Losing You Terrifies Me

chapter 44

"What are we waiting for?" Walter questioned that morning at the breakfast table.

Morgan was busy, consumed up in a book that Margot had let him read ever since the announcement of the move had come about as if it would make the transition any easier on the child. Margot shot a glance at Walter from where she was eating a small bowl of fruit.

"Waiting for?" Alana questioned nonchalantly, not looking up from her tablet as she sipped on her morning coffee.

"Why aren't we leaving?" Walter pressed, his voice down low as if the walls would be able to hear the conversation. He pushed his plate of food aside and sat up a little higher in his chair. "What are we waiting for?"

Alana's brows rose at the question, and she licked her lips with a small nod, her hands folding on the table top as her tablet was set aside. "We are currently waiting for your passport to be delivered to us. It takes time to get paperwork processed. And processed under the table."

"Passport?" Walter questioned. "We're leaving the country then?"

Morgan perked up a bit at that, his eyes leaving his book to glance around at the conversation curiously. "Where?" he asked in a voice mimicking the volume of Walter's.

"Margot and I are still deciding. We're planning on leaving for a safe house we're securing by the end of this week," Alana continued on, her tone just as simple and unconcerned as it had been from the beginning of time. "We had to make some changes to the plans when you were unable to tell us who had said all of those things. We will be leaving Friday night."

"Where?" Morgan asked again, looking over to Margot who was still silent, but had set her fork aside.

"Maybe South America or Europe," Margot answered. "Just for a bit. Then somewhere else."

"We're waiting until Friday? We don't have to have a passport to go to a hotel or something," Walter argued, eyes darting worriedly between the two adults. They had been sitting on this for a week already. Another four days wasn't good enough. Walter hadn't heard those men speaking again, but he knew when adults were serious and when they weren't. He knew all too well from his mother's boyfriends the types of inflections that tones could have and when to listen and when not to listen. "We should have been out of this house the night that I told you about...." Walter trailed off, but he knew that Margot and Alana understood.

"Wally," Margot said in her calm and toneless voice, a micro smile on her red lips. "Alana and I have decided that it's best for all of us if we wait until the end of this week."

"Why?" Walter's brows furrowed in confusion; his appetite completely gone now. "Because it would be suspicious if we just left?"

"That is one of the reasons, yes," Alana agreed with a nod, picking up her tablet once more to signal the end of the discussion. "Among other things that you wouldn't understand."

"My dad would have listened," Walter grumbled, pushing his chair back from the table and leaving the room without being excused. If they were going to ignore him then he didn't need to follow their rules.

He went back to his room, heading directly for the closet where his bag was still packed from that day where he had decided to run away before he was stopped. He could do it now. He pulled the bag, the only thing in the entire closet, from the floor and tossed it over his shoulder. His dad had taught him enough on how to get by for a bit out on his own. And he knew where Margot and Alana kept an extra bit of emergency cash in one of the drawers in the study. He had been boredly rummaging through the desk one day and stumbled upon it.

It would be tough, but he had been in worse conditions before with his mom and if she had been able to pull them through it, then he could do it alone. He was sure. With Molly and Will's lessons and stubbornness in himself, he was certain he would be fine.