Alone in the Wild(25)

Dalton tenses. Edwin looks at him, and it’s a keen look, a piercing one. I know what’s coming next. I feel the subject shifting, and I open my mouth to stop it, but Edwin says, “You don’t think you were better off in Rockton, Eric?”

“No,” Dalton says tightly. “I don’t.”

“But Gene Dalton thought you were. Snatched you up and kept you, and you made no attempt to leave. You must have thought it was better. An easy life for a boy. So much easier than in the forest.”

Dalton’s holding himself so rigid he barely gets the words out. “I did try to escape.”

“Eventually, you gave up, though. Resigned yourself to the easier life. Such a hardship.”

“My parents didn’t come for me,” he says. “They obviously thought I was better where I was.”

Edwin’s laugh is sharp. “So that’s what made you stop. A child’s pride. The boy sulking in the corner and telling himself his mother and father had abandoned him? Do you really think they didn’t risk their lives trying to get you back?”

“So you agree then?” Dalton says, his voice low. “That taking me was wrong, and yet here you are, telling us to take this child?”

We stand on a precipice. One where I see the answers to Dalton’s past below. I can get them from Edwin. Dalton can get them, too. Yet to take that step means accepting the plummet that must go with it. His relationship with the Daltons is already precarious. If he learns that they didn’t just naively “rescue” him from the forest but deliberately kept his birth parents away, he’d need to sever all ties with them.

In redirecting the conversation, Dalton has stepped back from that precipice. He doesn’t want answers beyond what Edwin has already given. He isn’t ready for them.

I can’t tell whether this retreat from truth diminishes Dalton in Edwin’s regard. It doesn’t matter. Dalton will do what he needs to protect himself until he’s ready for more, and no one can judge a person for those choices. They are what keep us sane. What keep us moving forward.

“This is not the same thing,” Edwin says. “Your parents were young and naive, but they were good parents, and their sons came first. You were not mistreated or neglected in any way. In fact, I personally worried whether they were properly preparing you boys for this life. It is one thing to teach hunting and foraging and trading skills. But we need more out here. We need a harshness and a ruthlessness that your parents lacked, and therefore could not pass on to you. If your father saw Jamie tossed out of his warm cabin, he’d have gone after the boy’s father. You check that impulse. You make sure he is warm, and you help, but you do not let him shirk his duties. You would never say his parents don’t deserve to keep him. This baby is different. Her people…” His lips curl. “Her people make Jamie’s dad look like father of the year.”

My breath catches, but I push it back and force myself to say, “Their worthiness as parents isn’t for us to decide.”

“Is it not? Down south they have child services. When I was a lawyer, my firm took on many cases of parents fighting to have their children returned. I refused to work on them. While there were cases of injustice, the children I saw were better off. I’m sure you saw the same in policing.”

He isn’t looking for a thoughtful, long-winded response, and that’s the only one I could give. Yes, I saw children taken from bad situations, who blossomed and thrived in foster care. Those are the success stories, and there were plenty of them, but there were others, too. Parents who screwed up and lost their kids and didn’t get a second chance. Kids volleyed from institution to foster care and back, who fled to find their birth parents, because however tough that life had been, it was better than the alternative.

“Tell us where we can find the parents,” I say. “We’ll take it from there.”

His lips tighten. “She would be better off—”

“We will take it from there,” I say, enunciating each word, my gaze locked with his. “Either you trust us to do that or you don’t.”

“You’ll have to wait until spring anyway,” he says. “They’re nomadic. Traders. It’s an extended family. The parents aren’t from Rockton. I’ve heard they were criminals who fled to the Yukon ahead of the law. I certainly believe it. While I would prefer not to trade with them, they bring items we cannot get otherwise. They travel all the way to Dawson for them. I don’t know where they overwinter, but they’ll be back in spring.”

The baby starts to fuss in Dalton’s arms. I reach for the pack and fill a makeshift bottle with warm milk from a thermos. Dalton takes it, and the baby quiets.

“You are a natural mother, Casey,” Edwin says. “Like Eric is a natural father. You didn’t even stop to think what she might want.”

“So this family of traders,” I say. “They make goods like this?” I lifted the fabric.

“They do.”

“And it was on the dead woman. Not the baby. Which doesn’t mean the child comes from them.”

“One of their women was pregnant when they were here last. I say ‘woman,’ but she was barely more than a girl. As for the baby’s father, let’s just say goods aren’t the only thing that family sells.”

He motions to the fabric. “This woman who died. My guess is that she stole the baby. She must trade with them regularly, and she knew what kind of life that child would have—particularly a girl—so she stole her.” He meets my gaze. “To honor her sacrifice, you should keep the baby.”