Chapter 24: Reason Line

Dalton came up the drive on foot on a Saturday morning in May.

He had left a rented car at the gate.

I saw him from the porch, where I was shelling the first peas with Waffles asleep across my feet.

He was thinner, and the quarter-zip was gone.

He wore a plain gray shirt, and he had no lawyer and no phone in his hand.

The man with the pie was at the fence, mending a wire, and he stopped working when he saw him.

Dalton stopped at the bottom of the steps.

Waffles lifted his head, looked at him, and put it back down.

"I won't stay," Dalton said.

"No."

"I'm not here to ask you anything. I'm not here for a statement, or a photograph, or the papers. The papers are signed."

"I know. I got them."

He nodded.

He stood there with his hands open at his sides, and I watched his mouth work.

I didn't help him.

I had spent five years finishing his sentences for him, and I was finished.

"I sent the helicopter away," he said.

His voice shook, and he didn't stop.

"I ordered it away from you. I knew you were on that road, and I knew she was dying.

"I picked a dog because I couldn't stand to hear Pip cry."

He drew a breath.

"Your grandmother died because of what I did. I'm sorry."

The wire creaked at the fence.

"I'm sorry, Hannah," he said. "I've been trying to say it since that night, and it wouldn't come out."

I looked at him for a long time.

I waited to feel something big.

What I felt was the sun on my arms and the weight of the dog across my boots.

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