8. Innocence
She radiated innocence. From the first time he saw her, he knew. He knew that she was this hick town's innocent angel that they wanted to protect from someone like him.
That boyfriend of hers. He was innocent too. They were the ultimate couple of the 50s. They went together like peas and carrots. He could even picture their future together if he tried hard enough. He would come home from a nice job to her and their two kids, a boy and a girl, of course. Very Ward and June if you asked him.
He was different. He was anything but innocence. Everyone knew that. She had refused to believe it. She saw good in everyone. Even him.
That innocence had been lost when he had seen her after those years. Lost somewhere behind the mask she put up for everyone. Hiding behind her false happiness.
It killed him to see her that way. The guilt seemed to radiate from her as she stood there in her grandmother's driveway. Then, a flash of that innocence he'd always known had re-emerged when she saw him. It was there until he pulled up. He seemed to take her innocence away and she had put that mask back on when he came around.
She would always be that innocent girl to him. She always was around him. Just lost and confused, trying to make things right. She had come to him at Truncheon, there he saw it again. That innocence that radiated her like white light. She thought she had lost it, but she never had. Even when she tried to naïvely tell herself that she loved that other man. The one that always took away that innocence.
With time, he knew, that innocent, small town girl, would find her way back to him. He would wait forever for his innocent angel that always brought light to his dark side.