Author's Note: Enjoy another chapter! Thank you for the reviews. I think so far this is one of my favorite chapters. I really like Wade in this story. He's not afraid to let Rhett know what he thinks. I really think Wade could have grown up to be a good man.

Disclaimer I own none of the characters and I am making no profit from this.

edited 6/22/23

Scarlett pushed away from Rhett like a teen girl caught kissing her beau, as soon as she saw Wade standing there, his arms crossed. "Wade, I didn't expect you back so soon." She smoothed back his hair that was slipping from her chignon in wispy little curls that framed her face. She then rubbed her hands over her swollen lips disbelievingly.

He smirked at her, "Clearly." He nodded towards Rhett, "I would like to see you in the study. I think we should talk man to man." He smiled at his mother, "I promise you mother that I will not shed any blood or maim him. I will be civil, I promise."

He didn't wait for Rhett. He turned on his heels and walked commandingly into the house like a young prince, and Rhett found himself following in his wake, preparing to face the music for his crimes. Wade didn't even look over his shoulder to confirm Rhett's submission. And Rhett was annoyed that the student had become the master.

Rhett was even more irked when Wade took the commanding seat at the desk once they had entered the study. Wade was in his element. The office may have been designed specifically for Rhett, but in his absence, it had become Wade's. And Wade was not going to relinquish it again.

Once Rhett sat down at one of the chairs in front the desk, Wade finally began speaking. "You should not have come back." He glared at the man who was the only father he truly remembered.

"I don't know why you think that it is acceptable to return after such a prolonged absence, but you have treated mother and Ella terribly. I don't care about you not being in my life. It taught me how I shouldn't be towards my family. I saw more than you or mother realizes growing up. If you were a gentleman, then you would take your bags and leave." Wade's hands were folded in front of himself and he leaned slightly forward, "but the entire world knows that you are not a gentleman and never were. If you ever had been a gentleman, then we would not be in this situation."

Rhett maintained his peace silently. He had known that Wade would not be easily won over. He had been preparing for this tongue lashing, and he was impressed by Wade's stoic and cool delivery.

"I know that you did try to send money to mother, after all I am taking over Uncle Henry's practice. Mother tried to convince me after I found you in her bedroom that she thought that you had changed. But in your 50s is a little late to finally grow up, wouldn't you agree?"

"I am here to make amends, Wade." Rhett assured, trying to mask the anger snapping inside of him. "And I agree with you. My treatment of all of you was terrible. And I ask for your forgiveness. I cannot undo the past, but I can try to rectify those mistakes."

"I should call you out." Wade glared. "I should call you out and challenge you to meet on a field at dawn to avenge the damage you've done to my mother and my sisters. But I won't, for I have learned from those rash and hasty choices of those in the past and those who are past their prime, and I prefer a more intellectual method of settling disputes. I have taken what I needed from you and from Uncle Ashley, from your pitiful examples and deplorable behavior. And I am a better man than either of you."

"It is in your best interest to not issue a duel." Rhett countered, "after all, though I have no desire to duel you, I am an expert marksman."

"As am I," Wade breezed. "There are many things that you know nothing of over the time of your absence. I'm no longer the child that you pretended to care for. I am a man now. I've put my childish things away, and that includes any rosy view of you. When you left like you did, you confirmed that you were and had always been exactly who everyone warned mother against."

Rhett was working to contain his anger that Wade would speak to him as such. And yet a part of him was impressed that this once mousy little boy, a little boy that he had raised, had grown into a man who did not hesitate to protect those he loved. Wade really would be better than those who raised him. The thought did not completely eliminate Rhett's anger, but he maintained his composure.

"I am not here to hurt your mother or your sister." Rhett reasoned.

"Did you intentionally come to hurt them the other times? Did you intentionally almost kill mother when you returned with Bonnie after months away from here? Did you mean for Bonnie to die by letting her jump on that stupid, stubborn little pony of hers." He delivered unflinchingly. "I may sometimes border on hating you, but I know that you didn't intend to cause the damages that you did. But intentions don't mean much where you are concerned." Wade's normally warm brown eyes grew narrow and cold. " I never said anything before, but I heard too many of your conversations with mother before you left. I remember how you treated her. Ella was too young. She didn't understand, but unfortunately I understood all of it. I will never erase the sounds of mother screaming as she fell down the stairs, until she wasn't screaming any longer, just the sounds of her body slamming into the entryway at the foot of the stairs." Wade's gaze was piercing.

Rhett bristled in anger. "I didn't mean for her to fall. I never would have meant for her to fall," Rhett stammered.

"And that just proves my point that your intentions have little relevance. You egged her on to fight you. You said one nasty thing after the next until she struck out at you, which you had to have known that she was going to do. You were at the top of the stairs for God's sake. You shouldn't have let her fall. The baby's death is on you." Wade finished solemnly. "And yes, the servants talked enough that I knew that there was a baby. Which is curious after everyone in town knew that you and mother did not share a bed."

Rhett sat there in silence. Defense seemed pointless.

"I sat for days trying to listen through the door. No one would tell us anything. And finally I could hear mother moaning. I waited and watched until no one was in the room, and I slipped inside." His eyes grew foggy for a brief moment. " She looked like a discarded doll made of rags that Bonnie or Ella had grown tired of. My entire life until that point she had always seemed so much larger than she was, but I will never erase the image of her looking so small and fragile in her bed. Her body was covered with bruises and bandages as she tossed in pain. And I listened to her cry. I don't think she ever knew that I was there, but I sat beside so that she wouldn't be alone as she cried for the baby she had lost and she cried for you. And yet you were too busy getting slovenly drunk to sit by her bed and hold her hand. There are many reasons for me to hate you. But don't think that those reasons started when you left. They started much earlier. One of my earliest memories is of my mother trying to lead us home after you abandoned us at Rough and Ready. She was younger than I am now, in between two armies with a simple minded servant, a terrified toddler, a mewling newborn, and a woman who had barely survived bringing the child into the world. The night sky glowed orange, and I tried so hard to be brave, but I was little more than a baby. But that is one of my earliest memories. You couldn't have seen us safely to Tara?"

As much as the trauma from childhood was pouring out, there was no childishness from Wade as he laid the case against Rhett before him, methodically laying out his crimes like the Archangel Michael on Judgment Day. "You seem to think that I or my family should owe you something, even forgiveness, but why should we owe someone who constantly took everything from us, and left us for dead in the middle of a battlefield."

Rhett was dumbfounded that Wade had been so much more aware than he had ever realized, and that he held such resentment for him. "But I'm not going to demand you leave, although I fully believe that I am in the right to do so. Instead I will leave you here with the warning to not hurt my mother or sister again. Given enough time and a little rope, I know that you will hang yourself from it. You can't stay loyal and true to mother. The wanderlust will attack you soon and you will sabotage your last hope for reconciliation on your own. And then I won't even have to sully my hands with the likes of you or upset mother by forcing you out. She will always know that I will never abandon her, just like she would never abandon me. Just know that I am watching and listening, much more than I did as a child. And I will not hesitate to protect my family from the likes of you.

At this Wade rose from the chair and strode purposefully across the room. "Just so you know I've taken the money that mother deposited in the bank from your checks and invested it. It had returned a profit of double what it began. After all, I want mother to be taken care of, even if you are not around to see it." And Wade shut the door commandingly behind him. Leaving Rhett in stunned silence.