Charlottesville, VA – Past

 

“Adam, why can’t we leave now? Why do we have to wait?”

Adam, with one hand on the cottage door, pulled Sissy to him with the other and kissed her forehead. “You said your uncle won’t be back until Sunday. There’s no reason to take risks. I don’t want to take the chance someone will see you. I’ll be as quick as I can. I’ve got to go to the bank and withdraw the rest of my money. There’s a place about two miles from the university where I can get some good horses. You have Meg ready to go when I get there, and we’ll leave as soon as it gets dark.”

Sissy nodded, though her eyes were still filled with worry. “Let me walk with you part of the way. Meg must be so worried; I never came home last night. I wish we’d gone to her.”

Adam touched her nose and then leaned down to kiss her. “It was nearly ten o’clock by the time we got back from Judge Gleasman’s. We would have had to spend our wedding night at your uncle’s.”

Sissy wrinkled her nose in disgust and Adam chuckled. “Try not to worry so much. By the time he gets back, we’ll be days away and impossible to track.”

 

 

Ponderosa – Present

 

“So what happened?” Little Joe prompted.

Adam forced the words past the lump in his throat, giving voice to the memories that had haunted him for nearly fifteen years. “I went to town, withdrew my money from the bank, and then headed out for the horses. It ended up being farther than I thought, and the man wasn’t home when I got there. His wife wouldn’t take the money from me; she insisted I wait until he got home. That took nearly two hours. I followed the outskirts of town so no one would see me with three horses. By the time I tied two of them near a stream to go buy supplies at a small mercantile, it was early evening. I was just ready to leave when two men walked in. They were talking about an upcoming case involving a friend of theirs, and one of them mentioned he was glad the judge had gotten back that afternoon so he’d be able to try the case the next day.”

Hoss sighed. “Sissy’s uncle?”

“Yes,” Adam replied. “I left the supplies sitting on the counter and raced out the door. I galloped that horse the whole way, praying it wouldn’t give out on me before I got there. I hadn’t even reached the top of the porch when the judge came out. He was furious, told me to get off his property, but I was angry, too. I tried to shove my way past him, telling him he couldn’t keep me from my wife. He punched me in the jaw hard enough to knock me down, and then he laughed. He told me he’d had the marriage annulled and hour before I arrived.”

“But how could he do that?” Little Joe erupted. “He couldn’t just undo your marriage. She was of age!”

Adam ran a hand across his face. “I told you. He was a powerful judge; a respected man. He’d recorded that she was weak of mind and that I had coerced her. He had the papers signed inside of ten minutes. I went at him, determined to get to Sissy, even if I had to tear my way through him. Professor Denton came out of the house then and held me back. I remember screaming at the judge that I’d get her back, that she wasn’t a prisoner, he didn’t own her. He stopped then and looked at me with eyes so cold I shivered.

‘Don’t ever tell me something isn’t mine,’ he said. The professor shoved me toward the steps, and then they both went inside and bolted the door.

I was frantic. I didn’t know what was going to happen to Sissy. I pounded on the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I’d just picked up a chair from the porch and was going to smash through one of the windows when I caught sight of one of his servants off the side of the house. He was beckoning me to come, so I went around back.

‘You gonna take both of ‘em?’ he whispered when I got there. ‘Miss Meg too?’

I nodded.

‘Good. You come back tonight. I’ll have ‘em ready to go.’

I can’t leave her, I told him. Who knows what he’ll do.

‘Now you listen to ole Gabe. You ain’t gonna get nowhere but thrown in jail iffun you stay here now. You go on and don’t come back til it’s dark. That’s the best chance you got.’

I didn’t want to leave, but I knew he was right. I . . . Later that night, I . . .”

Adam’s voice turned hoarse and he ducked his head. Ben crossed the room and placed a hand on his son’s shoulder.”

“Take your time, son.”

Adam breathed in deeply and then cleared his throat. “When I got there that night, things were in chaos. It seemed like there were buggies everywhere. I saw the doctor’s carriage, and I just knew that he’d killed Sissy. I ran for the house, but men reached out to stop me. They held me back while four other men carried out a body on a stretcher. I could feel my legs begin to give out, and then one of the deputies came out of the house with Sissy. I was so relieved; I shouted her name, and when she turned toward me, I could see the bruises. When the deputy put her in his wagon, I didn’t know what was going on; the men were still holding me back. Professor Denton came out of the house next and when he saw me, he stormed over.

‘Are you satisfied now?’ he asked. ‘She’s killed him.’

My head was reeling, and I felt like I was going to be sick. I nearly missed what he said next.

‘If you know what’s good for you, boy, you’ll tell me where she is.’

I didn’t know what he was talking about. Someone shouted for him after that, and the deputy took off with Sissy. The men let me go, and I collapsed onto the grass. It took a few minutes for everything to stop spinning, and then I started looking around for Gabe. It wasn’t until the next day I found out both he and Meg were missing.”

“What happened to them?” Hoss asked quietly.

Adam looked up, his eyes raw with pain. “I don’t know. As far as I know no one ever found out what happened to them. I tried to find them for a while because I knew it was what Sissy would have wanted, but I didn’t have a clue. No one did.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing,” Hoss said after a few moments of silence. “I’m sorry I ever had any hard feelings toward that gal. I can’t imagine living through all she’s had to.”

“And that letter,” Little Joe said. “It’s from her. Have you been writing to her all these years? Does it say why she was released early?”

“This is the first I’ve heard from her since that morning we parted. Pa finally convinced me that I had to move on. He thought I should stick with my plan of going to Boston to live with Grandfather, and then when I felt up to it, maybe enroll in Harvard. I didn’t have much inclination left toward wanting to be a lawyer anymore. When I finally went back to school, I switched my field of study. I kept writing to her though. I wrote for years, but never received an answer. I don’t know if she ever got them. I don’t know why she’s been released.”

Ben moved across the room to his large red chair and sat down. He shifted his gaze between his three sons before allowing it to rest on Adam. “I may be able to shed some light on that,” he said. “I had promised you that I would do whatever I could for her, and I didn’t stop trying even after you moved on. I have my suspicions as to why, but over the years, she was moved from her original prison quite a few times. Sometimes to hospitals, sometimes an asylum. I followed her for years, hiring lawyers and trying for appeals. About a year ago, I was contacted by a lawyer who thought he might be able to make a strong enough case. I kept in contact with him for a month or so and things sounded promising, but then I got a wire from him one day saying she’d been relocated and he was having trouble finding her. That was the last I ever heard from him.”

“So you think maybe he was able to get her sentence reduced?” Hoss asked.

Ben pursed his lips. “It’s possible.”

“You said you have your suspicions as to why she was being moved,” Adam said. “Do you think it’s Denton?”

Ben nodded.

Adam blinked a few times, and then held out his hands beseechingly. “Why, Pa? Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? What you’d heard?”

Ben sighed wearily and ran a hand over his hair. “Son, when I found you in Virginia, you were beside yourself. You’d stopped eating, you were hardly sleeping . . . I didn’t know what was going to happen with Sissy; if I’d ever be able to make any progress. I wanted you to be able to live your life without being constantly tied to the past.”

A deafening silence hovered over the room and Hop Sing chose that moment to announce dinner. “Family come to supper, must eat. Mr. Adam have long journey ahead.”

Hoss and Little Joe were the first to move toward the table. Adam got up slowly, sorting out his thoughts, wrestling with his emotions. He glanced up at his pa and saw in his expression compassion, though it was mingled with sadness and regret. No matter how much he wished his pa had done things differently, he couldn’t leave with that look on his father’s face. His mind flew back over the years and all the times his pa had been there for him – the times when he would lift a little boy high over his head and tell him to spread his arms so he could fly, the times he’d nudged an awkward teenage boy in the direction of a pretty girl, the times he’d listened while a young man talked of dreams of the future – and there was only one response that he could come up with.

“Thank you, Pa.”