All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 150

150

Patch drove for seven hours, so tired at times the old Buick veered across white lines till he opened the window and allowed the humid air to sober him. Fifty million acres of darkness.

He carried an old ordinance map, but most was lost to the marks he’d made. He glanced into the river but found nothing like those old miners had, no glitter in the silt, just a reminder that if his story had an end it would not be the kind he hoped for, where he found Grace, where she had lived a life filled with everything she deserved. He pulled off from Interstate 70 and slept fitfully.

At the first sign for Monta Clare he remembered, his heart sinking.

He passed by Rosewood Avenue and drove up toward Parade Hill, left his truck across the street and walked over.

“I missed the movie,” he said.

Misty nodded.

“I’m so sorry. Something happened.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a movie.”

He wanted to tell her but guessed that she already knew. Whatever the reason, she had come to expect it. To expect less from him because all those years ago he had emerged as less in every way.

“I can…we could go out someplace—”

“I need to stop now, Patch. Wherever we might have been heading, I

can’t anymore.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll see you, then,” she said and leaned forward, stood on her toes to reach up and kiss his cheek, and held there awhile, like the moment meant

something he did not fully grasp.

When he turned he saw it at the foot of her path. A yellow hairband discarded in the bushes. He remembered it from all those years before.

He bent and collected it, then turned and walked back up her path, not knowing exactly what he would say, just that it needed to be more.

Patch was about to knock when light hit the window beside.

And there, through it, he saw her.

And he saw who she was with.

There was a moment before the pieces aligned. Before the world once again turned without him.

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