Page 54 of The Way Back Home

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Olivia

One week later

YESTERDAY, I PARTEDwith ten grand of my life savings and finally bought myself a car. I can’t ride everywhere and I can’t keep relying on August to drive me to shelters all across the great state of Alabama. So as much as it hurt, I rode to the station, hopped the bus to Mobile, and drove a secondhand 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe off the lot. It has good mileage. The seats are a little beat up, but it will fit two large dog crates and five passengers comfortably, so it will do.

When I pull into the drive, Dalton is already hard at work painting the outside of the shelter. He’s shown up here every day to work at seven a.m. The man managed to break in everyday without ruining the windows or the locks, so I caved and decided to give him a key. He’s logged more hours on this shelter than any of us have, and it is almost done. We have a little work to do inside, a kennel or two to fix and a flowerbed to plant. Out the back, we’ve set up a permanent obstacle course for the new recruits. We are due to open our doors in two days, but first, I have a huge surprise for Dalton. I just have to go get it.

“Morning,” I say to him as I head through the open door.

“Morning, Miss Olivia.”

“How long you been here, Dalton?”

He dips his roller in the tray and continues to paint. “You want the truth or somethin’ I make up?”

I chuckle. “The truth, Dalton. Always the truth.”

“Mighta been about five a.m.”

I shake my head and glare up at him, but he just keeps on painting. “You need rest. You can’t be working all day and not restin’. I don’t wanna see you here at all hours of the morning.”

“I can’t sleep, ma’am.”

“I know,” I say. “I understand that, but I need you to try. I can’t have you collapsing on me in the middle of the day.”

“I’m a Marine,” he says, as if this is self-explanatory. He’s right; he’d stand there all day and all night if he had to, even if his legs were burning, his back screaming, and he could barely keep his eyes open. He’d still stand tall, because Marines are made of grit, stubbornness, and resilience.

I give him an impatient look and say, “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I set the gardening supplies I bought yesterday down in the middle of the porch, and Dalton climbs off his ladder and follows me to the car to help with the rest. “How you doin’? Aside from the lack of sleep, that is?”

“Can’t complain.”

“You can, if you want to.” I give him a reassuring smile. “I’m a real good listener.”

He shrugs. “My head gets a little messed up sometimes, but the pills help to keep it straight. Ain’t much else I can do. I ain’t missing a limb like August; I ain’t dead like my buddies. I’m here, I’m alive. It is what it is.”

“You have my number. You can call me when it gets bad. You know that right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “But I don’t own a telephone.”

“What?”

He shrugs. “I ain’t got no electricity.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t need it,” he says. “I don’t like the buzzing. It gets all up in my head, and I don’t want the government keeping track of me.”

I frown, and I’m about to ask what he means by that when the boys show up on their bikes. They stopped having the sheriff drop them off about three weeks back, and just started riding here of their own accord, ready to work. I’m going to miss them when the summer’s over. By now, they’ve more than made up for the damage they did, and I can’t see them sticking around much longer. Truthfully, I don’t really know why they’re still here. I’ll have to see about hiring someone else once they’ve moved on. I’ve already discussed hiring Dalton on a full-time basis once we are open to the public, but it will take a lot more than just two people to run a shelter, much less a program like Paws for Cause. I’ll have to make the time to discuss it with them later today. For now, we all have work to do.

---