Still, he knew Emma’s absence hadn’t brought this sense of emptiness. He wanted to be with Addie. Too much. He felt split down the middle, with one side, the rational side, telling him to run the opposite direction, while the other side hungered to see Miss Crum, to savor her goodness. But he didn’t dare.Not when a monster crouched inside him.People said he looked like his father. When he shaved, his father’s face looked back at him—the public face his father wore in town. Charles could still remember his father’s gentle touch as he’d run his fingers through Charles’s hair during church service. When Adam Graves wasn’t drinking, he’d been an affectionate man and Charles had loved him with all his being.But the years passed and his father drank more and more, quoting Scripture and beating his family. Many a Sunday following a thrashing with a razor strap the day before, Charles and Sam had sat cautiously in the pew. Until the time when Adam quit attending church and his family saw only his private face—that of a man filled with hate.His father appeared in his mind’s eye, as plain as if he stood before him.
