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To Another Heart

Chapter 9-Secrets Exhumed

Freddie...or Joe tries to understand what he has heard. Fortunately Adam and Hoss are on hand to help...ish.

Adam didn't know what to do.

For the second time in his life he didn't know what to do. He knew that he should do something…Hoss was looking at him in that way that his brother did when he thought that Adam would have all the answers and most of the time it was fine because he did.

What to do when your father told your long lost brother that he actually was your long lost brother coupled with he fact that he had jumped the gun less than ten hours after he had found out was really not what he had in mind.

Nor did he have the answers for it.

Hoss watched him for a second and then.

"Adam"

"What?"

"What do we do?"

"How the heck should I know?"

"Cause you know everything"

Adam wanted to snap that, that excuse had not worked when he was a child it sure as hell didn't work now. But this was not Hoss's fault. This wasn't anyone's fault other than Charles Le Duke and potentially his father who had grabbed the horse by the reigns as he had bolted out the stables without thinking about the consequences.

And here were the consequences. His father on one side of Marie's grave and Fre…Joe on the other side both of them not speaking. Joe was looking out over the lake not seeing anything and his father was watching Joe with an almost hungry expression. Adam sighed.

"Where are your children?" he asked Joe quietly. Slowly, ever so slowly, his brother turned to look at him and then he blinked as if he needed reminding that it was morning, that he had been here all night and that he did have children.

"I should…they are back at the house…"

Adam jerked a look at Hoss who nodded.

"Hoss will make sure they get to school" he said. "No point blowing their worlds up until we have a plan"

"Your Pa thinks—"

"Yeah" Adam said shooting his Pa a look. "Yeah I know Freddie it's…it's true I'm afraid"

"It can't be"

Adam sat down on the ground and held out a hand to his Pa who made an abortive sound as if he was going to start speaking. Right now the last thing they needed was his Pa trying to fix this. Adam might understand why he had done what he had done but the mess he had created was immense.

"Why?" he asked gently.

Joe looked at him.

"It just…it doesn't make sense"

Adam nodded.

"Charles Le Duke came into our house one day and took a baby." He said carefully. "You were that baby, you know it, I think deep down the second you heard that story you knew something wasn't right. I think…did he mention something to you?"

"No"

"Joe you killed him"

Joe didn't look remotely bothered by that fact. He also didn't seem to react to his real name either which Adam couldn't tell was a good thing or a bad thing. This kid was hard to read, always had been even when he had arrived. Adam didn't know if that was just him by nature or the environment that he had grown up in. He was horribly unsure of everything right now.

"I didn't…I had…what does it matter now?" he asked into the void. Green eyes snapped back to look at him. "Are you going to tell on me?"

Adam shook his head. It seemed such a childish response to a childish question. "No" he said finally. "Was it self defence?"

"It was justified" Joe muttered quietly. "It was him or me at the end, and the girls were in the way, I knew what would come Adam…he'd get rid of them, used to say as much, so I made it so that he couldn't come after me. Cause he was never gonna let me go."

"Joe—"

"I didn't…I thought he had killed her" Joe said jerking his head towards the stone. "That's why I wrote the note, I didn't know about this, I am not sure if I believe this, and even if I did…I can't stay here with it all out in the open"

"You just said it was self defence" Adam prompted. Joe looked at him blindly and then opened his mouth no doubt to tell him that it had been justified but Adam beat him too it. It was important, so terribly important that Joe got this right, that he got this in his head. That he didn't spill the beans and make things infinitely more complicated for himself than things were now.

"It was self defence" he said quietly. "That is what you tell Roy. He is not looking for a reason to investigate. If he has to he will because he is sworn by God and by the law to do that but if you don't give him a reason he is not going to look at it do you understand?"

Joe looked at him for a second and then.

"Oh"

"So stop talking" Adam ruled. "About that anyway. We have bigger things to worry about now. Like what the hell you are going to tell your children about what has happened and then I suppose…moving in the house?"

He hated that it came out as a question, hated that it came out as if he didn't know what was going to happen next because he didn't. Helplessness was not in the Cartwright way and it was clear that he like his father before him didn't know what was going to happen now.

"I am not…hang on" Joe said standing back up. "You cannot think I am staying?"

"Joe" this time it was his father speaking and Adam scrambled to his feet. "You cannot think that you are going?"

"You think you can stop me old man?" Joe asked and his tone shifted to the somewhat murderous. Adam sighed, and to think he had thought that it was going so well as well.

"Joe—"

Christ he wished his father didn't sound like that.

"What?" Joe said looking around at the two of them as if he was expecting them to say that this was all a joke, a terrible, terrible joke they were playing. "You don't…you don't think I believe you do you?"

"Why not?" his Pa said and there something in his voice that Adam didn't know how to put into words even within his own head.

"Why would I be lying Joe? Tell me" his Pa said in that same terrible tone. "Do you think I enjoy this? Do you think this is fun for me? Putting myself and the people I love through this kind of torture? Do you think I randomly go around telling my staff that they are my sons? Do you think I did this for fun? I did it because it's the truth. Because that photograph of your mother is the same as my wife. That was taken from my house when my son was gone and my son is you. And you know it, I know you know it I can see it in your eyes that I am right. Your…the man that raised you destroyed the woman I loved and very nearly destroyed me too and you think I would be just doing this FOR FUN?"

The last bit was shouted down the hill but Adam got the impression it was more at the world than at anyone else. Joe…Freddie…whatever the hell they were supposed to call him looked between the two of them as if desperate to see a lie materialise between father and son and then he swallowed. He looked more like a boy than he had ever done before and Adam realised with a sense of growing horror that he was afraid…he was afraid for this to be true though why even he did not think he understood.

"I am not lying" his Pa said finally. "I am not…you are my son, you are…I have been looking…" he seemed to struggle with what came next and Joe sucked in a breath.

"I don't…Adam I don't know what to do" he muttered. "I cannot be here Adam I can't…"

Adam didn't know what to do either. Their Pa was close to the brink and Joe was scared shitless and…

"Your children are in school" he said flatly. "You cannot leave your children"

"I don't intend to"

"Then you don't take them. You just…go for a walk?"

It was pathetic that, that was all he could come up with but Joe took at it and he didn't seem to notice or indeed care that it was a question attached to it. Adam grabbed him by the arm and put on his best murderous big brother face (according to Hoss)

"You come back" he snarled. "You come back and you don't run off, you don't take your children and leave him here like this, you don't do it Joe otherwise I will track you down Freddie or not Freddie and I will kill you with my bare hands"

Joe looked at him evenly and then.

"Heard that one before" he said an then he was gone hands in his pockets staggering down the hill uncaring he had left his pony tied to the side of the road.

That had to be a good thing, Adam reasoned. One didn't leave a horse if one wasn't coming back. This was Virginia. You didn't get very far on foot.

He sighed and turned to his Pa.

"Really?"

"Adam if he leaves—"

"He won't you heard him, he's not going without his children and Roy won't let him take his children out of Carson City right now. But that's besides the point isn't it? Why did you tell him like that?"

His Pa gave a slow smile as if he found Adam's response almost funny. Adam didn't think that anything about this was funny.

"I have waited…nearly twenty years to see that boy again" his Pa said and his tone was ravaged with a grief that made Adam shiver and want to take a step back. He didn't...he was a Cartwright and there was an element of they didn't step back at all. He dug his heels in and he waited.

"I have waited and I have prayed and I have gotten to the point where I knew deep down that I might only see him again in heaven and then I find out that he is alive, not only alive but in my own ranch three feet away from me and so no Adam I wasn't going to wait a damn second longer!"

"What did you think that he was going to do, leap into your arms and say hello Pa?"

"I hadn't gotten that far. I just…I wanted to…I didn't know…I had to tell him" he said lamely. "I had to tell him Adam I couldn't go a second more with him thinking whatever lies he had been told. And he has been told something by that monster believe me."

Adam looked away and blinked rapidly.

"Aw Pa…I get it I do I just…I wish you'd have let me be there, I might have been able to help. I might have been able to make this go a bit easier"

"Adam there was no way this was going to be easy" his Pa said finally. "And you know that. But the truth is out there and he knows it too. So now I just have to find a way to get him to believe it."

"Let him cool off" Adam said hoping his Pa wouldn't sense that he was playing for time. "He's been caught on the raw with this Pa and he has to think…I can see it over his face he…I think he believes the story but it takes time."

He knew he was making crap up even as the words came out of his mouth.

"Adam if he leaves—"

"Pa we cannot think like that okay…but if we crowd him he will run, he's…let's just give him some time…we have until those children get out of school. He'll come back for them. He's not going to leave his daughters here. Then we can speak to him"

His Pa's look was achingly forlorn as if he had decided already that here was no reason why Joe would stick around. That he had found him and had lost him already.

And there was nothing that Adam could say to change that.

"One step at a time Pa" he said gently.

He wondered if he was the only one who could hear the lie in his own voice.

And there you are...

Next Chapter-Joe or Freddie attempts to understand what he has heard. Roy ends up helping while Ben attempts to pick up the pieces and there are still two innocent children out there who do not know what is going on.