Her wipers could not clear the deluge that morning.
Hammering the roof of her truck as she pulled up outside the small house. Saint ran up the drive and saw him on the bench, the tree’s canopy doing enough, though still, rain dropped steadily on his shoulders, wetting his shirt dark.
“You know it’s raining,” she said, sitting beside him.
“It’s today?” Nix said.
“Yes.”
“And you hope to find…”
“I don’t even know. Something of hers. Something that gives us a name. A past. An identity.”
Nix sipped his coffee, staring at the tree and the roots like they were something sacred. Saint looked around and even in the rain it was beautiful, like a haven from the outside world.
“How do I deal with this?” she said.
“You always know, Saint.”
“And yet I always come back to you.”
“You find something, and the kid goes off chasing for her story. Her background. You don’t, and he’ll find some other way of keeping it spinning. I used to think it was crazy.”
“And now?”
“Now I think…if he loves her, if he cares that deeply, ain’t even a choice to make.”
“You ever get lonely?” she said.
He watched the sky through the trees. “The memories are enough. Maybe you tell the kid that.”
“My grandmother says you pray an hour each week. Before the service begins. What do you ask for?”
He sipped his coffee, and she smelled caramel and flowers and bitter smoke.
“I ask for understanding.”
“For what?”
“The bad things I do.”
She could not imagine him doing a single bad thing.
“I don’t see you at church anymore,” he said.
She smiled, but it was small. “I’m not sure that I’m ever welcome—”
“Jimmy Walters doesn’t decide who belongs, Saint.”
Jimmy’s mother had told the town of Monta Clare her secret. That she had terminated a life. That she had broken a pact with God. Norma had not spoken to her much that summer.
“I pray at home. Sometimes by the lake. I don’t kneel or clasp my hands, but I say what needs saying,” she said.
He reached out and patted her knee. “You’re a good person, Saint.”
“Tell that to my grandmother.”
“She loves you.”
“She does. Just less now.”
“That can’t—”
“I test her faith,” Saint said.
He smiled. “The great ones always do.”