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To Another Heart

Chapter 12-There Never Was A Horse

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

Dinner was…odd…

The girls made it less odd simply because they were too young to know any different and Hop Sing was too wise to say anything else. Joe found that he was rather glad that the other man was there and that his…that his…Pa? No…Ben…Ben was there too because Ben didn't ask anything that the girls couldn't answer. He asked about school and they answered Mary sometimes enthusiastically and Laura not so much. There was a test to be taken at school for the children her age and the winner was going to get a dictionary and Mary had set her heart on it. Joe personally thought it was going to take a miracle for him to put her to sleep until she had won the damn thing but he could not help but encourage her. Studies were important, he had never gotten the chance to go to school—

When he had pointed that out his…Ben had looked at him.

"You didn't go to school?"

Joe snorted.

"No" he said with an eyeroll. "Eighteen years in that house in the hills that was my education"

"Until you met Momma" Mary pointed out. "That was what you said, then you met Momma and she taught you a lot of things"

"Eh…yeah" he said not looking at any of the men at the table. "That she did"

In truth he had the tools already there in terms of what he could do education wise, he could read and write. What that woman had educated him on was the acceptance and acknowledgement of his true self and what he had wanted. And that he deserved to get away from his…well…from that man. What she had given him was two children and her contribution to the man he was today was not to ever be diminished by anyone. Joe might not want to be alone forever but he had to admit that he also did not think her value could ever be diminished in his heart.

God he thought stabbing a potato. There he was again sounding like some kind of posh boy like…

Well…his brother he supposed.

"Adam went to college" Hoss said and Mary looked at her Uncle with those big expressive eyes.

"Did you like it?"

"It taught me things" Adam said cryptically which Joe took to mean that Adam had spent a good chunk of time at college flirting and mucking around as most men in 1857 were prone to do. "But I thought the best education I ever got was coming across the Prairie with Pa and Inga"

"Whose Inga?"

"My mother" Hoss said and then Laura piped up.

"I thought your Ma's name was Marie Pa?"

"Eh—"

"I have been married three times" Ben spoke into the silence and both girls turned to look at him. Joe took this moment to cut up Laura's meet because he did not want these people thinking that he had raised two savages and Laura also didn't believe nine times out of ten in the exsistance of the knife and fork.

"First was to Elizabeth, Adam's mother and she died when Adam was a baby, then to Inga who was Hoss's mother who died when she was struck by an arrow and then to your Pa's mother who died from—" he twisted and choked on his own words for a second and then Adam chimed in.

"From a blow to the head"

Mary picked up her glass and took a sip of water.

"Our Mother died of fever" she said conversationally as if this was something that she dropped into the conversation everyday. "And Pa shot his…" She stopped and Joe sighed.

"I didn't shoot him per say" he muttered which was a lie but not something that his children needed to know.

"You pointed a gun at him and it went bang—"

"Yes thank you Laura"

"You know" Hoss said and Joe was not entirely sure he had been following this conversation. "You reckon Pa if we are moving cattle to market then maybe we can get some ponies for the girls"

"Ponies?! For us?"

Oh God Joe thought, that had set Laura off. Mary gasped and dropped her silver knife and fork. It dropped against the china and gave a kind of clanging noise and he noticed Ben wince and he had to bite down on his smile.

"For us?" Laura said again and her eyes were wide.

"Well only if your Pa says so. I reckon Adam and me we got a lot of Christmas's and birthday presents to make up for"

Immediately two sets of eyes were on him boring into his very soul. Joe caught his father's eyes despite the fact that he had not intended to and saw his look of amusement and had to smile back even though he tried to cover his mouth with his napkin.

"Depends" he said drawing it out. "If you two behave yourselves."

"Oh we will" Laura said and her smile was infectious. Joe snorted.

"Yes" he said in that time old honoured tradition that only parents knew. "I will believe that when I see it. Now both of you eat your veg."

And what was remarkable was that for the first time since they had been confronted with turnips and corn both of his daughters ate them. Granted Laura stuck hers in her mouth and took huge hunks of the sides in a rather unmannered way but as Joe thought looking at the two halves of his heart and soul and everything else…you couldn't have everything could you?

Hop Sing asked if they wanted cake for desert then or milk, cookies and ice cream and Joe was about to ask just how he had managed to figure out what his daughters last meal was going to be but then he caught sight of his father smiling at his plate and he thought he knew.

It was oddly touching.

Later on he would realise that it was also the first time that he had called or even thought of Ben as his father without flinching or his brain melting.

But more on that later.

"Well…not the worst dinner that we have had at that table" Adam said quietly puffing on his pipe. Hoss ran the cigar he had stolen through his fingers and then he lit it too and the two of them sat there resting in the barn smoking with only the scent of hay and horse in the distance.

"Charming girls" Adam said again and Hoss grinned. "Were uncles" he said and he was beaming. Adam hummed…it was a nice though he had to admit even though he didn't want to admit it.

"What?" Hoss said when he saw the look on Adam's face no doubt.

"I don't…trust is not something that I have a lot of" Adam said carefully. "And I don't trust that this is going to work…maybe tomorrow but right now it's all moving too fast"

Hoss nodded. Unspoken was the reason why Adam felt the way he did. Unspoken was the acknowledgement that when Joe had officially been declared missing his father had gone missing two, for three months Adam and Hoss (but mostly Adam) had kept the Pondarosa going and then the second his Pa had come back Adam had gone to college spitting like a cat with it's hackles raised and then when he had come back they had both been able to talk about it but the truth was as Hoss knew, Adam did not trust easily the people who came into his life not to leave them. He had seen through two of his father's wives and more woman of his own than Hoss had, had cigars. He didn't know who was going to tie his brother down but he did know that she would sure have to be some special woman.

"Look on the bright side" Hoss said quietly. "He's home."

"I know that…doesn't change that I don't believe that this is real. He looks like he wants to bolt half the time"

"You would be the same if you had the childhood he had" Hoss pointed out not completely wrong either. Adam nodded and watched as the pipe smoke curled in the air. It was a warm night, it was going to be too warm for the covers and he didn't now if his nieces were moving into the house with them or what to do with them. Children were not something that he specialised in. They were just…there…Hoss had been old enough to be himself when their Pa had left and Joe had been…well…gone. There had been nothing for Adam to do he thought bitterly.

The door to the barn opened and there Joe was speaking of the devil. He looked at them both stood there smoking and then.

"Can anyone smoke or is this a private party?"

"What's your poison?" Adam said and Joe held up what looked like a hand wrapped cigarette. He took Hoss's offer of a match and lit the smoke and then.

"Girls are asleep. You don't have to get them ponies you know"

"I want to…and they are taking it better than I am…brother"

God even the word felt strange.

Joe stared at him and then his gaze slid to Adam's.

"This is fucking bizarre"

"Are you going to stay?" Adam said finally. His voice came out harsher than he intended to and Joe clearly picked up on it but when he looked there was no hostility in his gaze. There was only a certain knowledge of what was happening, a reality that neither one of them could escape from.

If Adam had said it once then he would say it a hundred thousand times. He had never hated a man more than he had hated Charles Le Duke and he wished with his whole heart that he was being roasted and toasted in the bowels of hell.

Joe took another long smoke and then…

"What was she like?"

Oh fuck.

There was no way around who 'She' was. Hoss looked at Adam and Adam looked at Hoss and he knew that he would be the one to have to answer this because Hoss had been too young.

So Adam being the big brother that he was didn't ask Joe who he was on about, he just spoke about Marie. The second stepmother, the one he had not wanted and the one who at the end had sacrificed everything so that Adam could be here now speaking to her son.

"She laughed" Adam said because that was true. "A lot. She was…she wasn't afraid of anything. Certainly not of Pa. She…she would sit up at night and stich nice things, clothes and what not. She loved us…far more than we deserved"

Joe didn't know what to say to that and it was clear and Adam dearly wished to stop talking about her.

Marie was…complicated for him.

Marie was very complicated for him.

"I was a bit of a bastard" he said finally. "I wasn't…I'd had a stepmother you see and I had not had a mother and…" he trailed off. The truth was that his relationship with Marie was downright complicated and that was the truth of it.

"Adam—"

But Joe was looking at him in an odd way. As if he understood.

And Adam wasn't sure if he liked that.

Joe sucked on his cigarette for a second and then…

"This is strange…brothers…I mean I look at my girls and I think…is this going to be them in years gone by and then I shake my head because I know that it's not but at the same time…" he shook his head and Adam couldn't blame him.

"They don't write a book on this one" he said finally. Joe shot him a darkly amused look.

"No they don't" he said finally.

"Reckon we can rewrite it?" Hoss asked ever the faithful optimist.

Adam looked at Joe who looked at Hoss who looked back at him.

A triangle of brothers.

"I don't see why not" Joe said quietly.

"Absolutely" Hoss said enthused.

"Wonderful" Adam said dryly.

And the three of them puffed and smoked and snorted their way away.

Neither one of them noticed their father standing silently out of sight by the barn door.

Just as well really.

They had promised a start…

The ending…well…that was very much up for negotiation.

And there you go, nearly at the end!

Next Chapter-Joe says goodbye to some old ghosts and finally begins to move on.