“I would have said that the damage, while concerning, is already dissipating swiftly in light of—”
“Unnecessary. The point is that every move you three and Will Anders have made only deepened the damage.”
“How the—” Dalton clamps off the profanity. He takes a moment, and when he speaks again, his tone is even. “I don’t understand how we made things worse. Enlighten me.”
“Unnecessary.”
Dalton rocks forward. I brace for him to grab the radio. He doesn’t, because there’s no point. We see that now. We told ourselves, for a brief moment, that if we debate the matter with logic, we can win.
We know better.
Unnecessary.
It’s an ugly word, dismissing us, dismissing Rockton, dismissing everything we’ve done here. Yet it is also accurate. Our objections are unnecessary because the council has made up its minds, and their explanation is nothing more than an excuse.
They were already shutting us down. According to émilie, the internal explanation was the hostiles, an explanation that also blamed us. We’d “riled up the hostiles” by killing their leader in self-defense. We fixed that problem. I solved one of Rockton’s biggest mysteries—how the hostiles were created—and only a couple remain in the forest, and we haven’t seen them in months. Our reward for that should have been a reversal of the shutdown orders. It wasn’t. As émilie suspected, the hostiles were an excuse. The council continued quietly shutting us down while telling émilie they’d stopped.
Excuse upon excuse. The truth is greed. The council and those who invest in Rockton have wanted an increasingly better return for their money. Any pretense that Rockton is a philanthropic endeavor went out the window when the four original investors—émilie, her husband, and another couple—dropped to just émilie. The council started with bringing in more white-collar criminals and ended with sending us bona fide serial killers.
They say we can’t handle the responsibility. That we’ve lost the trust of our residents. After all, no former sheriffs had this problem, did they? Except no former sheriffs had to deal with this situation. They had white-collar criminals and maybe the occasional low-risk violent criminal. It’s only been in the last few years that the number of those violent criminals has increased, along with the risk they pose.
The obvious answer should be to confront the council.
You’re the ones sending us these criminals. You’re the ones endangering our people. You’re the ones lying to us. You’ve sent us man-eating tigers and expected us to control them with the same tools we use for house cats.
I’ve asked Phil what would happen if we told the council we knew the truth. He says they’d ship us out. Exile Dalton, exile me, exile Anders and anyone else they suspect knows, all the while denying everything.
They’ve overreached, and it’s all gone to shit. They got greedy, and this is the result, and with all the trouble we “cause,” Rockton is no longer a viable asset in their investment portfolios. It doesn’t matter what we do or say. Our protests are like those of factory employees thinking they can stop their plants’ closure by working harder.
All protest is, in Tamara’s words, unnecessary. All explanation is unnecessary because they don’t owe us shit. We are the foremen in their factory, and they can close our shop without explaining themselves to us.
“How long do we have?” I ask finally.
“We’ll begin extracting residents in two days,” she says. “There will be twice-daily pickups of seven residents each, who will be transferred to a private luxury property, where they will remain, as our guests, as they are debriefed. This is where you will get your wish, Detective Butler. We’ll take Brandon and Conrad on the first flight. We would like you to devise the exit lists, with known troublemakers being removed as quickly as possible. Two dozen residents will remain a month after the others depart, for which they will be provided generous recompense for helping with the cleanup effort.”
“Cleanup effort?” I say. “You mean removing supplies?”
“I mean removing everything. Rockton is being dismantled in its entirety. By the end of August, the town will cease to exist.”
TWENTY-ONE
Dalton and I go straight home after that. Phil murmurs something about calling a meeting, but he doesn’t try to get a response from us, just says he’ll handle it.
We take the forest route and go in our back door. Dalton walks through, and I nearly let the door shut on Storm, padding along silently behind us.
We head to the living room and sit on the sofa. Just sit there, hip to hip, hands entwined, Storm stretched at our feet.
I don’t know what to say. That’s always the worst thing about having a loved one in pain. Wanting to say, “I’m here,” and knowing that every variation on it sounds trite and incomplete.
I’m here for you. Whatever you need, just say it. What can I do to help? I’m sorry you’re going through this.
We need new words, fresh words, words that can cut through the pain and express how much it hurts to watch them suffer.
I want to fuss. Take action.
Do you need coffee? Tea? Something stronger? Is the temperature in here okay? I could open a window. Fresh air maybe? How about a pillow? Would you like a pillow?
All laughably ridiculous. Dalton is barely even here right now; he doesn’t need a damn pillow.
Bigger action then.
I will solve this for you. I will … leave you here, alone and in pain, while I stride into the town to make myself feel like I’m fixing something I cannot fix.
“I’m sorry,” I say finally.
“We knew.”
“I’m still sorry. I’m so, so, so—” My voice cracks and the tears come, hot tears of pain and confusion and grief.
Dalton reaches over and pulls me to him, and I crawl onto his lap, hold him as tight as I can, and cry onto his shoulder.
I’m sorry.
So incredibly clichéd. Yet what more can I say?
I’d have done anything to avoid this. Rockton is your life. Your mission. Your purpose. I’ve made it mine, but it was yours first, yours most of all.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says.
I open my mouth to say that we’ll figure it out. That isn’t what he needs, though. I mean it to be reassuring, but it’s even more empty than those trite phrases I can’t bring myself to repeat.
Of course we’ll figure something out. Dalton would never give up so easily. He’s saying he doesn’t know where to start. He’ll figure it out—we both will—but in this moment, he needs to be allowed to experience grief.
This is loss. A monumental loss for him. His life has been founded on unstable ground, and he has always known it, and the only way he’s been able to deal with that is to accept the instability of relationships in his life.
People come and go. He stays. Rockton stays. That is the true bond in his life. Dalton and his town. He’s devoted his adult life to it. He knows nothing else. Wants nothing else.