All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 58

58

Saint was summoned to the police station, where she stood beside Nix, who took her small hand in his and shook it firmly as he awarded her a certificate and a check for two thousand dollars. Daisy Creason took her photograph. Her grandmother, already bursting with understated pride, would buy a dozen copies and file them someplace.

Saint had her grandmother cash the check.

On that second Monday she arrived a little early and placed every dollar in an envelope which she left in the Macauleys’ mailbox.

She found a box beside the trash, and inside neatly folded she saw his flag. She fished it out and beneath it saw his antique treasure chest and doubloons that glowed yellow.

And then she heard the street door open and turned to see her friend.

She smiled.

He wore jeans and a plain navy T-shirt. He was too skinny.

“What’s all this?” she said.

“I’m not a pirate.”

She studied the trash carefully. “The flintlock isn’t there.”

“That was a gift.”

She lifted a little inside.

They walked to school mostly in a silence she tried so hard to break with talk of her bee mystery, of how she’d seen an Olds run into the back of a Chevy, and the two men get out and start yelling at each other. She told him her grandmother had stopped smoking Marlboro and moved to Virginia Slims, that Sammy the drunk had locked himself out of the art gallery and

punched through the window, and then woke with no memory of it so reported the break-in to Chief Nix.

She barely took breath, but when she did Saint noticed the way he walked, quieter somehow, his chin a little lower, his mind far from her and

the nonsense she spoke.

He no longer smiled.

The day after he arrived home she’d ridden her Spyder to the library and borrowed a book on trauma and psychological disabilities. She knew not to pry, that he was likely suffering nightmares, flashbacks, maybe physical sensations. Anger, shame. She had read through the night. She was ready

for whatever he needed.

“I need to steal a car,” he said.

She was not ready for that.

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