Roots

by CrazyKater

(Sequel to Home) Nobody said returning home after years away would be easy; they never claimed finding a place in a town and family that had changed would be simple. Even so, Adam Cartwright thought he had. But circumstances shift in an instant, old habits die hard, and just because a man thinks he's finished with the past, that doesn't mean the past is finished with him.

9. Chapter 9

NOW:

Adam and Buckley's fight was really something to see—or at least that's what Jamie would come to enthusiastically recount time and time again. Adam's memories of the interaction were fragmentary and disjointed when he finally woke, his knuckles scratched, bruised, and throbbing, his head pounding so relentlessly he could not summon the desire to lift it from the pillow on which it lay. The curtains were closed, the only light in the room was that of an oil lamp, burning excruciatingly low on the bedside table. He looked upon his surroundings with slit eyes, the throbbing of his head intensified by the dim light, his brain absently noting but not yet fully understanding the unfavorable nature of his current whereabouts. Opening his mouth, he was unable to stifle the groan which emerged from it. The noise alerted his bedside companion; Eddie inched forward in her chair and wiped his face with a wet cloth.

"Shhh," she whispered. "Take it easy. Just relax."

As the room seemed to begin to spin around him, Adam closed his eyes and focused his attention on the soothing coolness of the wet cloth being swept across his burning cheeks. His head was consumed by an overwhelming, hammering pain, a pulsating that extended, enveloping his neck and shoulders. His stomach turned viciously, threatening to force him to disgorge what was left of the bile churning inside of it. Judging by the soreness of his throat and the stale, foul taste lingering in his mouth, it wouldn't be the first time he vomited; he hoped he wouldn't do so again. With the way his head was pounding any abrupt and violent movement promised to cause it to downright explode.

"Are you really with me this time?" Eddie asked as she pulled the cloth away from his face. "Or are you going to pass out like you did before?"

"I think…" Adam whispered weakly, his voice gravelly and groggy. "I might be…sticking around."

"That's the best news I've heard in a while."

With the way he felt, Adam wasn't certain he agreed. "What happened?"

"You went looking for trouble."

"I must have found it."

"You did. What do you remember?"

"Uhm." Eyes still closed, Adam thought long and hard, his memories of the time just before his apparent unconsciousness feeling a little too fuzzy and fragmented to be fully recalled. He remembered sitting at breakfast with his family, intercepting Peggy on the porch, the ride and conversation they had shared. "I remember… learning what a fine piece of work your mother turned out to be."

"You remember coming back to town then?"

"I think…I think so."

"Returning to the house?"

"Yes."

"Demanding the whereabouts of my mother?"

"Yes."

"Going to the International House and arguing with Jamie?"

Adam's expression contorted. "I think so," he ventured, though he remained unsure. "Jamie was… upset about…something." The detail lingered just beyond his grasp.

"You were angry, too."

"And…Buckley…stuck his nose where it didn't belong."

He had hit Buckley, then Buckley had hit him back, and then he had hit Buckley again. Cracking his knuckles open and bloodying the man's face, each of Adam's punches had landed with even more fury and force than the one which had been unleashed before it. Blinded by rage, he had hit the man over and over again until he was suddenly grabbed from behind. He had a fleeting memory of being picked up, thrust through air, landing hard, and the world going abruptly black around him. Someone had intervened, pulled him back from Buckley. Had Jamie done that? Or had that been the work of someone else? Someone larger and stronger?

"You remember assaulting the sheriff."

"Assaulting?" Adam snorted weakly. "I don't believe I've ever straight-up assaulted anyone." Except for Will, a small troublesome voice inside of him whispered. Will was always the exception to any and all rules.

"You don't remember."

"No, I… think…I do." Opening his eyes, Adam found himself the subject of her evaluative stare. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"This isn't the first time we've had this conversation. You've come to before, and during the occasions you've managed to coherently speak, you've only been able to recall bits and pieces of what happened."

"Oh, yeah? How am I doing this time?"

"You recall more than you ever have, and you've held on to consciousness longer than any time before, so maybe you're finally back in the land of the living for good."

"As opposed to what?"

Eddie forced a meager smile. "The land of the nearly lost. Judging by the way your nose and ears bled, and the lump you have on the back of your head, the doctor diagnosed you with a fractured skull."

"Billy Buckley did that?" It was as unbelievable as it was unlikely; surely a man of Buckley's average strength and stature was not physically capable of such a thing, at least not in comparison to Adam's burly frame.

"You don't remember."

"I…" Head palpitating with pain, Adam was unable to finish the sentence. Casting his unfocused gaze upon his surroundings, he slowly began to identify what had struck him as strange before. The room was as familiar as the bed he lay on and both felt equally wrong to be presented with in his current state. "I'm in the wrong bedroom," he said. "In the wrong house."

"Your father wanted you close. He brought all of us to the Ponderosa to be looked after. He was quite worried. We all were. You bled so much; it took hours to stymie the flow from your nose and ears and head-wound. It was all very frightening to say the least. The first time you came to, you were so confused, so disoriented that you couldn't form coherent sentences. You couldn't stop vomiting the second time, and the third time, you were so quiet that we were sure something inside of your brain had been rattled loose. Those occasions alongside the doctor's abysmal prognosis did not make for a very inspiriting few days."

"Few days?"

"Four to be exact."

"Shit," Adam whispered, the swear slipping from his mouth before he thought better of it—if he was even capable of such a thing in his state—altering his spontaneous, contrite response to fit his muliebral audience. "I'm sorry, Eddie."

"For what?" she asked softly. "Engaging in an argument with the sheriff or allowing it to progress to the point where you were seriously injured?"

"Both, I suppose."

"Well, I won't accept an apology for either. If what Jamie recounted is true, then I understand why the fight took place. What you could apologize for, should you find yourself in a mind to, is not running for reappointment and so wittingly relinquishing your sheriff's badge to a man like Buckley."

With the pain in his head and neck reverberating anew and his stomach turning sickly once more, Adam thought her timing less than impeccable. "Hell of a moment to pick to have this conversation," he said, giving little thought to his subsequent swear. Maybe it was his lingering confusion, pain, or exhaustion which allowed the word to exit his mouth unchecked. Or perhaps it was because with all the things they had been through together and all the others they had not, there was little point in amending their messages to each other now. His annoyance over the topic was quick and transient; he was grateful their conversation had shifted to events distant enough to be easily recalled. "If you had an opinion, why didn't you voice it before the election?"

"Because I thought you were going to come around and eventually decide to run on your own."

"That was never going to happen."

"Why?"

Adam blinked listlessly, the answer seeming so clear to him. "It wasn't a decision that was mine to make."

"How was it not? Roy Coffee had made his decision, but you were still free to make your own."

"I wasn't. You don't understand. I couldn't go against Roy's wishes, and I couldn't remain sheriff without his support."

"Your father would have supported you. I would have supported you, too."

"Nobody else would have. Even if I had run against Buckley I wouldn't have won. There's a difference between men like him and men like me, and the way people around here choose to perceive us both."

"I know. If you thought things were rough in that town before, the tides are really beginning to turn against you now. You attacked the sheriff, Adam, and most folks don't care enough to take the time to understand the reason why."

"The tides have turned before. They'll turn again."

"Except for last time you had a badge protecting you."

"It didn't protect me. I was shot and nearly died."

"And how much more time is going to pass before something like that or this happens again? You were lucky this time. What is going to happen if next time you aren't?"

"What makes you think there will be a next time?"

"What makes you believe there won't? I knew the kind of man you were long before fate bound us together. You couldn't walk away from the dispute with Buckley, and you aren't going to walk away from any in the future. You aren't the kind to ignore injustices or tolerate impertinence. That was why being a lawman suited you; why relinquishing your sheriff's post without a fight was a very foolish thing to do."

Finally noting her melancholic tone, Adam peered at her through squinted eyes; he considered her momentarily, his brain struggling to distinguish and understand all that had gone overlooked since he first opened his eyes. With her shoulders hunched and dark circles marking the skin beneath her striking blue eyes, Eddie was visibly exhausted. Her long, blond hair hung loose and unkempt, cascading over her shoulders and down her back. The dark blue blouse tucked into her long skirt was wrinkled and stained; the front of both garments were speckled and splattered with flecks of dried blood. He had been impaired for four days, in and out of things, and it appeared as though she had not looked after herself or rested in just as long. Reaching out, she took hold of his hand; it was the most physical contact either of them had dare venture since before Charlie had died. There was a warmth to her dejected posture, a desperation lurking in the way she held his hand a little too tightly in her own. When she looked straight at him, finally holding his gaze, her eyes were wide and glistening with an emotion he was not accustomed to being allowed to see.

"You're afraid," he whispered, a hint of awe in his own impeded tone.

"Of course, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

"Because…"

Brow furrowing, she looked away from him, focusing her attention on something unseen across the room as she gathered her thoughts and composure. She clenched, then unclenched, and then clenched her hand, tightening, then loosening and then tightening her grip upon him. Her anxiety was powerful and palpable, seemingly filling up the room around them with a stagnant, hindering energy. Adam, however, did not feel entirely hindered by it. Maybe it was due to the injury to his head, or perhaps it was because of something else completely, but he was neither dreading nor afraid of hearing whatever it was she was struggling to say.

"Just tell me," he prompted. "It'll be okay no matter what it is."

"No, it won't."

"Sure, it will."

"No, it won't," she whispered mournfully. "I shouldn't be acting this way. I shouldn't dare speak of such things, not right now. The doctor said we are to keep you quiet and calm for the time being. He left strict orders not to speak of things that will upset you."

"I'm not upset."

She looked at him again, tears pooling in her eyes. Strangely, Adam was taken by her beauty, her intensity, the underlying passion for the belief governing her determination in the moment not to say the things she needed to the most. She was exhausted. Uncertain. Afraid yet protective. She was trying to protect him, he realized, from the weight of her insatiable fear. Even after everything they had managed to say and decide and all that they had not found the courage to, she still cared enough to remain at his bedside, to shelter him from the pain of the truth she so obviously and desperately needed to share. He knew she would share it, eventually, if not today then tomorrow, or the next day, or the one after that, and whatever it was, no matter how troubling or difficult it turned out to be, he would hear it and he would shoulder it, silently adjusting the invisible payload of all the terrible truths he now carried to make room for one more.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?" she asked, her wavering voice made thick by her tears.

Adam wondered where he would possibly start. "For upsetting you."

"You didn't upset me. I upset myself. These days it seems as though I'm always upsetting myself. I think too little and often speak too much. Being back in your father's home has reminded me of all I seemed to have forgotten as of late."

"Like what?"

"I've never seen you hurt before," Eddie said, guiding the conversation in a different direction. "When we lived in San Francisco and you were a marshal, I was not unaware of the dangers and risks of your profession. I knew that sometimes you were hurt. Even so, I never had to see you through any of the injuries you sustained on the road. You would come home with holes in your clothes, bloodstains on your boots, and new scars marring your skin, and that was all I ever had to witness of such things."

"And now you're afraid because you've seen me hurt?"

"No, not exactly."

"What then?"

Chewing on her bottom lip, she shook her head.

"You're afraid of saying it?" Adam deduced.

Eddie was slow to respond. "I'm afraid of how it's going to be received."

"In my experience, such things are usually better just spoken outright. The longer you hang on to them, the more difficult they become to say."

"Impossible," Eddie corrected woefully. "Not difficult."

"Why is it impossible?"

"Because sentiments are fleeting. Some proclamations are easy to conceive of and impossible to speak aloud. I don't trust I'll say what I want to in the correct way or even in a way in which you will allow yourself to hear it, especially since I have already said a thousand other things I wish I could retract. I have been dying to retract them, Adam. All the horrible things I said after Charlie's accident; the vile things I said after Ellie and Sam were born. I have spent the last four days longing for this opportunity, praying you would wake up, speak, and hear me clearly, so I could finally tell you how I really feel, and now that I can I'm too afraid to allow myself to utter the words." Huge tears spilled from her eyes, trailing slowly down her cheeks to fall to the floorboards. "I'm afraid I'll intend to say one thing and then I'll say something else entirely. I'm afraid my thoughts will be kind, but my words will be cruel. I'm not the same woman I was before. After we lost Charlie, something inside of me shifted and changed. Sometimes there is such a lunacy to my thoughts, a madness to my moods. Sometimes… sometimes something inside of me starts screaming, and I find myself saying things that I don't want to say, that I don't even mean, really. I can't control it. I want to, but I can't. It's all so much. It frightens me, and you frighten me, too."

"Why?"

"Because of all the things you don't say in the face of everything I do. You're too kind to me. Being back in your father's home has made that abundantly clear. All this time, all these weeks and months that you have carefully avoided your father's questions about the future. You kept the truth to yourself so your family's opinion of me would not be altered or changed. You allowed your father to believe that you were the one who didn't want to build a home on the land he gave you; you led him to think you were the one choosing to leave it untouched."

"I wasn't going to tell him the truth."

Adam wouldn't have. Not because of some altruistic desire to protect anyone like she was claiming rather because he could never settle upon the right words. He could never seem to find the right moment to look his father in the eyes and tell him there was no point in building a house because he wasn't going to be left with a family to put in it.

With all that he and Eddie had been through over the years, they had actually endured so little struggle standing by each other's side. The absences demanded by his career had carved deep gullies in the space between them. Eddie didn't know how to function with his constant presence any more than he knew how to remain in place for an extended period of time. He was a wanderer, and she was an independent soul. It was an odd pairing that had made for an exciting courtship but left no euphoria once marriage vows had finally been traded. Sometimes Adam thought—as he knew she did as well—that if Charlie had not come along then they would not have remained together. They certainly would not have married, or still been with one another now. They were too different to wish for a life without conflict; they were too much the same to know how to properly deal with the issues that arose. They were both too accustomed to bearing their burdens alone, never asking for or demanding the things they needed the most. They would both rather do without love and understanding altogether if having such things meant having to petition for them. They did not settle, and they would not beg. Except, sitting next to him, clenching his hand tightly, Eddie's eyes were wide, tear-filled, and pleading. Had they always been pleading or was he just noticing that now? Was it his injury that had shifted his perception, finally allowing him to see and acknowledge such things? Or was it her obvious exhaustion and self-proclaimed fear that was preventing her from disguising it? Either way, it didn't matter, because either way it had been manifested and it had been seen.

"You wouldn't tell your family the truth." She was crying in earnest now, her voice shaking with each purposefully stated word. "You wouldn't tell thembecause you are kind. You don't allow your words to be governed by your moods or the agonies you carry in your heart."

"No, I just ignore my feelings until I can't ignore them anymore, then I allow them to influence my behavior, and then everyone gets to experience a little bit of my agony."

Nose beginning to drip, she sniffled. "If that's supposed to be a joke meant to lighten the mood, it isn't very funny."

"It isn't a joke. Honey, that's just the damn truth."

"Honey," she tearfully spat. "I don't want to be your honey."

"I know, you told me already," Adam said, the memory of the terrible conversation refusing to be ignored. "You don't want to live in the house on Kay Street. You want to take the children back to San Fransisco, and you want me to stay as far away from all of you as I can possibly get."

"No!" Eddie shakily exclaimed, the word escaping her mouth in a sobbing breath. "Don't you understand? Don't you see? That's not what I want. Not anymore. Not ever, or at all. I changed mymind, Adam. That's what I spent the last few days hoping and praying I would be allowed to say to you. The thing I was so terrified of speaking outright for fear that you had changed your mind, too. I don't want to be yourhoney," she repeated, her tone becoming desperate and manic. "Being your honey isn't special. It isn't unique. It isn't representative of all the beautiful things we had before, everything that I was to you, everything that you were to me. Buddy, that's what I want you to call me, what I want to call you. Buddyis special. Buddy is unique. Buddy means something that nothing else ever can or will. I want you to call me buddy again. I want you to build a house for the children and me. I want you to regrow your beard, and I want us to be together, in the same place at the same time for the rest of our lives."

Adam was confounded. He struggled to reply; any words he might have employed to compose a statement that would honor them both lingered just beyond his reach. Vision swimming, his head pounded relentlessly, sharp daggers that began at the top of his head and shot down to encompass him in a paralytic agony. He was beginning to lose it now, the little bit of wherewithal that had allowed him to engage in conversation in the first place; it was only a matter of time before he would lose consciousness again.

"Come here." He tugged on her hand, pulling it weakly toward his chest. Impaired and nonplussed, it was the only thing he felt capable of.

Eddie was tentative. "Why?"

"Because I don't think I'm sticking around."

"If you don't plan on staying with me, why would you want me to come closer—?"

"No." Adam closed his eyes. "That's not what I meant. I meant, I don't think I'm going to be awake for much longer." Opening his eyes, he looked at her earnestly, black dots beginning to pepper his vision. "Please, Eddie… I can't find the words to properly… Look, if you want to be with me right now, then just be with me, okay?"

Letting go of his hand, Eddie wiped her face with her dress sleeve. "Okay." She crept into the bed carefully and settled her head in the crook of his arm. Eddie's body felt foreign next to his own; Adam could not recall the last time they had laid together in such a way.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "For being terrible and making things difficult. I love you. I always have, and I always will."

Unconsciousness overtook Adam quickly, enclosing him in a peaceful, latent blankness which seemed destined to extend forever and into infinity. At some point he came to realize he was walking, and shortly thereafter he found himself striding through an all-too-familiar doorway and into the sitting room of the Running D's farmhouse. The room looked as it had years ago, clean, and well-kept, made inviting and warm by the woman and little girl who inhabited it.

Sitting on the settee, Laura Dayton-Cartwright looked up from the washing she had tasked herself with folding and smiled. "Why, Adam," she greeted warmly, "how nice of you to finally call."

Looking down at his hands, Adam found his fingertips dancing upon the brim of the black hat he didn't recall wearing or removing. Was this a dream or a memory? He wasn't yet sure. With all the time that had passed since her death, Laura had never once appeared to him in the same way Ed Payson or Charlie sometimes did.

"Aren't you happy to see me?" Laura asked.

"I don't know. Am I really seeing you, or am I imagining you?"

"You're really seeing me."

He looked around the room, not yet sure of her or himself. There once had existed a great distance between them, a gaping span that had begun to grow the day he had stepped aside and allowed his cousin, Will, to claim her as his own. It hadn't stopped increasing since he had become aware of her untimely death, the day he had been led into this very house by a strange and insistent disembodied voice. It had prompted him to step closer and closer to where her body had been left. And the moment he stumbled upon her corpse was the very second his life had begun to slowly unravel, piece by piece.

"After all this time, Laura, all the years that have passed, countless other moments when you could have appeared to me, you choose to reach out now?"

"There's never been a better time."

"Or a worse one."

"No matter how bad things seem they could always be worse. Ed Payson asked me to tell you that."

"You speak to Ed?" Adam asked, slightly surprised.

"Yes." Laura nodded. "Although not frequently. He wanted to come to you now, but then thought it might be better if you and I spoke instead."

"Because?"

Given a choice, Adam would have preferred to be visited by Ed, a man of a similar phlegmatic disposition. If history was any indication, engaging in conversation with Laura only promised frustration and exasperation. There had been too many things left undone between them, too many questions left unasked and unanswered, and a single accusation, monstrous, troublesome, and true, that he knew he would never voice. There was little point in speaking such things aloud, and no satisfaction to be had by demanding ghosts acknowledge the mistakes they had made while mortal, things that could neither be rectified nor changed.

"Because of the conversation you just had with Eddie," Laura said. "Because of the one you and Peggy shared the other day. I swear, Adam, the way you've been allowing that girl to walk all over you is shameful."

"Eddie?"

"Peggy," Laura clarified. "She is headed down a very rough road. You need to direct her toward another."

"She's not going to listen to me."

"With the way you say that it sounds like you've decided to allow her to ignore you. The Adam Cartwright I once knew was not the kind of man to give up so easily, ever, or at all. You were always so certain, so stanch in your stances and beliefs." Standing, she pulled a quilt from the basket of washing, balling the fabric up in her arms to keep it from dragging on the floor as she closed the space between them. "Here," she said, offering him two sides of the blanket.

Adam looked at the quilt, then at the hat in his hands, the moment suddenly seeming a little too reminiscent of one they had once shared. Holding tightly to his hat, he did not take hold of the blanket, his amiable stance becoming rigid and incredulous. "Maybe I've changed," he said. Or maybe she had never really known him at all. Or maybe it was he who had never known her, he thought acridly, the repellant accusation he was determined not to utter lingering on the tip of his tongue. There was no point in saying it, he reminded himself. No response he could ever solicit from her would be enough to satisfy the torment she had posthumously caused.

"You have changed," Laura agreed. "But not nearly as much as you would like to think. After all, you are a husband and father now; you have other people to think about besides yourself. It isn't as easy as you once believed it would be, is it?"

"What?"

"Rearing children. Remaining loyal and faithful to your spouse when difficult times begin. Marriage isn't easy; although, it doesn't have to be quite as hard as it's been for you as of late."

Shaking his head, Adam refused to explore the topic in current company. "Laura, why am I here?" he asked. "Why are you here? After all this time, why appear to me now?"

"I already told you; Ed Payson asked me to come."

"Why?"

"To help you like you once helped me."

"I didn't realize I was in need of the kind of help only visitants like you can provide."

"And once upon a time, I didn't realize I needed the help you were offering me either. That didn't mean I wasn't. In fact, we both know how much I actually was. We need to talk about Eddie and Peggy, the wife you chose and the daughter who chose you." Growing weary of waiting for him to grab hold of the quilt, she made her way back to the settee, and placed the unfolded blanket atop the laundry basket. "Had I known how you and Eddie were destined to feel about each other, I would not have spoken so coarsely about you in my letters to her. I would have sent for her years ago, right after Aunt Lil's spontaneous arrival in Virginia City. Then you would have proposed to my cousin and not me, and it would have saved all of us a whole lot of time, frustration, and heartache."

"It wouldn't have saved you," Adam said, bluntly.

"It wouldn't have," Laura agreed. "Just as you were meant for Eddie, Will was meant for me; nothing would have ever changed that. Sometimes, looking back at the places we've been and the decisions we made moment to moment, it is easy to allow oneself to believe that things could have or should have been different than they were. Nothing about the circumstances surrounding my death could have been changed. No one and nothing could have saved me from Will, because I was never meant to be saved. You were."

"I wasn't saved. Laura, the diary you wrote destroyed my life," Adam disagreed, no longer able to keep his resolution of leaving accusations unspoken.

"I know it feels like that. And for what it's worth now, I am sorry for all the pain it caused you, but I am not sorry for writing it."

"How can you say that? How can you appear to me, now, like this, and not apologize for all the hell your words put me through? That diary decimated my reputation and standing in town. It eroded the foundation of my relationship with my father. And when it finally found its way into Eddie's hands, it annihilated what was left of my marriage."

A mere week after Ellie and Sam's difficult birth, two days after he and Eddie had moved their family back into the house on Kay Street, Adam had come home to find Eddie in possession of Laura's diary. Though she had been aware of its existence, verifying its contents with her own eyes was vastly different than a loose cognizance of what it contained. It wasn't the lies which Laura had embedded in her salacious tale that destroyed the manner in which Eddie regarded him, it was the bits of truth she had dared to include. Prior to that day, they had been doing their best to work things out—for their children's sake. There had been no more trying after that. They had given up on each other completely. Or was it Eddie that had given up on him? The diary coupled with her newly found knowledge of to whom their house in Virginia City actually belonged and how her husband had come to be in possession of it, becoming too much of a burden to bear. It was the house on Kay Street that had begun the descent of their eventual demise; it was Laura's diary which had pushed them past the point of no return. Eddie had called him all manner of things: a liar, a recreant, and a philanderer. She had said she hated him, reaching for the word with such velocity and anger as though it was something she had never dared say before.

But she had said it before.

After Charlie's tragic death, Eddie had told Adam she hated him. Citing his inability to confront the past, she had blamed him for the loss of their child; declaring that if Adam hadn't been so intent on running away from the past, his father, himself, and his repressed memories of Ohio, she would not have insisted they embark on their trip to the Midwest. She wouldn't have accepted when he finally asked her to marry him. If she had known that becoming legally espoused would come at the cost of their eldest son's life, then she would not have uttered a single wedding vow. She would have kept things as they were, her remaining in San Francisco with her mother and the children and Adam marshaling, his time with the family fleeting and sporadic, the danger and violence of the life he led remaining as far away from the rest of them as possible. She blamed him. For coming back to San Fransisco when and how he did. For turning his back on his marshal's badge, his status as a lawman, the identity he had obtained and claimed. For not being brave enough to face the past on his own. For not being present and able to catch Charlie when he fell. And whilst Adam had not said anything when she had howled her anguished accusations, he had experienced his fair share of retaliating thoughts, silent, damning accusations, and a horrendous aphonic realization. Eddie was right. Charlie would not have died had they remained in San Fransisco, because Adam would have been there to catch the boy when he fell. He would have been there, because that was what he had turned his back on his lawman's status to do. As Eddie lay crumpled up on the floor, sobbing and screaming, Adam realized he didn't care if she blamed or hated him. He blamed her, too. He hated her, too. For taking him away from Charlie when the boy needed him the most. For dragging him to Ohio to unearth a past she had no business being privy to in the first place. For pulling him down a path he had not wanted to travel, taking him away at a time when remaining in place had been the point.

"Things with the townsfolk are complicated," Laura said. "But your relationship with your father has recovered. Given time, your relationship with Eddie will follow suit. Didn't she just tell you she loved you? Didn't she just say she wanted things to be how they used to be?"

"Eddie is a Manford woman through and through. Her moods change with the wind, and she does not soften or amend the power of her words when she's in a furious state of mind."

Adam knew he wasn't an innocent party in the terse interactions he and Eddie had shared. He could not accuse his wife of speaking heedlessly without acknowledging that he himself never seemed to speak enough. Which was crueler: allowing oneself to disclose fleeting feelings and fears freely or withholding them and never saying anything at all?

"Maybe you can find it in your heart to make some allowances for such behavior," Laura said. "After all, she did just give you two more children. Birthing a single infant is taxing and arduous enough, especially given her specific difficulties; Eddie brought a daughter and a son into the world in succession. That's a lot for any woman to handle, Adam, challenging for both body and mind. Some struggle mentally after such things, and those are not the kind of difficulties that disappear overnight. On top of that, you must account for the stress of everything else. The demanding nature of two needy infants who cry so ceaselessly; the uncertainty of being uprooted and brought to a town that can be so uninviting and unkind; the consternation over a husband who has chosen to walk away from the only profession his wife has ever known him to hold; the abounding worry for a teenage girl who is rebelling against all authority and command; and the profound and incessant pain of losing a child. Any one of those things would be a lot for a woman to handle, but your wife is doing her best to shoulder them all, so you should not and cannot blame Eddie for the occasional, angry outburst, for the ever-odd vicious accusation."

"I never said I blamed her."

"That doesn't mean you don't hold her accountable."

"What do you know about the things I hold my wife accountable for?" Adam scoffed. He was frustrated with the conversation, angry with the ghost of a woman whom he wished could not speak with such soul-shattering accuracy about his life. If his ethereal conversations with Ed Payson had taught him anything it was that there was nothing the living could hide from the dead. Death imparted upon its travelers an unsettling and bothersome clairvoyance. He took a deep breath, tapered his frustration, opened his mouth, and tried again. "What is it, Laura? The thing you've brought me to this place to hear. You said Ed Payson wanted to come but sent you in his place. Did he intend to speak to me about my wife?" Lifting a finger of warning, he pointed at her authoritatively. "Be careful how you answer that question. You're assumed precognition aside, I won't believe you if you say that he did, because that is a topic of conversation he knows better than to broach."

"Maybe that's why he sent me."

Adam cast her a disbelieving look. "It could be. But it isn't."

Pursing her lips, Laura heaved a taxed breath through her nostrils. "You say you've changed," she said. "But you haven't. You're the same old Adam Cartwright you've always been. You'd rather suffocate on self-righteousness and self-loathing than acknowledge what has been so clearly placed before your eyes."

"I'd be careful with accusations like that. My patience is rather thin these days; if you're looking for a fight, I might just give you one."

"Like the fight you had with Billy Buckley? Engaging him was stupid, Adam, even you must know that. Despite the egregious nature of the insult he declared, you should have summoned the wisdom and wherewithal to walk away."

"Buckley had it coming," Adam said. Though during his brief moment of wakefulness specific details of the events had remained unclear, captive to unconsciousness he was able to access the recollection in full. "He publicly libeled my wife."

"No, he didn't," Laura said, a hint of exasperation seeping into her voice. "We both know he didn't because we both know Buckley wasn't talking about Eddie."

Frowning, Adam was unnerved. "What do you know about it?" he asked tersely, his expression darkening.

"Everything," Laura said, simply. "As your past interactions with Ed Payson have proven, there are very few things the living can hide from the dead. You didn't hit Buckley because he insulted the woman you married. You hit him because he dared to infer that you were still coquetting with another."

"I don't believe I've recently coquetted with anyone."

"Maybe not, but such a simple fact means nothing given your current situation. The people of Virginia City are always going to choose to believe the most salacious version of events no matter how little truth it contains. Buckley decided upon his version of the truth the morning after you kicked him out of Eileen Terry's room, and your most recent interaction with him has proven he has no issue speaking freely of such things. Once you're feeling better, you would be wise to not return to the house on Kay Street. You would be wiser still to never step foot in that town again. Think of the future, Adam. If not your own, then think of the life you want for your children. Think of Eddie. Returning to Virginia City isn't going to help mend your relationship with her. Forcing her to live in a house that serves as a constant reminder of your—"

"What exactly did Payson want you to talk to me about?" Adam demanded, unable to tolerate her conjecture. "My fight with Buckley?"

"That was his part of it, yes."

"And yours is what, exactly? To advise me on the best way to deal with my wife? To bestow upon me the wisdom to help her successfully navigate the storm of shit your lies left behind?"

"I said I was sorry for the diary. What more do you want?"

"From you? Nothing. You've done quite enough already." Turning his back on her, he strode toward the door. "I think I'd like to wake up now."

"Why? So you can continue to ignore everything everyone around you sees so clearly?"

Thrusting the door open, Adam walked through it only to find himself presented with the Running D's ranch yard. "I wantto wake up," he repeated, forcefully. The bid did nothing to change his circumstances; the land outside remained as fixed and robust as the interior of the house.

"It doesn't work like that," Laura said.

"With Ed it does."

"With me it doesn't."

Turning around, Adam regarded her carefully. "Then how does it work?"

"You have to listen to what I've brought you to this place to hear. Once you have you can leave. Although," she tilted her head thoughtfully, "given a little more time, and once you see what's waiting for you outside, you may never want to."

"What does that mean?"

Stepping forward, Laura took hold of his arm and ushered him out of the house. "Look," she said, nodding at the rope swing in the distance. "Someone has been waiting quite patiently to see you."

Setting his gaze upon the little, blond child sitting atop the swing's wooden plank, Adam was momentarily confused. From a far the child almost looked like Peggy. It couldn't be her; she was neither dead nor had her frame remained so slight and small. Then as the child seemed to take note of him, jumping from the swing to wave exuberantly with both hands, Adam's mouth hung open and his heart palpitated with grief.

"Hi daddy!" Charlie exclaimed.

"No," Adam murmured. "Oh, god, Laura, I don't want that boy here. Please don't allow him to come to this place."

"Why not?" Laura asked, her expression and tone softening. "He has no knowledge of the things that took place here. He doesn't know what Will did to me in the upstairs bedroom of this house, or the things you did to him. Charlie doesn't experience the house or the property as it currently is, abandoned, decrepit, and rundown; he sees it how it once was. The way you remember it when Peggy was young."

"I don't care. I don't want…He shouldn't…"

"I know," Laura soothed knowingly. Though, while living she had been often frustrated and confounded by Adam—all that he did and did not say—confusion and anger were afflictions death had cured her of. She was already privy to all he could and could not say. "But as you know there are very few events in life that unfold the way we want or think they should. Adam, nobody can blame you for feeling the way that you do about seeing your son here. Believe me when I say, he will never know the things that took place here. Although, it would be worthwhile for you to reexamine those events. Your part in them and the parts others played."

"I don't want to think about it."

"I know, but we must sometimes find the courage to do the things we don't want to."

"What purpose would it serve?"

"It would bestow upon you a certain amount of clarity. Wisdom you will need in order to navigate the future. You believe the worst is behind you. I'm here to tell you that it isn't. Now is not the time to lay down, give up and in. What took place with Will was just the beginning of the storm; you're in the eye of it now, which means you have yet to come out the other side. Immense difficulty is on the horizon. The challenges you will be faced with are staggering in comparison to those you've already experienced; past trials are nothing in comparison to those the future will bring. This is why it is important for you to take hold of the moment you have been presented with. This is the calm before the real storm. Don't allow dissonance, anxiety, or pride overcome rational thought. Do not rush to escape the security of your father's home, and do not pull your wife and children outside of his protective shadow. Reclaim what was once yours; find comfort, solace, and firm footing among your father and brothers. Make peace with Eddie and the past. As I said, no one can blame you for feeling the way that you do. You lost a child, your wife for a time, and yourself. Now, Eddie is back, and you're still lost, haunted by a past you can't change. Maybe the events that took place on this ranch were not honorable or right but that doesn't mean they need to be held on to so tightly."

"They can't be forgotten easily either. They shouldn't be. Laura, the things I did to Will—the things I did because of him…" Adam cringed, unable to continue.

"He messed with your family, your life, and your mind. In fact, he's still messing with your mind. You once nearly beat Will to death because you were afraid of what he would say, and then you kept him hostage in this house where he and I once lived because you were afraid of what he might do. Now he's gone and you're left with the memories, the guilt, regret, and the pain of it all. Your feelings are perfectly normal for a man who has endured so much. But now there is no more reason to regret, no more reason to feel guilty. You need to let Will go. Forgive yourself, and allow others to forgive you, too. You have to understand Will couldn't help what he was, and you can't help what you are either. Maybe you didn't do everything right, but you did the best you could. Your father, brothers, Lil, and Eddie, they all understand that."

"Peggy doesn't."

"Oh, she will, given time. She's young yet. She has her own demons to wrestle with, and that is why it is so important for you to rise above your own. That girl needs you. She may not want to, but she does. Adam, you are the only one—you have always been the only one able and willing to see her through difficulties. You and Peggy, the two of you have an understanding, a friendship, and rapport—"

"We did," Adam agreed. "We don't anymore. I can't imagine we will again, given what Lil did. If I was struggling to keep Peggy under my command before, it's going to be impossible to guide her now that my authority has been terminated."

"No. It hasn't. It can't be. Not really. Not ever. The bond you and Peggy have, the love you have for each other transcends legality. You didn't need such formalities when you took her away from Will, and you don't need them now. Besides, Lil's action was not ill-intentioned; she didn't do it to strip you of authority rather to ensure you would maintain it. Sometimes fate demands we make quick decisions. Sometimes we choose to do things because it's the only option in the moment. These are the kind of actions often harshly judged by others at a later time, but that doesn't mean they were ill-intentioned. Lil had a reason for doing what she did. When you hear it, you'll understand why circumstances demanded such an action. She didn't adopt Peggy to take her away from you; she did it to protect her from someone else."

"What are you talking about?"

Shaking her head, Laura dismissed the question. "If you don't know now, in time, you will. Make peace with Eddie," she urged. "Then, together, the two of you can decide the best way to navigate the situation with Peggy."

"And if there isn't any peace to be found between Eddie and I?"

"There is. The two of you were meant for each other. Have faith that you can talk your problems out. Eddie loves you, Adam, and you love her, even if you don't want to admit your feelings for fear of what they would demand you to acknowledge. You don't hate her. You want to, but you don't. In fact, you understand her a little too well, and that's what scares you the most. Your father is right: a traditional life was never going to come easily to you. It was never going to come easily to Eddie either. The two of you are a stubborn pair, more similar than you are different."

Squeezing Adam's arm one final time, Laura pulled her hand back. She looked at Charlie and the swing, then she considered Adam once more, her lips curling into a charitable smile.

"It's a shame I couldn't understand you better when I was alive," she said. "I'm not saying things would have worked out between us because they would not have, but it would have been nice to know that beneath your impassivity you're as human as the rest of us. You're not as nearly as judgmental or impenetrable as I once thought you were. You're no stranger to the sting of hurt feelings, and you hesitate when you're afraid. Your impassive demeanor is not the result of a callous disposition; it is a symptom of a heart that feels a little too much. Captive to unspeakable grief, Eddie left you once, and, overtaken by exhaustion, hurt, and anger, she threatened to leave you again. Despite your eternal display of impenetrable placidity, her actions hurt you more than you want to accept. Though Eddie is the one who finally admitted she's frightened by her love for you, you are just as frightened by your love for her. There is a vulnerability that comes with loving someone, fully and completely, and allowing them to love you fully and completely in return. Vulnerability has never come easily to you. You need to be needed by others; you don't like needing them in return, but you do needEddie, Adam. You don't want to, but you do."

"Come push me, daddy!" Charlie suddenly exclaimed, commanding his father's attention the only way a small child could.

Adam looked at the boy longingly, wanting nothing more than to escape the conversation by adhering to his son's gleeful demand.

"I've said all I intended to," Laura said. "You can wake up now. Or you can remain in this place a little longer and play with your son."

"Daddy!" Charlie shouted. "Come push me high!"

And with that, Adam's decision was swiftly made.

"Ed Payson asked me to tell you something else," Laura said as he began his trek to Charlie and the swing. "It's not Virginia City's new sheriff you need to be mindful of. It's his deputy. If Ed recalls correctly, when you were marshaling you didn't care much for deputies. What was it you once said? You never met one who didn't try to stab you in the back."

Adam thought little of the warning. With his family and himself safely sequestered at the Ponderosa beneath the meticulous watch of his father and brothers, the current sheriff of Virginia City and anyone in his employ was another problem for another time.

TBC