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“A few hours,” I answer with a sigh.
“If you want to sleep for a little while, I can drive for a bit.”
“I’ll be fine. Besides, I’m pretty sure your driver’s license has expired, and with our luck, you’d get pulled over and arrested ten miles down the road.”
He snorts but doesn’t argue.
I reverse out the way we came, taking one long, wistful look at the view before we’re back on the road, heading south. The music plays softly, and I hum along as I take in the sights. As much as I never wanted to come back, I can’t deny how beautiful the place is. I guess I’d forgotten. It’s funny how one black mark can taint everything like that.
“So, you grew up here?” Calix asks, breaking the silence.
“Kinda. I didn’t live here as such but it was where we went when we needed to get away from the world and reconnect or just have some down time. We’re heading to my family vacation home.”
He turns sharply to look at me. “And you think the best place to hide out is in one of your parents houses? What if they decided to use the place when we’re there? he snaps incredulously.
“My parents are dead, Calix,” I tell him, keeping my tone neutral. “So, unless there is a local ghost whisperer around that I don’t know about, I don’t think you need to worry about running into them any time soon.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re right to be concerned. You don’t know me from Adam.”
“No, I’m sorry about your parents. I lost mine too.”
I hold back theI knowthat’s on the tip of my tongue.
“Were you close?”
“No.”
I feel his eyes on me, so I look over at him briefly.
“We were not that kind of family.”
“What kind of family?”
“The good kind,” he says, then turns to look out of the window.
I want to ask him a dozen more questions, but then turnabout would be fair play, and I don’t have the brain capacity to keep my lies straight right now.
“Then, as callous as this sounds, you’re better off without them.”
“You assume I’m not like them?” He laughs, a bitter sound that, instead of scaring me, makes me want to wrap my arms around him.
“I never assume. I judge solely on a person’s actions.”
“You do remember picking me up from outside a high-security prison after I served twenty years for murder, right?” he asks me sarcastically.
“Not all murderers are bad people.”
He huffs out a laugh. “I think God might disagree with you there.”
“Do you think every man who goes to church and prays is a good man? Is that how you decide if someone is righteous or not? Because, let me tell you now, the world is made up of a vast array of colors, so many shades and tones that it can blind you. What it’s not is black and white. Tell me, who is the saint, and who is the sinner? A man of the cloth who touches little boys, or the man who stabs him through the heart without remorse for touching his son?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it? We all start down this dark path somewhere. Some people, like you, are born into this world. You take your first steps on this dark path, but others are people like me. We ended up here because there was simply no light in our world anymore.
“There is comfort in the darkness. An expectation of depravity and desperation. It doesn’t sneak in and surprise you like it does in the light. We know about the monsters under our beds, Calix. It’s in the little kid’s handbook. But nobody ever warns us about the monsters that live in the light. The kind of evil that can charm the birds from the trees with one hand while snapping someone’s neck with the other.”
