CHAPTER1
Rocky Mount, NC
November, 2005
By the time he turned six, Colin spent a lot of time at the living room window. He watched the cars come and go, traced designs on the glass made by the mix of sunlight and dust, and waited for his father to return home. Those very first signs of his father’s mood were crucial.
Soon after his mother’s death when he was four, Colin started reading. His father had increasingly become silent and remote, and Colin found comfort in the mystery of letters. He learned mostly through watching education shows meant for children twice his age. By five he had read all the children’s books available. By six he was reading everything he could get his hands on and was sneaking books on mathematics from the public library.
Their housekeeper was a heavyset woman named Adsila, whose mother was Cherokee and her father black. Adsila was as quiet as his father, who was sheriff of EdgecombeCounty. Colin’s father had done something to keep Adsila’s son from going to prison. Her loyalty to Sheriff Roger Eames was total.
The summer before Colin entered school, Adsila began taking him to the public library four blocks from their home. The Braswell Memorial Library had opened three years earlier and still shone like a new penny. Colin loved those visits more than anything. Adsila would lead him into the children’s section, then sit at a table in the Periodicals where she could keep an eye on him and read magazines for two hours. Adsila was fully aware of how Colin took books from the adult section. As long as he remained where she could see him, Adsila seemed unconcerned. Colin could have stayed there for years, surrounded by all these new friends.
His mother seemed very close to him then. Brenda Eames had often read her son to sleep, and occasionally Colin heard her now, whispering in that singsong manner she had used when he was still very young. Other times he sat and thought of their happiest moments together, days spent on the Outer Banks, Roger standing in the waves surf casting, his wife seated next to where Colin built sand castles. Brenda Eames could spend hours watching the ocean. She always came home smiling.
One day several weeks into June, Adsila told him, “I seen you in there, doing something on your daddy’s computer when he’s off working.”
Colin had no idea how to respond. Two years after she entered their home, his relationship with Adsila remained a mystery. The midday sun turned the sidewalk into a brilliant mirror. He walked alongside her, and remained silent.
Adsila continued, “You need to ask his permission.”
The words froze him. Colin stood in the heat and squinted up at her. “I can’t.”
Adsila was a handsome woman, in a strong and somber way. She inspected him for a time, then asked, “What is it you do online for all those hours on end?”
“I go to Davidson School.”
“And do what, exactly?”
“It’s called Plan Day.”
“You mean, Play Day.”
Colin saw no reason to correct her. “Will you tell him?”
Adsila studied him a moment longer, then started on, “Let’s get out of the heat.”
Over the past two years Colin’s father had undergone a gradual transition that worried Adsila and terrified his son. Colin always took the same position when he heard the car pull into the garage. His father was a big man, well over six feet and heavy with hard muscle and a harder life. When he was sober, his father’s tread held a dancer’s grace, quick and natural.
On the bad days, Colin slipped up beside the opening where the parlor met the hall running the length of the house. Standing half in and half out of the kitchen. Waiting to see if his father headed for the cabinet beside the refrigerator where he always kept a half-gallon bottle of Maker’s Mark. Something about those bad afternoons left Roger carrying a barely controlled fury.
On the worst days, Roger stopped at a bar frequented by off-duty police. Then he arrived late and stumbled his way through the normal motions of crossing the garage and locking away his weapons. He came in and ignored his dinner in the warming oven and took out the bottle and a glass. The first drink went down before he even seated himself at the table. He would sit there and glare at the opposite wall, muttering disconnected words about how the region was turning into a place he no longer recognized. Those nights, Colin scampered upstairs, often not venturing down for dinner. Anight’s hunger was far better than confronting his father in a rage.
As his father’s drinking came to dominate most evenings, Adsila began staying longer. She was comfortable with word less hours, drifting through her housework with scarcely a sound. His father seemed to find an odd solace in her silent presence. On occasion Roger talked politics with her—politics in their hometown, politics at the state level, or the awful government in Washington. Adsila often hummed a tuneless note, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, saying almost nothing.
Colin’s entire world changed the year he entered school. It happened on the nineteenth of September, the hottest autumn day anyone could remember. When Colin thought back on it later, it seemed impossible that so much could have been compressed between one rising and setting of the sun.
The events began as soon as Colin entered the kitchen. He was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when his father turned from spooning coffee into the machine and said, “I’m making us breakfast. Where is Adsila?” When Colin pointed to the washing machine running in the garage, Roger said, “Go tell her to join us. I’ve got something you both need to hear.”
Colin remained where he was, watching this man who looked like his father and wore his father’s uniform. But the words did not make sense. His father never did anything in the kitchen except eat and drink. He never spoke to anyone at the start of his day. Putting on his game face was how his father had once described it over a glass of Maker’s Mark. Getting ready for whatever the streets threw his way.
“Did you hear what I said?” He used what Colin called his cop’s voice. Hard and definite. “Tell her she needs to get in here on the double.”
The laundry room was located in what once had served as a bathroom for workers. Their home was surrounded by almost two acres of lawn. Every day he wasn’t on duty, right through the winter months, Roger Eames was out trimming and weeding and mowing. When Colin entered, he found Adsila standing by the ironing board, watching. He relayed the message and raced back into the kitchen. “She’s coming.”
“Make yourself useful, why don’t you. Get out the butter. You want some eggs? Sure you do, you’re a skinny little runt, you need to put on some weight.”
Colin squeezed himself into the corner between the fridge and the sink and watched as his father used a fork to swish the eggs around the frying pan. Colin knew the Teflon coating might get scratched, but he didn’t say a word. When his father was in a rage, going unnoticed was safest. Only his father didn’t look angry. Colin decided he had no idea what his father’s mood might be.
