All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 144

144

They spent the summer drifting toward the kind of friendship both needed.

Each Sunday morning they set off early and hiked river scene trails, the Meramec River laid down like a gold path choked green beneath trees that swept out over banks. Misty told him of hydrotropism, her hair pulled back, her cheeks blush from the gradient. She told him how her father used to bring her to the mountains, their bicycles loaded onto the roof rack. The two would ride miles that felt untouched since the resort era.

They stopped before the bottomland, the floodplain forest drained. She unpacked Tupperware, cutlery, and napkins.

“Sausage and hash brown casserole.”

He felt a little bile rise.

“My mother made it.”

He swallowed it down.

They ate beneath a sullen sky, and she asked him about Tooms. He told her he had made another dozen requests for visitation, written again, offered forgiveness, an avenue for atonement. Saint had done similar, though her belief waned, certain that Tooms had killed the girl and enjoyed toying with them, the last vestige of power for a man who had been stripped back to bone.

“Will you keep looking?” Misty said, as she sipped coffee from a thermos and watched starlings move to an orchestra so tightly conducted.

He watched her, outwardly so stoic it was like something or someone had robbed her passion fully. “Hydrotropism. When did you get so smart, Mist?”

“I also know that a group of ladybirds is called a loveliness. I like how some things are just perfect, you know.”

He looked at her, and knew.

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