All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 101

101

They ate dinner with Norma, who mostly ignored her granddaughter and instead smiled at Jimmy Walters as she piled his plate with pork steak, fried potatoes, and steamed greens.

“All that studying must make you hungry,” Norma said, as she buttered a roll and set it down on his side plate.

Saint pushed her potatoes around as Jimmy told Norma about his studies, and his weekends assisting at Culpepper Zoo.

He went on to run her through a wolf with canine distemper, a tortoise with poxvirus, and a hippo that needed a tooth extracted.

“Sounds tough,” Norma said.

He shook his head. “Tough is sexing a dormouse.”

“Pretty sure I could arrest you for that,” Saint said.

Jimmy smiled at her, but Norma did not.

They finished with butter cake, Norma cutting Jimmy a slice at least double the size of Saint’s. And when they were done, after Norma thanked Jimmy for saying such a wonderful grace before they ate, Saint followed him out and together they walked to Main Street.

They shopped the window of Monta Clare Antiques where he pointed out a walnut chamber ogee wall clock, a Carolean wingback, and a three- pint cocktail shaker.

“I could spend my whole paycheck in an hour,” he said, as he took in a dulled Costello globe so beat up she could not even read the detail.

It wouldn’t take long, she thought, and bit her tongue because she knew studying for a DVM while working weekends took a toll. And that in the long run, when he qualified as a veterinarian, he would earn a decent wage.

Beneath the canopy of Monta Clare Hardware store he took her hand.

“It’ll get easier, with your grandmother.”

“Only if I hand in my badge and go back to school,” she said.

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

He kept his eyes on the windows, on a passing couple, on the high church tower.

“I mean, you’ll have to stop one day, when we start a family,” he continued. He wore a beige sweater and white pants and boxy shoes she tried not to notice. Most evenings they ate with his mother opposite a wall dedicated to photographs of Jimmy that detailed how little he had changed since kindergarten. Though broad and handsome, he stood only a couple of inches taller than Saint. People at church said they made a cute couple.

“My mother asked if you wanted to come eat with us on Saturday night.

She’s making her famous Sloppy Joes.”

She had tried them at least a dozen times before, still trying to figure out the reason for their fame. “Sure, Jimmy.”

He squeezed her hand, then lightly kissed her cheek.

“I love you,” he said.

“You too,” she said.

“You could wear the green dress I bought you.”

She thought of the dress, how it skimmed her ankles and buttoned high on her neck.

“Not too much makeup, you know how my mother is,” he said, making

to roll his eyes.

She laughed.

After he walked her home, Saint retired to her attic bedroom and sat down with her copy of the Joseph Macauley case file and flipped the pages idly. She settled on Eli Aaron and the rosary beads. She had visited each church within a hundred miles, each Chinese supermarket, small gift shop and jeweler and Catholic bookstore, consulted with a dozen priests who scratched their heads and reasoned there were a million types of prayer beads, each a little different, each carrying the same weight of promise. And once more she ran over what they had. Photos of half a dozen girls. One of

them Misty Meyer. One of them Callie Montrose. She’d traced Eli Aaron back across a dozen states where he had taken photographs at two dozen schools. She could not put names to the other girls. Marty Tooms had worked with him. Maybe Tooms lured them sometimes. Aaron snatched them other times. It was messy and altogether uneven.

She fell asleep with the file across her chest.

Every night.

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