Chapter 2
The day took on a pristine quality, as if sunlight itself was transformed into a gift.
On the one hand, everything remained the same.
Colin returned to his boring classes. During recess and mealtime, he stayed on the periphery as usual, observing the other children, staying safe.
Just the same, the hours passed in a steady flow of mystery and change.
Colin could not identify precisely why he felt that way, except for how eyes followed him everywhere.
When school ended that afternoon, Adsila stood on the sidewalk beyond the playground.
Another first. She took him to the neighborhood diner.
They had been there once before, on his sixth birthday, when his father had spent the afternoon at what Adsila called the cop bar.
Colin ordered the same meal, cheeseburger and fries and root beer.
Once he finished, she walked him down to the library, pointed at the adult section, and told him, “You don’t need to sneak around anymore. Just go read what you want.”
If he had needed any indication that the day continued along an amazing course, it was here and now.
Colin spent a few minutes walking along several of the aisles.
He had heard the librarians refer to them as the stacks, a name that he liked very much.
All the rows of books rising up higher than he could reach, even if he stood on one of the little ladders on rollers.
Now and then he touched a title imprinted on a book’s spine.
Gently saying hello to friends he had not met.
He selected a book he had browsed through briefly at the end of his last visit.
He took it to an empty table and sat staring at the cover, relishing in the freedom this hour represented.
Colin found himself thinking back over how this remarkable day had started, the way Adsila had stood up for him.
He had no idea what that exchange had meant. Nor, just then, did it matter.
The book’s cover might as well have been a mirror into the past, the way it drew him from the library and sent him back to his favorite memory of his mother.
Seated in the sand, listening to the waves, feeling the soft crystalline mush drip through his fingers and form a castle where they might someday live.
His recollection shifted then, taking him to a place and time he rarely allowed himself to revisit.
Nights after their visits to the Crystal Coast, Colin’s mother always told him the same bedtime story.
About a place called the Sapphire Sea, where everybody loves everyone, and happiness is a way of life.
Mistakes are forgotten and forgiven. Songs are sung for a lifetime.
And dreams are meant to be shared. It always made Colin’s mother sad, talking about this place only she could see.
Yet somehow it drew them closer together.
As if she revealed to him her secret place, the one nestled deep in her heart.
Two and a half hours later, he looked up to find Adsila and Celeste standing over him. “What’s that you have there?”
He closed the book and turned it around so they could see the cover: The Art of Thinking.
“Told you,” Adsila said.
Celeste drove a nearly new Buick SUV. It was the nicest car Colin had ever been in. She watched him rub his hand along the seat. “Do you like cars, Colin?”
He nodded. “A lot.”
“What else do you like? I know you like reading. It sounds like you enjoy math. And I know people confuse you. What makes you happy?”
So many of her questions left him feeling confused and unsettled. Even so, he was able to say, “I’m happy now.”
She glanced over, then back to the road, then looked at him again. But she remained silent until she halted at a stop sign and could give him her full attention. “Why do you think that is? That you’re happy.”
“Because you see me.”
The muscles of her jaw and neck bunched tight. A horn honked behind them. She returned her attention to the road and did not speak again until they pulled up in front of his home.
Adsila and two other people stood by cars parked on the street’s opposite side. Celeste rose from her Buick and walked around to Colin’s door, as if she intended to shield him. She asked her sister-in-law, “You’re certain about what we’ll find?”
“It’s Friday,” Adsila replied. She pointed to Roger Eames’s car. “You take a good look there, you know what’s going on inside that house.”
It was the first time Colin realized Adsila knew why he waited by the front window.
His father’s car was parked with two wheels in the grass, like he had taken aim at the garage’s open door but could not quite bring the vehicle into alignment.
So he left it where it was, partly blocking the curved walk leading to their front door.
On days when Roger Eames could not enter his own garage, Colin knew he would be missing another meal.
Celeste turned and waved to the people waiting across the street. “Let’s get this over with.”
Adsila locked her arms across her middle. “Who’s that woman there?”
“She’s from Child Services. I need a formal witness, in case there’s trouble.” She waved to the other person, a tall man in a police uniform. “Thanks so much, Jerry. I owe you one.”
“No problem.” He smirked at the car, asked, “How do you want to play this?”
“I’m hoping we won’t need you. But if you could stay out here, you know.”
“Got it.”
Celeste turned to Adsila. “You should go.”
“What for? The man is going to know I had a hand in this.”
“Just the same.” She hugged the larger woman. “You did the right thing, bringing me in.”
Adsila remained as she was, her arms held tight to her ribs. “Sheriff Eames took care of my boy when he got in all that trouble. I owe him.” She cast a single glance at Colin. “But his son is special. This boy deserves better than he’s getting.”
“It’s why I’m here.” Celeste stood by the curb and waited until Adsila drove away. She told the others, “Let’s get this over with.”
Colin used the key hanging from the strap he always carried around his neck, along with a tiny ID inside its plastic cover. His father had told him time and again never to lose it, never take it off outside the house. He never did.
Then he opened the door, and the smell hit him.
The odor was strong as a punch to his gut. The pungent stench formed part of his nighttime terrors.
“Stay right here, Colin. Angie, you best record this.” She started inside the house, then turned back and waved to the police officer. “Jerry, do not let this child inside.”
Even when she was so severe she sounded angry, Colin was not afraid of her.
The heat was a harsh element, strong as the odor drifting through the front door.
He heard Celeste call out, asking if anyone was home.
He could see her move swiftly from room to room, followed by the nervous young woman who held her phone up like a shield.
Colin felt the sweat begin to gather and bead on his face and back.
The heat and pungent odor pressed on him, pushing him away from where he stood.
His feet remained planted on the front step, but inside he shifted back. Farther and farther away.
He watched from a far distance as Celeste came rushing back outside, drawing the younger woman by a hand on her shoulder. The social services officer walked at an angle so as to keep her phone aimed behind them as …
Roger Eames stumbled into view. The beast from Colin’s nightmares was revealed now, the sickly stain down the front of his disheveled uniform, the massive hands that grasped at nothing, the rage, the roar.
Celeste yelled, “Jerry!”
The police officer rushed forward and took an iron grip on Roger Eames, halting his forward momentum, shouting at the man to back up, take it easy, hold where he was or be cuffed and stuffed inside the police car.
Colin doubted his father heard anything at all.
Colin felt Celeste place a hand on his shoulder and guide him around.
But all he could see was how his father raged. The beast. At him.
Celeste led him back to her Buick and restarted the engine.
When the cool air struck his face, he began to tremble.
But Celeste had already turned away, talking on her phone now.
By the time a second police car arrived and they subdued his father, Colin was shivering from head to toe.
The sight of three officers forcefully stopping his father from reaching Celeste’s car only made his tremors worse.
Almost like he was freezing. Even though he kept sweating the whole time.