All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 69

69

They came to the first grave maybe five hundred yards from the house, the

land excavated and not replaced.

Patch knelt beside it.

Saint sat cross-legged on beds of silver-backed leaves. “Elk Rock, Roberts Creek, and Cordova Park. Thousands of acres we cannot even begin to map,” she said.

“I wonder about this dead girl that was buried here.”

“And around that is another thousand acres, and a couple roads. And a million places to hide.”

“She would have had friends, favorite things. Maybe she kept bees,” he said, and Saint smiled before realizing it was not said for her.

He tugged at the neck of his T-shirt.

“And I’m not just talking about our parks…our states,” she said.

He looked at the grave, dug out far and deeper, the sides stone, a sepulcher that no longer held its intended.

“Nix tells me to just stop. To just get on…” Patch began.

“I’m not—”

“Eli Aaron knew, right? He knew where she came from and where she was headed. I don’t belong here anymore. I don’t belong…” his words buried beneath the call of a goldfinch.

“People say…the world…it’s wide open for us. But maybe you’re closing it, Patch. You’re blocking routes till there’s only one left, and it doesn’t lead anyplace good.”

“I remember things. Sometimes in the middle of the night I remember something she said, and then I can’t sleep after. Could be it’s something that

will lead me to her.”

“Tell me and I’ll note it down. I’ll collate everything you have. I’m good at…being organized,” she said, and sighed to herself.

“Tell me you believe she’s real.”

She thought of the way he described her. The long hair, the short hair.

The voices. That there was no trace at all. “I believe she’s real.”

He dropped his head into his hands and buried himself so totally she reached out but could not bring her hand down onto his skin so let it hover just above, feeling the heat of his desperation. She wanted to see him smile at her again. She needed it.

Saint knew right then she was in trouble.

The same kind he was in. The kind they would likely never be free of.

“I saw you with Misty,” she said, and God did she try and keep her tone neutral as she took her sneaker off and shook a stone free.

“She feeds me cake and rice and some kind of stew. She talks about veal bones and tofu and all kinds of shit I never heard of.”

“She likes you.”

“You haven’t tasted it.”

Saint wanted to go rockhounding, to dazzle him with Druzy quartz while he hunted galena, because in the right light he said it shone like pirate treasure. She wanted to sit beside him and watch Mister Rogers and Lady Aberlin, and Joe Negri show his accordion. And freeze when he tagged her, locking so still that after a while he’d poke her till she cracked. She wanted him to be a pirate once more.

“And now she wants me to go to her goddamn mansion house for dinner.”

“My grandmother said you can come eat with us…even Sundays when she does the lamb.” Despite where they were, and what lay around them, Saint still felt herself flush.

“I don’t know how to…the Meyers. They’ll say thank you, but I’m not sure what that means.”

“It means you did a good thing, and sometimes in life you need to be reminded of the good things you do. Because if you forget—”

“Nix said you sat in the station every day so the cops wouldn’t forget.”

She fussed with her braid and did not look at him as she ran her tongue over her snaggletooth.

He reached out and covered her hand with his, and she exhaled like she’d been holding that breath a year.

“If it hadn’t gone exactly the way it did then people might not know about Grace and that she’s entirely brilliant and that she deserves to be spoken of and that she deserves to be found.”

“Do you love her?” Saint asked, her small body tensed.

The question hung there.

The air cauterized.

He did not answer.

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