All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 51

51

Grace told him it was dawn, the center of the sun eighteen degrees below horizon, its light scattered through their fragile atmosphere. She told him no matter what happened he had to breathe, to be brave, to be a pirate.

He drifted in and out of consciousness.

He dreamed he would emerge through some trapdoor into a woodland much like the kind he had been taken from. Or maybe a street in an unknown town in an unknown city, where they’d flag down a car and it’d take them to the cops and maybe the hospital.

He wondered at the furor, the flash of a dozen bulbs for the two kids long since buried. Most of all he worried about her, that she would be taken someplace else, that he simply would not survive without her.

“Don’t sleep,” she said and squeezed his hand too tight. “There’s too much you haven’t seen. The sky at Baldy Point, how Lake Altus-Lugert spills from the dam, crashing its way along the North Fork Red River.”

“Tell me something real,” he said and did not recognize his voice.

“I grew up in a big white house. 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.”

He whispered, “Paint your house for me.”

“A long driveway with tall trees on either side. Trees that reach over like they’re linking arms to protect the people that walk under them. And grass

so green it might really have been painted. And in flower beds beneath sash windows butterfly weeds glow like campfire.”

He tried to smile.

“There’s shutters at the windows, and a balcony that runs around the entire building. There’s a staircase that winds its way from the yard to the bedroom, and in winter you can see it because the praying trees shed leaves till the house emerges like a snowflake on a summer day.”

Grace made him finish his water, then she pressed her lips to his, and

when she broke off he was breathless.

“You want to pray?”

He shook his head.

“Good, because the way I hear it praying involves asking for a whole lot of forgiveness, like that makes things better. But you know what I know?”

He shook his head again.

“Sometimes the only way to heal a wound is to tear a bigger one in the

person that hurt you.”

“I’m tired, Grace.”

“Someone once told me you can hear a smile,” she said.

“Bullshit.”

“Say something and I’ll tell you if you are.”

“Though it’s dark, I’ll always find you. Though you’re stronger than me, I’ll always make sure that you’re safe. To me, you’ll always come

first.”

“You’re smiling.”

“Because it’s true.”

He did not remember falling. He did not remember her plan, or her cries, or her slapping at his face to try and wake him.

He did not remember the gunshots outside the door.

Patch did not remember smelling the smoke.

Or the heat of the fire.

He did not remember letting Grace go.

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