Summary:  After years of marriage Tara stands next to Adam’s grave thinking. If you haven’t read “Long Road Back” or “Acceptance”…you won’t understand the part about the desert and having a dead man with him.

*Eliza and Rosa are wives I gave to Hoss and Little Joe in other ff stories I did. Third, and last, in the “What if” I got off The Crucible. First—Long Road Back, Second-Acceptance and this one.

Rating:  K  (750 words)

Long Road Back Series:

Long Road Back
Acceptance
Far Side of Jordan

Far Side of Jordan

The wind has a bit of a chill today; it’s playing with the leaves as it hurries by too. I don’t feel it though, I don’t feel much of anything. My life, my love, he’s gone. I can’t believe it but his headstone is right there. His name is all in bold letters, people said there was no need for that…the big letters that is. Oh, but there was. He was no coward, no small man. He stood out among the rest.

Did he have weaknesses? Did he have trials? Did he know heaven and hell? Of course, he did! He was a man! My tears they flow like the raging river we fought when the boat we were in during our honeymoon capsized; they tear into my soul just as sharp as any ax ever thought of doing once it hit the wood of a log. He’s gone, my pillar of strength…even when he was weak, he gave me strength.

They, the people in and around Virginia City, think I am strong. They said I had to be strong because I stood by him when he was lost to others. They are wrong. They don’t know what my life was like before I found him alone on that desert place, having a dead man with you doesn’t count as having company. They don’t know how close I was to quitting, to giving it up and crawling behind my wall again. I had nothing to fight for, no one to give anything to…until Adam.

He gave me a reason for living again, he gave me a purpose. I was needed and then, when he broke through that invisible wall, he gave me his friendship. Oh, sure his family gave that to me too, and it helped me immensely, but HIS friendship. A man’s friendship without the fear the only thing he wanted was to bed me down. I was on cloud nine. I can’t even tell you when the friendship turned to love only it did.

I couldn’t see him enough. If he came into town, and I was working, I would catch a glimpse of him just to see he was still there. If I was at his father’s, I could have spent hours listening to him read from Shakespeare and other fine books.

Then we married. I couldn’t get enough of him then either. Poor man, spring round up probably got looking quite good to him, even if he’d never admit it. Oh how I wish we’d been blessed with a dozen children but they didn’t come, not even one. I cried, the one people said was so strong, I cried and almost went behind my wall again but…he stopped me. He was my rock, my strength. He helped me to see that we may be childless but we weren’t without children.

“No children?” Adam looked at me astonished as Little Joe and Rosa’s oldest came barreling through the kitchen; he was being chased by Hoss’s oldest son. “What do you call that whirlwind that just came through here?” He took my hand and led me to the front room. Hoss’s daughter was playing with Little’s Joe’s three other daughters and his, Little Joes’, other son was outside chopping wood for us. Hoss and Little Joe have taken their wives on a much needed vacation…we have seven children in the house for two whole weeks. We always had one of them over it seemed.

Hoss went first, killed in a freak logging accident. Eliza remarried just last month and moved to Carson City. Pa died five years ago and Little Joe? He and Rosa are, as they say still kicking around and some of the grandchildren still live on, or around, the Ponderosa, and they’re always dropping by the house.

Guess Adam was right, but my tears still fall. How can they not? After forty-two years, I’m lost without him, but I won’t crawl back behind the wall, for his sake. “I love you, Adam. When I cross over, I expect for you to be waiting on the far side of Jordan for me.” I turn slowly and walked away.