Chapter Twenty-Nine: Whiskey
“Papa, I’m going to go find him,” Jessica told her father defiantly. “He rode toward town and I intend to make sure he’s okay.”
“You heard him, Jessica, he said to stay away from him,” Fred countered. “And I want you to do just that until we find out what’s going on inside his head. I will take Benjamin into town and see to Matthew. You will stay here.”
“Papa, Benjamin deserved what he got from Matthew, as terrible as it was,” Jessica rushed to defend Matthew and Benjamin grumbled and glared as he stood up and brushed off his pants.
“I beg to differ—“ he began, swiping blood from his lip.
Fred glared at him and had Benjamin’s mouth snapping shut, “You dared to lay hands on my daughter and call her a foul name. You will be speaking to the sheriff when we do arrive in town.”
Benjamin seemed upset by this development but in too much pain to offer much in the way of argument.
“Papa, I’m coming,” Jessica spoke up, finding that it was difficult. She had always prided herself on being an obedient daughter and minding her father’s wishes, but just now she was more concerned about Matthew than her father.
Matthew had a kind and caring soul. They had spent hours each night talking, laughing and getting to know one another. She was not bothered by his attack on Benjamin however the ferocity of it startled her a little. It had seemed almost as if Matthew had been seeing someone else’s face when he’d been beating Benjamin’s.
And then there was the look in his eyes as he’d pulled away from her and ran. It had been a look of pain, disgust and sadness so profound that it tore at Jessica’s heart.
She cared about Matthew, truthfully she loved him and had fallen deeply over the time he had spent here with her and her father.
“Jessica Bailey—“ her father began but Jessica stood her ground and met his eyes pleadingly.
“I love him, papa. Something is wrong and I want to help him. He won’t hurt me.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Fred countered, glancing at Benjamin’s bloody face.
Jessica nodded and laid her hand on her father’s arm, “Yes I can. He won’t hurt me, papa. He loves me too, I just know he does. I can help him if you’ll let me.”
He wanted to argue, Jessica could tell but then, after a moment, he nodded and offered her a faint smile, “You are so much like your mother. You see a bird on a cliff with a broken wing and while the whole world shouts at you to leave it be you shake your head and climb on that cliff after it. Go ready two horses and bring a bit of extra rope for our guest.”
***
Matthew stood before the mirror of the hotel and stared hard at himself. It had all come back to him now. He was a monster. A woman beater, a bully, someone who beat others down to make himself feel more powerful… he was his father.
Though he was also something else now… he was a murderer. It mattered not to him that the man he had killed had been an Indian. A life was a life and Matthew had stolen a man’s life without any remorse at the time.
God he felt remorse now.
Worse than that he felt a hatred deep down in his soul. A hatred for himself. For the man he had let his father and the whiskey turn him into.
He could remember Deniah trying to reach him when his whiskey obsession had first begun to rule his life.
‘Matthew, I love you and you are not yourself sine you’ve been drinking so heavily. I need you, Matthew, please do not go drinking tonight.’
Matthew had scoffed at her, laughed at her, called her a fool and with the whiskey from the day before still burning in his blood he had gone off to find more. Deniah hadn’t understood! She hadn’t understood his pain, the guilt of knowing he’d caused his mother’s death and the physical pain of the beatings he had received his entire life, the beatings he had protected her from.
But those days were over now. His father was dead. Deniah was dead. The man that Matthew had been before the accident was dead. Matthew had no doubt that she had died on that wagon in that landslide. Her body hadn’t been found beneath the mountain of mud and rocks but surely it had been there. Now Matthew just longed to be dead as well.
He looked down at his hands. In one he clutched an unopened whiskey bottle and in the other a loaded revolver. Now there was only one decision to be made. To drink and forget a while before he ended his life or to simply get the trigger pull over with.
He had nothing. His sister was dead and she had died hating him. He had murdered a man in cold blood and laughed about.
Matthew’s stomach rolled and if he’d had anything left in it he would have been throwing it up into the wash basin. He thought of Jessica and shook his head, swallowing hard as he met his own hard brown eyes in the mirror. Matthew was a murderer and an abuser. Jessica damn well deserved better than that.
A flash of the pain in Deniah’s eyes as Matthew grabbed her arm flashed through his mind again and Matthew cried out with rage and pain and threw the whiskey bottle with all his might. It crashed against the far wall sending glass and whiskey alike spraying across the room.
Damn that whiskey!
Damn his father!
Damn himself………
Matthew raised the gun to his temple with a trembling hand. Tears ran down his cheeks as he closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He might as well do the world a favor and remove himself from it. His finger was tightening on the trigger when a knock came to the hotel room door.
“Matthew?”
Matthew froze as that voice washed over him like a cool balm on a searing burn. That gentle, soft voice that had read to him, spoken to him, helped to pass the terrible dragging hours while he’d been waiting for his leg to heal.
“Go away, Miss Bailey,” he whispered through the lump in his throat.
“Let me in,” came Jessica’s soft reply.
“No. You don’t need to be anywhere near a man like me.”
“Too late. I’ve spent a lot of time around you, Matthew, and you’ve never once hurt me. Don’t hurt me now. Please let me in.”
Matthew lowered the gun. He couldn’t pull that trigger with Jessica on the other side of the door. He wouldn’t do that to her. He’d hurt enough people in his life, “I’m not going to let you in, Jessica. Go on now.”
“No, I won’t abandon you, Matthew. I…I love you.” Matthew froze and the gun clattered to the floor, “Matthew, are you okay?!” Jessica exclaimed with near panic.
“I’m fine, Jessica. You should leave,” Matthew managed to mumble.
She loved him. The woman he loved and wanted to spend his life with loved him back. It was a fate crueler than any other that Matthew could imagine. He was a monster and he would not allow Jessica to stay around him and risk herself. There was a devil inside of him and Matthew didn’t want Jessica becoming a victim of that.
“Matthew, I only asked out of politeness. I have the spare key and will let myself in if need be.”
Matthew loved the way his name sounded on her lips and hated it all at the same time. He had no right to love her.
“There are things you don’t know about me, Jessica. Things that would have you running the other way if you knew them.”
Mathew heard a sigh on the other side of the door. He thought she was finally going to walk away and he wasn’t sure why his heart broke so badly at that thought. Wasn’t that the outcome had had desired? Hadn’t he wanted her to walk away from him?
Then the sound of a metal key in the lock reached his ears and the door swung open.
***
Jessica had left her father downstairs though it had taken a lot of convincing to do so. She wanted to talk to Matthew alone and she knew her father would only cause him to put up the walls that were always guarding him when her father was around. She knew it was because her father had warned him away from her and that irritated Jessica to no end.
She loved her father and wanted to make him proud however who she chose to give her heart to was of no concern to him. He had raised an intelligent, resourceful daughter who could make her own decisions.
So when Jessica opened that door and saw the pain, the hurt, the hopelessness and the tears on Matthew’s face she decided then and there that whatever the man had remembered, whatever he was facing, she was going to face it with him.
“Oh, Matthew…” she whispered. She quickly closed the distance between them and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly while pressing her face against his broad chest.
He stiffened at first and Jessica wondered if he was going to push her away but then his chest heaved in a heart wrenching sob and he wrapped his arms around her almost painfully tight as his hot tears soaked through her hair.
Jessica held back her own tears, knowing he would need her to be strong just now, and led him toward the bed where they sat down side by side though Matthew kept his arms around her and she rested with her head on his chest.
“Talk to me, Matthew. What did you remember?”
“Everything,” Matthew replied, his voice a broken shell of what it had once been.
“Tell me about it,” Jessica urged.
“No,” Matthew shook his head and pulled away from her. “If I tell you then I’ll lose you.”
Jessica smiled at him and dropped to her knees in front of him. She looked up into his pain filled brown and rested her hand on his stubble covered cheek, “There is nothing you could tell me now that would cause me to turn away from you. I know the man you truly are, the man you have been these past weeks. You are kind, caring, warm and determined. You are no monster and you are certainly not ‘no good for anybody’ as you said before. Have a little faith in me just the same as I have faith in you. Talk to me.”
After several long, tense and quiet moments Matthew did as she said and began to talk. Jessica sat on her knees and listened attentively careful to keep her face emotionless even during the more terrible parts of his tale.
He told her of growing up and having a father who was always heavy handed and impossible to please. His father had pushed Matthew to be more and yet no matter how much Matthew did it was somehow never enough. He spoke of his sister, Deniah, and how he had guarded her from that side of their father because he hadn’t wanted his sister to feel that pain.
He poured out his heart about the guilt he felt over knowing he’d brought the sickness home that killed his mother and the way that changed things for the worst between him and his father. Jessica fought hard not to cringe when he opened up to her about the beating he had gotten upon returning home the night they’d buried his mother.
Then his story took a much darker and uglier turn. He told her about the whiskey and the way it had taken over his every thought and desire, shortly after it began to change him, slowly morphing him into a man that he no longer recognized. A man who laid roughly with whores, abused his sister and even shot an innocent Indian man.
“It feels so odd to look back on it like this. I don’t feel as if it were me that did these things. It feels as if I’m simply reading a storybook about a monster only when I get to the end there is a mirror and I realize the monster is me.” Matthew let out a long shuddering sigh but his eyes had long since run dry. “I’m sure you’ll be wanting to leave now and I do not blame you.”
Jessica stayed there on her knees, staring at his chest for several long quiet moments. Did she want to leave? Was she afraid of him and the past that was eating at him so terribly? She probably should be but the truth was that she was not. Matthew was not a mean man and he was no monster.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she stated with finality as she looked into his eyes.
She saw him stiffen, his throat bobbed and his eyes widened, “Are you insane?”
Jessica laughed lightly, “Perhaps. But I also know that the man I stayed awake talking with so many nights, the man who made me laugh and blush and fall so deeply in love with him is no monster.”
Matthew sighed heavily and rubbed his face, “But I am. The things I did were terrible….”
“Yes they were and the things that happened to you were terrible and the whole situation was terrible and now it is over. Though I will make one request for our future.”
“Our future…?” Matthew asked slowly as if fearing she was suffering from brain madness.
“You’ve got to give up the whiskey.”
“I want it bad,” Matthew replied swallowing hard, “And that makes me want to blow my own head off. I was about to before you knocked on that door.”
Jessica swallowed hard and felt a tear run down her cheek, “Thank the Lord I got here when I did then. And from now on when you want whiskey, come find me and we’ll get through it together. Replace whiskey with me, Matthew.”
“I don’t deserve you, Jessica. Hell I don’t deserve to breathe after the things I’ve done and the people I’ve hurt. My sister loved me and I loved her something fierce and she died with bruises on her skin and hate in her heart caused by my hands.”
“Oh Matthew…” Jessica rose up and hugged him again and in the next instant she was pressing her lips to his. She had no idea what had driven her to be so forward but she had wanted to ease his pain and a kiss had happened.
Matthew groaned against her mouth and pulled her closer. His fingertips danced up her arms and his hands cradled her face with so much gentleness that it was easy to understand why he felt as if someone else must have done the horrible things he remembered.
Jessica felt her body soaring with the tender kiss that Matthew placed upon her. There was nothing forceful or dominating about it and yet she still found herself short of breath when he pulled away and laid his brow against hers, “I love you, Matthew. I want to be your wife. I want to stand beside you and help you through this. I want to be your whiskey….”
“I don’t know…” Matthew whispered. “I don’t know if I can…”
Jessica nodded and stood, though her heart was heavy as she did so, “I will be at my home. I will leave you one of our horses so that you do not get arrested for horse theft. When you come back to return the horse then I’ll have my answer.”
When Matthew didn’t reply and simply stared down at the worn out wooden floors beneath his boots, Jessica nodded and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
She was terrified. Would Matthew ever come back? Would he take his own life or would he simply run away and fall back into his old demons? Only time would tell. Jessica had done all that she could do, she had lain all her cards upon the table and the rest was up to him.
“Well?” her father demanded as she stepped out of the hotel and he rose from the bench.
“He’s a man with terrible demons, papa, but he can overcome them if he’d simply allow himself to be happy again.”
“He doesn’t want to be happy?”
Jessica sighed and allowed her father to slip his arm around her shoulders and she leaned against him and nestled her head against his chest, “He doesn’t believe he deserves it.”
A/N: The next chapter will have Deniah and Gray Skies (I promise!) Jessica is truly a strong woman and while not much of the story has focused on her character I wanted to show some of that strength... even if it is a bit of a naive and hopeful strength