The Comfort of Black (35 page)

Billy didn't need to be spoken about. His name didn't deserve the effort of muttering it. She hadn't even had the Billy Dream in over a year, so, like her past, everything was becoming a distant memory, the kind of memory that bled into the realm of
maybe-it-never-happened
. Occasionally, Black would throw a horrible tantrum, the kind involving the lashing out with fists and feet. All kids had such moments, she knew, but when it happened to Black, Hannah saw flashes of her father in her son, and she feared Black had inherited Billy's dark rage, despite Justine's declaration that Hannah was not Billy's daughter. Other times Black would do something so kind or even simply innocent that Hannah knew in her heart her boy had none of Billy's blood in him.

Such were the scales of Black's childhood, tipping ever so slightly one way and then to the other, and only time would truly tell what kind of man Black would grow up to be. All Hannah could do was raise her son with limitless love, compassion, and patience. And hope for the best.

Hannah sighed and looked at her watch. It was just past seven in the evening, late for espresso and cake, but too early for dinner. Tonight, as most nights, they would have a simple dinner at home. There would be two books at bedtime, one in English and one in Italian, and Black would sleep deeply next to her as she lost herself
a bit deeper in her own book. Tonight she would finish
The Great Gatsby
, one she had read twice before. This time, she felt Daisy Buchanan's loneliness so achingly that every word spoken by her in the book could have come from Hannah's own mouth.

Tomorrow she would begin again. One sunrise at a time, hoping the brightness of the day would set them free and not expose them like roaches caught in the open by a kitchen light.

A bruise-gray cloud passed in front of the sun. Hannah was jolted by the sensation of looking out her window onto Puget Sound, waiting for the dark to come. Hating the in-between when the sun was rolling through the last moments of its day. Of longing for the certainty of night.

It would be dark here soon enough.

“Aidan, time to go,” she said.

Black looked over and asked one more time if he could keep the bug.

Hannah said no.

Black frowned, looking for a moment as if he was going to argue, but said nothing. Then he looked back down at the bug, which hadn't moved the entire time, and tilted his head as he considered it. As the cloud passed and the sunlight once again warmed her face, Hannah watched her boy. She felt her body tense as she suddenly envisioned Black deciding to stomp on the bug, smearing it against the ground. That's what Billy would have done. A young Billy would have played with the creature until he got bored, then he would have killed it.

Instead, Black stood, said something to the bug, then ran over to his mother, laughing.

“I told him I could come back tomorrow and play with him some more,” he said.

Hannah exhaled and brought her boy close into her, holding him, running her fingers through his thick hair, and then bending down and kissing the top of his head.