Chapter 19 Dalton
DALTON
Dalton stood in the middle of his room—no, Andy’s room—his blood turning to ice in his veins.
He knew what he had to do. He’d done it a thousand times before. Whether it was a garbage bag or a duffel bag, or no bag at all, he’d taken what broken pieces of his life he could carry and fled or been driven out again and again and again.
He was an adult now, with marketable skills, and a promising future. But somehow this time hurt the most.
It doesn’t matter, he told himself. They’re perfect as they are. You’ll only mess things up.
And that was an idea he couldn’t bear. If he left now, then the Barretts would always be just as they were in his memories of this precious time he had spent with them.
If he stayed, he would ruin that. He always did.
When he was ten or eleven, he’d seen a nature documentary on television one day, in a home he lived in for a short time.
On the TV, the narrator described how one bird would place its eggs in the nest of another bird to trick it into raising its young.
But the imposter baby took more than its share, pushing the other nestlings out of the way, and sometimes entirely out of the nest.
Stop thinking about that, he told himself sharply as he grabbed his duffel out from under the bed.
He shoved the armful of clothing he’d been keeping in Andy’s dresser inside the bag and slung it over his shoulder, not bothering to zip it up before he strode out of the room without looking back.
He still saw the photos of Andy in his mind’s eye as he moved quickly down the back stairs, skipping the creaky one without really thinking about it.
I’m not stealing your life, Andy, Dalton promised his friend. You’re the one they want here, not me. I was only passing through.
When he reached the kitchen, he tried not to inhale the comforting scent of the pot roast Michael had made for dinner, or let his eyes drift to the refrigerator, which was plastered with Dove’s drawings of Santa Claus.
I can make my own life, he told himself. I don’t need to be a poor substitute in someone else’s.
But the words rang hollow in his mind because he knew to his bones that no matter where he went or what he did, this was the home he would long for.
He stepped outside and locked the door behind him. Snow slanted down hard, obliterating any view he might have had over the farm. It was just as well. There was no more time for sentimentality.
Dalton put his head down and crunched through the snow toward his truck as frigid fingers of snowy wind clawed at his face and neck.
He had arrived in darkness, somehow it was fitting that he left in darkness too.
He had just thrown his duffel into the cab when he heard the front door open behind him.
“Dalton,” a soft voice called out across the snowy lawn.
He forced himself not to turn. She felt sorry for him, that was all. But he didn’t deserve her pity.