Getting there early would give him an extra half day of daylight, and though Aimee didn’t like the idea of Jack driving at night on his own, she was too tired to argue.The Louisiana darkness was oppressive. If the night sky had torn itself open and bled ink onto the earth, it still wouldn’t come close to the depth of shadow that swallowed the levies and live oaks. It was liquid darkness: a darkness so heavy it blotted out the brightest headlights. But the weightiness of night was, for Jack, more than appropriate. It was the perfect backdrop to a battalion of unwanted memories; the perfect color for the nightmare that had become his life.He remembered being locked in his room, but he didn’t remember exactly what had pushed Stephen over the edge. Something had happened to reduce his mother into an emotional wreck of a woman, weeping, trying to talk around the hitching in her throat. He could hear them yelling at one another outside his door, but everything was muffled; underwater. Jack made out a few words, words like ‘safety’ and ‘away’ and ‘not right’ and ‘no choice’.
