Chapter 10 Dalton
DALTON
Dalton spent Thanksgiving morning helping Michael and Mary in the kitchen while Ella and Dove straightened up the house for company.
Delicious smells filled the air, and Michael had turned on the radio so that the local station’s all-Christmas format filled the house with holiday cheer.
There were raw vegetables to chop, a turkey to baste, biscuits to bake, and about a dozen other items written in loopy cursive on Mary’s little kitchen chalkboard. The cozy space was bustling with the three of them in it. This was Dalton’s favorite kind of day.
But try as he might to focus on the tasks at hand, as soon as he got into the rhythm of his work, his mind kept carrying his thoughts back to Ella, as usual.
Every time he closed his eyes, he was back in the barn, with Ella tending to his hands, her gentle touch awakening something ravenous in his chest. Or he was in the kitchen, drinking in the sight of her cheeks flushing after asking if he had a girlfriend.
Ella had been married. She was a mother. But there was an innocence about the young woman that tugged at his heart.
And then there was the night when he’d told her who he really was, or maybe more accurately, who he wasn’t.
Dalton wasn’t someone’s beloved brother. He wasn’t anyone’s treasured son. He was completely alone in the world, and there was nothing in his past to be proud of besides his friendship with Andy.
Her whole family saw his coming here to help them as a great sacrifice. But Ella knew now that the reminder of Andy was a comfort to him, and that his actions were as selfish as they were noble.
And still she looked at him like she was grateful, like she respected him, like she cared.
I don’t deserve her caring. I don’t deserve any of this.
But whatever he thought, it didn’t stop Ella from sharing a few words with him between chores these last few days, or her mom from thanking him and wrapping a motherly arm around him for a quick half-squeeze as they walked back from the barn each night, or her father from inviting him to play a game of chess after dinner and calling him son, as if he knew how that word might fill Dalton’s empty chest.
Now he was going to be sitting around the family table at Thanksgiving, like an actor in a too-perfect TV special.
Or maybe like a frustrated family member in an advice column.
People were always complaining about holidays with family—that there were arguments about politics or past grievances, that they disliked one person or another, or felt put out at how much they had to cook or clean, or pretend to like someone’s over-sugared glazed yams.
But Andy’s family seemed to be wholeheartedly looking forward to the meal, and only sorry that the house wouldn’t be fuller.
“It’s a small Thanksgiving this year,” Mary remarked more than once as she pulled pies in and out of the oven and stirred the green beans. “I can’t believe my sister went on a cruise. Can you even imagine?”
Dalton honestly couldn’t imagine, no matter how many times Mary brought it up.
As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t a woman alive with more practical and humble sensibilities than Mary Bennett.
The woman loved nothing more than the coziness of her regular work routine, and the comfort of her own home.
It was strange to think she had a sister who liked to treat herself to fancy vacations.
“She’s earned it,” Michael put in. “She and Tom have worked their fingers to the bone for years, and he’s always talked about seeing more of the world one day.”
“That’s true,” Mary allowed. “They run a small grocery store, Dalton. It’s very demanding.”
“It makes sense they might like to have a little adventure then,” Dalton agreed, smiling at the evidence that Mary’s sister was like her after all. Everything about this family made sense. The other shoe never seemed to drop with these people.
“I’m so glad Lori and Dan are coming,” Mary said. “It will be fun for Dove to have two more children in the house.”
“Two more kids?” Dalton asked, grabbing the potholder she had just dropped before she could bend over for it.
“Oh, yes,” Mary said. “Danny is a little older than Dove. He’s in third grade this year. And Olivia is five, so just a year younger. The three of them always have a wonderful time together. They’re always especially interested in the farm, since their family lives in the city.”
“That’s great,” Dalton said, meaning it. “I’m sure they love the chance to see what life is like here.”
“We’re done,” Dove yelled, sprinting into the kitchen and hugging her grandmother, who was holding the tray of biscuits she was about to put in the oven.
“Is that so?” Michael asked, looking up from the mashed potatoes he was seasoning. “Good job, young lady.”
“Mama helped,” Dove said.
“I’ll bet she did,” Mary said with a secret smile.
Dalton figured she was thinking correctly that Ella had probably done just about everything herself, with a bit of assistance from her little helper.
But it was so like the family to encourage Dove to take pride in her contributions.
One thing he noticed about the way Dove was growing up was that no one ever seemed to yell at her, and he was very certain they had never raised a hand to her. She made mistakes all the time, but they talked to her calmly, and they told her they believed she could do better.
The first foster family he’d stayed with probably would have said that a child would turn out rotten if they didn’t experience what they called discipline.
But Dove wasn’t rotten at all. She didn’t beg for material things. She appreciated what she had, and she tried her best to do better when she made a mistake.
He wished that he’d gotten some of the Bennetts’ kind of loving discipline early in his own life.
He might not have been so rebellious if he’d felt more understood.
And then maybe he wouldn’t have messed up so much with the families that came after.
Looking back, it was easy to see that they had all been good people who really had wanted to help him.
But at the time, he’d been a hot-headed, damaged kid, convinced that the whole world was against him.
The thought of one particular foster mom’s look of hurt and disappointment after he pulled something colossally stupid put a lump in his throat.
Could she have been like a real mother to me if I hadn’t been so angry? Would she have loved me if I had let her?
When he thought about it now, he figured that he’d probably sensed that she wanted them to be close, and some self-sabotaging part of him had made him prove her wrong and show her that he was unlovable again and again.
But the past was the past. He couldn’t do anything about it now. Normally, he tried to simply put these thoughts out of his head.
But talking with Ella had brought it all back up to the surface again, and he was surprised to be seeing things differently now than he had years ago.
I’m doing the right thing for Andy, he reminded himself. I was a good friend to him, and now I’m helping his family. That’s who I am now.
But he was just a friend. He knew better than to get attached to Andy’s family. That was the real reason he had preferred to spend today at the diner.
However today turned out, he had a feeling he would love it. And it would make him feel a closeness with Andy’s family that wasn’t real, wasn’t earned. Dalton was just a friend of their son’s, passing through to help with the harvest.
But when winter came and there was no more work to do, they wouldn’t want a stranger in their home.
I’ll move on. I’ll find civilian work or I’ll enlist again. I have skills now, and some self-control. I’m not the man I was before.
But it was one thing to have value on paper and another to feel it in your heart.
“You okay over here?” Ella’s gentle voice cut right through his worries and snapped him back to the present.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just cutting up vegetables for the tray. Is this how you guys normally do them?”
“That’s much nicer than we’ve ever done them,” Mary put in from across the room. “It’s like a work of art.”
He glanced down at the tray, where he had carefully arranged a virtual rainbow of peppers, snap peas, broccoli, and carrots and felt a little burst of pride.
“It does look nice,” Ella said. “How can I help?”
“Oh, Ella,” her mom said. “Could you light the candles?”
“Great idea,” Ella said. “Dove, do you want to walk with me and we can talk about how to be safe with candles?”
“I remember,” Dove said proudly.
“You do?” Ella asked her. “Well, why don’t you talk to me about it?”
“You never, ever have candles without a grownup,” Dove told her as they headed back toward the living room, clearly delighted to be on the telling end of things. “And you don’t play with matches or you’ll catch on fire...”
“She knows her stuff,” Dalton said, surprised.
“Dove is a wonderful child,” Mary said.
“We’re biased,” Michael added. “But it’s still true.”
“It really is,” Dalton said, nodding.
“She’s growing up with a lot of adults around,” Mary pointed out. “So it stands to reason that she’s more responsible than a lot of kids her age. But I think some of it is just innate.”
“We are who we are,” Michael said, nodding.
“They’re here,” Dove yelled from the front of the house.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mary said. “They’re early. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Michael and Mary hurried for the front door, but Dalton hung back, torn over whether it would be worse to fail to greet the family’s guests, or to insinuate himself into their private moment of reunion.
He settled on applying himself to the last of the vegetables. But before he was finished, the sounds of happy voices rushed toward the kitchen.
“Dalton,” Michael said. “I want you to meet my niece, Lori, and her husband, Dan. Their kids, Danny and Olivia, are playing with Dove in the other room.”
A smiling woman with strawberry-blonde hair and a dark-haired man in an actual polo shirt smiled at him from the doorway.