Page 62 of You Belong Here

Sometimes I count the hours and minutes instead of the days. Time does not leapfrog here. It shuffles along the floor, slides sideways. Each day feels like a circle, ending once more where it began. The first line and the last line, bookended together.

I count the days between visits. Measure the gaps between letters. Recalculate everything again after meetings with the lawyer.

I have a hard time orienting myself without counting. Without keeping track.

I’ve worked it forward and back, night after night, trying to find the moment I could’ve stopped it.

Was there another way? Another chance emerging in hindsight? Another option to save Delilah and me, together? Or was it only at the very start, when I could’ve just told the truth the first time I was interviewed?

Or further back still.

Sometimes, in my dreams, I don’t close the door. I don’t steal the key. I don’t play that game of darts.

But those are dangerous thoughts. Because in those same threads, I don’t move to London. I don’t meet Trevor. I don’t have Delilah.

My life has a different sort of calculus to it now.

I took a plea for my role in the crime, sparing us all a trial. Three years. Though my lawyer thought I’d be out in half that.

Involuntary manslaughter is treated as a felony in Virginia.

I already knew this. Had known it for two decades.

I’d looked it up from a different continent, separated by a body of water, where no one would look too hard at what I was doing online.

I’d checked the statute of limitations: There wasn’t one.

And so I had decided—I would never go back.

And then there was Delilah, another reason, a better reason—the only reason, at the end of the day.

If Adalyn returned, I feared what she would do. She would play it as a game, play her cards, show her hand. Trade a year, or two, or three, for me. Wouldn’t we all do it? Trade in time?

I never wanted her to come back. But then she did, and Delilah was alive because Adalyn had died in her place. I had to reconcile these facts.

That in her return, Adalyn had saved my daughter.

I was no longer a threat to anyone, but I did owe time. Not just for Charlie Rivers and for Micah White. Not only for their families. But maybe for Adalyn, too.

Sometimes I can hear the wind, higher-pitched, a whistle against the concrete. I know it’s the same wind that funnels through the valley—blowing from her on its way to me—and I start counting again. I can feel it getting closer. There’s not much time left.

It’s a countdown now, to all the things that are waiting for me out there.

Three, and I can feel my blood pulsing under the tattoo of the mountains, calling me back to the place where they are.

Two, and I see Delilah and Trevor in a car outside, waiting for me.

One, and I’m home.