A half hour later Sammy stopped by, and the three gathered as he set a large brass and leather case down on the counter, flipped the lock, and lifted the solid pine lid.
Charlotte peered inside, blonde hair falling over eyes smoked with shadow.
“You bought her a shotgun?” Saint said.
“Boss and Co., London. 1912. Story goes it was used to dispatch an Irishman over gambling debts.”
Charlotte let loose a long whistle as she held it up and cocked it. “It’s just…it’s just perfection. Thank you, kindly, Samuel.”
“It’ll keep the boys away,” Sammy said, and winked at Saint.
“Or draw the right kind in,” Charlotte said, and winked at Saint.
“And then you can arrest them,” Patch said, and winked at Saint.
“Technically it’s just a blink when you do it,” Saint said.
Patch frowned.
Saint had to head back to Kansas, so they made the eighty-mile drive just father and daughter, Charlotte talking of the party, about some kid called Dallas who Patch took an immediate dislike to.
“I mean, he’s got three girlfriends already, but they won’t put out, so I figure I’ve got a real shot, and if that fails, now I can take an actual shot,” Charlotte said, as they rode the four-lane highway, a whisper of trees all that cut the gray.
He watched her speak animatedly. His touchstone, his anchor to every good thing. After the piece ran in The New York Times the letters had reached the point where Sammy threatened the mailman with legal action, so they were redirected to the Mad House, where Charlotte continued to collate them, vowing to reply to each, even just to tell them her father would not be painting for the foreseeable. The story had been picked up by several news outlets and crawled its way from New York along the coast and across much of the country.
Before they left, they had stopped by Misty’s grave, and Patch had left Charlotte there with her mother while he walked the perimeter of St. Raphael’s. On his return he saw her eyes red, offered her his hand, which she shied from. “A bird shat in my eye,” she said.
They parked in the lot and walked through the gates of the Culpepper Zoo.
In crisp sunshine he watched as she unfurled a map and took a pen from her pocket and marked them a route that took in every enclosure, for a moment allowing herself to be a kid.
He bought her feed for the farm animals, and she held her small hand flat as the goats came to the fence. In the soft hue of the aquarium she pressed her face to the glass at the passing of a clown loach. As she pushed open the heavy door and led her father into the reptile house he began to feel it. The heat crept up, his skin cool and damp.
He tried to shake it off, to reason away the flight of his pulse as too much coffee. He managed to smile for her, but reached out and clutched the slick stone wall to keep himself upright. He pressed a hand to his chest, then his neck.
He heard her call him to come see the snakes, but his muscles tightened. He cursed under his breath, zeroed in on her and the way she watched the reptiles as he tried to find his center. It grew worse, his hands beginning to shake as his body fought against him. He saw her as he closed his eyes. Grace’s face so present and real.
The last thing he heard was the cry of his daughter on her birthday.