She asked about his mom, a woman she’d never heard him mention. He told her about his childhood, of the uncles who had raised him and why. He didn’t have to go so far as to tell her about Bell hiding a potential murder weapon for her to get the gist of his complicated relationship with his mother, for Randie to understand Bell and her petulance, the danger of a grown woman who felt she was owed shit that deep down she knew she’d never have. Randie’s parents were still living, divorced, but both in DC, and there was distance there on all sides, she said. “They must be proud of you,” Darren said. Randie grew quiet again, and this time there was a note of melancholy in her voice when she changed the subject and asked why he was in Jefferson. He told her about the missing kid and the tangled aspects of the case. “His dad’s a killer, a known member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.” He told her about Hopetown and the little bit of history he understood so far, the mix of Negroes and Caddo Indians living together for generations. Randie said she’d like to film it. “Before it’s gone.” And this saddened Darren so much that he opened up the room’s minibar, hoping it had been replenished at some point during his absence today. But by then they’d been talking awhile and Randie said the sun was rising in Florence. Somehow his body felt more connected to her room in Italy, where he’d been picturing her for the past hour and a half and where it was just after dawn, and he lost his taste for the liquor. After she described the rush of gold that was lighting up the Arno at that very moment, this country boy tried to best Europe with a description of the sunrise from the back porch of his family homestead in Camilla, how dawn started in the pine tops in the surrounding woods, light the color of butter freshly churned eventually rolling down to brighten the East Texas thicket, the rising sun making diamonds of the dewdrops on the lush green lawn of the back eight acres, where on any day of the week you might see a fawn poke its white-capped head out from the trees, eyes a glassy green, its black button nose sniffing at the same honey-sweet scent of wet grass and pine as you, or you might hear prairie warblers in the trees or find a bluebird perched on the porch railing if you were lucky.

“I’d like to see it someday.”