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To Another Heart

Chapter 11-Let Fate Decide

Joe tells his girls the truth and then comes back home to the house where Ben is waiting.

The sun was shining off the lake. It was a soft glare, blue skies on the silver lake making it seem almost reflective like a shiny mirror. Joe watched it and then.

"Pa?"

He ran a hand down blonde hair.

"Yes Mary?"

"Can I ask a question?"

"Of course you can darling"

"So…so you are really Mr Ben's son…and you were took from him as a baby and now your back…but you didn't know that right?"

"No honey I didn't"

"So Mr LeDuke was not your Pa?"

Joe felt his teeth grind together.

"No honey he wasn't" he said.

LeDuke had never wanted his children and Joe had never allowed them to call him Grandpa. The old coot had seen it as a mark of respect and Joe had seen it more as a mark of rebellion. It had been one of the small ways of rebellion that he had, rebelling against the man and taking those small victories was in a way the only way forwards that he had.

Now he had another path in front of him.

If he wanted to take it.

And he was still not one hundred percent sure he did.

"So…Mr Ben is your Pa?"

"Yes honey"

Mary thought about it for a long moment her little brown creased and then it smoothed out and she snuggled back down at his side. "I think I like him better" she said quietly. "Do you think he will keep our afternoons where we can read?"

Joe snorted. He really couldn't stop himself he thought as he brushed back some of the blonde hair. One would think that, that would be the least of Ben Cartwrights problems right about now.

"Sure honey" he said softly.

"Do we call him Grandpa now?" little Laura asked tucked up under his other side.

"If you want to…I don't…I don't know" he said changing tact halfway through. Because the truth was he didn't know. And what he didn't know was glaringly obvious in front of him and it was scaring the living daylights out of him.

"And Hoss and Adam are our Uncles" Laura said easily.

"Well done stupid" Mary said with sisterly scorn. "You've figured it out"

"Mary" he said sternly. "Don't call your sister stupid she's trying to figure out answers to questions even I don't know"

Mary opened her little mouth and then no doubt caught the look on his face and…

"Alright Pa, sorry" she said snuggling back to his side. There was another heartbeat of a silence and Joe found himself oddly sentimental.

God knows he was not a man to be overcome by emotion but he found as he held his girls to him that he didn't know how Ben Cartwright had gone on he had known and understood from Adam that it had been hard but as he looked out over the lake with his own two precious children clutched to him he found that he was actually more impressed with his father than he dared to admit. If something like that had happened to either one of his girls he didn't think that he would be able to carry on never mind run one of the most successful ranches in the country. He was barely hanging on as it was on a good day. He would be barely hanging on.

"So…do we get to stay here…and have a grandpa and uncles then?" Mary asked and well…wasn't that the crux of the question?

"Do you want to?" he asked. "I don't mind your answer I just want to know"

"I do" Mary said quietly. "This is the nicest place that we have ever lived in Pa. Laura and I have our own bed and theirs a curtain…we can see out of the window and see the stars. We can go to school, I can sit and read my books all day long! I like it here, it feels safe"

"I like the puppies"

"Oh you would" Mary said scornfully. "But people are nice here" she said nodding her head. "People are nice here…much nicer than home. Even the girls at the hotel for woman…"

"The hotel for woman?"

"That's what Uncle Adam calls it"

The simplicity of her saying the word Uncle Adam took his breath away and quite eclipsed the fact that his brother had explained the whorehouse to his daughter as a hotel for woman.

Seriously.

"Laura?"

"I like it here Pa, I like having a family"

"Pa" Mary said suddenly. She turned her whole little body to look at him dead in the eye. "Pa I don't…I mean do you think…Ma wouldn't mind would she. She wouldn't mind us being happy here would she?"

"No sweetheart" Joe said quietly brushing his hands through that golden hair again and pulling loose a twig between his fingers. "No she wouldn't mind us being happy here"

"And…and you having family doesn't mean you love us any less does it?"

Again he smiled. Out of all of the questions that his girls could have asked him about this whole shit show they had asked the ones that he knew in his soul he could answer honestly, truthfully and with no hesitation needed.

"Darling I love you and your sister more than I love anything else in the whole world. I am always going to be your Pa and I am never going to love you any less. All this means is that this little family of three that we have been has a few more people wanting to join us. And it's going to be hard but—"

"But we can do it" Laura said looking animated. Joe chuckled and tugged her onto his lap.

"Yeah" he said quietly looking out over the water. "Yeah I guess we can do it."

And for the first time since his world had been blown apart he believed it.

And he felt like he could put just a little bit of the shattered pieces back together again.

Ben had been waiting. Shameless perhaps but he had been waiting and counting down the hours, minutes, seconds…he had been trying to hide how desperate he was, how utterly terrified he was. He knew that Joe had gone to pick up his daughters but he had not seen hide nor hare of him and though most of his belongings were still at the ranch Ben also wouldn't put it past any son of his (or Marie's for that matter) to simply ride off into the night and never come back like some lone ranger.

It didn't help that the boys were wating too. Both Hoss and Adam were sat on the porch Adam with a book he was not reading and Hoss with something to whittle that he was not whittling. Ben on the other hand was leaning over the corral and looking down into the mud and trying to pretend that there was an actual point as to what he was doing instead of this endless waiting game.

There wasn't by the way but that wasn't the point was it?

He looked up when horses hooves came into the yard and then his heart did something funny and complicated that felt like he was on the verge of a heart attack.

Joe was there, he had both girls with him on his horse one sat with her legs over the edge and the other side saddle.

Mary and Laura.

His grandchildren.

Trust Joe to give him grandchildren.

Trust Joe to give him granddaughters.

Ben had raised two boys and seen three born.

He was still not one hundred percent sure what to do with girls.

Both Mary and Laura hopped from the horse with all the skill of youth though they did wait for the horse to stop. The dust swirled around them as Joe dismounted and they waited for their Pa to throw his reigns around the hitching post and come to stand with them. Both of them were watching him with a highly anticipated expression as if they thought that he was going to do something like sprout wings and fly.

Before Joe could speak the blonde one, Mary spoke for him.

"Pa told us everything" she said with a kind of relish. "And we've decided that if you want us to stay we can stay. Providing we can still do our reading in the afternoons"

"Mary—"

"But Pa you said!"

Joe was wearing an expression that Ben knew intimately well. He knew that he should be speaking but right now his heartbeat was thumping alongside the tune that was pa has decided to say, pa has decided to stay. Joe has decided to stay.

He would never admit to anyone how utterly afraid he had been that the answer would have been something different even with a goodbye in the frame. How terrified he had been that he would just find his boy only to lose him in the same day.

"You're going to stay huh?" Adam said sliding an arm around his shoulders and looking down at the girls and not as his brother.

"If you want us to" Joe said softly. He was still not looking at Ben.

"Of course we want you too" Ben said softly and finally those big green eyes were back where they belonged. On his face.

For a second the two of them stared at each other and then Joe nodded looking away and folding his lip under his teeth his hands in his back pockets as if he didn't know where else to put them. Ben drank it in, the body language, the posture, the looks all of it and knew his heart was content.

"So your our Grandpa huh?" the littlest one said.

"Yes" he said to Laura. "I am"

She nodded and then he saw her turn to her sister. Mary was still watching him.

"You can have all the books you want" Ben promised. "And ponies, I suppose I do have a lot of birthdays to make up for don't I?"

Both of them cheered at that.

"Now if you want why don't you go with Hoss and Adam and see if dinner is ready?"

They were gone in a flash alongside Hoss. Adam looked at him for a second and then clapped his shoulder with his hand nodded at Joe and was gone too.

Joe looked at him for a second and then.

"They took that better than I did" he said finally.

"God made children durable for a reason" Ben said and Joe nodded. He looked out back over the yard and then back to him.

"So your okay...with us staying…I mean?"

"Boy I wanted nothing else."

Joe nodded again and this time there was a smile flickering at his lips.

"I…sorry for hitting you"

"Well I could have done it better I suppose"

Joe did laugh at that and Ben cracked a smile too.

"New day, new beginnings?" he offered and Joe nodded.

"I'm not good at this" he said quietly. "I don't…I'm not used to having people care about me, I mean I know I've got the children but they're children you know?"

Ben did know and with an emotion that gripped him as if in a fever he reached out and tugged the boy close to him again.

"I do know" he said quietly. "And don't worry son…we will help you get used to being loved"

Joe watched him for a second and then he nodded eyes wet.

"Pa?"

It was Adam from the doorway.

"Hop Sing says if you want to eat before midnight dinner is ready" he said and then he was gone.

Ben gripped the boy tighter.

"Come on son" he said gently and again those green eyes were on him the exact shade as he remembered. "Let's go inside"

And together they did just that.

And there you go-only three more chapters to go!

Next Chapter-Dinner, an evening with his brothers and this still does not feel real. Joe wonders when it ever will. Fortunatly Adam and Hoss feel the same.