“Can I see the place where your eye should be?” Charlotte asked.
“I can think of better gifts to give you. It’s not every day a girl turns thirteen.”
The buildup had begun a little under a year before, with Charlotte claiming that hitting her teens would likely change her beyond all recognition. She told him she would need a new bra, the kind that gave her cleavage. He had called her grandmother immediately, and she had appeared at the door that afternoon and whisked the girl into town to see Miss Delaine. Fittings ensued, purchases were made. Patch hid himself in the yard until he was certain the matter had been handled.
Charlotte also claimed she would need a key to the Mad House, which he duly had cut at Monta Clare Hardware. She would need a dress for the day and another for the evening. Another trip to Miss Delaine, this time Patch stayed out on the sidewalk as the girl and her grandmother attacked the racks with ferocity.
“And I’ll need to throw a party,” she said over a breakfast of muffins and bacon.
Patch looked up. “What kind of party?”
“Elegant, extravagant, wild in a way, and opulent.”
“They need to change the reading list at your school.”
“There should be a tray of prophylactics should things get rowdy.”
“What, like antibiotics?”
“No. But picking up some penicillin isn’t a bad idea.”
He kept her back from school on the day, spoke with her teacher Miss Lyle, who frowned and pointed out school policy, and also that she had seen his work hanging in Sammy’s window. Patch agreed to come teach an art class and a trade was agreed.
At six he led her down to the kitchen where a jewelry box sat on the counter.
She removed the necklace and held it up, a single stone hanging from a chain, the same blue as her eyes.
“Like Mom’s,” she said, for a moment quiet before she rallied. “I mean, it’s not what I’d choose, but perhaps I could pawn it one day. Keep me from doing actual porn.”
“It’s all I ask.”
And then he handed her the piece of paper.
The sketch he had completed near fourteen years before, as her mother slept. The sketch Misty had bequeathed so that he might remember that in their world, in their life, something special had happened.
Charlotte stared at it for a long time.
“I drew that the day you were conceived.”
“Fucking gross.”
Saint showed up like she could smell the muffins, and outside on the driveway beneath the flutter of fall leaves she left a trailer, and on top of it was a 7 comb and a cedarwood hive with observation window.
Charlotte circled it. “Beautiful. What is it? Some kind of mobile meth lab?”
Saint talked high-temperature waxing, auto flow combs, and honey keys. “Way simpler than the one I had.”
“You doing okay, Special Agent Brown?” Patch asked.
“I’m okay,” she said, and wondered if that had ever been true for either of them.
“Anything?”
“No.” She had told him about Eli Aaron. How cops in every state had a photo and description that were far out of date. She had spent a week trawling security camera footage in a fifty-mile radius of the church where Eli Aaron had picked up the rosary beads. The sisters could not be sure of a date, only the season. The work was painstaking. She had gotten nowhere at all.
“Is there a chance…all these years?” Patch said.
“There’s a chance.”
“And if you find him.”
“Then he might lead us to Grace.”