All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 156

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When the framing was completed and the stucco dried, he spent an entire week painting it white, the shutters a shade of Aegean that changed each time he lay in the darkness and plucked memories like peacock feathers that fanned his craze.

“And I rattled those wooden floorboards with my tap shoes until my heart soared.”

Patch deciphered a code that was not there, decided he needed heart pine floors and so spent another month scouring reclamation yards until he found a shade that matched his mind’s eye.

“A bedroom for me, my mother, and three more we rented to whoever was passing through. One time it was a girl maybe nineteen, and she taught me the art of applying makeup. Decadence, Patch. There ain’t a more decadent word. Another time it was a preacher on his way to Pearl River County. You ever seen Hemmsford Swampland? Man, that place needs exorcising.”

Five bedrooms for a man who would live alone. A cavernous den and kitchen, a dining room because Grace mentioned the formalities of Thanksgiving dinner. An orangery, which Saint named, because Patch did not know what the fuck an orangery was, only that the glass roof shed morning light over the white walls.

The external staircase was a labor of hatred that brought him to his knees when it would not join, or float, or fix. In the end he accepted help from Saint’s cousin Patrick, a carpenter from Brookfield who fixed it over Labor Day weekend. The end result so close to his vision he’d hugged the man so long Patrick looked to Saint to free him.

“Stop scaring people,” Saint said, over Brunswick stew and corn

muffins.

Patch nodded.

“Real fine looking house though,” her grandmother said.

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