Chap­ter 10 of All the Col­ors of the Dark begins with Saint rid­ing her bicy­cle down Main Street in the small town of Mon­ta Clare, nes­tled deep with­in a val­ley and sur­round­ed by lush, vibrant green­ery. The town, with its wind­ing streets, feels like a tran­quil escape, yet as she ped­als toward the Mey­er estate, Saint is aware of the shift­ing atmos­phere. The warm hues of the grand homes lin­ing the street momen­tar­i­ly cap­ti­vate her, with their well-main­tained gar­dens full of bloom­ing Vir­ginia blue­bells and but­ter­fly weed. As the incline grows steep­er, how­ev­er, her effort begins to take its toll. The bike, which once served as a means of free­dom, becomes more of a bur­den, and Saint decides to aban­don it. She opts instead to hike the rest of the way up the hill, her mind full of con­cern for her friend Misty, Patch’s daugh­ter, whose well-being is now her pri­ma­ry focus.

Reach­ing the estate, Saint is struck by the stark con­trast between the grandios­i­ty of the Mey­er house and the emo­tion­al tur­moil she feels with­in. The house stands tall with its stuc­co façade and lead­ed glass win­dows, offer­ing a sense of wealth and pow­er. How­ev­er, this exter­nal dis­play of afflu­ence does lit­tle to ease the ten­sion inside Saint’s chest as she anx­ious­ly won­ders about Misty’s con­di­tion. She approach­es the front door with a mix­ture of hope and dread, only for it to open unex­pect­ed­ly, reveal­ing Mr. Mey­er. His exhaust­ed demeanor, cou­pled with the glazed, unfo­cused look in his eyes, imme­di­ate­ly tells Saint that this is a man weighed down by immense emo­tion­al bur­den. Despite their pri­or rela­tion­ship, the inter­ac­tion between them is dis­tant, and it becomes appar­ent that Mr. Mey­er is not able to con­nect with the present real­i­ty of his daughter’s life or her rela­tion­ship with Saint.

The brief exchange that fol­lows is emo­tion­al­ly heavy, filled with a sense of detach­ment. Mr. Mey­er, acknowl­edg­ing Saint only in the most indif­fer­ent way, con­firms that Misty is rest­ing but offers no fur­ther infor­ma­tion. His cold­ness is not born of mal­ice but rather of an inabil­i­ty to process the depth of what has hap­pened. His sug­ges­tion that Saint return home seems to stem from a place of exhaus­tion, both phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al. Saint stands there, caught between the impos­ing archi­tec­ture of the house and the weight of loss that seems to hang in the air. Her thoughts race as she remem­bers Patch Macauley’s sac­ri­fices to pro­tect his daugh­ter and how his actions reflect­ed the fierce love he had for her. She can­not help but draw a par­al­lel between Patch’s will­ing­ness to go to great lengths to shield Misty and the pro­found sad­ness she sees in Mr. Meyer’s eyes—a man who, despite hav­ing wealth, can­not seem to pro­tect the ones he loves from the harsh real­i­ties of life.

Saint’s mind con­tin­ues to race as she con­sid­ers the state of things. She feels a deep sense of urgency to speak with Misty, but Mr. Mey­er, unmoved by her pleas, insists that she wait until Misty has had time to rest. The dis­missal feels like a final blow, the door between them clos­ing with a soft click that echoes loud­ly in Saint’s mind. It’s a moment that forces her to con­front a painful truth: wealth and mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions, no mat­ter how impres­sive or grand, do not pro­tect against emo­tion­al dev­as­ta­tion. The cold­ness of Mr. Meyer’s response fur­ther high­lights the dis­tinc­tion between out­ward appear­ances and the emo­tion­al iso­la­tion that can exist even with­in the walls of a grand home. His fear and anx­i­ety, though unspo­ken, are pal­pa­ble, and they fill the space between them, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for Saint to breathe.

As the door shuts, Saint is left stand­ing on the doorstep, con­sumed by a mix of emo­tions. She feels the heav­i­ness of the Mey­er family’s grief and the sharp sting of their emo­tion­al dis­tance. The pal­pa­ble fear in Mr. Meyer’s demeanor lingers in the air, and Saint finds her­self grap­pling with the pro­found sense of help­less­ness that has tak­en over. The chap­ter not only high­lights the con­trast between wealth and emo­tion­al loss but also reveals the com­plex­i­ties of the rela­tion­ships with­in the Mey­er fam­i­ly. In this moment, Saint’s per­son­al tur­moil inter­twines with the Mey­er family’s grief, cre­at­ing a poignant scene filled with unre­solved ten­sion and the painful real­iza­tion that even in the face of great priv­i­lege, emo­tion­al scars are not eas­i­ly healed.

The chap­ter con­cludes with a pow­er­ful reminder of the fragili­ty of human con­nec­tions. It under­scores how the expe­ri­ence of loss and the fear that accom­pa­nies it can cut across social and finan­cial bound­aries. Saint’s desire to help Misty, to pro­vide her with com­fort and sup­port, con­trasts sharply with Mr. Meyer’s appar­ent emo­tion­al shut­down, leav­ing the young girl to reflect on the deep­er mean­ing of loss, love, and the human con­di­tion. What becomes evi­dent is that wealth and sta­tus are no shield against the heartache that life can bring. The emo­tion­al dis­tance between Saint and Mr. Mey­er, despite their shared his­to­ry, marks a key moment in this chap­ter, push­ing Saint to fur­ther con­front the com­plex­i­ties of fam­i­ly, grief, and hope as she nav­i­gates her own emo­tion­al jour­ney in a world filled with uncer­tain­ty and sor­row.