The Turning Point

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT- BEYOND THE ROAD

Davies

The next day, after meeting Wallace, I decided to go out and revisit my past. My old house, which was next door to the Mitchells, was still there, unchanged like a scar that never closes.

I went around the fence that separated the street from the yard and stopped on the sidewalk. The "For Sale" sign stood erect, rusty and leaning, a mute witness to abandonment. Six years had passed, and nobody wanted that house. It was as if the walls carried the terrible stories that had happened there, driving away anyone who dared try to live in them. Some said it was haunted. Maybe it was. After all, my own demons never really let me leave that place.

My gaze fixed on the entrance door. For a moment, the vision blurred into memories. I could see my mother standing there, opening it with a smile, her sweet voice calling, "Come on, Davies, lunch is ready."

My hands began to shake as the memory slipped like a ghost into the present.

"How long is this going to haunt me?" I thought, as a suffocating sensation squeezed my chest.

I sat down in front of the door, folded my legs and buried my face in them. The need to cry was desperate, but the tears wouldn't come. It was as if the grief was trapped, rooted so deep that I could no longer release it.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound. The low rumble of a familiar engine that immediately made me raise my head. Wilson's old truck had stopped a few meters from me. It was even older, rusty, a perfect reflection of its owner. He looked at me for a moment, his face impassive, before starting up again and heading towards the dirt road that led to the pasture.

My blood began to boil. He had the nerve to show up. After years of silence, of pain, and still in trouble with the courts, there he was, acting as if nothing had happened.

I got up in a rush, ran to the Mitchells' house and quickly entered Eva's kitchen. I grabbed a knife, tucking it into the back of my pants and covering it with my t-shirt. The cold handle pressed against my skin, but the feeling of control was comforting.

I stepped out onto the street and started running. The asphalt gave way to dirt and the landscape changed. Tall, yellow pastures stretched out on both sides of the road, the fields parched by the heat of that early season.

I knew where he was going. Calvin had once mentioned that, after arguments, Wilson always fled to this place. It was a refuge for him, but for me, it would be the stage for something bigger.

My run slowed until I was walking on autopilot. Each step brought me closer to my purpose. After several minutes, I spotted the blue pickup truck, abandoned by the roadside.

On the other side of the fence, I found him sitting under a tree. The old shotgun rested on his legs, and in his hand, a nearly empty whiskey bottle. The scene was pathetic. He looked like a broken man, but for me, that wasn't enough.

I slipped under the fence and approached slowly, stopping a few feet away. I knew it was dangerous. He was armed, and the whiskey in his veins made him even more unpredictable. But I couldn't stop. Something inside me screamed that it was now.

He raised his eyes to me, unsurprised, as if he knew this moment would come. He took another long sip of whiskey before standing up with difficulty. The shotgun remained in his hand as he limped a few steps to the side, looking at the horizon.

"I loved your mother," he said suddenly, without looking at me.

Hate hit me like a wave. His words were an insult, a disgusting lie that made my stomach churn.

"I love you too," he continued, his voice slurred by alcohol. "All this time... I've been a monster to you. And I can't change what I did."

The words were poison, and my body reacted to them with repulsion. My hand instinctively went to my back, gripping the knife handle.