BEFORE:
Word of Ben's reaction to his oldest son's reappearance and his refusal to support him in his endeavor as the town's sheriff spread through Virginia City like wildfire. Instead of judging Ben harshly, asking each other what kind of father treated his son in such a way, people turned their attention to trading inferring speculations about what Adam had done to cause his father's abandonment. It wasn't long before talk of a clandestine love triangle between Adam, Laura, and Will began again, and it wasn't long after that before Laura's diary resurfaced to make calamitous rounds. The scandalous, false memoir coupled with Ben's reaction to and lacking support of Adam decimated what little good remained of the oldest Cartwright son's reputation.
He was the talk of the town. There was no end to the denigrating things folks had to say about him, no limit to the ways in which they challenged his authority or the things he was denied because of the lies they chose to believe. They called him a grifter, adulterer, murderer, and child-stealer. In the very same manner in which he had once turned Ed Payson away, Will Cass would not allow Adam to purchase anything from his general store. He was first refused lodging and then food service at the International House. He could have made an issue of such things, stood tall and strong, his sheriff's badge pinned prominently on his breast as he demanded to be acknowledged, serviced, and served. But he did not. He was not in the frame of mind to wage such wars, and doing so would not come without the difficulty of more talk and rumor. The last thing he wanted was for word of his difficulties in town to make their way to his father's ears, lest they satisfy him in a warped sort of way, or worse: inspire him to come to his aid. The idea of tolerating the latter notion was almost as bad as the first. Adam could not bide seeing his father's satisfied any more than he could stomach accepting his help. He was a grown man, after all, and a father himself. He had not returned to seek respite in the coolness of his father's shadow; he had come here to give his son a better life. Although, given the way things were unfolding, such a thing was beginning to feel increasingly out of reach. Though Adam had anticipated returning would not be easy, he had not expected things to be quite so difficult.
Outside of the cells in the backroom of the sheriff's office, he had no dependable lodgings. He could not bring Noah to Virginia City to sleep in such a place. Adam had quickly found that he himself could not sleep there either, for it had only taken three nights of slumbering in one of the cells before he had awoken to find someone had snuck in in the middle of the night, closed the door, and locked him in. Some foolhardy kid, Roy Coffee had theorized when he serendipitously dropped by the office for a visit and finally emancipated Adam from the cage. A youth emboldened by swirling rumors and a deep desire to have a monumental tale of illicit triumph to gloat about to his friends. Though Adam was quick to agree in the moment, later he would question the verity of the assumption and his uneasiness would be enough to demand he obtain other arrangements.
Turned away from all the town's respectable establishments, he was forced to seek harborage in those which were considered degenerate. In a surreptitious, slummy two-story building on the East side of town, Adam obtained a room to sleep in. This part of Virginia City was seedy and derelict and had been for years, a chunk of settlement that Roy Coffee had once gone to great lengths to ignore the existence of. Only a particular kind of man frequented the streets of this district, and only a particular sect of women inhabited them. Adam was careful about who saw him come and go from this place; he left his room before sunrise and returned long after night fell, and he paid the craggy, haggard madame extra to keep her mouth closed about their arrangement. He was not immediately certain why she had lent him the room, why she of all people would want the sheriff hanging around to witness, rather than ignore the scurrilous activities taking place in the building. The establishment was more of a cat house than brothel or parlor house, and there were times Adam wondered if it could even be described as that. The activities of the house were not merely improper or crude; they were downright obscene. He had vowed to keep his mouth shut about the things he witnessed or overheard—that was part of the deal he had made with the madame—but Lord if that didn't seem downright impossible sometimes when the noises began. He did his best to ignore them, to uphold his end of the deal, and for the first few nights, he succeeded.
Laying in his room in the darkness, vicious echoes erupting all around him, Adam forced himself to think of other things, to focus on his own worries rather than those of someone else. He thought about his marshal's badge, hidden away in the bottom of his saddlebag but not relinquished as it should have been. He troubled himself over Noah, longing to hold the child once more. He fretted over Peggy, desperately hoping that the girl had kept her promise and departed for college. He anguished over his secret keeping of Will. How was he ever going to bring Noah here? What was he going to do with Will? Both were still in San Francisco, each seemingly awaiting decisions he could not bring himself to make. How could he ever make them? Here. Now.
Reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt, he pulled out the photograph of the brutalized prostitute he had been accused of killing. Though he couldn't see the details of it in the darkness, he didn't need to. The fiendish image was burned into his memory; he would never forget it. He didn't want to forget it. Day after day, he kept the photograph in his pocket, holding the image of her dehumanized body as close to his heart as it always seemed to his mind. Night after night, he looked at it, the night air disturbed by the sounds of the working women and their cliental in the rooms surrounding him, his ears ringing from the memory of someone else's plea, once made so violently to him in a dream.
"Open your eyes," the slain prostitute had shrieked. "Open them."
At the time he had not wanted to see; he had not wanted to know. With eyes wide open, he thought he saw what she had been imploring him to a little too clearly. The photograph stayed in his pocket to remind him of what had been done. What could be done if he lost direction and nerve and allowed himself to fall victim to morality and doubt, because God only knew how easy that would be to do. Here. Now.
The painful moaning of his female neighbor gave way to a petrified, heaving scream. "Stop!"
Startled, Adam could not stifle his concern. Shoving the photograph back into his pocket, he sat up in bed and listened.
"You're going to kill me!" the woman cried.
"Ah, quit your bitchin'," her companion barked.
"Stop!"
Swinging his legs off the side of the mattress, Adam planted his feet firmly on the floor, grinding his soles into the floorboards, lest he allow them to take him out of the room.
"Please…Stop!"
"You knew what you were in for when you took my money."
"Then you can have it…back!" the woman cried, her voice gasping and strangled. "I don't…want it anymore!"
"I know you don't want it. You never want it. With you, it's all about need."
Leaning forward, Adam rested his elbows on his knees, and clenched his hands tightly together, lest he allow them to reach for his holstered gun on the side table.
"Help!"
"You can scream all you want. Ain't nobody ever showing up."
"Help!"
"Ain't a single man around here that would bother to care about someone like you."
"Oh, God… somebody please… help me!"
Deal or no deal, Adam could not tolerate listening anymore. He couldn't bide being forced to live out the rest of his days inundated by the screams of another woman he should have saved. Standing swiftly, he grabbed his gun before he could rethink the action. Long, purposeful strides took him out of his room and toward that of his neighbor. His free hand clenched and then turned a doorknob which no one had bothered to lock. Thrusting the door open, he aimed his weapon, his eyes widening as his gaze fixed on a scene he had not been prepared to view.
If he had believed his room was rundown, the interior of this one was downright putrefied. Threadbare curtains hung low from the window, their nearly transparent fabric pulled tightly closed to hide what lay beyond them. The floorboards were grimy and grody, covered in a course mixture of dust, dried out mud, and blood. Empty liquor bottles were scattered about; a full chamber pot lay ignored on the floor next to the bed; a nearly empty oil lamp, its flame burning dim and low, cast just a hint of light on the pair on the bed. The woman lay naked and gasping for air, her hands lifted to clutch and claw at her bed partner's as they remained wrapped around her neck. Straddling her, the man's shirt hung loose across his chest, and he was without pants.
It wasn't the most terrible thing Adam had ever seen; it was far from the worst situation he had ever walked into. It wasn't the state of the room or the acts that were taking place in it which unsettled him the most; it was the people. He didn't want to recognize either of them, but he knew them both.
"Billy Buckley," Adam said, pointing the barrel of his gun at the younger man's back. "What the hell are you doing?"
Looking at him, Buckley was neither scandalized nor chastised. "What business is it of yours?"
"She was screaming," Adam said. "That makes it my business."
"Ain't no concern of yours."
"Your hands around her neck make it my concern."
Eyes narrowing with distain and uttering a muttered swear, Buckley relinquished the woman's neck. He rolled off her body and sat, hanging his legs over the side of the bed. Looking between his exposed nakedness and Adam, he reached for the sheet, wrapping it around himself as he glared back at the woman. "I paid her," he said.
Not nearly enough, Adam thought. "Whatever the agreement was, she seems to have changed her mind."
"Yeah, well, she doesn't get to have a say."
"I believe she does."
"Man, are you deaf or just stupid? I already told you: I paid her."
"That doesn't mean you can do whatever you want."
"It doesn't mean I can't."
"I'm telling you, you can't."
"You ain't got the right to tell me nothing! Not with the things I know about you. Not with all the others I've heard about you either."
"Don't start," Adam warned darkly, his temper flaring. "You don't want to mess with me, Billy. Trust me when I say, I'm not the same man you went up against before. I'm not nearly as understanding as I used to be." Gun trained on Buckley's chest, he tilted his head, indicating at the doorway. "It's time for you to leave now. Go home to your wife before I decide to deem what was happening here a crime."
"Man," Buckley scoffed, "I would like to see you try."
"If I were you, I'd stop talking and start walking instead."
Buckley looked Adam in the eye, then looked at the gun, and then he looked away. "No whore is worth a fight," he said, hotly. "And this one sure as shit ain't worth getting shot over or catching hell from Sally because of it."
He let the sheet fall to the floor as he stood and gathered his discarded pants. He took his time putting them back on, and then made a show of first looking for his boots and then putting them back on one at a time.
Adam did not lower his gun or soften his stance until Buckley finally left the room. Stepping forward, he lifted the discarded blanket from the floor and hid the woman's naked body beneath it. "Do you need the doctor?" he asked.
Clenching the blanket to her chest, the woman shook her head.
"You're sure?"
The woman nodded.
"Do you want to press charges against him?" Adam asked.
Her demeanor shifted in an instant, transforming from weak and meek to something else entirely. "Lord, no."
"You're sure?" With all the empty liquor bottles strewn around the room and the way she had slurred her words, Adam wondered if it was possible for the woman to be sure of anything.
"Of course, I'm sure. I'm sure of something else too: I didn't need you barging in here like you did."
"You were screaming for help."
"Who asked you to listen?"
"He was choking you, might have killed you had I not come."
"He wouldn't have."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"You can't."
"I do. You don't know Billy like I do. In fact, you probably don't know him at all. Like he said he paid me."
"That doesn't mean he gets to hurt you."
The woman laughed. "Now, aren't you just the sweetest, most innocent thing? Imagine a man making it to your age without knowledge of such vile things. Hurtin' is the point, for that one at least. What do you think he pays me for? Or so much for that matter?"
"You were screaming."
"Oh, darlin', that's his favorite part."
Adam was disgusted.
"I know what you're thinking. A woman of my extended age shouldn't be turning such dangerous tricks. Shouldn't even be letting a man of his age convince me to try them. You know I was always the beauty in the family. Beauty, that's what Papa used to call me," she said, her voice carrying a longing and desperate edge. "Oh, you should have seenme back then. I was the prettiest thing for miles and miles. Men looked at me back then. They looked at me and they saw me when they did. I used to hold my years so well. All I seem to hold well these days is liquor."
Feeling a familiar, funny tightness settle in the back of his throat, Adam wanted to say she didn't seem to be doing a very good job at holding even that. "What are you doing here, Eileen?" he whispered.
Eileen gave no indication she recognized or remembered him in her current state. "I've just fallen on hard times, it seems." She looked at him absently, her eyes dull and glazed. "I suppose maybe you've fallen on hard times, too."
"Why would you say a thing like that?" Adam asked, unnerved.
"You have sad eyes," she declared, drunkenly. "And besides that, you're here, too."
The assessment did not sit easily with Adam after the fact, and, in the hours after leaving her room, sleep refused to claim him. He sought respite in the sheriff's office long before dawn, brooding over the interaction and drinking one cup of coffee after another. Roy Coffee stopped by in the mid-morning, as he had become known to do. Most days, Adam did not mind the company. On this one, however, Coffee's presence ground on his nerves; he wished the former sheriff would find something else to do. After the night's events, the photograph of the slain prostitute sat heavy in his pocket, the lightness of its paper feeling like a boulder resting upon his heart.
Sitting aside Adam's desk, Roy Coffee appraised the younger man through the corners of his eyes. "Adam, I gotta talk to you about somethin'," he drawled. It was the first thing of value either man had bothered uttering since first looking upon each other.
"Go on then."
"I heard a rumor about you this morning."
"Just the one, huh?" Adam asked dryly.
Coffee ignored the subtle quip. "It was guff about your current living arrangements."
"From whom?"
Coffee shook his head. "Don't matter."
"Then what does?"
"If'n it's true, and you really are spending your nights in a place like that—"
"A place like what?" Adam asked, baiting. Say it, he thought snidely. Come on, Roy, just open your mouth and acknowledge what you've gone to great lengths to ignore. It was a silent bid that was destined to remain unspoken and therefore unheeded.
"Well," Coffee said, "I suppose I don't got to tell you the kind of things your pa is going to have to say about it if'n he finds out."
"I reckon at this point in my life my father doesn't get a say in where I live."
"You're not wrong about that."
Leaning back in his chair, Adam crossed his arms, and evaluated the elder man. "Are you in a mind to tell me what I amwrong about?"
"No good is gonna come from you stayin' there. No good is gonna come from the things you're going to see if you keep that kind of company."
"What kind of company?" Adam pressed. Just say it, he thought. Goddamn it, Roy, just open your mouth and say it already. Find the courage to call things what they are instead of blindly believing they're what you want them to be.
Coffee ignored the question, his expression becoming guarded. "I know you saw her there, Adam, and I know that stumbling upon that situation is bound to make you feel a certain kind of duty, a certain kind of way."
"And I know who told you I was there," Adam countered. "What happened, Roy? Did Billy Buckley go running to you the second I kicked him out of her room?"
"No, not exactly."
"But he told you, just the same."
"He did."
"And?" Adam pressed.
"And, well, I reckon I don't got to tell you what's gonna happen if'n you decide to keep carrying on that way—"
"What way?"
"Taking up a cause for Eileen Terry," Coffee said. "Boy, just about the last thing you need is for more folks than Buckley to be associating your name with hers, because if they do then it is only a matter of time before that bit of the distant past will be drudged back up. Folks already like to believe you're responsible for Laura Dayton's murder, all hell is going to break loose if they start trading speculations about Sue Ellen Terry's death, too."
Sue Ellen Terry. Adam closed his eyes. Lord, that seemed like a thousand years ago now, the fateful evening when he had pulled Sue Ellen close, and Jesse Sanders had shot her dead in his arms. Adam had been accused of killing her, and the only reason he had survived that bout of speculation to unearth the truth about Sanders was because he had had Pa on his side. He didn't want to think what would or could happen should folks begin to speculate about those events again, now that his father's faith and support was nowhere to be found. But he couldn't ignore Eileen Terry or the woman's circumstances, because she was a part of that story, too—even if she was the detail most often forgotten about.
Eileen had also been a victim of Jesse Sanders. He had strangled her, left her for dead. Discovering lifeless body, Adam had thought that she had died. Even Pa hadn't believed the woman to be alive, neither had the crowd of men who burst into the room not long after. Looking over her presumed corpse, it was Doc Martin who had finally proven their assumption wrong. It was he who had watched over her in the coming days, anxiously waiting for her to open her eyes or relinquish her life completely. Eileen should have died, but instead she lived. But for what? Adam couldn't help wondering. To become something much worse than what she already had been?
"I don't care about the talk," Adam said, surprising even himself with how much he meant the statement.
"You should," Coffee warned. "And you should find other livin' arrangements, too. Like I said, the longer you hang around places like that, the more you're gonna find yourself privy to things you're better off not seein' in the first place. I'm not one to take a stance for or against what goes on in places like that. When I was sheriff, I always kinda figured, murder and butchery aside, it really ain't no business of mine what goes on in establishments like that."
"Buckley is married, Roy; he has no business—"
"Look, judge the man's morality all you want, but if'n that's the stance you're going to take as an official of the law, then you're gonna find yourself lockin' up the majority of the men in this town. All I'm sayin' is that it is no business of yours or mine or anybody else what goes on behind closed doors between two adults, especially when money is exchanged. I can't say I agree with Buckley frequenting that place, but I will say that I downright disagree with you sleepin' there. You sit in judgment of Buckley spending time in a place like that because he's married man all the while ignoring that you're still one, too."
Adam's expression darkened. "Sleeping is vastly different than frequenting."
"And do you know what else is different? The understanding folks around here have about the kind of man Billy Buckley is in comparison to you. People don't talk about him the way they talk about you; in fact, I'm not certain anyone talks about him at all. If word gets out that you're sleepin' at not just frequentin' a place like that…" Shaking his head grimly, Coffee did not finish the sentence.
"You're afraid it's going to give folks the wrong idea about me."
"It's gonna do more than that. It ain't seemly, Adam. Your pa won't like it, and I don't like it either. If'n your tryin' to build a future for your children here, then you're starting in the wrong place. You need to talk to your pa about going home."
"I don't want to live in my father's house."
"Want ain't the same as need."
"It isn't an option. My father doesn't want me there; he doesn't need me there either. He has the Ponderosa, the house he built and his sons to share it with. Three of them, in fact."
Coffee cast Adam a guarded gaze. "I was wondering when you were gonna finally bring that up. So, you met him, Jamie, that boy your father took in."
"I don't know what Pa was thinking, taking on a boy of that age at his."
"I suppose he was probably thinking along the same lines as you were when you took Peggy. He saw a kid with nobody to care about them, no one to provide and look after them proper, and decided he oughta do right by them."
"He's old enough to be that boy's grandfather."
"He is, but that don't mean he ain't up for the job."
"And things were different with Peggy," Adam asserted. "Taking that girl was the only choice I had at the time."
"Maybe takin' Jamie in was the only choice your father had. After all, Adam, you weren't here. You didn't witness that whole deal go down."
"Let me guess, that boy and his father showed up to Virginia City during an especially dry time of year and promised to make rain."
Coffee frowned. "What do you know about that boy's pa?" he asked. "Or the rain, for that matter?"
"Nothing," Adam lied.
The knowing glint in Coffee's eyes seemed to dispute the claim, and for the first time of many Adam began to wonder how much the older man knew. He could not help wondering what Jamie was saying, if the boy had already shared the details of their original meeting with Pa, and what he, himself, would do about it if the boy had.
"Tell me what happened at dinner last night," Coffee said.
Adam didn't follow. "Dinner?"
"Yeah, you know, Sunday dinner. The one your pa furiously invited you to after you was sworn in as sheriff."
"After he voted against my appointment, you mean. Congratulations," Adam said flatly as he began to recite his father's bitter words, "you're officially the sheriff. I hope you will serve this town well and that you are as capable as Roy seems to think you are."
If he had thought that enduring his father's silent anger the evening of his reappearance had been bad, then standing silent himself as Pa maligned him in front of the Virginia City Town Council had been much worse. Though he had always been aware of the variability of his father's temper, he had never believed him the kind of man to be downright cruel. But Pa'sdeclaration had been cruel. It was not enough that he had to disagree with Adam's intentions; he had to do it publicly.
"He didn't mean nothing by it," Coffee tried to soothe.
"Hell of a thing to say if you don't want it to mean anything."
"Yeah, and I'm sure you've said a few of those kinds of things yourself. Maybe you even said one or two of them last night."
"To whom?"
"Your pa."
"When?"
"When you went to the Ponderosa for dinner."
"I didn't stay for dinner," Adam admitted, annoyed.
"Because?"
"I found the conversation to be displeasing so I left."
"Displeasing. Is that the kind way of saying you and your pa fought?"
"That's the kind way of saying a lot of things."
"What'd you fight about?"
Scoffing, Adam shook his head. If Roy Coffee thought he was going to become privy to such things, then he had another thing coming. In hindsight, the only thing more imprudent than taking the ride out to his family's home was the argument he and his father had engaged in once he was there.
"Adam?" Coffee prompted.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Why?"
"Because it was dumb."
"Well, then, maybe that's why you ought to talk about it. It'll probably help, getting whatever happened between you and your pa off your chest, so you can calm down and assess the situation clearly."
"I am calm."
"Were you last night?"
"Not exactly."
"You were uneasy," Coffee deduced.
"Yes."
"And this unease, did it settle in before or after you walked back into that house?"
"What difference does it make?"
"I don't know. Could make a little or a lot, depending."
"Depending on what?"
"How the fight began and who started it."
Shaking his head, Adam stood, clenching his empty coffee mug in his hand as he made his way to the coffee pot sitting on top of the stove at the other side of the room. He did not want to think about last evening's events any more than he wanted to own up to his part in them. Lifting the pot, he found it was too light to contain another cup of coffee. He thought about making more, then thought better of it. He didn't want to do anything that would give current company an excuse to linger longer than they already had. He was no longer in the mood to answer questions or avoid them.
"I have work to do, Roy," he said as he placed the coffee pot back on the stove. "Things to sort through on my own."
Coffee refused to be dismissed so easily. "I heard you didn't want to take off your hat," he said. "That you didn't want to take off your gun belt, neither."
"Why are you asking me what happened then? Seems like you already know."
"Because there's two sides to every story."
Turning, Adam looked at Coffee indignantly. "What makes you think you have the right to hear them both? I know you're fond of me, Roy. I know sometimes you look at me and think that maybe in a different life I could have been your son instead of my father's. But I am not your son, no matter what the badge you've pinned to my chest can sometimes lead you to imagine. So, don't you dare sit there and try to be my father, especially after you've brought me back to be so close to the presence of my real one."
"Is this the tone you greeted your pa with?"
"Why does it matter to you?"
"I'm just trying to figure out how things went south last night, so that maybe they don't have to head that way again."
"My relationship with my father is not your problem to fix."
"Just tell me what happened, Adam," Coffee implored firmly. "Just get it out and off your chest, so you can make sure it don't happen again."
"So, now, suddenly, I'm the only one who's solely responsible for the fights Pa and I have?"
"No. But you were responsible for the one that happened last night."
"Because I didn't want to take my hat or gun belt off?" Adam scoffed.
"Because you started the fight."
Snapping his mouth shut, Adam turned back around, faced the stove, and fixed his gaze on the wall behind it. There was no avoiding the truth; he had started the fight. He had not ridden to the Ponderosa seeking it but that did not prevent it from taking place. Though he did not want Coffee to be privy to the details, that did not prevent the man from knowing the things someone else already told him. "I didn't want to take my hat off," he admitted quietly, his shoulders sinking slightly.
"Why?"
"Because…" Adam began and then hesitated.
He had gone to the Ponderosa, stood outside of his father's door, and lost his desire to walk through it again. Frozen in front of it, he had begun to think about the way things were, instead of dwelling on the way they ought to have been, and, in doing so, he had realized he shouldn't have gone there. That he couldn't be there. Not now. Not with the way things were. Not with Eddie and Charlie gone. Not while he was harboring his secret about Will. What would happen if Pa decided to embrace rather than reject him? What would happen then?
"Adam," Coffee prompted.
"Pa welcomed me," Adam said softly. "Or at least he tried to, in his own stupid, stubborn way."
When the door finally opened, Adam had been taken aback to see Jamie Hunter standing behind it. It had been so startling, so odd to be received by the boy, this person who should have been a stranger but was not. Looking at Jamie, all Adam could think about was Will and the day his cousin had shot and then left him for dead, how the boy and his mute father had saved his life, and Ed Payson's etherial warning: "Don't you understand that town means to kill you? If you go back there, you're going to end up dead." All too soon, his father was standing in front of him. Pa had smiled and said the only thing Adam had wanted to hear—the only thing he had really needed to hear.
"He said he was happy to see me," Adam said. "And I refused to relinquish my gun, and then the whole thing just went to shit."
"You lost your nerve," Coffee said.
Adam wanted to say he had lost a lot more than that. The second he had seen Pa smile he had known that coming back to Virginia City had been a terrible mistake.
"You got to thinkin' too much," Coffee said.
Adam was certain he had not been thinking enough. He shouldn't have come back here; he couldn't have Pa looking at him the way that he had.
"You got to focusing on the wrong things," Coffee said. "You started thinkin' about the way your pa looked at you the first time you reentered that house, and then you got to thinkin' about the things he said the day you was voted in as sheriff, and you got mad. Then your father said he was happy to see you and you didn't know what to do with that. Your anger didn't allow you to take kindly to such a thing."
It was as reasonable of an explanation as any, though it was far from the right one. It wasn't anger that had pushed Adam to bait his father into an argument. It was fear. Panic. He had panicked, and when faced with such a volatile emotion in such an unfavorable moment, he had reached for anger to steady himself. To shield him from the sudden familiarity of his father's eyes, so unintentionally prying, so apt and practiced at noticing all that was often better left ignored. All at once, Adam had known that the only thing worse than his father refusing to look at him was Pa really seeing him, finally taking note of all the things that were obviously out of place, and becoming privy to all that he was determined to hide. Pa could never know the truth about Will, his actions or current whereabouts. What Adam had done to him. What he was doing to him. He wouldn't understand, Adam thought morosely. How could he? When there were times when Adam wondered if he understood it himself.
"Your anger wouldn't allow you to let things be," Coffee continued. "So, you chose to engage in the same old asinine song and dance your pa and you have always fallen into so easily. He pushes and you pull back so that he can have his way; you push and he pulls back so that you can have your way; and when you both push at the same time, neither of you gets their way. In the end, you both lose. Well, I reckon, after last night, neither one of you is gonna feel up to pulling back so that the other can have the upper hand. Both of you are going to keep pushing and pushing each other until everybody loses."
"There are just some things in life you can't fix, or change," Adam said, an assessment that encompassed so much more than Coffee could ever know. "You'd be a goddamn fool to even try."
"No, sir. I do believe you'd be a fool not to try. Not everything is the way you think it is, Adam. As a matter of fact, not everything is the way your pa thinks it is either. Things are bad between the two of you now because they were bad before you left. They can't get better until everything is laid out in the open and addressed. He's angry at you for leaving the way that you did. You're angry at him for putting you in a position where you felt like you had no other choice but to leave. If you allow things to continue unfolding the way they currently are, you're going to find yourself angry with a whole lot more. You need to sit down and have an honest conversation with your father. You need to rethink your current living arrangement, too."
Turning around, Adam looked at Coffee somberly. "You talk about all of this as though the solutions are easy. As though the years haven't impacted things around here so little and left me so changed."
"The years haven't changed you as much as you think, and I reckon that's the thing that frightens me the most."
Coffee evaluated Adam momentarily, then rose, and made his way to the door. He lingered in front of it, then turned back around.
"Get out of that whorehouse, Adam, and stay as far away from Eileen Terry as you can get. Like I said before, the last thing you need is folks talkin' about that bit of the past or for you to see something that rubs you the wrong way and encourages you to start peacocking around this town like things are still the way they used to be instead of how they currently are. Talk to your pa. Make things right with your family, and then maybe you'll finally find yourself clearheaded enough to handle this town."
TBC