All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 148

148

That night she called him from a pay phone outside her motel, breathing the lilacs that grew ten feet high. Lights sailed up high toward her as cars followed roads that circled the base of the mountain. She had spent a long afternoon in the Summit County PD, called Himes and faxed him her report, ate bad pizza and ran through her notes till the ink blurred and then

made the call.

“It’s midnight,” Patch said.

“Sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

She could see him sitting there in the dark, not a single light on in the old house.

“I’m at a town the locals call Breck, and from where I’m standing I can see a mountain that would put ours in shadow. If it just fell…if it…it would crush us all.”

“I think Misty has a husband or something.”

“Why?”

“We just see each other early on Sundays. I don’t know much about her life now. We talk about the past but nothing beyond.”

“You meeting the parole officer?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She laughed.

“I worry about you,” he said.

“Stealing my lines.”

“I thought about you every day, Saint. I thought about Jimmy and what he did.”

“It was a long time ago now,” she said, like she did not think of it, too.

Like she did not still ache each time she saw a mother pushing a stroller.

Like for a long time after she had not avoided the children’s section in bookstores, had not sped up when she passed playgrounds. She did not imagine a different life, where she could be what she did not deserve to be.

Where Jimmy had passed his exams, and not raised his fists. Where though he could not be the man she wanted, he could be a father. They could be the kind of parents she herself had not known.

“You remember Summer Reynolds?” she said.

“Fort Worth. Her hair is cadmium and ochre and violet. Viridian eyes that told her parents she was one step ahead. I remember her mother said she was trouble, but said it with a smile, you know.”

She told him.

And heard the click and the dial tone.

OceanofPDF.com