Contrition

Nick watched his older brother carefully for months after they got him home. Nick wasn't about to forget the rampage Jarrod had gone off on – or the knock-out punch Jarrod left him with when he left the house – or the gun Jarrod pointed at him and cocked when Nick put himself between his older brother and Cass Hyatt, to keep Jarrod from murdering the man. Nick didn't let the memories fester, but he didn't dispose of them either. They sat there, waiting to be resolved, waiting for the time when Jarrod was ready to hear a serious dressing down, because he needed one, and he sure had earned one.

But Jarrod wasn't coming back to his normal self very quickly. Six months had gone by. He was working at his offices in Stockton and San Francisco, but he was still too quiet, too introspective when he was with the family. Still too hidden away for Nick to have at. Nick was looking for that opening, because it would come. Jarrod would need somebody to really let him into him, with words and maybe even with fists, to get him out of the last of his despair.

Nick was waiting for Jarrod to get up even a small head of steam about something, anything. For that flame in those blue eyes that said he was ready to fight for something again, that he was ready to argue with Nick again like they used to do before Beth, before Rimfire, before Jarrod had pulled so deeply inside himself. That's what it was going to take, and not just for Jarrod. For Nick, too. He wanted to have at his frustrating older brother so bad it burned because he was dammed mad at him for what had happened, but the time hadn't come. The opening hadn't come.

Nick didn't talk to anyone else about this, not even to Heath. He didn't try to prompt anything out of Jarrod, either. He just waited and watched and listened, and decided that even if it was a year later before he could knock his older brother across the room, with fists or with words or with both, he would wait for it.

The explosion came suddenly, unexpectedly, roaring out of the library when Nick and Heath were coming through the front door at the end of the day. Jarrod's deep baritone versus Victoria's alto, loud words they couldn't make out except for the volume. Jarrod was arguing with their mother over something. Nick and Heath looked at each other and threw their hats down on the table in the foyer. Jarrod and Victoria arguing was not a common occurrence, and Nick especially didn't like hearing Jarrod have at their mother, even if she could hold her own just fine in an argument. Nick tore off fast for the library, Heath right behind him.

There they stood, Victoria straight as an arrow and Jarrod bending so that they were in each other's faces. They were arguing over something that wasn't clear from their words. "You're being as bigoted as they are!" Victoria was yelling.

Jarrod had back at her with, "Bigoted?! You call me bigoted? What gives you ANY right - "

"Whoa!" Nick yelled.

His mother and brother both stopped, totally unaware Nick and Heath had come in. Jarrod turned and walked away from his mother, but Victoria stayed where she was. Nick came over to her. Heath stayed by the door, waiting to see where he ought to step in, if anywhere.

"What's the yelling about?" Nick asked.

"Your brother won't defend Billy Temple against that assault charge," Victoria said. "The Women's League has asked him – "

"I won't defend him and I won't be explaining to you why I won't!" Jarrod interrupted. "He spoke to me in confidence and I won't be discussing this with you or the Women's League or anybody else, even if I'm not defending him!"

"You can at least give me your reasons!" Victoria marched over to him again.

"Prejudice because he's a negro has nothing to do with it, and I resent you for implicating that it does! Don't you know me by now?"

"No," Victoria said. "I don't."

Jarrod felt the dig and knew what was behind it, but it didn't change his thinking. "I will not give you or anybody else any reasons for what I'm doing," Jarrod said. "It's none of your business, Mother. Now, let it alone."

Nick took his mother by the shoulders and moved her back toward Heath at the door. "Mother, maybe you ought to go calm down and let me talk to big brother here." He tried to be rational as he handed her off to Heath.

Heath understood his job. He took hold of Victoria and guided her out of the room, saying, "Come on, Mother. Talk to me a while and let Nick and Jarrod talk in here."

Heath got Victoria out and away, and Nick closed the door behind them. He turned and saw Jarrod by the fireplace, the fire in his eyes and not in the firebox. The opening was here. Nick saw it plain as day. He moved slowly and deliberately toward his brother, but stopped short of that fist that had laid him out flat in this room six months earlier. "What the hell is the matter with you?" Nick said, stirring up the fire in his own eyes. "You don't talk to Mother like that."

"We've had words before, Nick," Jarrod said. "I'll talk to Mother the way I want to when she's trying to put her nose into my business." Jarrod turned away.

Nick considered grabbing his shoulder and turning him around physically, but decided not to. "Look, big brother," he said instead, "we've given you a lot of leeway over the last few months because you haven't come back around to being yourself yet, but if you think I'm gonna let you turn this sullen routine into being ornery and disrespectful to any of us, you got another think coming."

Jarrod didn't turn, but just said, "Nick, let it alone and get out of here."

"No," Nick said, "and don't you go planning to take a punch at me, either, 'cause I'm ready for you this time. It's way past time for you to stop playing the broken man routine, and I'm not gonna let you keep it festering so you can take your guilt out on the rest of us, especially Mother."

Jarrod turned fast, taking a step toward Nick.

But Nick stopped him, with words. "Yeah, I mean that. I don't care if you really are having trouble coming back around or you're just playing us now so you can be whatever you feel like being whenever you feel like being it, but I'm not going for it. I'm not gonna let you do it. You owe me. You owe me big time, because I got between you and your victim and I stayed there and was ready to take you killing me instead of him. You owe me for that, and you're gonna pay me off, right now!"

Jarrod looked startled when Nick said the word "victim." It wasn't a word that he had even thought of all these months, not of Cass Hyatt. But it was the right word, and Jarrod heard what Nick said. Hyatt wasn't just "a" victim – Hyatt was "his" victim. And the rest – Nick had been ready for Jarrod to kill him, his own brother – his own beloved brother – rather than kill Hyatt. Jarrod hadn't seen that in his still disrupted mind's eye either, but it was truth too. Suddenly that moment in the street in Rimfire was full in Jarrod's face again, but now there were facets he hadn't seen then. Now he was seeing more than he saw before.

You could always read Jarrod in his eyes, unless he was blocking you intentionally, and now he wasn't. Nick saw he was making his way in there, into that stubborn Barkley guilt he brother was carrying around. "What you did in Rimfire, you're ashamed of, and you ought to be. You had no excuse for it, none at all."

Jarrod's eyes flared up again. Nick's words made him think of his wife, dead in his arms.

But Nick kept on. "You've been wallowing in self pity – "

Jarrod flared up even more.

Nick still didn't ease up. "Yes! Self-pity! Because you can't stand the guilt! Well, you'd better stand it now, because if you don't and you keep being ornery with Mother or Audra or anybody else around here, I'm gonna beat some manners into you! This is not the man you are, not a man who yells at women and not a man who tries to kill another man or take a gun to his brother! That is not who you are!" Nick pointed into Jarrod's face. "You wake up to that! You get rid of that miserable piece of crap you turned into and you be Jarrod Barkley again, because I'm not gonna let you be anybody else anymore. And I'm sure not gonna let you have at Mother the way you just did. I'll knock you across this room over and over until I knock some sense into you."

The flames in Jarrod's eyes died down. He let his gaze fall away from Nick's. He turned away again, facing the fireplace, resting his arm against the mantle. "I apologized to you before," he said.

"But you didn't change your ways," Nick said. "You're trapped, Jarrod, and it's a prison you made for yourself. I'm gonna break you out, whether you like it or not, no matter what it takes."

Jarrod closed his eyes, hung his head, and didn't say anything.

Nick said, quietly, "I told you I'd be with you while you try to straighten this all out. Well, I am, but you have to let me. You have to let somebody in and let somebody shove you in the right direction and it has to be me. I'm the one you took your gun to. I'm the one you owe."

Jarrod was still silent, still not looking at Nick.

Nick wondered for a moment if he'd been wrong to take the opening he thought he saw, but then Jarrod quietly said, "You're right, Nick. It's a prison I've made for myself."

He came away from the fireplace, but Nick grabbed him by the arm and stopped him when he tried to pass by. "Don't you walk away from me."

"I'm not," Jarrod said. "I'm going to apologize to Mother."

"And then what? Are you gonna go right back into that head of yours, or are you gonna start rejoining this family?"

Jarrod looked a bit askance, then actually slumped. "Nick, I'm doing the best I can."

"Do better," Nick said. "Give up the guilt. Buck up and be a man again."

Jarrod looked him in the eye. "Let me apologize to Mother."

Nick let him go.

Jarrod left the library and found his mother and Heath in the living room, both standing up, obviously talking to each other. They stopped when they saw him coming, Nick right behind him.

Victoria stood where she was, looking right at him. Heath moved back, away to the fireplace, watching. Nick moved over there with him, and Heath took a deep breath.

Jarrod tentatively reached for his mother's arms, took them gently, and said, "Mother, I'm sorry. I lost my temper and I'm sorry. But I can't tell you why I won't take Billy's case. It's a confidential matter, and I know you understand I wouldn't say that lightly and you know it's not because I'm prejudiced. I know – " He hesitated. "I know you don't know who I am anymore and sometimes I don't either, but please accept my apology at least. I really am sorry for the way I just talked to you."

Victoria reached her arms to his, saying, "Come back to us, Jarrod. We miss you."

Jarrod actually gave a tiny, embarrassed laugh. "Nick read me the riot act, and next he'll slug me across the room. I can't have that. I'll try harder."

Victoria put her arms around him, and he held her.

"I'm sorry, Mother," he said softly into her ear. "I'm so sorry."

She took his face in her hands and kissed him. "I forgive you, darling. For everything."

Jarrod smiled and held her again. Nick let out the breath he'd been holding since he and Jarrod came into the room, and Heath gave him a pat on the arm. "Progress, brother," Heath said quietly. "Progress."

The End