AFTER OUR BREAK FOR lunch, we kept walking. I took thousands of photos. We ended up at another great place for dinner, then went to a little bar.

We’d had such a great time all day, but once we sat down to have a drink, Crow seemed nervous. For such a laid-back guy, that fidgeting was really strange.

We sat in the semi-darkness. A few small lights illuminated the room, but most of the light came from the flickering candle on our table.

“You’re an amazing girl, Fay,” he told me.

I smiled, but something about his tone made me think there was more behind his words than simply paying me a compliment. Did he want to break up?

But we’d just gotten everything sorted out. Things were so perfect. Surely, he wouldn’t have given me the necklace if he wanted to break things off this quickly.

“Thanks,” I said, not sure how to respond.

He had more to say, so I waited. There was no point rushing Crow, and if I kept talking, he might get distracted.

Maybe I should keep talking. Maybe I should distract him from what he wanted to say, because something told me it’d be no good.

His hand squeezed tight around his wine glass, so tight I worried he’d crush it and cut himself. Violin music played in the background, music so melancholy that it added to my bad feelings. The day had been so perfect that I wanted nothing to destroy it.

“What is it?” I asked.

He didn’t look at me but stared at the wine in his glass. In this light, that wine looked almost black.

“I need to tell you something. I’ve been thinking about it all day. We need to start out honest with each other, and if you change your mind about me after I tell you this, then walk away. I’ll understand.”

I nodded.

I couldn’t imagine anything Crow could tell me that would make me want to walk away. If he’d done bad things, they’d been justified. I knew him well enough to know that.

“Growing up, things were pretty tough,” he said. He was still staring at that glass, swirling the wine in small circles.

I didn’t talk. I’d give him as long as he needed. He wasn’t the kind of guy to open up easily. Man, I wished they’d shut off those damn violins, though.

“My dad was a drunk. Mom died when we were kids, and there was just the three of us: Dad, me, and my little sister, Cindy. He started drinking when Mom died, maybe before that, even. I was too young to even really remember her. But he was a nasty drunk.”

My stomach clenched. I knew there’d been shadows in Crow’s past, but I hated to think of him being abused.

“He’d always been rough on me, but I could handle a beating. I hated him for it, and I vowed I’d get out of there one day, but I couldn’t leave Cindy behind. I figured I’d put up with it, then, when she was old enough, the two of us would escape. I’d tell her stories about the little house we’d have. She wanted to have pretty things around, things that wouldn’t get smashed up.”

All I could do was nod. I wanted to reach out for him, put my arms around him, but the way we sat made that difficult. Crow seemed like he was a whole other world away, anyway. If I interrupted him now, even to give him comfort, he might crawl back inside that shell and never talk about this.

“When I was sixteen, he started getting worse. He’d always left Cindy alone before that, but she was growing up. He got this idea in his head that she was running around. He wanted to control her. She was a good kid, no different from any other girls her age, but when she started wearing makeup and dressing like a teenager, he told her she was a whore. A few times, he went over the edge. Screaming at her was bad enough, but when he raised his hand to her, I’d jump in.”

He finally raised that wine glass to his lips and took a sip. Then he sighed.

“I wanted to kill him, Fay. I had nothing but hate in my heart for that man, and if I’d thought I could get away with it, I’d have cut his throat and thrown the body in the river.”

He looked up at me then, and all the pain showed in his eyes.

If I could, I’d wipe away that pain. I wanted to take every bad thing in his life and replace it with good.

“Are you shocked?” he asked. “Maybe I shouldn’t...”

“You wanted to protect your sister. That’s not a bad thing,” I told him.

“I thought about taking Cindy and running, but I had no way to support her. She’d have been taken away from me and put in a foster home, and I wasn’t sure which would be worse. All I could do was protect her. Then, one day, I’d been at a friend’s place. Cindy wasn’t home, either. We both tried to stay out of that place as much as we could. It sure wasn’t a home. I got back and thought the house was empty. I grabbed a Coke out of the fridge and was about to head to my room when I saw him. He’d fallen to the floor, all curled up in a ball. He struggled to call out to me, but the words were just a gurgle.”

He stopped and took a swig of his wine. A big swig. Then he stared at something over my head.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” he said. “Do you want me to go on?”

“If it helps.” I reached out for his hand, hoping I could give him some strength.

“I knew I should’ve called an ambulance. He was dying, and he couldn’t get up off the floor. I froze. That man had done so many terrible things, and I’d thought about killing him so many times. It seemed that fate had stepped in to do what I couldn’t. I just kept thinking that if he got help, one day he’d destroy us. One day Cindy would get a boyfriend, and then he’d go mental. The terrible things he’d done were just a shadow of what was to come....”

His hand tightened around mine.

“I didn’t help him, Fay. I left that house and didn’t come home for hours.” He gulped. The sound seemed to fill the room. “When I got back, he’d been dead for hours. I rang the ambulance then.”

“You did what you had to,” I said.

“I caused his death. I’ve tried to justify it. I’ve told myself that I could’ve stayed out for a few hours longer and I’d have never had to make that decision, but in the end, I could’ve saved him, and I didn’t.”

Crow looked up then. He looked me straight in the eyes. He wanted to read what I was thinking, searching my face for any sign of rejection.

“I’m not sure what you want from me,” I said. “But I’m not going to walk away. You protect the ones you love.”

I smiled at him. I needed him to know that I’d stand by him.

“She didn’t think like that,” he said.

“She?”

“Cindy. She knew, Fay. She knew I’d been home. That can of Coke sat on the coffee table near his body, and she worked it all out. He was her father, and she loved him in spite of everything. She’s a much better person than I am. She went away, and I never heard from her again.”

Crow kept sipping his wine, and those violins didn’t let up. I wanted to reassure him, to make things better, but I wasn’t even sure where to start. I could only keep holding his hand.

“You’ve never heard from her at all? Maybe, now that she’s older, you should try to get in touch.”

He shook his head and put his glass down. “We should get back to the hotel,” he said.

I guessed that meant the conversation was over, but as we left the bar, I put my arm around him and pulled him tight. Crow might have a darkness within him, but, like I’d always thought, he was a good person.