Her name was Callie Montrose.
She lived in a town near seventy miles from Monta Clare and had not returned from school.
When Norma heard, she took the Colt from its place in the garage, checked it was loaded, and slept with it in the drawer of her nightstand.
That night Saint took her small rucksack and filled it with a pocket flashlight, a slingshot, a book of matches, and a jackknife so rusted the pivot caught.
She walked down sleeping streets, and at the Macauley house slipped in through the kitchen door and found Ivy passed out on the sofa. Saint covered her up, noting the empty bottle, and crept up the stairs. In the haunt of Patch’s bedroom she retrieved the pistol from its dented biscuit tin and took a moment to stare at the empty bed.
“I’ll bring you home,” she said, quiet. “I swear it.”
The pistol lay heavy in her hands, its origin heavy on her chest.
“What did you get for your birthday?” he said.
“Spyder,” she said, and pointed toward the enamel-framed bicycle with the drum brake and the quilted banana seat. “It has a basket for my things.”
So far her things were books, a chain of daisies, and a small rock she would later take to the library in Panora, where she would scan the geology section and discover it was not an emerald.
He let out a customary whistle. He wore a navy hussar waistcoat crossed with fine gold detail and pearl buttons, his eye aching for her to return the question.
She waited a full minute before he caved.
“The waistcoat. I got the waistcoat, Saint.”
“It’s not your birthday yet.”
“I found it hidden in my mother’s closet. Who can wait for such a thing?”
She saw it had been made from an old dress shirt, his mother a skilled enough seamstress.
“It’s a thing of beauty, Patch. Really, it is.”
Sometimes she was giddy about having a friend to call her own. At first she was mindful of the fact he was only after her honey, but then he suggested they run the corn maze together, and the roots of first friendship took hold. She was careful not to load him with too much of anything other kids deemed nerdy. She bit her tongue when he talked pirates, because she’d read three books on the subject to better understand his kind, and his facts were riddled with inaccuracies. She did not correct his English, his grammar, did not flinch when he cursed, which was often, and was something she would try to emulate, which thrilled her grandmother no end. She fought the urge to invite him for dinner when she found out his mother worked shifts that did not leave enough time for her to care for him. To her he was an exotic creature she would do well not to grasp too tightly for fear of scaring him off.
“I reckon it’s the same kind Henry Every wore when he slaughtered the Mughal vessels,” Patch said, then pulled a rusted spyglass telescope from his pocket and aimed it toward the frosted woodland.
Saint pulled back a thin branch and gamely joined in. “I read his crew also raped the slave girls.”
He frowned, looked down at his waistcoat, and then frowned again. “So I look like a rapist?”
Jesus. “Not at all, if anything you look the opposite…like rape is the last thing on your mind.”
He frowned once more.
Friendship was a difficult art to master.
Theirs had blossomed after he showed up at her house with a stolen spoon and a single cracker, bloomed when he sat next to her at lunch each day, eyeing her sack lunch to see if it contained honey. And now she knew several cogent facts about him.
His mother worked nights, and drank wine, and sometimes passed out cold from the combination.
He believed his one eye was more powerful than her two, and that he could read print from a hundred yards. A theory they had tested with his copy of Playboy in her backyard.
“Ursula Andress. Born March 10, 1936. Honey Ryder,” he called, squinting at the page.
“Always with the honey,” Saint said, though marveled at his skills.
He was both brave and stupid in a way she could not understand, like he knew nothing of risk or consequence. On their second outing she had confided in him her desire for a second hive to expand her empire. That same evening he had attempted to steal a colony from the Meltons’ farmstead. The resulting massacre had seen him absent from school for three days.
“I guess I could give you your gift early too then,” she said, and sprinted back into the house while he stayed in the yard.
She made him close his eye as she placed the one-shot flintlock replica gun into his small hands.
And when he saw it his mouth fell open. He looked at her, then the gun, then at her again. “How did you—”
“Lucky find.” She would not tell him the luck was born of trawling the flea market, Goodwill stores, and pawn shops on her grandmother’s bus route and beyond. Of emptying her piggy bank and still coming up short, and so striking a loan agreement with Norma whose terms involved Saint mowing the lawn and pulling weeds for the next seventy years.
He hugged her then.
Unexpected.
“You just wait till you see what I got for you,” he said.
She did wait, and a week later was thrilled with the butterfly brooch he gave her, until she saw an impassioned plea from Miss Worth for its safe return on the church bulletin board.