All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 234

234

They sat together.

Tooms was not cuffed. There was no trace of the hours before, of how close he had come to losing his life. She marveled at what a person could

endure.

“How was that last meal?” she said.

He laughed, the tension spilling from him. “Grilled cheese. Ain’t a

better meal on this earth.”

She caught the inflection and smiled.

The night sky made it through the smallest window as he finally sat back and talked.

“I still remember the smell that morning. Summer…it’s got its own feel in Monta Clare, right. Before the heat wakes for the day. Nix had a dog growing up. I guess if you’re a dog person you get it, how they’re family.

His face when that mutt showed up…”

She let him speak; the drain of the day before blazed in her eyes, her

skin and bones.

“I was just out looking for Scout.”

Saint smiled. “I found him. He disturbed the hive in our yard. Bees will kill to protect their queen, even if it means giving their own lives.”

Blackjack knocked, set two coffees down, but not before Saint noticed

his name badge.

Darnell Richardson.

For a moment she stared at him, his smile and the kindness in the big man’s eyes. She sighed as he left them, no longer knowing which side of the coin was up.

Tooms breathed the steam.

“I know what you did for those girls,” Saint said.

He did not speak, still, maintaining an oath he would die to protect.

She smiled again, but it was entirely broken. “You gave them a chance when no one else would. Maybe you saved lives.”

“But not all of them.”

She thought of him visiting high schools, hanging around outside in case they sought him. Just being there so they knew they were not alone.

She thought of the girls, some not even older than she had been back then, turning up at the farmhouse and being led to the room where he took one life to save another. No questions were asked. No blame apportioned. Girls from church towns, from unforgiving families. Wealthy. Poor. He gave them their lives back. And then someone found out.

“Tell me about Eli Aaron,” she said.

“Eli Aaron was a bad man. I knew that the day he came into the school to photograph the children. I heard him, with Misty Meyer, with the other girls. So I went to his house, to tell him, to let him know someone was

watching him.”

“And he—”

“He let me know someone was watching me.”

“That’s why we found your hair fibers at the Aaron house.”

He nodded.

She felt the chill. “That’s how he chose them. He was doing God’s work. He chose penitent sinners. The pregnant girls who came to you for an

abortion.”

Tooms said nothing.

“You could have warned them,” Saint said.

“I thought he was just taking their money, promising to make them models. When he told me he knew what I was doing I worried for them.

That he might tell their parents or something. And I did try to tell them, but I didn’t even take their names. It was safer for them.”

Saint closed her eyes. “So you took to waiting outside the schools. To try and warn them to be cautious.”

“I should have done more to protect them.”

She placed a hand over his. “You did enough. You did everything.”

There was no pride, no sense of doing right. He stated a fact because it was just that.

“You told me you killed Grace,” she said.

He straightened a little. “I treated Joseph’s mother for over a decade. I watched her getting worse. It was my duty to inform Social Services.”

“But you didn’t.”

He shook his head. “I failed that boy fully.”

“You lied about murdering her.”

He nodded. “He lost so much of his life. And I knew he would spend the rest of his days searching. Nix told me she wasn’t real. That Joseph conjured her.”

“You wrote me…you wanted to tell me because you knew Nix wouldn’t agree to it.”

“I gave Joseph an out. I was being put to death anyway. Grief is a part of life. It’s the unknown that truly ruins us.”

She thought of Patch.

“When I saw Joseph here I cried that night because I knew I had failed.

I knew I had made the wrong choice. To hear him speak, to offer compassion and hope when he himself had none. I didn’t deserve to look him in the eye. And then he escaped. And in those hours when I sat with the chaplain and waited for them to put me to death, I used my last prayer to ask that he never returns.”

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