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To Another Heart
Chapter 8-The Child Between
The truth is out there...and it hurts. Part 1. Ben.
"How do you know her?" Adam said pointing at Freddie's backside where Marie's picture was.
The kid turned and looked at Adam.
"She's my mother" he said shortly and then he shut the door and led his daughter away just in time to totally miss Adam's eyes bugging out of his head as the new reality crashed down upon him.
For a second the entire room was frozen and then...
"No fucking way" Adam said flatly. "No fucking way has he been living in the bunkhouse for the past three..."
But he never got to finish that sentence because Ben's knees had just given out.
Roy managed to catch him before he hit the floor.
Ben cannot speak.
He genuinely thinks that he cannot speak. He thinks sitting on the chair Roy hauled him into he cannot speak. Adam has gotten him a brandy and is looking at him with an odd expression. Hoss next to him looks scared out of his wits. Like he had done when…
He takes a gasp and then another and then a sip of brandy and then he throws it back and lets the burn take him. Everyone is looking at him and wordlessly he points the glass at Adam who goes to get another one as if looking desperately for something to do, anything to do, anything that gets him away from his father and the awful look that Ben can only imagine is plastered on his face.
He doesn't know what to think or what to say or what to do.
Freddie.
Freddie is Joe.
Freddie is his son which means…
Oh hell.
He's a grandfather.
He throws back the next brandy as fast as he threw back the first one and then he feels a bit more himself. Or more himself enough to get his brain to connect to his mouth so he can speak. He doesn't like the look on his boys faces. His boys who are no doubt in the same headspace he is in and do not have the luxury of falling to the floor.
"How do you know her?" Adam said pointing at Freddie's backside where Marie's picture was.
The kid turned and looked at Adam.
"She's my mother" he said shortly and then he shut the door and led his daughter away just in time to totally miss Adam's eyes bugging out of his head as the new reality crashed down upon him.
For a second the entire room was frozen and then...
"No fucking way" Adam said flatly. "No fucking way has he been living in the bunkhouse for the past three..."
No…no he cannot go there now, he cannot think now on that.
"So…" he says hearing his voice and not really hearing it if that makes sense.
"So he…so Freddie is Joe"
"Looks like it" Adam says grimly. "He didn't know…no way he knew who we were, he was looking for work when I found him he didn't know a damn thing, and it makes sense because none of them mention where they came from before this happened. Not even the children."
"Our nieces" Hoss points out. "Wow. How does our little brother have children before we do"
He says it like it's so easy. As if Freddie being Joe isn't important in the sense that Hoss has already accepted him. Hoss has always accepted him and nothing is going to change that.
But then again, Hoss out of all of them had the biggest capacity to love, his heart was too big for him to do anything else with it but love.
God knows he never got that from Ben.
He pulls himself together and tries to get his brain into gear. He is suddenly achingly aware that the next moves his family make depend on him keeping his brain and his wits about him. Right now his boys are looking at him for a sense of direction and like he did all those years ago when Joe was taken and when Marie was killed he knows that he must pull himself together and act fast now.
"How…Roy do you think that he knew?"
"About Charles La Duke and you? Not until Adam told him. Adam I assume you told him why you all hated La Duke?"
Adam nodded. Roy nodded too.
"No way he stays if he knows that, he'd be panicking and that was not a man who was panicking Ben. I reckon he has no idea. But you gotta be careful what you tell him and when—"
"Is he in trouble for…for what happened?"
"I don't want to rake up old business for something that someone has ruled an accident" Roy said flatly. "I don't want to go digging…if that man is dead then good riddance to bad rubbish. If the kid did it then…then I reckon that it was more than likely self defence. Either way we will never know"
Ben nodded.
"So are we getting him in the house and telling him?"
"Adam we cannot…we cannot drag him in the house and drop this on him. It should…it should be me and it should be me and him without the girls."
"Then you need to do it tomorrow. If you don't want the girls around then you need to do it when they are in school" Adam said flatly as if he knew as well as Ben did that the idea of waiting another second never mind another night was torture.
Ben nodded.
He held out his glass and Adam sighed.
Roy left eventually. Hoss and Adam drifted upstairs and he watched the dawn come in and finally around one in the morning his brain started to kick in gear. Now that he was thinking about it there had been signs. There had been an ease with Freddie…Joe…and certainly with his children that Ben had never been able to explain. He had seen flickers of Marie all over the boy but had chalked it down to being an old fool. The boy had come from a shady background…
He was alive.
Alive.
It was such a powerful word to think of, his son, that precious little baby with the big green eyes had grown into a curly haired young man barely old enough to shave with two children. God he must have been a teenager when he'd had Mary. Far, far too young he thought with a father's scorn. Far too young to have children, far too young to be out here on his own. Ben would have never let him go out on his own that far…and he wouldn't have let him get married that young either. Or have to get married.
Or was he even married? As he stayed awake that night and tried to think on how best to do this the reality was that he didn't even know if Fre—Joe had been married.
Oh God.
The scale of what he had lost was bearing down on him now and it was more than he could bare.
When dawn broke he knew he couldn't wait a second longer.
He was asleep when he opened the bunkhouse door. They had their own little room the three of them and the girls were making do sharing one bed and he was in the other. He looked at those two girls who were his granddaughters, looked at the blonde hair and the brown haired girls and felt his heart thud again. Then he turned his attention to his son and it nearly stole his breath away. He didn't know what else to do other than stare him.
He was asleep curled up on his side curly hair a mess eyebrows furrowed a little in sleep and Ben had the craziest idea to just…sit there and watch him sleep. That was all he wanted to do, just sit there and sleep and watch his boy in a way he had never been able to do before.
His son was alive.
His son was alive.
And Ben loved him. Loved the man that he had become, the father that he had become, all of it, he loved him so much it hurt him.
There had never been any doubt that he wouldn't love him as much as he loved his other two. Now he had his three boys under one roof again and all was well…
Well…not well but…but he had his three boys under one roof. Ish
One problem at a time Cartwright, one problem at a time.
Gently so not to disturb the two sleeping girls he put his hand on Joe's shoulder.
He started awake at once. For a second he looked at him and there was fear in his eyes that Ben wanted to sooth away but knew that he couldn't. Not yet anyway.
"Come with me" he whispered. "I need you to come with me"
Joe watched him for a second and then swung his legs out of bed. He reached upwards for his trousers and then.
"Why?"
"Job" Ben lied. "Adam will make sure the girls get to school okay"
Joe looked at him for a second and then nodded. Ben didn't know weather to be amused or insulted that he took his pistol with him and made a great show of tucking two knifes into his boot.
They made slow work of the horses up to Marie's grave. Ben slid down from the saddle and looked at the warn stone as Joe did the same.
"This your wife?"
"The one Charles Le Duke killed"
Joe gave a long sigh.
"You know?"
"Yes…I…"
"If you want me gone I get it" Joe said in a rush, "If you want a duel I'll give you one too old man but fair warning I will kill you."
Ben turned and looked at him.
"Not a lot of room for trusting in your world is there?" he asked feeling almost amused.
"Not if you knew my father there wasn't"
Ben did. He knew the man who had taken Joe and he knew his father, rather intimately on both accounts.
"Adam told you about my son, the one who was taken?"
"Yes…my father never spoke about him though so if you…"
"I found him"
That threw him and Ben watched Marie's name for a second as Fre…Joe tried to figure it out. He didn't know what to do, didn't know what else to say as he waited until…surely the boy had to figure it out?
"I don't understand"
Apparently not.
Ben turned and faced his son for the first time in what was years. Too many years, too many old years gone, so much he had missed out on.
He hoped that man was in hell.
"I am…you see…the photo that you have is off my wife. The one you said is your mother, I am your father Freddie. Your name is Joe and I am your father and Charles Le Duke kidnapped you when you were a baby and killed your mother, might have killed me too for all the good I was and…and I am your father, I need…I am your father Joe…Joseph…you are my son"
He stared down at the boy who was his son and his son stared back at him and then with a smile that he knew was from his soul, a moment that he knew he would remember forever…a love that he knew was burning so bright in him that it would never go out he moved to embrace his boy at last and—
WHAM.
Joe had punched him.
He fell backwards onto Marie's grave and caught himself on her tombstone.
Well he thought grinning insanely through the blood in his teeth.
He was definitely Marie's boy alright.
God knows he had the temper.
he looked up to see Joe looking down at him eyes wide shaking so hard he was a blur.
"Joe"
"Don't call me that"
"Son—"
But that seemed to freak him out more. Ben got to his feet and stared at him and…
"Joe—"
But Joe was shaking still and he staggered back against the grave and caught his leg. He tumbled down a little catching himself and then he pressed backwards against the tree shaking so violently Ben thought that he was going to faint.
He took another half step forwards on his knees this time and waited.
Joe kept looking at him without seeing him.
It didn't matter.
He had waited a lifetime for Joe.
He could wait another moment.
And there you go, See you next time.
Next Chapter-Freddie...or Joe tries to understand what he has heard. Fortunately Adam and Hoss are on hand to help...ish.