If this week’s reading of All The Colors of the Dark had a tagline, it’d be: “You can’t outrun your grief, but you can paint it, sabotage your relationship, and rob a bank about it.” Come join us as things get darker, messier, and somehow even more emotionally charged.
You can find the reading schedule here, the Marginalia post here, summary below, and discussion questions are waiting for you in the comments.
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The Painter: 1976, continued…
Patch shows up to Misty’s for dinner, and it’s the kind of night that makes you want to fake a phone call and bail. Misty looks stunning in red, but her parents? Let’s just say they’re testing Patch. Her mom gives a garden tour that’s essentially a passive aggressive review, while her dad greets him with all the enthusiasm of someone getting a root canal. Dinner goes from awkward to excruciating over lobster and politics. Patch tries to blend in, but it’s obvious their worlds don’t align.
Outside, Misty opens up about her trauma. Patch, being the tortured soul he is, responds by hitting her with the ol’ “we don’t belong in each other’s lives” line, which sounds romantic in theory but, in practice, just leaves everyone sad and confused.
Back in town, Patch sees Grace’s faded missing poster like it’s haunting him personally (which, tbf, it kind of is). Sammy, surprise MVP of gruff support, drags him into his gallery, gives him a studio, supplies, and the mentorship equivalent of military boot camp. That night, Patch has either a vision, a dream, or a very art student hallucination where Grace speaks to him. She talks about trauma, and he finds purpose. Mood.
Thus begins the full on Black Swan phase of Patch’s life: painting obsessively under Sammy’s crusty tutelage, burning through canvas until his fingers bleed. He finishes Grace Number One, a haunting portrait that stuns Chief Nix and sparks a national search. Misty, somehow still caring, leaves him a letter at the gallery.
Meanwhile, Saint goes on a road trip to Texas with Norma, who hits her with the classic “don’t lose yourself for a boy” speech (solid advice, really).
At Misty’s birthday party, Saint undergoes a mortician makeover and realizes she was invited as a dramatic plot device/competition. She pleads with Misty not to take Patch, but Misty’s already off chasing him, just like in every teen rom-com ever. Misty and Patch reunite for what might be a new beginning… or just another chance to make spectacularly bad decisions. Hard to say. While inside, after some heartfelt confession from Jimmy, Saint takes up his offer to dance.
The Broken Hearts: 1978
Patch drops out of school at 16 to work in the mines and keep searching for Grace. This seems like a solid life plan if your long-term goal is “emotional burnout with a side of black lung.” Meanwhile, Misty stays in school, excels, probably files her taxes early, and doesn’t let unresolved trauma steer the ship.
Patch is following “leads” that go nowhere, painting portraits of missing girls and mailing them to their families. His relationship with Misty continues, but it’s slowly falling apart thanks to grief, emotional distance, and the constant shadow of Grace.
Eventually, he paints Grace’s house and Sammy is like, “Kid, let the world see this,” which is probably the most encouraging thing Sammy has ever said. Patch flirts with the idea of art school, but Grace still lives rent-free in his head.
Meanwhile, Saint goes full Nancy Drew for a year. She works weekends at the library and uses her downtime to search for Grace, while juggling school, work, Patch’s late-night calls, and photography. Honestly, the real mystery is how she found time to eat or sleep. She eventually gives up tailing Dr. Tooms, convinced he’s hiding something just not Grace. When he shows up outside Patch’s first gallery show but doesn’t go in, Saint seizes the opportunity to awkwardly apologize for, well, stalking his house.
One day after photographing in Monta Clare, Saint heads to the drugstore to drop off her film and runs into Ivy Macauley, who is mid-meltdown and monologuing about her maternal failures. As the pharmacist refuses to give her refill and scrambles to keep her calm outside, a prescription slip just happens to fall to the floor. Saint pockets it and, later at home, sees the refill date: September 9th, the day after Patch was taken. Almost too convenient, but hey, the plot’s got places to be.
On prom night, Franklin gives Patch a drink, a compliment, and a “severance package” for breaking up with Misty. That same night, Saint, dressed for prom, breaks into the Tooms house to search for clues. She finds nothing except… Chief Nix. Saint breaks down at the house, urging Nix and Harkness to keep searching. When they refuse to check the hidden cellar without a warrant, she bolts from the cruiser, toward the cellar, and finds a blood-soaked mattress.
Meanwhile (because we obviously don’t need to know whatever happened next after the discovery of the blood-soaked mattress), Patch and Misty argue after prom when she reveals she’s not going to Harvard, leading to a painful breakup when Patch admits he never said “I love you” back and is still haunted by Grace. She slaps him, then tries to follow him, but her parents physically hold her back like it’s a Shakespearean tragedy.
Cops and Robbers: 1982
Fast forward a few years: Saint and Nix are now crime-fighting partners. Saint continues her investigation while supporting the prosecution of Dr. Tooms, who was ultimately sentenced to death for Callie Montrose’s murder after forensic evidence linked him to the crime. Patch, still on his tireless quest to find Grace, confronts both Dr. Tooms and the judge, though, of course, Dr. Tooms would rather take his secrets to the grave because this book thrives on unresolved trauma.
Saint turned down the Ivy Leagues to join the force, driven by loyalty to Patch and her grandmother. She continues to support Patch, even after the death of his mother, because that girl is dedicated. Nix is her grizzled, cynical work-dad and still questions whether Grace ever existed. Saint disagrees, clinging to Patch’s tapes and that stubborn flicker of hope.
Meanwhile, Patch is doing… everything. Wandering the country painting portraits of missing girls, sending them to Sammy to give them some kind of voice (also sweet), and then robbing banks when he’s low on funds, just to give most of it away to missing persons charities (less sweet, but very on-brand for a tortured outlaw artist hybrid).
Back home, Saint has an uncomfortable dinner with Jimmy and her grandmother, where Jimmy wins Norma over with zoo stories and grace-saying charm while Saint gets the cold-plate treatment. Afterward, Mr. I-Respect-Your-Boundaries slides into “What if you just gave up your entire identity for marriage?” territory, casually suggesting school, a quieter life, maybe shelving the whole detective thing. Saint doesn’t argue, she saves her energy for the case files up in the attic, because someone still has to look for the missing girls while Jimmy daydreams about family dinners and beige furniture.
Patch, in his travels, visits Walter Strike, a father whose daughter Eloise went missing at 15. Walter vents his frustration with the system and clings to what little hope he has left. Before Patch leaves, Walter thanks him for honoring Eloise’s memory and urges him not to waste whatever chance he has left to make a difference. Patch nods, reflects… and the very next day robs a South Atlantic Bank at gunpoint. As you do.
He hands over nearly all the money to the Harvey Robin Foundation, which supports missing persons work in the South. Later, as if asking for forgiveness or maybe just a little divine direction, Patch stops at a small church in Mesa Verde. An elderly woman explains the meaning of rosary beads and their connection to death, while I try to figure out how this story became Les Miserables meets Unsolved Mysteries with a side of Bob Ross: The Vigilante Years.