Notes:
This is the sequel to Home. I recommend reading that story prior to this one; this plot will not make sense to you if you don't.
Please review! It's been so long since I wrote Home, I'm more than a little nervous I've missed my moment of interest for writing this one. I am so sorry for the incredible delay and very excited to be finally being in a place where I can share this. : )
ROOTS
NOW:
The summer sun hung high over the calm and clear waters of Lake Tahoe. It was the perfect day to spend on the shore, basking in the warmth until it inevitably became too much, and respite was sought within the patient, cool waters.
Sitting on a sandy bank, Adam Cartwright smiled. The sleeves of his shirt had been rolled up, his boots and socks removed. Knees bent in front of him, he wrapped his arms around his legs, and watched his child play from afar. His oldest son, Charlie, was thoroughly enjoying himself, filling a small, tin bucket with sand, and then flipping it over, packing one full load after another on top of each other to build a towering pile. It was almost taller than him at this point—which, Adam mournfully realized, was not really that towering at all. Five-year-old children were not known to be objectively tall. Charlie was no exception to this rule; he stood at just over three feet, a height he would never surpass.
"Good job, Charlie," Adam affirmed. Charlie stood on bare tiptoes, carefully placing one final bucket of sand on his tower. It was now taller than the boy would ever be. Adam shook his head to clear the sad observation. There was no point in dwelling on it now. Not on such beautiful days in such stunning dreams as this. "That's quite a structure, son."
Taking a step back, Charlie assessed his project and frowned. It was not obvious whether he was displeased with its height or his inability to make it taller. It was not long before he abandoned it completely, shifting his focus to racing up and down the vast lake shore. He ran a little too fast, his small feet slipping and sliding precariously among the sand with each step he took.
"Slow down," Adam warned.
Stopping suddenly, Charlie turned, his tiny brow furrowing with intense thought. "Why?" he asked.
Heart fluttering, Adam failed to provide a reason. There simply wasn't one. Not anymore. Nothing terrible could happen if Charlie ran too quickly on the slippery and unsteady ground. There was no threat of him falling, skinning a knee, breaking a leg, or worse. Such worries were antiquated, rendered blatantly unnecessary given the event that had already taken place.
Looking between the lake and his son, Adam tried to hang onto contentment, but it was fleeting, slipping just beyond his grasp as reality began to creep back in. He would have liked to have brought Charlie to this place. He would have relished watching him play in the sand, teaching him to swim in the waters, and overseeing him as he grew up roaming the land on which he himself had spent his formative years. None of that could happen now. It was too late.
Charlie was gone. He had died in San Francisco.
Adam hadn't been there when his son took his last tragic step. He hadn't caught him when he fell, hadn't held him as his life slipped away. He hadn't whispered any last words or final declarations of love, permanently extinguishing any doubt that somehow such a certain fact could have been left unknown. Adam had not been there, and Charlie was not here now. Too often, it seemed, Charlie's short life had been reduced to a collection of things he would never do. He would never run the banks of Lake Tahoe or explore the vast land surrounding it. He would never meet his grandfather and uncles, his new sister and brother. He would never be allowed to grow larger than he appeared in his father's dreams. He would forever exist in the memories of those who knew and loved him as a boy no more than five years old. In his waking moments, Adam tried his best not to think about these things. Shamefully, he tried not to think of Charlie at all. He did not know how he negotiated most days, rising each morning and continuing on as though something was not missing, as though nothing about his life was terribly wrong. It was wrong—he knew that. Even if he never allowed himself to consider it, he always knew. It was always there, this feeling of wrongness. It was the undercurrent of every emotion, every act. Something was wrong. Nothing would ever be quite right again.
Charlie began running again and then stopped abruptly. He looked at Adam, his expression pinched with concern. "Someone's crying," he said.
Closing his eyes, Adam listened, and his mind finally registered the sound. Someone was crying. It was not an unfamiliar thing to hear these days, an obvious consequence of adding not one, but two new members to his family. If one of the twin infants was fussing, it would not be long before the other joined in. Opening his eyes, Adam looked at Charlie, his beautiful, tenacious boy who now only existed in his dreams. "I have to go now," he said. "But I'll see you tomorrow night, okay, buddy?"
Charlie shrugged. "Okay," he said.
Closing his eyes once more, Adam opened them again and found himself staring at the ceiling of the bedroom he and Eddie shared. The darkness behind the curtains teased it was hours before dawn. The distant crying continued, impervious to his sudden consciousness as he discerned what he could not before. There was a duo of cries circulating the air of the family home, one shrilly filling the silence when the other paused to take a deep breath.
Groaning, he rose, intent on helping his wife. Entering the hall, he was detained by another one of his children. Security blanket wrapped over his shoulders, Noah looked up at his father and lifted his arms, silently bidding to be picked up. Having been born a generally exceptional sleeper, at three years old, Noah had grown nocturnally restless as of late. He struggled to fall asleep and often woke in the middle of the night in disarray. Whether it was the residual shock of having endured so many changes in such a short period of time, the surprise of becoming an older brother to not one but two noisy infants, or something else that was making the tot restless, neither of the boy's parents were sure.
Holding Noah, Adam peeked into Peggy's room and found the teenager fast asleep. Like so many occasions before, he both applauded and slightly begrudged the girl for her ability to remain asleep while slumber seemed so out of the question for the other members of her family. Expelling a deep sigh, he clenched the cold metal of the doorknob and wondered how many other times fate would allow him to look in on her like this, and how she would react if she knew that he had. The two of them were not on good terms and had not been since she discovered the truth about his treatment of Will, which in turn, led him to discover the truth about Will's treatment of her. Neither of them knew how to handle each other now, how to navigate their relationship after the abrupt sharing of such difficult secrets. There were so many things he wished he could have protected her from—so many things he now knew he had not.
Holding Noah tightly, Adam made his way downstairs, and finally joined Eddie in the sitting room, her preferred location to sit or endlessly pace when the infants fussed extendedly. Sitting in the rocking chair, she was visibly exhausted. Holding a wailing baby in the crook of each of her arms, she cast him an exasperated look.
"Where's your mother?" he asked.
"Out. Don't you remember? You were the one who insisted she take an evening away."
Adam did not recall, but that did not influence his reply. "She deserves it," he said. "A woman like that deserves more out of life than the flat expectation she play governess to her grandchildren for the rest of her life."
"Like what?"
"What?" Adam asked, unsure he heard her correctly over the cries of the twins.
"What does she deserve?"
Shrugging, Adam was unwilling to expand on his comment. If asked directly, he would freely admit he was fond of Lil; if pressed in the right surroundings and circumstances, he would confess the truth. The first time he met her, he was annoyed by her, and now he loved her—which, he figured, was the magic of the years that had passed while he was far away from Nevada, under the spell of his self-proclaimed Fairy Godmother.
"Never mind," Eddie said. Unbuttoning her nightshirt, she offered her wailing daughter her exposed bosom. It was swiftly rejected as the infant continued to howl in tandem with her twin. She looked at Adam exasperatedly, her face laden with exhaustion. "I give up," she admitted. "I don't know what to do. None of our other children ever cried this much or refused to be comforted by food."
"Let me try."
Eddie scoffed in a humorless manner. "Sorry, I don't think you're equipped."
"You just said they weren't interested in eating." Adam tilted his head at Noah. "You take this one back to bed, and I'll take those two and maybe we can all manage to get some rest before sunrise."
Eddie looked at the calm tot, content in her husband's arms, and then at the wailing duo in her own. "Okay," she agreed.
Finding himself alone with his howling infants, Adam took Eddie's place in the rocking chair. "Shh," he tried, as neither baby showed any indication of calming. Extending his leg, he moved his foot against the floor, moving the chair back and forth in a comforting rhythm. "Shh."
Despite his efforts, their crying continued. Looking between the pair, he tiredly surmised that the twins' inability to be quickly soothed and easily placated was not the only way in which the pair differed from he and Eddie's older children. Unlike Charlie and Noah, who had both inherited a distinct mixture of their parents' most obvious respective physical characteristics, these children had not. They both had dark, black hair, and neither had inherited Eddie's blue eyes nor Adam's hazel. These children had dark eyes—brown eyes to be exact. This was something that, within days after their birth, Adam had resigned himself to not thinking about too hard or much. It simply was not conducive to dwell on the infants' eye color, or from whom they may have inherited it. After all, brown eyes were prominent in his family; his father had them—and so had Will. Besides, this was a much less bothersome detail when compared to the one Adam found himself most troubled by in the quiet moments when he allowed himself to be troubled at all.
He was most bothered by their names.
William Samuel and Laura Elizabeth had the distinction of being named after deceased family members. As with his other children before them, Adam had had little say in the matter. The names had been chosen and declared to the extended family before he had a chance to accept or reject them. He did not want to think the monikers his wife had picked for their youngest children had been selected out of spite, but sometimes his doubts overcame him. He couldn't deduct the purpose of such a thing.
Why would Eddie choose to name their children after deceased cousins of questionable repute? Why would she want to be constantly reminded of a harrowing past they were all meant to move on from and forget? It didn't make sense to him. He could ask her if he really wanted to know, but he had no intention of ever doing that. Curiosity be damned; there were just some things in a life a man did not need to know. Due to his stern insistence, Sam is what they would call the boy, Ellie, the girl, and he would do his very best not to think about the people who had possessed their primary appellations first.
"Come on," he whispered as the babies continued to wail. "How about you give it a rest, huh?" His voice was deep and gruff with sleep, yet gentle. Absently, he noted how much he sounded like his father in this moment. Though the deepness of his voice would never quite reach Ben Cartwright's baritone, it was weighty in its own right. When pushed to the limit, he could be every bit as formidable as his father. Maybe more, if surrounded by the proper circumstances.
As the infants continued to cry, Adam abandoned all thoughts of likening himself to his father. "It's late," he said. "Early," he amended. "Your Ma's tired and so am I. I'm sure if you just stopped crying for a minute or two, you'd find that you are too."
For whatever reason, the plea worked. Carefully cradled in the arms of their father, Sam and Ellie quieted. So overtaken by the bliss of the surrounding silence, Adam continued to idly rock the chair back and forth, lulling even himself back to sleep. When slumber came for a second time, he dreamed of nothing.
Morning came too soon. Awakened by the familiar chatter of a full household, Adam peered blearily around. Though his arms were empty, he felt no concern over such a thing, certain that either Eddie or Lil had liberated his children from him while he slept. He rose with a groan, rubbed a hand over his stubble-covered cheeks, and set his attention on preparing himself for yet another day.
Returning to his bedroom, he changed his rumpled clothes and shaved quickly. Despite welcoming Eddie's presence in the house on Kay Street, he had yet to regrow his beard, and she had yet to re-don her wedding band. Sometimes he wondered if she was waiting for him to make the first move, if the ring on her finger would miraculously reappear if he allowed the hair on his face to grow. Sometimes he wondered if he would be more amiable to allow the hair to grow if one day his wife's ring magically materialized. And other times, he regarded the situation as the worst game of Chicken he had ever found himself engaged in, the stakes of which often felt much too high. Not that it mattered. Game or no game, neither one of them were playing. Not anymore. Eddie could claim she didn't understand; she could hate him if she wanted to— he knew a part of her always would—it wouldn't change anything. If there were just some things that a man shouldn't know, then there were others he just could not fix.
Donning his vest, he decorated his breast with the silver sheriff's star, wrapped his gun belt around his waist, placed his hat on his head, and bid his children farewell for the day. Lil was noticeably absent from the family's morning activities, something which Eddie's parting words only served to emphasize.
"The minute you see my mother you send her home," she said.
He left with a clipped nod.
Xx
Stepping into the sheriff's office Adam found Roy Coffee and his father already inside.
"Sheriff," Coffee greeted.
"Son," Ben said.
Adam repressed a sigh and forced a meager smile. What he would have given to have had the office to himself for a change. It just was not a common thing these days; if Roy Coffee was not meandering, which as Adam's deputy, he had every right to do, then Pa was. "Roy," he said. "Pa."
Ben and Coffee traded a guarded glance, then appraised him warily. It was Coffee that spoke first, his words slow and carefully chosen. "I didn't expect to see you this early."
"I'm always here this early," Adam said.
"I know," Coffee said. "But, I guess, I figured today might be a mite different than usual."
"Because?" Adam asked.
"Because…" Coffee fruitlessly drawled.
"Because I was hoping to take you to breakfast," Ben said.
"You were?" Adam asked. This was the first time he had heard of the plan. Roy Coffee, however, seemed sufficiently appraised. Almost too much so.
"Breakfast," Coffee affirmed with a nod.
Looking at his father, Adam wondered what the pair had been speaking about prior to his arrival and when their conversation had begun. "I'm sorry," he said evenly, choosing his words carefully. "I don't recall agreeing to breakfast today."
"That's because you didn't," Ben said. "I thought it would be nice for the two of us to sit down and talk."
Adam surveyed the room. "We can't talk here?"
"Well, of course we could," Ben said, "that is, if you've already eaten."
"I haven't," Adam admitted.
"Then go on, Adam," Coffee urged. "Let your Pa take you for a good meal."
"I have things to do—" Adam tried.
"Nothin' that can't wait," Coffee said. "You can do all that needs doin' when you get back. Go to breakfast, and then deal with whatever the day has in store for you after."
"In store for me," Adam repeated flatly. He became uneasy as his father cast Coffee a disgruntled look. Something about the situation was inherently wrong. What did Coffee and his father have to speak about without him in attendance? What was the purpose of the impromptu breakfast?
"Come on," Ben urged, quickly ushering Adam out of the office and onto the bustling street. Father and son did not speak until they were seated at the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel.
"So," Ben said, the word exiting his mouth at a maddeningly slow clip. "How are things?"
"Things," Adam repeated.
"Well, you know… with the family and such."
"The family?"
"How are Eddie and the children?"
"Fine," Adam deflected.
He was not sure who he was protecting by circumventing the question: himself or his father. Maybe he was not protecting either of them. Perhaps he had just found his footing again, finally falling back into a familiar somehow comforting impenetrable disposition. He was Adam Cartwright, after all; the eldest son of his father's four; and, as an educated man, he had a cool, invariant demeanor. Often controlling the conversations he chose to engage in, he was always so quietly certain of everything. Except, of course, occasions when he was not. Instances of uncertainty had been somewhat of a rarity years ago, when he had been single and childless, a grown man living in his father's home, his birthright and livelihood impossibly intertwined in the form of the great Ponderosa. It was not like that anymore. He had left Virginia City and then he had returned, and somewhere along the line his enduring certainty had left him. He questioned himself now more than he ever had, more than he would ever dare admit aloud.
"Things are fine," he repeated firmly. He wondered how many times he would have to say the statement before he could truly believe it. He felt old, inept, and unsure of damn near everything.
Ben was visibly unconvinced. "You know, if your tone was different, it might make those words more believable," he said. His voice was quiet and careful, a little too gentle to be tolerable. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Ignoring the question, Adam took a sip of coffee, placed the cup on the table, pushed his half-eaten breakfast aside, and appraised their surroundings. The small restaurant was relatively busy given the lateness of the morning hour and the day of the week. Thursdays tended to garner a lackluster crowd, at least in comparison to the weekend. This one, however, had invited a collection of people who rivaled that of the busier days. A few of them he recognized and most he did not. He noted the details of the newcomers, a mixture of supposed business travelers, unknown knockabouts, and wanderers who had been lured west by the promise of better things. Together, a very long time ago, he and his father had been considered by others as the latter. During his marshaling years, Adam knew he could have been considered a wanderer too. Both were difficult time periods to let go of—as aimless and tumultuous as they both had been. Sometimes he ached for them. What he would not give for a night alone beneath the stars in the middle of nowhere, some place where no one and nothing harbored expectations or preconceived notions of him. The world might seem so open then, inviting, and unspoiled. He longed for that kind of hope, freedom, and certainty.
Sometimes he longed for a lot of things.
Like Charlie.
The strength of the love that had once bound him and Eddie together so fervently.
And the life he had abandoned the day he turned his back on his father's home. As infuriating as they so often were, things were simpler back then. Everything that was needed or wanted from him had been maddeningly predictable when he still remained in his father's assuaging shadow and employ. Everything had been so much easier when he had resigned himself to remaining unmarried and alone.
He glanced at his father. Ben's brows were knit, his face tight with concern he was struggling to conceal. His father was so worried, Adam would not dare keep the truth to himself. "Sometimes I just want to go back," he whispered. The statement was foolish to utter, impossible to properly respond to.
"I know," Ben said, his voice low and gentle. "But living in the past does not help navigate the future. Grief is a hell of a thing, son. It's easy to get lost in if you allow yourself to. I won't pretend I know what it feels like for you. As you once said, I may have lost you for a time, but you returned. Charlie never will."
Nearly flinching at the mention of his son, Adam took a deep breath and forced an indifferent expression. "If you brought me here to talk about the past, then you're going to be disappointed," he said, reclaiming control over the conversation once more.
"I didn't." Pushing his breakfast plate aside, Ben placed his hands on the table, tented his fingers, then intertwined them in a tight grip. "I brought you here to talk about the future."
"What about it?"
"What are your plans?"
The question seemed so broad that Adam had a difficult time deducing the answer his father was seeking. It took him a few quiet moments of contemplation before he considered the time of year and that led him to consider something else. Leaning back in his chair, he crossed his arms, surveyed his father, and chastised himself for not realizing the purpose of this breakfast sooner.
When Roy Coffee had surrendered the remaining duration of his elected incumbency as Virginia City Sheriff to Adam there had been a little over a year remaining on the term. That span of time had now dwindled to less than two months. Sooner rather than later, Adam would need to share his decision, publicly declaring his own intention to run for re-election—or not. His father was not the first person to broach the subject, and he would not be the last. Still, Adam felt a small twinge of disappointment Ben dared bring it up at all.
"You're talking about the upcoming election," Adam said.
"I'm talking about a lot of things."
"Like?"
"Like the Running D and the span of land that connects it to the Ponderosa. Your land and the land that belongs to your daughter, both of which have remained conveniently overlooked and neglected since the last time we spoke of them."
"You mean the only other time we spoke of them."
To Ben, the distinction seemed to make little difference. "Like I asked before, what are your plans?"
"For the land?"
"And the election."
Adam's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "The land, the election, and what else?"
"Your family."
"Boy, this is some conversation," Adam grumbled as he gave up on the day unfolding any better than it had begun. "One might even find it inappropriate, off-putting at the very least, considering recent history and the fact that you and I agreed to be nice to each other."
"Am I not being nice? I'm simply asking about your plans."
"You're interrogating me."
"I am hardly interrogating you."
"You want to know about the land, the election, my family, and the future."
"Are those subjects suddenly verboten? If so, then I'll happily retract the question. I just want to know how you are, Adam. I just want to know—"
"How things are going," Adam finished. "Yeah, I heard you the first time."
How dare is father press him on matters he was not yet willing to talk about. How could Adam talk about it? There was no certain response to any one of the questions that had been asked. No convenient plan of action. Nothing about this moment in life was easy. In fact, everything felt a little too hard. His father knew that. If he had not previously been aware of it, then Adam's admission of wanting to go back should have been a pretty clear indication. Why was Pa pressing for more information?
"Adam?" Ben prompted.
"Things aren't going particularly well right now," Adam said impetuously. It was neither the full truth nor a complete lie, rather something that existed someplace in between. "Is that what you want to hear?"
Ben looked down at his hands contritely. "No."
"Then what are you trying to get me to say?"
Ben looked at his son, then turned his gaze upon the room. "I just want to know your—"
"Plans," Adam angrily finished. "Yeah, I know. You and everyone else in this town are just dying for the answers to the same question: Is Adam Cartwright going to run for reelection or just plain run."
"No one is thinking that."
"Everyone is thinking that. You know, Pa, I can handle other folks thinking it, but what I can't seem to endure is the thought of my own father thinking it, too. I'm not withholding information or being purposefully coy. The problem with answering that particular question is I don't necessarily have an answer, and the answers to everything else you want to know are all contingent on that one."
"Well, son, that's all you had to say."
"Why do I have to say anything? Why can't things just be the way they appear? A father sharing breakfast with his son, instead of an old man probing for answers about things that aren't his business in the first place."
Pushing his chair back, he abruptly stood and looked down at his father. For the briefest of moments, a hint of his inner conflict was etched upon his face, and then it was gone as he walked purposefully away from the table, leaving both his father and the conversation behind.
Xx
Entering the sheriff's office in a huff, Adam looked at Roy Coffee who was still sitting behind the desk and lifted a warning finger. "If you intend to press me about the upcoming election—"
"Why would I do that?" Coffee asked mildly. "I know better than to ask questions I already know the answer to."
"What makes you think you already know the answer?" Adam demanded.
"What makes you think I don't?"
"I haven't said anything about it."
"There are just some questions in this life that folks don't need to hear the answers to. After all, a second term was never part of my original proposition to you."
"A lot of things have changed since then."
"Don't I know it," Coffee said. "Still, given the events of the past year, I'm sure you can understand why other things might need to change, too. There ain't no purpose in dancing around it, so I'm just gonna come right out and say it. Adam, I think it's in the best interest of everyone if you don't remain sheriff of this town."
"That's quite the drastic shift in opinion, Roy. If somebody would have overheard the things you said to get me here last year, then they would have gotten the idea that I was meant to be the savior of this town."
"This town was never in need of a savior. You were."
"I see, and now that Will's gone and my wife has come back, I've outlived my usefulness?"
"I'm not saying that."
"Then what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that guarding Virginia City has outlived its usefulness to you. This town doesn't need you, but you have a family that does."
"If I'm not going to run for sheriff then who is? You?"
"No."
"Then who?"
"Billy Buckley."
Adam could not repress his disapproval. "If that's meant to be a joke then it isn't very funny."
"It's no joke."
"Billy Buckley shot down Ed Payson in cold blood."
"It wasn't cold blood," Coffee disagreed. "Both Payson and Buckley were armed when they engaged themselves in that gunfight, both you and Sally Cass both testified to that fact."
"Just because facts can render something legally dismissible it doesn't mean the situation was morally irreprehensible."
Coffee regarded him thoughtfully. "I know," he said purposefully. "And if you think about recent events, I'm sure you'll realize why this is the way things need to be. I don't like saying these things, Adam, especially to you. I take no pleasure in knowing that Buckley took the life of your friend. Ed Payson died years ago now. Buckley's calmed down since then; he's changed. Given all that's happened, I would think you, of all people, would not be eager to judge anyone based on the past."
"So, Buckley's your new man, just like that."
"Just like nothin'," Coffee disagreed. "Don't think for a second this decision is one that came easy."
"It couldn't have been that hard." Snorting disgustedly, Adam shook his head. "Out of all the people in this town you choose him?"
"No, I chose you, but you and I both know you ain't often fond of things somebody else has decided should be yours. I reckon if you were then you'd never have left the Ponderosa in the first place. You would have married Laura Dayton years ago and you'd still be working for your pa."
Adam flinched, the mention of Laura's name cutting like a knife. "Don't you dare," he warned deeply, "talk to me about what could have been—"
"Then you're going to have to be open to the notion that we can talk about what currently is." Coffee was nonplussed by the younger man's anger. "It ain't a slight. I know it feels like one, but it ain't. This job has run out its usefulness for you. It was a good distraction. It gave you what you needed before. All it's going to do now is take away from you. Can't you see that? You have a family, a wife, and kids. Buckley don't have any of that."
"He doesn't have a lot of other things either."
"What do you want, Adam? To stand there and spit thinly veiled disparagements of Buckley's character? You can, if'n that's what you really want to do, but it ain't gonna do much to change what's already been said. It ain't gonna make walking the path you've been presented with any easier. I've said and done my part. I've asked Buckley to run and you not to step aside and allow him to. You don't have to like it, but it's just the way that things have to be."
With that, Adam knew there was nothing he could say to change Coffee's mind. There was nothing left to say. He could either defy the elder man's wish or respect it. One path would ensure that the two of them remained on good terms, the other threatened to challenge their relationship, and neither option promised to bring him peace. Neither would change the truth.
"Just think about it, Adam," Coffee urged. "Think about all that I've said and everything you refuse to. Let me know in a few days or so how you really feel about the matter, and what you intend to do."
Unable to tolerate the room, the uncertainty of the moment, or the man in front of him any longer, Adam left without further word.
TBC