Colton closed his eyes.
“I understand, Colton. I don’t think you realize how much I understand.” Danny ran trembling hands through his hair. “But that’s not the point. Do you realize what happens to the town if you’re not working? If the town Stops, then it’s all over. Everyone will be trapped here, cut off forever, and it’ll be your fault!”
Your fault.
“I don’t want the town to be cut off forever,” Colton said.
“Then why did you do this?”
The silence lasted so long Danny almost thought the spirit wouldn’t answer. “You didn’t come,” Colton said at last, his voice almost too low to hear, like the scraping of old gears. “Why? You said you would.”
Danny leaned back on his heels. When he didn’t say anything, Colton went on.
“I waited. You said you’d come back, but you never did. This was the only way to bring you back.”
Your fault.
“My auto broke down,” Danny said, his voice hoarse. Although it was the truth, it still felt like a lie. “I couldn’t come with a broken auto. And I couldn’t very well send a note. ‘Yes, please deliver this to Colton Tower in Enfield, attention: clock spirit.’” Danny paced around the room, kicking over a dusty box. He sneezed and tried to sniff indignantly.
Colton stared at the floor. He was finally beginning to look guilty. “You couldn’t come?”
“No. My auto was in shop until this morning, but then I got the call that you’d gone and done this. Bloody ungrateful fool, that’s what you are. Why are you here, exactly? What’s your purpose?” Colton looked up, confused. “To keep time running! You’re Enfield’s guardian. You’re supposed to take care of yourself, not—not destroy yourself like some selfish—Goddamned—”
The dust was making his eyes water. He turned away and rubbed at them, but the water escaped past his eyelids and he scrubbed his face to get rid of it.
Your fault.
He wrapped his arms around his stomach. The air was too thin, his shoulders shaking with the need to breathe, to run, to curl up and pretend that none of this was real.
“I’m sorry.” Danny felt a hesitant touch on his back. “I’m so sorry. I—I don’t want to do that to the town. That wasn’t what I was trying to do. Danny?”
He had to answer. To say everything was all right now, that it wouldn’t happen again. But the stone that sat inside him grew sharper, heavier, cutting his throat as it pushed itself out as words.
“It was me,” he whispered to the floorboards.
Colton stepped around him and touched his elbow. “What?”
Danny closed his eyes. “I’m the reason my father left.”
The stone was dislodged, but not completely gone. Colton’s fingers on his elbow anchored him to the floor, his eager silence waiting for him to explain.
He still heard the echo of the door slamming in the corners of quiet moments, a faint reminder of what he had done. Still saw his father’s green eyes as Danny yelled in the dim hallway.
“You don’t care about this trip, do you?” Danny had shouted. “You want any excuse to leave!”
“That’s not true,” Christopher said. “I just have to check something, and then I’ll be back. We’ll be on our way to France in the morning, like I promised.”
“I don’t want you to come with us.”
“Danny—”
“No. Go to Maldon, all right? Just go. Fix whatever mess Matthias made. Mum and I will go without you.”
Then the slam of the door, the tightness of his mother’s admonishing eyes, the message that Christopher had decided to go to Maldon after all.
The shrill ring of the telephone the next day.
“I told him to go to Maldon,” Danny said. “I was so angry. I don’t even know why, now. I can’t summon the rage I felt then. But because of me, he left. He went to that tower, and … he was …”
“Danny.” Colton’s hands framed his face. “Danny, that wasn’t your fault.”
Your fault.
His mother’s words, pushed over her broken sobs, when she heard the news. The words that were now their foundation. He was the architect of their suffering.
“It is my fault,” he said. “I pushed him to go.”
But Colton was shaking his head. “It sounds like he would have gone anyway.”
Danny had entertained the same thought. Anything to absolve himself. But those reassurances were little more than lies. No matter how logical, his truth was sharp and cruel, edged in blame.
He had never told anyone before. Not even Cassie. Now the stone began to dissolve, its burden no longer only his.
Danny looked up, meeting Colton’s steady gaze. “I have to get him out of there,” he said softly. “I have to find a way to make it right.”
“You will.” Colton’s fingertips traced the line of his cheekbone. Danny had never given much thought to that small area, but suddenly it became the most pivotal part of him. “I know you will.”
“If the clock can even be fixed.”
Something in Colton withered then, and he withdrew his touch. He crossed his arms and gave a nearby box a gentle kick. “You’re right. I really am a fool.”