All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 259

259

In the embers of summer they loaded Saint’s truck and set off an hour from dawn.

Two weeks before Charlotte would make the journey to Boston, where Saint had already planned to visit often, if only to bring the girl some decent home cooking.

A little over a thousand miles, they planned the route lazily, just highlighting a couple of stops they would make along the way.

A road trip, not mother and daughter, but friends. Friends that had been through so much together.

They detoured at Mount Vernon and followed a long sweeping curve toward Nashville. Charlotte wore denim cut-offs and placed her bare feet on the dashboard as she sang along to Dolly Parton and Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, and, of course, Johnny Cash.

By the time they made it to their motel, Saint’s ears were ringing from the din, and her mouth aching from laughing.

“You sing like your mother cooked,” Saint said.

They ate hot chicken and strolled the glittered walkways, Charlotte drawling Elvis as she posed for a photograph before the lights of Music Row, her top lip quivering till Saint doubled over with laughter.

They stopped at the Cherokee National Forest, the girl turning quiet as the sky crimsoned over Appalachian mountains so lush they mirrored the sheen of deep river gorges. They hiked a couple of hours and Saint fired off pictures of eastern box turtles and five-lined skinks, juncos and peregrine falcons. In time she would fill another book, her mind on Theodore as she carefully pasted in photographs he might one day look at.

At a waterfall that cascaded over ridges and brows of russet rock, Charlotte stopped and turned to her.

“What I said…about not wanting you as a mother—”

“I know,” Saint said.

“I mean. You’re everything. And you—”

“I know that, too.”

Charlotte hugged her quickly and tightly.

A day later the horizon spread from the Blue Ridge Parkway beyond.

They played games, spotted bumper stickers, and assigned points for noting WWJD, SHIT HAPPENS, and, as they neared their destination, OBX.

They stopped for lunch, Charlotte tapping her foot to bluegrass though Saint could see the way her shoulders tightened, her smile a little less as she quietened. It was not a trip with a clear destination or aim. It was unsaid, though hope gently warmed in the pit of their stomachs.

The jar of purple honey carried a label.

And after a day carving through the Piedmont they came to Hillcrest Farm.

It was not a place that would appear in any guidebook, and as Charlotte found matching jars on the shelves, Saint took the calculated risk of showing a photograph of him to the young girl that worked the counter.

A shake of the head.

The crushing of a dream that perhaps had always been out of reach.

Charlotte did not speak much afterward, as they drove aimlessly through a plateau of low hills, the land beginning to flatten toward distant

coastal plains.

“He’s keeping you safe,” Saint said.

“He could be dead,” Charlotte said.

They spent another day moving through North Carolina in heightened silence. They met traffic as they coasted out of Raleigh.

Nose to tail.

“The bumper sticker again,” Saint said, and Charlotte noticed it and smiled.

The letters OBX, and beside it a skull and crossbones.

They saw it a half dozen times as they drove toward the flats.

At a truck stop far from anywhere Charlotte stopped by the car next to them and stared at yet another bumper sticker.

This one carried the same letters, only instead of a skull and crossbones it bore the face of a pirate.

“What does it mean?” she said, to the big guy climbing from the car.

He was tall, and beneath broad shoulders was a bulging stomach.

“Outer Banks, North Carolina,” he said, and shot Saint a smile.

“Why do so many people have it?” Charlotte said.

Another smile, this time a little wider. “You ever been to the

Caribbean?”

Charlotte shook her head.

“You head to the Outer Banks and you won’t ever need to.”

Charlotte squinted at the setting sun. “And the pirate?”

The man leaned on the hood of his car. “That’s Blackbeard of course.”

“Blackbeard,” Charlotte said, in a whisper.

“The pirate, Edward Teach. Of all the places in the world, and he chose to hide out in the Banks.”

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