Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Yellowstone.

A/N: Hi all! So I just started Yellowstone three days ago, and I'm already at the beginning of season four. This show is…something else lol. But I absolutely love it. It's captivated me in a way that a show hasn't for years.

Anyway, I wanted to explain this story a little bit. I wanted to explore a slightly softer side to John Dutton that the show seems to typically portray, without sacrificing the dramatic element of it (remember, I haven't watched season 4 or 5 yet, so maybe he changes a bit in those seasons?). This story here features Josephine Dutton, John's late-in-life surprise. She's sixteen when the show starts, which is where this chapter starts. I have several chapters planned out right now, and I have an ending planned out, but it will be a long while before I get to that. Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys!

In every family, whether they admit it or not, there's a kid that everybody loves but nobody really pays attention to.

In this family, that's me.

My name is Josephine, but the last time anybody called me that I was six years old and was in trouble for stealing candy from my daddy's desk drawer. He knew I was doing, knew I had been doing it for as long as I could walk, he just happened to catch me that day. I froze in the doorway, scared that I was in trouble, but after a few seconds Daddy picked me up and tickled me until I couldn't breathe. He told me that day I could get one piece a day, more if I did extra chores and was really good, but if Mommy ever caught me I was on my own.

I'm known to everybody else as Joey.

I was, in my dad's words, the biggest surprise he ever had in his life. The rest of his kids were pretty much grown when I came along. Lee, my oldest brother, was twenty-one when my parents announced me and twenty-two when I was born. Jamie was eighteen, Beth sixteen, and Kayce twelve when I came along. Daddy was in his late forties, he told me, looking forward to an empty nest coming up soon.

Seems I blew that plan out of the water.

Anyways, like I said, I'm Joey. I've always kind of faded into the background here at Yellowstone ranch. Being the baby of the family apparently comes with all the cuteness and no responsibility. Even after all my siblings grew up and moved away, the only thing my parents really wanted me to focus on was school. Things were good most of the time. Right up until I turned eight. While I fix up my dad from whatever idiotic thing almost got him killed today, I'll tell you what happened that put me in this chair I have to sit in all the time now.

It was 2010. My oldest brother Lee still lived with us. My mom still lived with us then, too, but not for much longer. I guess I should tell you about my mom too. My mom was a whirlwind romance my father had a couple years before I was born. His first wife, the mom to my brothers and sister, had died three years earlier. My mom was hired as a housekeeper at the ranch, but three months after they met, the two of them were married. Two years later, here I was.

Everything was pretty good for those years, at least as far I could see. I know now that Daddy will hide stuff from me if he thinks it'll upset me, so if he and Mom fought, I never knew about it. But no matter what was going on, the three of us had our own routine that we did every single night. It didn't matter if there was snow on the ground, rain coming down, ice…nothing mattered. What mattered was that the three of us were together. Daddy would get in his chair on the front porch, Mom would be in hers, and I'd play. If the weather was good, I'd play in the front yard. I had a soccer ball I played with most of the time, but there were nights I just ran laps around the house. If my Daddy wasn't too tired, he'd get out there with me. If he was, he'd cheer me on and help me come up with other ideas how to have fun before going to bed.

I remember the night all that ended. Forever.

Like I said before, I was eight. I was running around the yard with my soccer ball, which by then was old, ragged, and faded. There were bits of the coating around the soccer ball coming loose and beige fibers could be found all over the yard if you were taking a close enough look. Daddy had offered to buy me a new one, but I wanted to keep the one I had until it couldn't be used anymore. I found out later that he had one packed in the closet to give me for Christmas, but he never did.

The last thing I remember from that night was turning towards my parents. They were on the porch, heads together, talking about something. I watched them real closely for a minute before I said anything. I don't remember what I was thinking when I did that. Maybe I knew on some level that this was the last night we'd ever be a family. Maybe I just wanted to watch my Mommy and Daddy loving on each other for a minute, because it was something I didn't see very often. Whatever it was, that moment is stuck in my head forever.

"Daddy! Come play with me!"

I remember him turning around to me, but that's it. Everything after that went black.

The next time I woke up, I was tired. Real tired. I tried to turn my head but it felt like there were bags of sand in it. The next thing I heard was a bunch of people rushing over to me, but I heard one thing above everything else.

"Whoa, darlin'. It's okay. Look up, I'm right here."

I turned my eyes slightly and there he was. Daddy was sitting on my bed, smiling at me and stroking my hair. Right then I was certain of one thing. I was okay. No matter what was going on, I was okay. I felt like crap and was scared out of my mind, but Daddy was there so I was safe.

I still feel that way most days today.

I took a deep breath and took a look around. I had been sleeping for a long while, that much I knew, but I wasn't in my bedroom at home. There were a couple of nurses standing there, and one was at the door calling for a doctor.

"Where are we?" I asked Daddy.

"We're at the hospital, baby." Daddy told me. "Do you remember what happened?"

I thought back and remembered a little. "I was playing ball."

"That's right. You were out in the front yard playing with your soccer ball."

"Did I fall?" I asked him.

"Yeah. You did. You had a seizure, baby."

"Seizure? What's that?"

Daddy took a deep breath. He always did that when he was trying to come up with how to explain something to me that I didn't understand in a way that wouldn't scare me. He still does it today, eight years later.

"It means that you're sick, honey. There's something going on in your brain and the doctors are trying to figure out what."

"My brain?" I said. I must have whispered because the doctor that had just come in asked me to repeat what I said. "That sounds scary."

"I won't lie to you, baby. It is. But you got one thing you gotta remember."

"What?"

Daddy took my hand then and squeezed it. Him doing that has always quelled any fear I was feeling, even if it was just for a second.

"You got Daddy right here. And I ain't going nowhere till we figure this out. And what happens when somebody messes with Daddy's girl?"

I smiled then. "They mess with Daddy."

"That's right."

It was only then that I noticed what was missing. "Where's Mommy?"

"She went to get some coffee. She'll be here in a minute. Look, the doctor needs to look you over. I'll be right here the whole time."

I squeezed his hand, the way that I'd told him I was scared without telling him I was scared my whole life. He squeezed back, and I let the doctor examine me. He asked me a few questions, simple stuff like my name, how old I was, what school I went to. He asked me questions that were a little harder to answer, like what Daddy's full name was, what he did for a living, and I passed all that with flying colors. The doctor seemed happy. He turned to my parents and told them both, in no uncertain terms, that I seemed to be doing okay but he would like to run a few tests just to be sure.

The next couple of days were full of tests. They took blood from me twice. I've never been much of a crier, but both times they took the blood I cried so much that I wet Daddy's shirt. It wasn't that it hurt so much as I was scared, tired, and still felt horrible. I wanted to go home and made that known to anyone who would listen. My parents kept telling me it would happen, I just had to be patient. Other tests were done, but I don't remember them very much. I think Daddy made them put me to sleep for them,

The next day that's crystal clear to me from that time was four days after I landed in the hospital.

It was the first time that awful week that my parents both left. They'd been taking turns sitting with me that week, one going back to the ranch to make sure things were running smoothly while the other sat with me. They explained to me that they were just going to talk to the doctor, and that they'd talk to me as soon as they got back. I didn't want to be alone and begged one of them to stay, but Daddy said he had a surprise for me. I could have it if I promised to be brave for them. I snuffled and nodded my head. My Daddy thinking I was brave was everything I lived for then. It still is now to some degree. But a minute later, my sister Beth walked in the door. She had gotten home from Utah the night before. I'd missed her terribly, and after a hug and kiss on the cheek, Beth was happily playing with me. I know now she was keeping me distracted, but that day she made me feel like I was the most important girl in the world.

I'll never forget the look on Daddy's face when he and my mother walked through the door a few hours later. My Daddy had taken his hat off, something he never did indoors anywhere other than at home, and he looked scared. Real scared. My mother was crying, but it was Daddy that scared me the most. My Daddy, I was certain then, was the strongest and bravest man in the whole world. If he was scared, then whatever was coming was bad. Real bad.

I had a tumor on my brain, Daddy explained after he calmed my mother down. He sat in the chair beside the bed while Beth held me on the bed. The tumor had to come out, he said, or I'd get a lot sicker really fast. The surgery was happening in two days, he told me, and hopefully, after that, I'd get better.

I never got better.

The whole family came in and out over the next couple days. Daddy stayed right there the whole time, trying his hardest to keep my spirits up. My mom seemed a little distant, but I was too preoccupied being nervous about the surgery to notice. I went into surgery and fell asleep, thinking I'd wake up in a little while and everything would be okay, just like it had been when I'd woken up from having the seizure.

But this time, when I woke up, things were different.

I felt something big and hard in my throat. I heard a bunch more machines around me than I'd heard over the last few days. Daddy was standing over me, screaming for a doctor to come in the room. The doctor came in and told me to take as deep a breath as I could, then to cough. He pulled whatever was in my throat out, and while I could breathe better, I was hurting. My throat was dry and painful. I started to talk as the doctors and nurses set to work around me, but Daddy shushed me gently.

"Listen, darlin'. Don't try to talk, okay? I'm gonna tell you what happened, but you have to calm down. Alright? Come on. Breathe with me."

Daddy took a bunch of slow, deep breaths, in and out, in and out, in and out. We'd done that a few times before when something scared me, and it always worked. The fear didn't go away this time, but I was able to regain some measure of my composure. Daddy smiled at me, readjusted my blanket, and he talked to me.

My Daddy's always had this way of talking to me about serious stuff in a way that makes it seem not so scary. It's a talent not many people have, especially for a situation like the one we were facing just then. But Daddy was more straightforward with me that day than he'd ever been before.

To make an incredibly long and medically detailed story short, the stupid doctor had cut into the wrong part of my brain. They'd eventually gotten the tumor out, but they'd taken way too much of my brain along with it, and the next few weeks were going to be full of trying to figure some things out. The tube that had been in me when I'd woken up had been helping me breathe since I got out surgery. After I'd rested up for a bit, they were gonna see if I could walk around on my own. It would be a long time before I could even think about going back to school again. Daddy told me a lot of other things, then he asked me if I had any questions. I looked around the room and noticed something gone.

"Where's Mommy?"

It's amazing how much a whisper can hurt someone. Daddy looked like I'd slapped him. He scowled for a second, just long enough for me to see it, before he just turned sad again and told me another way that my life was going to change from that day on.

"Mommy's gone, baby."

"When…" It was so hard to talk right then, but I had to know. "When she come back?"

"She isn't, baby." Daddy said. "Mommy decided that she wasn't strong enough to handle this, so she left."

That's right, folks. I was eight years old. I had, in the course of a week, had a seizure, found out I had a tumor, and had just woken up from brain surgery that had likely injured me beyond repair, possibly in ways that no one even knew about yet.

And my mother, who I've mostly referred to the last few years as my egg donor or incubator, decided that it was too much for her to deal with, so she hit the road.

But what I felt in that moment wasn't anger. That came later. What I felt just then was a deep, hollow grief that I've never felt since. My mommy was gone, and I was convinced that I was to blame. It was all my fault. I started to turn away from Daddy, but he grabbed my chin and pulled me back to look him in the eye.

"Hey. You listen to me. Your mama leaving is not on you. Mama left because of Mama. No other reason. I don't want you to blame yourself, okay?"

I nodded. Talking just then wasn't possible.

"Tell me what you're thinking. I know it hurts to talk, so take your time."

I licked my lips, which were dry and hurting too. I closed my eyes and gathered my thoughts.

"I feel like I ruined everything."

I felt Daddy's big hand cover my cheek. He was wiping away tears I didn't know I was crying. I opened my eyes back up and looked at him. He was smiling, but I'd never known before that day that there could be so much sadness behind a smile. I've never forgotten what he said to me next.

"You didn't ruin a thing, precious. Not a thing."

Daddy never mentioned my mother after that, and I never brought her up to him. I was in the hospital a couple more weeks. My speech got better, but that was about all. I still stutter sometimes, but my voice is much clearer. I had to relearn a lot of stuff I'd learned in school, but about three months later I was caught up. I had tremors sometimes, but they faded away. I had to go back and forth to the hospital quite a few times, where they told my I was healing, just not all the way.

The one thing I never could do again was walk.

I tried, tried so hard so many times that even the physical therapist at the hospital said I was the most stubborn patient she'd ever had. But apparently the part of my brain that had been cut when the doctor went in controlled things like walking, and I just never gained the ability back. Eventually, Daddy convinced me to take a wheelchair, where I've been ever since.

There's one more part to this story that may be of interest. An epilogue of sorts. The doctor that operated on me was out of a job before I ever woke up from surgery. His medical license was stripped from him. A month after I got home from the hospital, he suffered a mysterious accident where both his legs were broken. After he recovered, the only job he was able to get was that of a bag boy down at the local supermarket.

The same supermarket I went to every week with someone from the staff to help with grocery shopping.

I have my suspicions that what happened to the doctor was no accident. I've never brought that up to my dad either, mostly because I'm not sure I want to know the real answer. I have no doubt that Daddy's the one that arranged for him to get the job as the bag boy, no doubt so that every time I walked in the store he could see what damage his reckless mistake had caused.

Folks, there's a lesson in this. One that everyone could use at some point or another.

Don't hurt John Dutton's babies.

But that's not the reason I wrote this. Here comes the real morbid part. There's always been a part of me that believed I'd die young. I don't know why, but that part got sharper after the surgery. It's something that's been at the back of my mind for as long as I could remember. Every time I see my Daddy or one of my older siblings, I'm just absolutely certain that I won't live to be their ages. I hope I'm wrong, but I wanted to write this just in case I'm not. I hope someone finds this after I'm gone, even if it's years from now, and they can read this and know a piece of my story. Maybe I'll add to it, maybe not, but for now, to think that there's a piece of me out there-I'm planning to bury this in the yard-that someone may find some day?

That's pretty cool, ain't it?