All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 90

90

Weekends Saint worked in the public library in Panora, leaving her bicycle leaning by the black railings as she adhered herself to library work like a swan to a lake.

Handling inquiries and loans, orders, and even simplifying the antiquated card system. And in quiet moments, of which there were many, she searched.

She wrote letters to a hundred coroners in as many jurisdictions, spoke with thirty-seven hospital receptionists in a thousand-mile radius of the Eli Aaron house. She gave the description of the girl in the painting, swallowing down her own protestations and her grandmother’s.

“He can’t know what she looks like,” Norma said over lemon muffins one afternoon in Lacey’s.

Saint had not replied, just looked out across the street as the 42 bus drew up and he climbed from it and into Misty’s open arms.

She knew from Norma that Patch worked his own angles, seeking out the parents of missing teens, making notes in a red folder as he rode toward the St. Francois mines each morning. Saint spent a year searching public and state records. She focused on death certificates. The work was painstaking and exacting, though most could be discounted by age bracket alone. She worked with the baseless assumption that Grace could be three years older because it gave her a little more to go on, and so she searched professional licensing. Nursing, therapy, law, and medicine. When she found possible matches she made a note and then began to delve into their lives. She made close to three hundred calls to bewildered women, mothers and fathers and grandparents. Saint worked on her approach, to begin with

softening the ask, before long just leading with the question, Do you know a boy named Patch. Sometimes they hung around for a little of the background, but others simply cut her off.

She looked into requesting federal records, though with only a first name to go on she gave up quickly.

Saint lost interest in Dr. Tooms after a year of watching his place.

Whatever he had hidden, she was certain it was not Grace.

Patch still called in the middle of the night, and he had filled three tapes with his ramblings. In some he was frantic, muddled and confused. In others he spoke of the way Grace smelled on what might have been a winter morning in the basement they were held in. He recalled lemon on her skin, peppermint on her breath. He mentioned the sky at Baldy Point, how Lake Altus-Lugert spilled its way from the dam, crashing its way along the Fork Red River. Each night Saint covered the telephone with a blanket so its ring would not wake her grandmother. It was madness. It was her link to him.

She did not coast at school, rose clear to the top of the class, mute to the excited talk of college and prom. She no longer wore her braid, instead tying her long hair back and mostly ignoring fashions and the passing trends. Layered blowouts, platinum blondes. She wore corduroy overalls and looked on as Misty dazzled in cape collars and lace yokes.

She woke one day to see a line of roses leading from the street door to Jimmy Walters, who held a large bouquet.

“He wants to ask you to prom,” Norma said, from beside her.

“I know that.”

“I hear Patch is going with Misty,” Norma said, like it needed saying at

all.

“I hear that, too.”

Norma softened. “I also hear Sammy is showing his paintings next

weekend.”

“Oh.”

“Give Jimmy a chance. For me. And I promise you, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll take full responsibility.”

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