LISTEN TO YOUR HEART

Adam was in the barn taking care of Sport as he did every morning. His family had left hours earlier to do the jobs necessary around The Ponderosa. He didn’t feel much like rushing. He hadn’t felt like rushing for awhile now.

When he first arrived home at The Ponderosa three months ago after being gone for a year, he felt his life was back to normal again, but the more time that went by, the more he felt something was missing. He found himself thinking more about Ruth. Part of him wanted to contact her, but the other part of him didn’t. He was torn inside by what was right for him, and what was wrong. Putting some hay in Sport’s stall, he stood there watching him eat, but not really watching, but thinking. He’d done a lot of that lately, but it didn’t seem to help much. He became withdrawn from people and became very quiet. “Give it time son. It’s too soon,” his father had told him. How much time would it take to get this woman and that year out of his life? How would he ever?

His thinking was interrupted by a buggy pulling into the yard. The last thing Adam Cartwright wanted right now was to talk to someone. Being the only one home, he knew he had no choice. He reluctantly walked to the yard.

The back of the black buggy was facing him. The dark sky above him and the black buggy before him didn’t make his mood any better. His mind flashed back to the day of his father’s funeral, or who he thought was his father.
Pushing those memories from his mind he walked to the front of the buggy to reluctantly greet the visitor.

“Hello Adam,” the woman’s voice said. Looking at the passenger, Adam was taken aback. “I’m sure I’m the last person you ever expected to see, aren’t I?” Ruth asked sadly.

“Why have you come here?” he demanded.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“Because, because it‘s something I have to do.”

Adam helped Ruth off the buggy and walked in front of her, leading her into the house. “Have a seat,” he said laying his hat and gun belt on the case good by the front door.

Ruth sat down in Ben’s leather chair, while Adam stood before her, his arms crossed at his chest. She knew this body language meant he would be on the defensive and she didn’t feel comfortable talking to him that way. “Matt, I mean Adam, please sit in the blue chair.”

Adam complied with her wishes, although his body was not relaxed and his eyes were not friendly. “Why have you come here?”

“Because you are the only person I have left in this world.”

“You mean Matthew was the only person you had left in this world.”

“No, I mean you Adam are the only person I have left.”

“Why did you do it? Why did my fath, why did John do it? How could the two of you have been so cruel to do such a thing? How could you?”

“It goes back many, many years. I had been married before I met John. My husband and I had two beautiful children, a boy and a girl. They all died from an ailment going around that year. I thought my life had ended until John came into it. He was an extraordinary man who had taken the world by the horns. Nothing could ever get in his way. We married and were so very, very happy until we found we couldn’t have a family. The doctors thought because I had had children that the problem was John’s. He never felt like a whole man ever again. It was as if the doctor had shot him, and little by little throughout the years that bullet killed him inside. I didn’t think any less of John. I loved him and that’s all that mattered to me. I knew we could adopt a child, a son that he wanted so badly. There was always that option, and many people had done it.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because John couldn’t. He felt it was as if he were surrendering his manhood by doing so. He found it wasn’t in him to raise another man’s son.
He saw it as if he wasn’t man enough to father a child, and having to look at that child everyday would be a constant reminder of that. I told him I would take the blame for not being able to have a child, but he couldn’t do that knowing the truth. As the years went by, so did John’s life. Instead of dealing with his pain, he wrapped himself in his business and shut me out of his life. I thought in time he’d snap out of it, but time just made it worse. When we went on the trip to San Francisco, which was the trip we found you, I knew our marriage was over. I came to that realization on the way out to San Francisco. No matter how much I tried to deny it, there was no denying it now. I knew the trip would make no difference. It was as if I were married to a stranger for the man I love and married no longer existed.”

Looking over at Adam and seeing he wasn’t softening, she continued. “Before we found you that day, I had been going over and over in my mind the words I would say to John asking him for a divorce. I found I couldn’t go back to New York with him. I couldn’t go back to that empty life again. I would tell him that evening and find a way back to San Francisco, where I would begin a new life for myself without him. It was better than living a dead one back in New York. When we found you that day and John found out you had no memory of who you were, he came to me and begged me to go along with his idea of claiming you to be his son. I tried my best to talk him out of it, but I agreed to go along with it anyway.”

“Why, why did you agree to do such a thing?”

“Because Adam, I hadn’t seen my husband smile or happy in so long, and it was as if I had been given both he and my life back to me that day. I knew inside of me that it was wrong, but I also knew that it was a way to hold onto the man I loved, my marriage, and the life I wanted with him.”

“How did you explain me to people?”

“We didn’t have to. We moved from New York to Boston. We made sure we didn’t come in contact with anybody we once knew. It wasn’t easy. It was as if John had killed Adam Cartwright that day and was running every day of
his life from the law, fearing someday they would catch up with him. I had nightmares almost every night about it. I knew it was wrong, but in a short time, I came to love you as a mother would love her son. You brought such joy into our lives, and you were the son both of us had always wanted.”

“Didn’t you realize that I may have had a family? Didn’t you know that they would have been suffering by my loss?”

“There wasn’t a day that went by I didn’t think about that. I didn’t know who you were or I would have checked it out, but I don’t know what good that would have done except to make me feel worse. John knew though. Somehow he knew. I’m guessing he found some type of identification on you the day we found you while he undressed you.”

“My father said he found my book by where I must have fallen in the creek. It was barely wet, so it meant it had been in the water some, but how did it get out of the water? That bothered him. That book had my full name in it. It was the only thing I had on me that personally identified me.”

“A month before John died, it was if I were being told by someone unknown to me to go into the secret compartments in John’s dresser, and that I would find the answer to who you were there. I found a piece of paper that explained who you really were and who your father was and where he could be contacted. You see Adam, John wanted to tell them you were alive, but he didn’t know how. If you think about it, if he had, both he and I would have gone to prison for what we had done. I know deep in my heart that John didn’t care what would have happened to him, but he did care what happened to me. He loved you so much, as if you were his real son. He was living out his fantasies in you of what his son would have been like.
Unfortunately, I also know that keeping that secret inside of him eventually killed him. It was his love for you battling with what was right.”

“He told me the day he died that he wished he could tell me something. I wondered what that could have been. Now I know what it was. If he had told me maybe I would have understood. I don’t know, maybe not. All I really know is I loved the two of you as my parents, and I really thought that I was your son,” Adam remembered.

“I know. It got to where we really believed you were our son we loved you so. You made our empty lives full again. You looked so much like John it was as if you had been sent to us.”

“Why did you write the letter?”

“Because I felt your family would always wonder what had happened to you. Always wonder if you were dead or alive since they wouldn’t have found a body. I knew I was taking a chance in mailing that letter by the post mark, but Boston is a very large city with lots of people in it, and there was a good chance if he came here, he’d never find you. Your father mentioned your mother had returned you to him. Was her grave the one you stopped at the day of John’s funeral?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see her name on that headstone and wonder about it, or were you drawn to it?”

“I walked past it and something inside me told me to turn my head and look back.”

“Then your mother really did lead you back to your father.”

“In some childlike way I guess, I always felt my mother has watched over me.”

“Childlike? No. She was and is. I wonder if those nightmares I had, had something to do with her or with my guilt? I guess I’ll never know.”

“So why did you come here? Did you come here thinking if you told me all of this I would forgive you and take you back into my life, or what did you hope to accomplish?”

“I came here, because I needed to explain things to you, and yes I hoped that in some way you could begin to forgive both John and me if you understood why we did it.”

“I have healed some inside, but I still have a long ways to go. In all honesty, I don’t know if I can ever forgive you.”

“I think of you often also, Adam. I’m so alone and I’m so empty inside. Now I know how John must have felt all those years. Now I understand his pain. There‘s nothing worse than to be all alone and have nobody who cares about you.”

“No matter how things were for the two of you, what you did was flat out wrong and you know it. You can’t justify what you did. You took a year away from me. A whole year of my life that I can’t get back. How many years would you have taken from me if I hadn’t found my father that day?
How many?”

Putting her hands to her face, Ruth cried as she answered, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Adam.”

Watching her cry and not going to over to comfort her tore his heart out.
Part of him wanted to comfort her, but the other part didn’t. Fighting with himself, he walked over to her lifting her up and holding her against, his arms around her, comforting her. As her tears flowed, an idea came to him.

“Ruth, you say your life is empty.”

Bringing her hankie to her face, then sitting back down, she replied, “Yes.”

Standing before her Adam continued,“ I think I know of a way to fill that emptiness in you, if you will listen to what I have to say, and not say anything until I finish.”

“All right.”

“A week ago there was an accident that took the lives of a man and his wife from around here. They have seven children ranging in ages from six months to twelve. There are four boys and three girls. They have no other living relatives and they need a mother. They need someone to love them and care for them, and I think you’d be perfect. Right now they are all split up living with individual families until the orphanage has room to take them.
You were my mother for a year and I know you have a lot of love to give to those seven children. If there is any logic in what happened to me, maybe it was that you were meant to come here and take care of those children. They need you, and you need them.”

“What are their names and ages?”

“Mark is the baby, and he’s six months. Jennifer is two. Zachariah is four. Hannah is six. Charles is seven. Samuel is nine. Sarah is twelve.”

“My children were named Sarah and Samuel. I think that’s a sign, don’t you?”

“I’d say so.”

Smiling Ruth said, “Oh Adam, I agree with you, I think it’s just what I need and what they need as well. Please take me to them.”

A YEAR LATER Adam rode up to The House That Love Built. It was a large two-story home that Ruth had built for her new family, and on the front of it was a sign that read those words. It truly was a house that love built.
Ruth was the best mother these children could have asked for, and they were the best thing for her. Walking up to the door he was bombarded by children as he always was. Ruth came out holding Mark in her arms. Adam picked up Jennifer and Hannah in his and carried them into the house, while the others followed. Setting them down on the sofa, he sat between them, as he always did. The children gathered on the sofa and on the floor around him. Sarah brought the book over to Adam that he had begun to read to them. They called him Uncle Adam and two times a week he’d come by and read to them, then play with them for the afternoon, then have dinner with them. He became someone very special to them, and they to him. It brought him great joy that, that particular day when Ruth came to see him, and he chose to comfort her, that he listened to his heart instead of that other part of him.

This particular evening when Adam was about to leave, Ruth walked him outside. “Sarah please watch the children while I say good-bye to Uncle Adam.”

Walking up to where Sport was tied up, and mounting him, Adam turned to face Ruth. He said three words to her before departing. They were, “I forgive you.”

THE END

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