All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 44

44

“Are they looking for you?” she said.

“There’s a cop that sometimes stops by.” He thought of Chief Nix showing up when the neighbor called the police again because Ivy was slumped at the wheel of the Fairlane and Patch could not heave her inside in time. He didn’t ever write it up. Just hauled her in and helped her to bed, then peeled a couple of bills from his wallet and handed them to Patch. He had not told Saint these things. He learned young that you could hide much

with a smile.

“And your friends?”

“Saint.”

He thought of her, small and smart and seeking out angles that brought them closer. How she mastered the slingshot a whole day quicker than he had. How she sat beside him when they did their math homework, guiding him toward answers that lay far beyond him, coaxing and leading till he was left with a single option that she beamed at like he’d figured it out alone. He thought of Norma, her heart and cooking and toleration. Of how he tried to exist in the shadow of their lives so they would not have to notice him much. He tried out his own angles, to be funny, to be charming and endearing. To make himself useful. One time he tended their yard when Saint rode the bus with Norma. Another time he painted the peeling window frame in the front bay of their large home. Those days he stayed for dinner so hot and filling he slept the night after, not even waking when his mother returned from her shift. Those days he stayed because he had earned it.

“She’s…the best of me,” he said.

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s smart. And she can play the piano so beautiful I stop and just watch her fingers. She’s skinny and wears big glasses and her hair in a

braid.”

“What about her parents?” she said.

“Her mother died a couple days after giving birth. She was young. Saint said if abortion had been legal she wouldn’t exist. Her father skipped town after. Didn’t pay nothing to her grandparents. She found letters her grandmother wrote to him. Return to sender.”

“This Saint, she loves you.”

“No. She does it out of kindness, and maybe pity. I guess sometimes the two go together nicely. I’m not about to turn either down.”

“You don’t need charity. And I’ll bet that’s what Saint already knows.

She’s being kind because she loves you.”

He shook his head. “She’ll see it now I’m gone.”

“See what?” she said.

He spoke without intent, just a brutal and complete honesty. “How little

I left behind.”

He felt her bare arm against his.

“I need to know your name,” he said.

Her voice dropped to a whisper, her breath hot as she pressed close and cupped her hands around the shell of his ear.

“Grace.”

OceanofPDF.com