Out of Darkness Read Online Free

over before she remembered to close her eyes. Cari hadn’t closed her eyes, either, but she did it on purpose, staring up open and bold at the ceiling. Or maybe at God beyond it. If anyone could look Him straight in the eye, it was Cari. Beto kept his eyes closed tight for a full second after the prayer ended, and Naomi saw that he held on to Henry until Henry pulled his hand away and started serving his plate.
    Henry forked up a slice of ham from the platter and dribbled a glob of lumpy pepper gravy onto a biscuit. Naomi watched and waited for a complaint. She’d never cooked this kind of food before, and it showed.
    â€œSo,” he said, “how was the first day of school?”
    Beto told him the class was small, not even forty kids. All the students had their own seats, and no one had to sit on cigar boxes like they did back in San Antonio. That put a satisfied smile on Henry’s face. Cari rounded out the description with an impression of their teacher, who sounded formal but kind. She’d given them something called a world book, and then somehow Beto was talking about a pig that ate ants.
    Naomi stopped listening and stared out the window over the sink, which pointed straight at the neighbor’s kitchen window. A heavy-set woman was trying to wash a bottle with one hand while she balanced a red-faced baby on her hip.
    When Naomi looked back, Henry was looking at her. “How about you?” he asked.
    She shrugged. Who knew what would happen once she actually went to the school. The enrollment card with the name Naomi C. Smith—not her name at all—was still inside the pocket of her dress. Henry had taken away the twins’ names, too, registering them as Robbie and Carrie, never mind that her mother had named them Roberto and Caridad in the days before she died. When Naomi asked him about the names on the cards, he’d waved her words away. Nobody would ask for a birth certificate here, he said; people were in and out of the school all the time because of the oil field. It would be simpler, he said, to have everybody enrolled under the same last name.
    â€œSmith” was a slick, faceless thing, a coin worn smooth. Maybe that was why he did not understand that carrying a name was a way of caring for those who’d given it. Naomi Consuelo Corona Vargas. That was her name. She closed her mouth hard around it. Let him handle the silence. Let him decide what to do with it. She stared out the window and watched the dusk turn the white of the neighbor’s house pale purple, then gray.
    â€œY’all got the stuff unpacked right quick,” Henry said.
    Naomi nodded. There hadn’t been much to unpack. But she could still feel the handle of her mother’s guitar case in her hand as she slid it under her bed, way at the back toward the wall. Not that she could hide it from Henry; he’d seen her put it in the back of the truck in San Antonio and then had handed it down to her again in East Texas. She guessed he recognized it, but she couldn’t say for sure.
    Maybe he’d been too busy gloating over the twins’ delight at the neat little oil camp house with its running hot water, electric lights, and fancy appliances. They’d run from room to room, flipping light switches, turning on the taps, bouncing on the beds. It might have been brighter and more modern than the cramped space they’d shared with their grandparents in one of the San Antonio corrals, but for her, the house was too full of Henry. Every fork and spoon and glass in the place had touched his lips. His shaving things sat on the shelf in the bathroom alongside the same aftershave she remembered from years earlier. She saw an oily handprint on the kitchen wall and a wadded handkerchief on the couch in the living room.
    â€œWhat’s for dessert?” Henry said, cutting into her thoughts. “You kids want some dessert?”
    Naomi frowned and went to the pantry. She found a can