Disclaimer: Jericho is not mine.
Jonah Prowse does not slink. Other people might suggest otherwise; other people liked to use words with negative connotations when they talked about him. It made them feel superior to look down on him and pretend that their predictable little lives with their narrow little decisions gave them some sort of a right to pass judgment on how he did things. They stuck their noses in the air and behaved as if they didn't make their own little forays into the grey areas of life when it happened to suit them. He just played on a bigger scale. He figured that they were jealous that they didn't have the nerve in the first place or the wherewithall to live with the consequences if things happened to go south. He might make risky decisions. He might color outside the lines, but he had never once whined or complained that things were somehow unfair when he stretched his hand out a little too far and got it smacked back in response. He had always done his time quietly. If nothing else, then it had always provided a productive amount of free time in which to plan. He didn't always take the time to do planning when he was in the middle of the moment.
He was a make the choices as they come and roll with the punches kind of a guy, and it had always served him well enough. Other people would disagree. Other people would see time served and contracts severed and think that those were all mistakes that had cost him. They weren't. They were risks that he had taken. Sometimes, that worked in your favor. Sometimes, it didn't. The trick was to know that you had to keep risking. The trick was to always remember that things could go either way. That way you were never surprised. You had to be flexible in life.
That was the problem with most people - they just weren't willing to be flexible. They saw something and decided on a way to get there and never paid attention to what other ways there might be. There was always another way. That was one lesson in life that he had learned good and well. You couldn't always go straight at something. You had to be willing to go around or sneak up from behind. Sometimes, you even had to go under a lot of other things to get to where it was that you wanted to be going.
He hadn't understood that when he was younger, and it had cost him one of the few things in life that he ever regretted risking. When his wife gave him the it or me speech, he had taken her at her word. She was taking a risk, and he knew how to respect that. He was never a deadbeat (no matter what the people with too much time on their hands in that town might have whispered behind his children's backs). He always contributed. He got them their first cars. He threatened to shoot Emily's high school boyfriend. He taught Chris how to change oil.
He was around even when he wasn't officially around. It hadn't been enough to keep Emily on his side when Chris died. Chris was gone. Their mother was gone. Emily was what he had left. He might not always understand the choices that she was making. She might not always understand his. They might not even get along all that well (in his experience, the people that loved each other best never did). She was still his girl. He might have had his issues with the Mitchell situation and the resulting fallout, but he wasn't really gone. He couldn't really go - not when he had to be close enough to step in if his daughter needed him. Besides, he had skills that were in high demand these days. He had a decent position from which to barter.
He kept to his word about staying out of town, but he never really went away. He was close enough to hear that there was some sort of a commotion going on over the refugee situation. He kept his information wheels well-oiled and knew that his daughter's fiancé was mixed up in it somehow. He had a spotter reporting in to him that the man was on his way out of town before half the people actually in town likely knew what was happening. He was not slinking around on the outskirts. He was being observant and paying attention to his daughter's interests.
He had to give the banker credit; he looked like he knew more about how to handle himself out on the road than he would have expected. He had obviously spent some time in some shady places since the bombs fell. Jonah could work with that. He might be looking out for his daughter's interests, but there was no room out here for someone who couldn't do something to contribute. He couldn't remember the guy's name, but he had known who he was. That was interesting. He wouldn't have expected Emily to go flipping through any family photo albums.
It turned out that his name was Roger. It just happened that he knew the newly formed trade routes. He knew where the information centers were forming. He knew which places were setting up a form of commerce and which ones were just going through the motions. He had a place for someone who knew those things. He had a place for someone who was good at negotiating with people. He had a place for someone who knew what to watch for to know when it was time to get yourself gone. He had a place for Roger, and Roger didn't have any place else to go. It turned out that Roger was a guy who knew how to be flexible.
He might have not really understood the step up fiancé thing when he had first heard. He might have had his thoughts about Emily and her mother and Jake and himself, but he learned pretty quickly that Roger definitely understood Emily.
"She never really forgives you, does she?" The man asked him one day as he rode shotgun (a literal description now) while Jonah drove.
"For what?" He asked him.
"Not being there when she wants you to be," Roger replied staring out the window and scanning the roadside for possible threats.
"No," Jonah answered him. "I don't think she knows how."
The other man didn't say anything else; he just kept up his window vigil.
Roger knew how to be flexible. He knew how to get by when he had few options, and Jonah was no longer alone off on the sidelines looking after Emily.