Burt spent money the Hummel family didn't have to hire a man willing to ride out West in search of Finn, and thus started a grueling six days while the family waited for any word. Burt kicked himself over the course of those days. Burt knew Finn going to California had been a bad idea from the first, when he read the note Finn had left for Rachel and his mother. Joining with the railroad. Earn the money to save the house. Getting his wife and mother away from Defiance, and the Karofskys, and any other debtors that might come alone. Yup, Finn had plans to make it big and save the day. Such a practical plan. Such a hopeful plan. But plans like those have a tendency of failing when the stakes get too high.

If Kurt thought on those days, he wouldn't be able to tell one from the other. They didn't even seem like six separated days at all – just one long day, punctuated by periods of dark and light. He didn't think Rachel or Carole or his dad slept that whole time. Kurt definitely didn't. He tried to think positive, but it came with a hitch. He would picture himself seeing Finn ride down the road toward the house, perfectly fine, but with a hole in his chest, that grew wider and wider the closer he came, and when he finally reached the porch, he'd fall from his saddle to the floor, dead. Or he'd daydream about Finn, riding into town in the back of a fine coach, pulled by a team of horses, but then robbers would come to take all his money. Finn wouldn't give it, pleading with the robbers to see reason, but they'd shoot him in the head and take the money anyway, setting fire to the coach just before they rode out of town, as a lesson to folks not to follow.

But those were all nightmares – stupid, vile, stress-induced nightmares. There was no reason why real life had to turn out that way. No reason at all. Finn was the kindest, sweetest, most compassionate and fair minded man that Kurt had ever met. If there was a God up above who wanted good for the world he supposedly spent seven days creating, then he would want to keep Finn in it, to carry out his work.

On the seventh day of waiting, the Hummel family received word from a neighbor that a letter had arrived for them in town. It was short on the postage, or the neighbor would have delivered it. Kurt left his work immediately and went to town in haste to pick it up.

“Is that from Finn?” the woman at the post office asked when Kurt paid what was due. She smiled when she said it, and spoke matter-of-factly, but he could tell by the tone of her voice that she knew a bit what was going on. Even in a town of eight hundred people, news traveled fast.

“That's what we're hoping,” Kurt said with a smile he didn't feel. He tell from her eyes when she took his money without counting it that she'd hoped he would open the letter there in the office, but he didn't. He didn't want to read it before everyone else. He couldn't bring himself to. First off, it wasn't addressed to him, and even though it was a letter about Finn – his stepbrother Finn – it would feel like invading his stepmother's privacy. Secondly, Kurt could feel it. The moment he touched the envelope, when he saw it wasn't addressed from Finn, but from Matt Rutherford, the man his dad had hired, his heart skipped about eighteen beats, and he knew.

It was confirmation of what he had suspected after Paul Karofsky's visit the week before, or the fact that neither he nor his son were anywhere to be seen since that day.

Kurt walked the letter home, wishing more than anything that he could be anywhere else, that he could be that crow flying away from here, from death – ones he'd already suffered, and the one waiting for him at home. He wished he hadn't been so gall darned eager to check the post that he volunteered to take the walk into town to get it. But none of this could he change – not the road he was on, not his station in life, nor the message written on the letter in his hands.

He felt completely helpless.

Kurt walked up the porch steps slowly, and entered a quiet house holding its breath.

“Did you open it?” Carole asked, meeting Kurt at the door and taking the envelope from Kurt's hands. With the exception of Carole, his father and Rachel were right where he left them, as if time had stopped when he walked into town and started again when he opened the front door.

“No,” Kurt said, the word leaving his mouth without making a sound.

Kurt watched Carole tear into the envelope with shaking hands. It broke his heart that there was still hope in his stepmother's eyes when hope had already been extinguished in his heart. She pulled the thin letter out, dropping the envelope to the floor. Rachel came to read over her shoulder, but Kurt's father sat in his chair, his eyes on his feet.

He knew like his son knew. There was a reason why Paul came out there to plant that suspicion in their minds. There was a reason that he told them to go look after Finn. Whatever did happen, whatever Paul was referring to, Finn didn't make it.

Carole read the letter out loud for them to hear, even though Kurt wished she wouldn't.

Ms. Carole Hudson-Hummel –

I regret to inform you…

Rachel heard those four words and broke completely, collapsing to the sofa she'd been sitting on, sobbing and sobbing until it wrung her throat dry.

Carole stopped reading, not a single other word failed to pass her lips. She passed the letter to Kurt, standing closest, and started to walk away. She didn't collapse the way Rachel did. She didn't bawl. She crumbled. She walked over to the sofa and sat, putting her arms around Rachel's quaking body, trying to hold her daughter-in-law together so she could cry.

Kurt didn't want the burden of the letter. He didn't particularly care how his stepbrother died, but he felt someone needed to know. Someone had to carry the knowledge of how his life was cut short.

Kurt opened up the letter. It had been typed instead of handwritten. Matt probably had it done that way because he couldn't write. He was grateful. The neatness of the type made the words easier to read when he started to cry.

Kurt didn't read the letter word for word. He just read the ones that mattered. Finn had been trapped during a rockslide when the mountain tunnel he was working on expanding collapsed.

He wasn't the only one. Eleven other workers along with him were crushed by the falling rocks and debris.

Kurt folded the letter carefully, neatly, and put it in his pocket. Behind him he heard his stepmother hushing Rachel, and Kurt wanted to comfort her. He wanted to put his arms around her and rock her sadness away, the way Finn used to, until she quieted enough to fall asleep.

Then there was his stepmother, doing her best to stay strong while her entire world fell apart around her - her son gone, and a husband at death's door. A second husband, since she'd buried Finn's father ages ago.

And his father, trying so hard to remain stoic but with tears starting down his face, his body no longer strong enough to keep them inside.

Kurt felt crowded in, pressed upon by grief, the air too thick, the house closing around him, pushing him out through the front door and on to the porch. He sat in his mother's rocking chair, alone. The bugs hadn't started with their noises, and the birds held on to their songs. With nothing but the open meadow breeze blowing through the branches, he started to weep, and once he started, he found he couldn't stop.

***

Kurt had fallen asleep out on the porch, his mother's chair rocking slowly though he no longer consciously pushed it. It swayed as he shifted, looking for a comfortable spot, then falling out again since the other option was too awful to consider. He heard voices coming from the direction of the other two chairs on the porch. He wanted nothing more than to fall back to sleep, but he stayed awake with his eyes closed to listen instead.

The first voice belonged to Carole.

“There,” she said. “I got her back to sleep.” She sniffled as she spoke, her words shuddering as she tried to keep her voice down.

“How's the baby?” his father asked.

“Alright, I reckon,” Carole answered. “Comfy inside his momma's belly. Headstrong like Rachel. Strong like…like Finn.” She hiccupped over the words, and cleared her throat. “That little one will make it through this alright. How's this one been?”

Kurt assumed that this one was a reference to him.

“He's doin' okay,” Burt said. “Tossin' and turnin' like his sister.” Burt sighed. It dissolved into a cough, and he pounded his chest with his fist to stop it. “He and Finn, they were close. Closer than two men I've ever seen that didn't have blood between them. I don't know how he's going to handle this.”

Those words skewered Kurt, and he almost gave himself away, but he bit his tongue and kept quiet.

“Do you really think…that Paul…arranged that accident?” Carole asked. “To kill Finn?” The notion, or voicing it, made Carole's voice shake harder.

“I don't know,” Burt said between coughs. “He definitely has the pull. Would explain his knowing about it, wouldn't it? But would he go that far just to force our hand? It seems kind of outlandish just to arrange a marriage. What else could he gain?”

“All those other people that died,” Carole moaned. “What if there's something else we're not seeing? What if he was after someone else, and Finn getting caught up in it was just some kind of happenstance?”

“I…I just don't know,” Burt said, hushing his wife, soothing her as she sobbed. “I just…I just don't know.”

Kurt's father heaved, then coughed so heavily it drowned out Carole's cries. Carole blew her nose in a handkerchief, and his father coughed more.

“Come on,” Carole said, standing from her chair and taking her husband's hand, “let's get you out of this dusty night air. I'll come back for Kurt later on.”

“It's not…it's not the dust,” Burt muttered, shuffling toward the house even though he wasn't eager to be indoors. He had started to feel the way Kurt had felt – hemmed in by grief. It choked him, suffocating him faster than the fluid filling his lungs.

“I know,” Carole said. “I know.”

Carole's speculations about Finn's accident swirled in Kurt's mind, preventing him from going back to sleep. He opened his eyes and shook the sleep from his head. He stood from his chair, preparing to pace to porch and watch the sun set, but he began to feel antsy. He got down off the porch, deciding to stretch his legs, to clear his mind, and give himself a moment to think. He always thought better when he had a piano to play, and as the piano at The Buckhorn Saloon was silent, Kurt thought he could go in a sit a spell, maybe earn himself a five dollar coin and some tips. But he found himself turning around and walking the opposite way, down the indented road that led toward the Karofsky's ranch. Somehow, Kurt knew he would end up there. Even as he doubled-back past his house, he didn't stop to saddle up his father's horse. He didn't want to go out to the Karofsky place any faster than he had to. It felt like he was walking himself to his own execution.

The sun had only started to set when Kurt began his journey. Its light shone behind him, stretching his shadow out in front of him, filling in the creases and the divots that horses' hooves and carriage wheels had made in this stretch of dirt road. Kurt examined them as he walked, tracking them with him eyes, trying to visualize them crossing in his mind, weaving, twirling, spinning him somewhere else, giving him another choice. He counted out the steps he walked, figuring that he should know how many he's taken. He didn't know why – it just seemed like an important thing to know. When his mind drifted off and he lost count, he tried to think of anything else that would take him mind off what he was doing. He started reciting lyrics from songs he played down at the saloon, followed by the words to hymns he's apparently memorized playing for the church on Sundays. He'd run out of songs to recite and things to count by the time he saw the roof of the Karofsky ranch peeking up over the road, and he knew this was it. It was a clear view from the road to the Karofsky's porch. He saw father and son both sitting there, soaking in the last of the evening sun and passing a jug of whiskey between them. If he could see them, they could see him.

There was no turning back for him now.

“Well, well, well,” Paul said as Kurt came up the road. “Isn't this an ironic turn of events?”

“Good evening, Mr. Karofsky,” Kurt said, tipping his head to the man since he wore no hat on his head. “David.”

“And look who's found his manners, son,” Paul said, slapping David on the shoulder. “Isn't this a treat?” David blinked groggily, peering Kurt down as if he hadn't a clue who the heck was standing in front of them, and Kurt wondered how long they'd been hitting that jug before he came along. “And to what do we owe the pleasure of the proud Mr. Kurt Hummel darkening our lowly porch? Your father hasn't succumbed to his illness so soon, has he? You haven't come here with that awful news?”

Kurt sighed. This was going to be harder than he thought if Paul was determined to see Kurt eat crow, especially with David swaying in his chair, like he might lose his dinner and keel over any second. Kurt decided this might go smoothly without him there.

“David,” Kurt said, “if you don't mind, I would like to talk to your father alone.”

David's eyes brightened, as if the sound of Kurt's voice made him realize who was there, but then he became sullen, as he realized in the exact same moment, that Kurt had asked him to leave.

“Wait,” he slurred, “Kurt? But…”

“Go on, David,” Paul said, clapping his son on the shoulder and pushing him from his chair, “do as the polite man asks.” David looked like he might press the issue, but his father pulled his son over to talk in his ear. “Remember what I said about not having long to wait?”

David nodded, but he didn't look happy. Kurt had walked over from his house to talk to them, something he'd never done before. Something he'd most likely never do again. David didn't want to leave the porch if Kurt was there. He knew the second his head found a pillow, he'd be out for hours. But he'd been talking to his father about the situation with the Hummels, and his father told him to have faith, that he would fix everything. David just had to be patient. So David stood from his chair, muttered a disappointed, “G'night,” and lumbered off the porch in to the house.

Kurt watched David stumble sleepily inside, curious how it was that Paul looked more awake and aware than ever compared to his son. He smiled at Kurt as if he had expected him to come walking up that road the whole time, and was sitting on the porch, shooting the shit with his son, waiting for him.

“So, son,” Paul said when he heard a second door open and close, his son shutting himself up in his room to sleep off the night's libations, “is there something you come here to talk about?”

Kurt swallowed hard. Paul knew. He knew it all. Even if he wasn't complicit in the accident that killed Finn, he knew it would turn out this way. Somehow, someone would die, and Kurt would end up on his porch.

“Mr. Karofsky, if I marry your son,” Kurt started, not hearing the words come out of his mouth for the screaming in his head, “you'll erase my father's debt? All of it?”

Paul took a sip from his jug before he answered. This was his game. He liked to make people wait, stew in their nerves, awaiting his decisions.

“Absolutely,” Paul said, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief he held in his grip. “I tell you what. I'll put it in writing. Have my lawyer look it over and send it to your house in the morning. How would that be?”

Kurt wrung his hands and nodded, unable to settle his mind as his body betrayed him with that single dip of his head.

“That would be fine,” Kurt said, the words hanging heavy in his chest, weighing down his heart till it didn't beat as steady anymore. “But I have one condition, and it's non-negotiable.”

Paul's eyes flew open wide, and he laughed a throaty laugh. He wiped tears from his eyes with his whiskey handkerchief, shaking his head in disbelief.”

“You sure do have a pair on ya, kid, the way you see fit to talk to me and mine.” Paul slapped his thigh and snorted. “With the money your pa owes us, I don't think you're in any position to be making conditions, especially non-negotiable ones.”

“Please, just” – Kurt's mouth felt dry, and he wished he had taken a swig himself before he left the house, to keep his nerves steady – “leave Rachel and my stepmom alone. I marry David, and that's it. Your business with my family is over. Deal?”

Paul thought about it, or pretended to. He seemed to be making a big show of this discussion. He liked seeing Burt Hummel's smart-mouthed, uppity brat sweat, even if he'd be calling him family soon.

“I'd say that's a deal,” Paul said. “But I have a condition of my own. You back out on this deal, you leave my son, I don't care what the reason, and I won't come for you. I'll go after your sister-in-law, and that new baby of hers.”

“Why?” Kurt asked, wringing his hands harder. “What could you possibly want with her? She has nothing to do with this.”

“You represent a lot of money, Kurt,” Paul said, relaxing into his chair, crossing a leg to rest his right ankle on his left knee. “Money that I'm givin' up to make my son happy. If you leave, then my son's not happy, and I'm out money.” He paused to take a drink, the whiskey barely touching his lips. “But that girl, and that baby, I can sure make some money off of them. You savvy?”

“Yeah,” Kurt said, and in the late summer heat, his insides turned to ice. Make money off of Rachel and her baby? Kurt could only imagine how. The fact that Paul knew filled his mouth with bile. “I savvy. I won't leave. I promise.”

“That's good,” Paul said with that triumphant smile that Kurt was sure could curdle milk. “You're a good boy. A reasonable boy. A smart boy. My David's going to be a happy man. I'll tell him first thing in the morning. Unless…unless you want to stop by and tell him yourself.”

Kurt shook his head. He couldn't get his body to do much more.

“No,” Kurt said. “You tell him. Good-night, Mr. Karofsky.”

“Please, Kurt,” Paul said. “Call me pa.”

Kurt took a step back. Then another. He finally remembered how to move, and turned to leave.

“Hey, Kurt,” Paul said, calling him to a stop. “Did you find about Finn?”

Kurt wrung his hands together so hard, he thought he heard a bone snap.

“Yes,” Kurt answered in a shaky voice. “Yes, we did.”

“Don't you want to know the truth about your stepbrother?”

Kurt didn't know if Mr. Karofsky was messing with him; if he actually knew something, or if this was another part of his cruel game. Kurt shook his head.

“It won't change anything,” Kurt said. “Good-night.”

One step, then another. He got his feet to move, and they didn't want to stop. He heard Mr. Karofsky's throaty laugh chase him down the road, and Kurt wanted to run. He could have run all the way to New York if he had a mind to, if he hadn't just sold his life to the devil and his son.

***

“You can't!” Rachel cried, shaking her head when Kurt tried to take her in his arms. “Why, Kurt!? Why would you do something like that!?”

“Rachel's right,” Burt said between fits. “You shouldn't have done that, son.”

“What other choice did we have?” Kurt countered, watching with regret as Rachel retreated to his stepmother's arms instead of his. “Finn's gone, and the Karofskys might have had a hand in it!”

“So, marrying into that family was the logical course of action?” Rachel asked bitterly.

“Frankly, yes, Rach,” Kurt said. “Because if I don't, who are they gonna come after next? I'll tell you who, Rachel. You and the baby.”

Rachel put protective hands over her stomach, while Carole covered the girl with her own body, as if she could block her from whatever harm Paul Karofsky might be concocting on the off chance Kurt reneges from their deal. The thought had never occurred to Rachel. It had never occurred to any of them. What sort of monster would come after a pregnant woman to recoup a debt?

The same sort of monster that would blackmail the son of a dying man into marrying against their will.

“We could have gotten them out of here,” Carole offered, but she knew when she said it that there was no way.

“And send them where?” Kurt argued, needing to drive his point home. “With what money? Apparently there's no where they can go that Paul won't find them.” Kurt shook his head, cursing the tears coming to his own eyes. “No, this was the only way.”

“Oh, Kurt!” Carole shuddered, and Kurt took her and Rachel into his arms, hugging them tight. Hugging them like they were all he had left. “I'm so sorry.”

“I know,” Kurt said, patting her back gently. “But don't be. Please. This was my decision.”

“Kurt!” Rachel cried, unable to think of any way to comfort her friend.

“It's okay.” It was a lie, but it sounded convincing. Only his father, sitting in his chair, watching his family with mournful eyes, knew. “Really. Besides, David wants to leave Defiance, too. I know he does. He always has. Maybe I can persuade him to go East, hmmm? I could end up in New York after all.” Kurt peeked past his stepmother's trembling shoulders and saw his father shake his head. Burt knew there was no hope, but Kurt decided to stay optimistic.

He had no other choice.

“My mother always did say that people show up on our doorstep for a reason,” Kurt said, to Rachel and to Carole, but mostly to his father. “And David's shown up on our doorstep more times than most. Who knows? Maybe this was meant to be.”

***

That night, the Hummel house was a house in mourning. One son gone, one on his way, and a patriarch dying. With that future lying ahead, Rachel and Carole in particular were inconsolable. Single mothers and widows didn't often do well on their own in towns like Defiance. But at least they'd have a house to live in. It was a small comfort to know they wouldn't be out turned out in the street with a new baby to care for after Burt passed on.

Carole made supper – corned beef and potatoes - but hardly anyone touched it. Rachel turned in early. Carole brain wouldn't let her, and so she started to clean. Burt retired to the porch with his son, and watched the last of the stars come out. They sat a short distance apart, Kurt in his mother's rocking chair and Burt in his, but it felt like miles.

When it came down to it, Kurt wanted to be angry with his father - for not planning things better, for being so stubborn when it came to the family's finances, but mostly for dying, which was the one thing farthest from his father's control. Knowing that that was the biggest issue behind his somber mood, Kurt chose to say nothing.

Burt wanted to tell his boy that he was proud of him for being a man and standing up for his family. He wanted to tell Kurt that he wished he could have done better by him. He wanted to say that he'd miss him, forever and always. But Burt had never been good with those kinds of words. He, too, said nothing.

The wind kicked up, swirling the dust on the porch around their feet, aggravating Burt's cough, so he decided to call it a night.

“I'll see you in the morning, son,” he said as he passed Kurt by, putting a heavy hand on his son's shoulder.

“Good-night, Dad,” Kurt said, putting a hand over his and giving it a squeeze.

And that's the way both men said I love you.

Kurt sat on the porch and rocked in his mother's rocking chair until his back ached, and his fingers became so cold, they curled in on themselves in search of the warmth of his palm. He sat until he heard the piano at The Buckhorn finally begin to play. He sat until there was no point in it. It wouldn't stay night because he wished it. Eventually the morning would come. He couldn't change his fate by sitting on this porch and rocking in this chair. He had to just go on, and hope for the best.

So he got up from his mother's chair and abandoned the porch, too, to ready for what he predicted would be the least restful night of his life.

Despite his confident words, his reassurances that he was fine, that things would work out for the best, Kurt lay awake in bed, waiting for the rest of his family to fall asleep. Then he turned his head into his pillow, bit down hard, and started to cry.