THEY REACH THE RIVERBANK. He lets go of her hand and switches off the flashlight, and for ten seconds that stretch like a hundred the night blacks her vision. She feels on the cusp of panic until the edges of a knowable picture begin to emerge, half-familiar sensations, beauty of detail and scent. Thick ankle-high grass and damp loamy soil underfoot. The tarry water flowing by with its mica flecks and earth whisperings. The long shadows of elderberry shrubs on which clusters of tiny blue-black berries impose islands of bewitching lacquered darkness.
An owl hoots warily in the distance. And she recalls her mother telling her how some indigenous cultures believe that the elder tree offers protection against evil and witches.
Sure.
Sam’s been staring at the river, but now he turns to look at her. A facet of light appears on one cheek; she has no idea where it’s coming from, but for some reason it moves her deeply.
It’s then that she hears herself asking him the first of the questions she’s brought.
He tells her. Tells the whole thing, and when he’s done she speaks about extenuating circumstances, questions of self-defense. But he is reluctant to talk about excuses or ways out. What he needs to do is draw from his acid pool of self-recrimination a portrait of his own flawed conscience, a drawing intended to posit that, according to some moral proof of his own reckoning, inside the heart of his violent mistake must live the real person.
Which, if true—the X-ray correct and the guilt earned—then inside the heart of the real person can live only the violent mistake.
She leans closer and kisses the mark of light on his cheek, the unconscious brand of his goodness.