All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 93

93

Franklin Meyer handed Patch a heavy crystal glass filled with brandy, poured one for himself, and walked them out onto the stone terrace.

Way out in the distance a gardener tended the grounds. A wooden walkway ran through trees toward a body of water punctured by a large fountain. A long line of lavender scented the air, the sun just beginning to drop as hidden lanterns flickered on.

Behind, the white stucco loomed with hip roofs of blue slate and flowered headers on each of the fourteen windows and pediments.

Franklin led him over to a long, smoked glass table and they sat on cushioned wicker chairs. For a moment they enjoyed their drinks and the sound of the evening approach.

“So tonight is the night?” Franklin said, crossing a leg. He wore a white

shirt opened three buttons.

“Yes, sir.”

He looked at Patch’s suit, navy, expensively cut and borrowed from Sammy. It was a little large, but a good way from the ruffled blues and creams he’d seen on the walk over to her place.

A limo idled in the driveway, beside it a photographer sitting in his car, waiting for the signal to come capture the most beautiful girl in town on the night of her senior prom.

Franklin smiled. “Makes a change from the movies, right? I forget who she likes now…the boy with the sideburns.”

Patch’s mind ran to Danny and the T-Birds, Sandy and her Pink Ladies.

He’d been made to sit through five showings now. The Saturday before they’d caught the return matinee before Misty pouted her way through her

burger and fries till Patch relented and they caught the evening show, too.

Not just caught it; Misty sang through each of the numbers, before declaring herself hopelessly devoted to Patch on the walk back up the hill, her voice so screeching, so awfully at odds with the rest of her.

“How’s work going? You’re over at Bell Lewis, yes.”

“It’s good.”

His last shift. In the depths. Floor to underside five feet seven so Patch spent each of his nine hours stooped. Straightening up afterward had almost brought tears to his eyes.

“It’s honest work, Joseph. Important work. The heartlands…” he trailed off. “Senior prom,” he said, a note of wistful in his voice, like Misty’s childhood had passed by too quick. “You know we wanted more children. A son. I suppose all men think about it at one time or another. It wasn’t in the cards for us. So, you see, Misty is everything. And I don’t mean that as a throwaway comment, Joseph. Misty is everything we have.”

“She’s a special girl, sir.”

“You’ve tasted her cooking?”

Patch nodded.

Both men stared off into the distance wearing matching frowns.

“The pair of you have grown close. Of course, Misty will be heading off

to Harvard in a few months.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was both spoken of and unsaid, looming on their track like a freight train headed toward them. Patch knew the damage would be severe but also knew it had been on their horizon since the moment she sat beside him on the fallen oak. For her part Misty deflected whenever he brought it up. He imagined her there, her fit tailored, among girls like her and boys entirely unlike him.

“She says she doesn’t want to leave,” Franklin said. He drew out a large cigar, offered one to Patch, who shook his head. He lit it and fanned the smoke with his free hand. “If I’m honest I thought it would pass.”

If he were honest, Patch did, too.

“I understand about origins. The two of you…there’s romance to it. I’m not too old to see that. Like it was written in the stars.”

“You all think I saved Misty. But she’s the strong one.”

Franklin smiled at that. “But you must know she feels—”

“Obligated.”

Franklin held up a hand, steadying, cooling though Patch remained calm.

“Sometimes when you’re in my position, when you have so damn much…it’s easy to be painted as self-serving…as righteous and pompous and, well, everything I used to think about my own father. We’re custodians of old money. My main job was not to lose it, maybe grow it a little.

Preservation of place.”

Patch glanced back at the house once more as lights manifested through the glass. The slow smoke of one chimney, the gray lolling above before dissipating. An upstairs window opened to music. The easy guitar, the promise of childhood living and wild horses.

And he sat there and waited for what he always knew would one day come.

“We have to want more for our children, Joseph. Otherwise we restrict them only to mirror ourselves. That’s not how progress is made. We strive.

My daughter is brilliant in most ways, but none more so than her desire to claim everything she can. Every misstep her mother and I have made will be realigned by Misty.”

Patch stared into his glass, cutting a dozen tones as he held it to the lantern buried in the trees. He wondered if the person who made it knew it was a perfect thing. He looked around at their world and saw so many perfect things. And only one thing that could never belong.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said, quiet.

Franklin smiled gently and finally looked over at him. “I don’t think talk is enough at this point. She dodged one bullet that morning…I’m just trying to help her dodge another.”

Patch smiled, not because he did not understand, but because he did.

And with that Franklin reached into his pocket and took out the check and placed it on the table. “I will die grateful to you, Joseph. There’s so many things I can give you, but my daughter isn’t one of them.”

He stood and touched Patch’s shoulder, and then he went back into the house.

Hues of dusk caved in that placid summer day.

They stood at the foot of the grand staircase as Misty made her descent.

Patch remained there in the photographer’s strobe, dazzled not by the flash but by a girl he could not possibly have dared to hold on to. A floor-length gown, the same yellow as the band in her hair. She met him and took his

hand.

Her parents joined them.

He had never seen Misty smile so wide.

“You look so beautiful,” she said, as she ran her hand through his hair.

“Stealing my lines.”

Nothing about them fit. Nothing about them worked.

She loved him entirely and absolutely.

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