NOW:
The week passed at a furious pace, the events of each day and night molding together to form a blurred and unremarkable amalgamation. Sleep did not claim Adam easily. He spent his nights tossing and turning, longing for peace that would not come. When the twins began to cry, he took to first pacing the upstairs hallway and then, much to Eddie's annoyance, the parlor downstairs. He tried to assist Eddie with the infants, but his offers remained swiftly and firmly declined. Her protectiveness over them was troublesome. Were sleep deprivation and overtaxation responsible for the peculiar behavior? Or was it something more? Something serious. Something sinister. Another covert truth that harbored sharp, painful fangs with which to bite them if it was ever roused from its hiding place. He watched helplessly as Eddie held her screaming infants in the crooks of her arms. Nothing she tried was enough to comfort or quiet them. Not rocking or trying to feed them. Not holding them close and walking them from one end of the room to the other. The infants' wailing was relentless, as were Noah's silent tantrums when he was eventually roused—yet another victim of another turbulent night.
Unable to assist or comfort anyone else, Adam focused on Noah. The little boy became the center of his father's attention. His newfound independence streak notwithstanding, Noah clung to him like a shadow; he took great interest in everything his father did, listened thoughtfully to everything he said, and no longer having to wage outright wars to become the primary focus of one of his parents, the boy's behavior seemed to improve. Though his stubborn streak endured, his tantrums became less frequent, and any emerging bad behavior was usually squelched by no more than a few firm words from his father. Of course, maybe Noah's shift in disposition could have also been attributed to another change, one that only Adam's new-found free time had allowed.
Spending his waking moments around his clamorous younger siblings seemed to provoke the boy, leading him to misbehave. Noah's disobedience only served to exasperate Eddie and, in turn, caused the twins to become more disruptive. So, after breakfast, Adam would scoop Noah up and take him away from the house on Kay Street. They spent their days on Sport's back, exploring the vastness of the landscape beyond Virginia City. Often times, their adventures would lead him to his family's property; others, Adam would have to prevent Sport from wandering too close to the acreage his father had given him, and sometimes he would have to correct his own direction when he found himself unconsciously guiding the animal toward the Running D. The decrepit estate seemed to call out to him, beckoning him to revisit it again. But he would not dare take Noah to a place that had held so much pain, destruction, and evil. He had no intention of encouraging ghosts from the past to stir. Still, avoiding something was different than making peace with it, and contemplating the past was a difficult thing to avoid.
If his sheriff's badge had been a lighthouse leading him back to Virginia City, then Will had been an anchor, intent on holding him there. Without either, he was feeling increasingly unmoored. An outcome to be expected, he supposed, considering how everything had shaken out in the end. He was a man without purpose now—save for entertaining and shepherding the little boy perched in the saddle in front of him as they rode. If his father had his way, Adam would have already found a new purpose. He would be so busy tending to the Cartwright family's joint purpose that he would have little time to consider anything else. Not the eternal unsettling peculiarity of the Running D, Eddie's troublesome moods, or her two youngest children, who seemed destined to never stop crying. Not the surrogate daughter who wanted nothing to do with him, or the little boy who was only happy when he was the sole focus of his father's attention. God, things were a mess, but if Pa really thought re-adding him to the Ponderosa's payroll would sort anything out, he was flat-out wrong. It wouldn't help anything. It would make matters worse. Even so, Ben's offer sat heavily on Adam's heart. It wasn't so much whether he'd accept the proposition that troubled him, rather how he'd find the words to decline it and what he and his father would do once he did.
"I think you ought to give it a try," Lil said. Standing in front of the dishpan on the counter, she swiped a wet cloth over a sud-covered plate. "What else will you do if you don't do that?"
"Something else," Adam said.
Taking the wet plate from her outstretched hand, he wiped it dry with a towel and placed it on the shelf. Wrenching the towel in between his hands, he watched as she cleaned another plate, waiting for his assistance to be needed again. If Peggy were here, she would be the one delegated to help with this particular chore. Then again, if things were more normal than they had been as of late, Lil would not have been the one who had cooked them dinner. Eddie would have taken up the task—just one of many that her mother often magically materialized for the sole purpose of completing—and it would have been her who stood in the kitchen now. Soaking and then scrubbing remnants off of plates and bowls. But Eddie wasn't interested in such tasks—not now, at least—and Peggy wasn't here. Unable to tolerate his mother-in-law shouldering the full burden of the household, Adam pitched in where he saw fit and helped as much as he could.
"Then what will you do?" Lil asked. "Take up as the dishwasher at the International House?"
The similarity of her question to those his father had asked did not go overlooked by Adam. They paralleled each other; maybe they weren't the same, but the worry they were born from was. He shrugged. "There are worse things to do, I suppose."
"Better ones, too."
She didn't approve of him assisting her—that much was clear. A man like him should be working outside, tasking himself with more difficult—and less delicate—tasks. Something that required more thought or heavy lifting. Something that demanded he usher wayward stock—or men—away from trouble. Something that allowed him to enforce peace and order. Washing dishes was women's work, a decidedly unsuitable chore. If neither she nor Eddie were around to assist, Lil's opinion would be different. With a wife at home, it was unseemly for such tasks to fall on him—or Lil, for that matter. Women's work. Men's work. Like his father before him, it was all work to Adam now, and he had nothing better to do.
"I suppose I don't understand," Lil said, "why you would be against at least trying it. I know your father would be happy to have you. Your brothers, too. It's work that would come easily to you; after all, you've done it before. It isn't as though you would start your way at the bottom. Honey, you would be much, much more than a hired hand." Her lips curled into a smile, her enthusiasm for the notion out of place and forced. She was afraid, but of what he wasn't sure. "Your father said he would be glad to have you."
"You spoke to my father?"
"Yes."
"About his proposition?"
"Well… yes."
Feeling a sting of disappointment, Adam opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again as he felt small fists talk hold of his pants, clinging and pulling at the material around his knees. He looked down to find Noah staring up at him, his blue eyes brilliant and wide. The little boy's insistence, his silent bid for a ride, stifled Adam's impending retort. Ignoring Lil's palpable worry, he abandoned the towel, the dishes, and the conversation.
They took the evening air and a well-worn path to Leopards Pond. Sitting on a fallen tree trunk, Adam watched his son play next to the shallow waters and tried to ignore the tension settling around his shoulders and the heaviness tugging at his heart. He would have liked to have taken Charlie to this place, a bitter realization he hadn't allowed himself to dwell upon until now. He would have liked to have been allotted more time with his oldest son. To bring him back to the territory to meet his father and brothers. To show him all the things he was finally taking the time to share with Noah. To hug and kiss him. To hold on to him for one more day. But fate and God had denied him such simple kindnesses. Or, maybe, he had denied himself.
Adam rubbed his hand across his chest as his heart began to throb. How was it possible—how was it fair—that he himself could have fallen from the rafters of the skeletal beginnings of a new house and survived? How was it conceivable that, after falling down a few meager steps, Charlie had died? He didn't understand how two events could be so similar and so different—how the seemingly less serious of the two circumstances could result in a more dire outcome. With all the things Adam had done, the ferocity of the life he had lived, and the vicious men he had made a career out of chasing, it didn't make sense that he could be alive and his son could be dead. The only thing Charlie had ever chased or run after was his father. Oh, how he practically flew down those steep stairs lining the walkway of their house in San Francisco each time he caught sight of Adam finally returning home after yet another trip away. "Daddy!" he would scream exuberantly, thrusting himself into his open arms.
Approaching hoofbeats started him out of his sullen revere. Hand falling to his side, Adam turned on the log and saw Peggy sitting tall atop a stately Friesian a few yards away. The horse had been a gift from Ben, presented to the teen on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. He, alongside Hoss, Joe, and—judging by the familiar face of the young man trailing behind Peggy upon his own mount—Todd Wyatt, a young Ponderosa ranch hand, were all helping her train the animal to become her daily mount. Though such a gift could be perceived as unconventional for a young woman destined for the circles of polite society, for Peggy, it was both fitting and needed.
When Adam resumed riding Sport, he had left Bingo, his dependable mount from his marshaling days, at the teen's disposal. But shortly after Will's death, Peggy stopped utilizing the animal. Her rejection of it had become yet another thing that had not been spoken about directly, rather just silently shouldered and accepted. She had taken to riding Eddie's horse, a fine, black creature she had acquired during her time away; it was a gentle animal, well trained and picked. Sometimes, in his most ungracious of moments, Adam could not help wondering who had chosen the horse. Surely, it was not something Eddie had done alone. Not her, a woman who had grown up in the city and never rode a horse until their journey to Ohio. But that was just yet another truth harboring teeth—better left alone until he was certain he could withstand such a venomous bite.
Adam lifted a greeting hand and watched the pair from afar. Their horses lingering side by side now, Wyatt and Peggy traded a glance and a few words he could not hear. Finally noting Peggy's presence, Noah extended an excited index finger, his lips curling into an exuberant smile. Realizing she had been noticed by the boy, Peggy cast Adam an inscrutable stare. She glanced at Wyatt again, then dismounted and placed her reigns in the man's outstretched hand.
Noah ran toward her as she approached.
"Heya, pal!" Peggy exclaimed warmly as the boy thrust himself into her open arms. Grabbing ahold of him by his underarms, she lifted him up and swung him side to side in an over-exaggerated manner, sending his legs flying through the air. "Oh, it's so good to see you! I've missed you terribly."
Setting Noah back on his own two feet, Peggy appeared unsurprised when the boy grabbed her by the hand and pulled toward the log where Adam sat. Once there, the tot relinquished his grip. Perching himself on his father's knee, he pointed at the area of the log next to them.
Crossing her arms loosely, Peggy neither adhered to nor acknowledged the request.
"Horse looks like he's coming along well," Adam said.
"Yep," Peggy said coolly.
It wasn't the response he was hoping for, but he'd take it just the same. At least she acknowledged him this time. "What'd you end up naming him?"
She kicked the tip of her boot against the ground awkwardly. "Marshal."
"Marshal?"
"I didn't pick it… Jamie…" She paused, then rolled her eyes and shook her head. "It was his dumb idea. He started calling him that, and it just…stuck."
"Those kinds of things tend to happen, I suppose. The only reason Sport ended up being named Sport was because of all the times I had to remind him to be a good sport while he was being trained. I don't believe I ever worked so hard in my life to tame a mount; I'm not sure I ever will again, as a matter of fact."
Peggy looked at him guardedly, seemingly trying to decide if she wanted to continue the conversation or walk away. Having already properly greeted Noah, she seemed to have little reason to remain. "He's a rough one," she said. "Of course, you're not a rancher now, so I suppose you won't be training much of anything anymore."
"That's the plan anyway." Adam appraised Todd Wyatt. He was a handsome young man; although he was not aquatinted with acknowledging such things, even he was aware of such a glaring detail. Wyatt was tall, sturdy, but not burly. The hours he spent outdoors had tanned his complexion; his sun-kissed skin exaggerated the pigment of his dark blond hair and only served to intensify his emerald-colored eyes. It was difficult to ignore the young man's beauty. Adam prayed Peggy was still young enough to remain immune to it. "Todd been helping you out?"
"What?"
"With the horse."
"Oh…" Preoccupied, Peggy looked back at Wyatt. Her expression softened, a small smile tugging at her lips. "Yeah…He's been a big help."
"And Jamie?"
"What about him?"
"Have you been helping him?"
"With a horse?"
"No. With school."
"Oh." Peggy looked at Adam, her softened demeanor enduring. "Well, to be honest, he's pretty terrible with both."
"That boy will never be a horseman."
"Or a scholar. I've been trying my best to help him with his studies, but he doesn't care enough about school to spend a significant amount of time improving his marks. He doesn't often ask for help with much of anything, even if he really needs it."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Are you asking for help when you need it?"
Inhaling a sharp breath, Peggy looked at the calm pond waters. "How's Eddie?" she asked eventually.
"She's… tired. She has her hands full with the babies, but she misses you."
"Oh, I doubt that very much."
"Okay. Well, Noah misses you. I miss you, too."
She shook her head, unsettled by or unable to process the proclamation. "So, that's your plan, huh?"
Adam didn't follow. "What?"
"To be done with ranching. To allow Sport to be the most challenging mount you ever tamed."
"I'm not going to work for my father, if that's what you're wondering."
"Then what will you do?"
Adam sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. Though the teen was far from the first person to pose the question, this was the first time he seriously considered his response. "I don't know," he admitted. "Not yet, at least. What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Do you have a plan?"
Peggy shrugged. "I used to," she quietly said. "Now I'm not so sure." Her gaze shifted to Noah. "Sometimes… I think that maybe I'd like to go home again. The problem is, I don't think I know where that is anymore." She looked at Adam again, her hazel eyes locked on his own. "You're all he talks about, you know."
"Who?"
"Your father. He calls your return a gift."
"He shouldn't."
"Well, he does. He's going to be disappointed when you tell him the truth about what you've decided to do or not to do. I suppose Eddie will be disappointed, too."
"Why?"
"Because I don't reckon you'll see a need to return to San Francisco, either. Not with Aunt Lil married to one of Virginia City's less-upstanding citizens, and your remaining son close to the love and protection of his extended family."
Adam frowned. "Peggy, I have two sons." And he should have had two daughters, except the surrogate one who was standing in front of him seemed as intent as ever on distancing herself from the relationship they had once fallen into so easily.
Peggy scoffed ruefully and nodded as though his answer was to be expected. "What did you decide to call them?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Eddie's babies."
"My other son and daughter, you mean."
The infants were Cartwrights after all. Of course they had other names, too. Primary appellations that unsettled Adam deeply, that he hated and refused to speak aloud. The reason Eddie dared to utilize the monikers was something he had long forbade himself from thinking about. If this bit of truth had fangs, then he was certain it was harboring poison, too.
Noah stirred, no longer content with sitting still. Placing the boy on his feet, Adam watched his son roam the bank of the pond, sporadically bending over to investigate a rock, flower, or small, wayward tree branch.
"Sam," Adam said, finally answering Peggy's inquiry. "And Ellie."
"Samual and Elizabeth. So, you decided to favor their middle names."
"Better than the alternative."
"William and Laura," Peggy provided. "I told Eddie you weren't going to like those names. I told her that you were going to have a fit. She wasn't concerned about your reaction or feelings. As a matter of fact, I suppose, she wasn't concerned about a lot of things."
"If you have something to say about your mother, I'd rather you just say it outright."
"Eddie isn't my mother. She was my second cousin, but she isn't even that anymore, not really."
Then what is she? Adam thought. What am I? Now that he had allowed the teen to separate herself so effectively from the family unit he had formed. His father was wrong, he thought for what felt like the millionth time. Space and time were doing nothing to sort out the pain lingering between him and Peggy, between Peggy and Eddie. Something had happened; something had gone wrong while he had been away in Ohio burying Will—he had always suspected that; however, this was the first time he began to question if it wasn't his actions that had pushed Peggy away, rather something Eddie had done. Or maybe she hadn't done anything at all, and that was the real problem.
"Peggy," he said. "I wish you'd come back." Or better yet, he wished she'd finally head east for college and do something productive while time did or did not do what Ben Cartwright was desperately hoping it would.
"No." Peggy shook her head mournfully. "I won't be forced to live in a house made of sticks and straw again; I can't spend the rest of my life waiting for the big, bad wolf to finally show his face again and blow it all down."
Adam was confounded by the explanation. How could she be worried about such things now? "Peggy, the big, bad wolf is dead," he said. "I hung him in the middle of Virginia City and then buried him in Ohio."
"Will was never the wolf. Not really. His teeth were never as sharp as those belonging to the truths everyone pretends to ignore. I can't lie anymore, Adam." She had not called him "Pa" in months. The moniker had become yet another thing that had been lost the day her secret diary had been shared—the truth about what she had witnessed and endured while Will Cartwright had been her stepfather put on full display for all the town to know. But each time she used his given name, it cut Adam like a knife, carving away little pieces of his heart. "And if I go back to the house on Kay Street, I'll have to. I just want an honest life."
"And you can't have an honest life with Eddie and me?"
"Not until the two of you decide to have one, too." She cast him a somber glance, her eyes wide and bright with conflict and concern. "You know, you and your father really are more alike than you are different. He doesn't allow himself to acknowledge things he doesn't want to see, and neither do you. But avoiding the truth doesn't protect you from it; it just delays the pain and intensifies it. The longer you allow yourself to believe things that are untrue, the more difficult it becomes to accept that they aren't."
"Peggy…" Adam began and then stopped. Grinding his boots into the ground beneath them, he clasped and unclasped his hands. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't his father; sometimes the proper words of wisdom remained just beyond his grasp.
"You don't see me," Peggy whispered as though to answer his unspoken inquiry. "Not as I was or even as I am. When you look at me, you see the same thing the people of Virginia City do."
"And what do they see?" Adam hated to ask the question. They had gone this long without discussing such things, and they could go longer still, but to ignore the opportunity that had been presented would be remiss. It was better to know what he was dealing with upfront. He needed to know how much gossip the girl had heard, how much of their damning narrative she had internalized, and how much of it was informing her opinion of herself.
"A little girl who was orphaned by her parents, abandoned, and abused. A girl who is damaged beyond the recognition of polite society, one who cannot be rehabilitated or repaired."
"And what do you see?"
"I don't think I see anything of value, not anymore. Life isn't fair; I think a part of me always knew that, but I guess I didn't realize that my whole life was going to become the sum of everyone else's mistakes. Mommy and Daddy's, Will and yours, and Eddie's, too, I suppose."
"A person isn't the summation of their parents' worst behavior. Folks can say all kinds of things, and they can even believe them too, but that doesn't make any of those things true."
"It doesn't make them untrue, either. Especially not when the basis of the talk comes from something valid. Frank Dayton was my father; he was a philanderer, a cad; he married Laura, who was my mother, a flighty, vapid thing. Together, they brought me into the world, and then they decided that they didn't love each other; in fact, they came to find that they didn't much like each other at all. So, Frank wandered, and Laura took to hating him. He died an inebriate, and she died a variable tart. Laura's second husband died an abuser and murderer, hung in the gallows by the man she truly loved."
Adam shook his head. "Your mother never loved me."
"You loved her."
"No, I loved the idea of her."
"No, Adam, you loved the idea of me. You still love the idea of me. You cling to the lies you told yourself in the past as though they'll somehow protect you from the pain of the present or the truth that the future will demand you see. You do see it, don't you? The way you regard me. You look at my potential in a way not unlike the way your father once looked at yours, as though my future successes will be enough to justify your past mistakes, as though my achievements are meant to help ease all the pain that still remains because of them. It's too much, you know, to be responsible for righting so much wrong and easing so much remaining pain. And there is so much remaining pain, so many complicated feelings to sort out, and so many difficult decisions still to be made. Just because certain struggles end, that doesn't mean we are immediately granted understanding of why they had to take place. Just because we have removed ourselves from harm's way, that doesn't mean we have been left uninjured. When I was a little girl, you scooped me up and took me away from this place; you saved me from Will and the nightmare my life with him had become, but in doing so, you destroyed your own. You spent six years wandering and searching, grasping for remnants of all the things you weren't prepared to lose: your understanding of your father, of Will, or even yourself. Life happened and things changed along the way, but you can't say you actually chose anything."
"That's not true. Peggy, I chose you."
"No." Peggy shook her head sadly. "I don't think you really did, because, even after all this time, there is one thing that has never changed."
Adam's expression became pained. Given her age, it wasn't right for Peggy to be so wise; it wasn't seemly that he himself should be so transparent, his faults and plights so easily seen and aptly acknowledged by her youth. It wasn't right for her to look upon him and so clearly see all the things he was trying not to see himself. Of course, Peggy had always been so good at seeing things adults around her would rather be left concealed. She had known her father was dead long before her mother summoned the courage to tell her. She had silently withstood the truth about Will Cartwright long before the adults surrounding her had been forced to recognize his abounding sins. And, when Adam had snatched her up and taken her away from the Running D to Lil's home in San Francisco, it was never Peggy who had struggled with the realities of what such a thing would do. All the things the decision would come to signify—and all that it would not.
"I'm not your daughter," Peggy said. "I never was, and I never will be, not really. I became a Dayton by blood and a Cartwright by law, but you aren't the man who gave me either of those names. I was born to Frank and adopted by Will; they were my fathers. Now, I'm not saying that they were good ones, but they were what I had."
Then what was I? What am I?
The answer to Adam's silent inquiry arose a little too quickly, a little too easily, from the depths of Adam's mind. He was the father of others now. There were three small children who needed him much more than Peggy wanted to believe she did.
"You were the one who took me away from this place," Peggy continued. "But you weren't the one who brought me back. From the moment I stepped off that stage with Noah in tow, you've been trying to send me away again. From here. From you. You cling to the hope that I might one day suddenly wake up and decide to go to college, as though such a decision is so innately important and good that it would negate all the bad that has already taken place. As though it would spontaneously mend all that has been broken. But it won't, because it can't. You and I both know that time and space have never helped anything or anyone. Just as I know, when you look at me, you don't really see me as I am. You're too busy seeing the same things that the townsfolk see—a little girl who's been abandoned and abused."
"I don't see that."
"Yes, you do."
"I don't."
"But you do."
Surveying their surroundings, Adam looked at Noah, then focused his attention on the pond. A breeze had picked up on the other side of the bank; it blew incessantly at the waters, leaving them choppy and rough, but it had not yet reached them yet. His gaze drifted to the shore beyond the waters, and he frowned, his eyes setting on a figure in the distant horizon, man on horseback was appraising him and Peggy from a far. Though the distance between them was too great for Adam to distinguish who he was—or determine if he was really there at all—there was something disturbingly familiar about his silhouette. Something illusory, foreboding, and false.
How many years had passed since Will had come upon Adam and Peggy at this pond? Damn-near eight now. Too long for the memory to be so easily resurrected.
"You've been missing all day," Will had said, his anger palpable as he appraised the pair. "You best get home now." Though the instruction had clearly been meant for his wayward stepdaughter, he looked at Adam as he said it. "I expected more out of you than this."
I did too, Adam thought sadly. I expected so much more of you, myself, and my father, too.
"Adam, I really need you to listen to me," Peggy urged.
"I'm listening."
"When you look at me, I need you to really see me."
Shoving the memory aside, Adam focused his attention on Peggy. "I see you perfectly fine," he said.
"And I need you to do for me what your father failed to do for you. I need you to be strong enough to accept the things I want for myself instead of trying to force the ones you want for me."
"And what are those?"
"I'm not going to college. You need to stop harboring hope that I will."
"But you worked so hard for the opportunity. Now, in an extreme moment of difficulty, you're just going to throw it away?"
"I never wanted it, not really."
"Then why all the effort, Peggy? Why did you bother to continue with academics after completing what was required? If that was the case, then you would have been finished when you were thirteen."
"The effort I put forth wasn't about learning. It was about rising to the challenge."
"Right, the challenge of mastering the level of academics you were—"
"No, the challenge of you."
Adam was dumbfounded. "Me?"
"When we lived in San Francisco and you were still marshaling, you would float in and out of our daily lives. The times you were around were short and scarce, and there was often competition for your attention."
"Competition," Adam repeated, wondering if she had chosen the correct word.
"I know it wasn't volitional," she said. "It wasn't a choice you made, and you didn't mean for it to be that way, but that doesn't mean it was different than how it actually was. You were so busy relishing your time with Eddie, doting on the two fine children she had given to you. Sons who bore your name from the moment they entered this world. Charlie and Noah were so much younger than me. Needer. They were prone to forgetting things about their father during the long stretches of time he spent away. I wasn't like that. I was older, and I was someone else's child."
"Peggy, you weren't different. You were the same. I cared for you the same way I cared for my sons. I worked to feed, clothe, and keep you in school longer than any of your peers, which, Peggy, was not an inexpensive thing."
"Is that your only concern?" she scoffed. "The amount of money you spent?"
"No."
"Then why bring it up?"
"To illustrate my point. If I didn't care for you as much as I do my own children, then I certainly wouldn't have supported your academic pursuits. Not financially. I would have encouraged you to find other things to do. Instead, I did what was necessary to make sure you were prepared for the future you wanted. To make sure your dream of college was within your reach."
"No." Peggy shook her head vehemently. "That's not why you wanted me in school. Adam, college was never my dream."
"What are you talking about?"
"You only noticed me when I did well in school. The only time you and I spent together was when we were talking about my pursuit of college. You couldn't see me otherwise. You never saw me. You never wanted to. Even now, you don't want to."
"That's not true."
"Oh, you want to see me leave. See me off to college like that would make everything so much better than it currently is. Like it'll somehow magically protect me or you from acknowledging the difference between how things are and how we wanted them to be. You know, my whole life I've been in someone's way. My mother never really wanted me; my father couldn't be bothered to take real note of me; I was an inconvenience to Will; and I was nothing more than a fixture to you. Something that existed in the background, never really allowed to step forward to be a true part of things."
"You were a part of it." They weren't true, the things she was claiming. She was far more important, her presence was much more stabilizing and propelling than she could ever imagine. "You are a part—"
"You're not listening."
"I am."
"You're not hearing the things I'm saying."
"I am."
"No, you aren't. You're missing the point, just like you always do."
"I don't always do anything."
"Except for the things you do." Brows knitting, Peggy stood, crossed her arms, and pressed her palms into her sides. For a moment, she seemed angry, then she seemed sad, and then, as she looked down at him, her eyes shining with an unsettling gleam, Adam realized he had misread her completely. "I swear, I don't even know why I try to talk to you about anything. The second this damn conversation is over, we'll act like it never happened. I'll go back to avoiding you, and you'll go back to avoiding me, and we'll all go on pretending that everything is just fine and that what little is left of life as we once knew it isn't crumbling beneath us."
"Peggy…" Adam hesitated, reaching for the correct words and the right way in which to say them. "Don't say damn," he finished lamely.
Peggy nodded as though his lackluster response had been expected. "I hate you, you know," she said forlornly. "For everything you weren't, and all that you can't be now."
And there it was: the horrible, terrible, sorrowful truth, the one they had each avoided drawing attention to for so long. It was the omission that had kept them from speaking to each other as of late, the reason they carefully avoided talking to each other about anything of value. It was what she had been afraid she'd slip and say, what he had been afraid he would be forced to hear. And upon hearing it, Adam realized it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. It hurt more.
"I know," he said.
"If you know and I know, then I guess there's nothing left for us to talk about."
"But there is. Peggy, I don't want you to feel like a background object in my life. I want you to come home. In fact, I insist that you—"
"You're not my father. You can't tell me what to do."
"I can."
"You can't."
"I can."
"You can't."
"I can," Adam said emphatically, firmly.
"Don't you understand?" she cried, her expression pinched and pained.
Tears pooled in her eyes as she began to move away from him, taking one single backward step at a time. Her sudden shift in disposition was confounding, her level of agony disturbing. In that moment, she reminded Adam so much of Laura that it stole his breath away. He shouldn't have been so surprised—so taken aback. She was Laura's daughter, after all, a detail that was more easily ignored when Peggy was still little. But she wasn't little anymore. And Laura was gone.
"You ruin everything!" Peggy shouted tearfully. "You've ruined everything! You took me away from this place, and then you pinned a badge on yourself and spent the next six years chasing Will and running away from the truth. You missed so much, and you left so many things undone and ignored!"
"Peggy—"
"I am not your daughter!"
"Peggy—"
"I never really was, and now I never will be!" Shaking her head furiously, she continued to take backward step after step. "You never wanted me, Adam! And that's just fine because I don't want you either!"
Turning around, she ran to her horse. Looking between her retreating form and his father's stagnant one, Noah frowned, his forehead pinching with concern. Dropping a rock he had been taking great care investigating, the boy took off after the girl, only to be interceded and swept up in his father's arms.
"Leave it be, Noah," Adam instructed, wondering how he was going to find the desire to adhere to his own direction. "For now."
Peggy rode away, but Todd Wyatt remained steady. Adam was taken by a sudden and exponential uneasiness. He didn't like the way the young man was regarding him. Tangible, salient, and familiar, the fury radiating from Wyatt's ridged physique troubled him far more than he wanted to admit.
I'm disappointed. Will's voice hummed in the surrounding breeze.
Holding his son tightly, Adam tore his gaze away from Wyatt and shifted his attention to the shore on the other side of the water to find that the figure lurking on horseback was gone. When he finally glanced back, he found Wyatt had gone, too. But Will's voice remained, as acrid and cold as the building wind.
I expected more out of you than this.
TBC