Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  Darkness My Old Friend

  Lisa Unger

  The New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Lies and Fragile returns to The Hollows, delivering a thriller that explores matters of faith, memory, and sacrifice.

  After giving up his post at the Hollows Police Department, Jones Cooper is at loose ends. He is having trouble facing a horrible event from his past and finding a second act. He's in therapy. Then, on a brisk October morning, he has a visitor. Eloise Montgomery, the psychic who plays a key role in Fragile, comes to him with predictions about his future, some of them dire.

  Michael Holt, a young man who grew up in The Hollows, has returned looking for answers about his mother, who went missing many years earlier. He has hired local PI Ray Muldune and psychic Eloise Montgomery to help him solve the mystery that has haunted him. What he finds might be his undoing.

  Fifteen-year-old Willow Graves is exiled to The Hollows from Manhattan when six months earlier she moved to the quiet town with her novelist mother after a bitter divorce. Willow is acting out, spending time with kids that bring out the worst in her. And when things get hard, she has a tendency to run away – a predilection that might lead her to dark places.

  Set in The Hollows, the backdrop for Fragile, this is the riveting story of lives set on a collision course with devastating consequences. The result is Lisa Unger's most compelling fiction to date.

  Lisa Unger

  Darkness My Old Friend

  The second book in the Hollows series, 2011

  For

  Joe, Tara, and Violet

  I am blessed that my brother is also my dear friend,

  That I can think of his wife as my sister,

  And that their darling daughter is a lovely flower

  in the garden of all of our lives.

  part one gone

  “Fools,” said I, “you do not know

  Silence like a cancer grows.”

  – SIMON & GARFUNKEL,

  “The Sound of Silence”

  prologue

  Failure wasn’t a feeling; it was a taste in his mouth, an ache at the base of his neck. It was a frantic hum in his head. The reflection of failure resided in his wife’s tight, fake smile when he came home at the end of the day. He felt the creeping grip of it in her cold embrace. She didn’t even know the worst of it. No one did. But they could all smell it, couldn’t they? It was like booze on his breath.

  Traffic on the highway stuttered. He tried to breathe through the trapped-in-a-box feeling that was expanding in his chest, that too-familiar tightness of frustration. He looked around at his fellow commuters, wondering why none of them had taken to screaming, or banging on their dashboards. How did they do it day after day? Killing themselves for pointless jobs that ultimately lined someone else’s pockets. Then they sat in an endless snaking line only to get home to a ceaseless litany of needs. Why? Why did so many people live like this?

  This weekend is your very last chance to take advantage of the absolutely rock-bottom prices at Ed’s Automart. No job? Bad credit? Nothing to trade in? No problem. We can help!

  Kevin Carr snapped off the radio, that schizophrenic rant of criticism and demands. Eat this. Buy that. Need to lose weight? Whiten your teeth? Bacon double cheeseburger. Personal trainer. Foreclosure auction on Sunday. But the silence that followed was almost worse, because all he could hear then was the sound of his own thoughts-which sounded suspiciously like the radio, only there was no “off” button.

  Around him the herd of commuters-some carpoolers, but mostly solitary drivers like himself-gripped their wheels and stared ahead. No one looked happy, did they? People weren’t singing along with the radio or smiling to themselves. Plenty of people were hands-free talking, gesticulating in their conversations as though there were someone sitting beside them. But they were alone. Did people look gray and angry? Did they seem unhealthy, dissatisfied? Or was he just projecting? Was he simply seeing in the world around him a portrait of his own inner life?

  He pulled into the right lane quickly, without signaling, cutting off some asshole in a late-model BMW. The other driver made a show of squealing his brakes and leaning on his horn. Kevin looked into the mirror to see the guy flipping him off; the man in the Beemer was yelling, even though he must have known that no one else could hear him. Kevin felt a rush of malicious glee. It was the first time he had smiled all day.

  The phone rang. He pressed the button on his steering wheel to answer, though he didn’t like to take calls when he couldn’t see the ID screen. He had so many balls in the air he could hardly keep track of them all.

  “Kevin Carr,” he answered.

  “Hey.” Paula. “On your way home?”

  “Almost at the exit,” he said.

  “The baby needs diapers. And Cameron feels a little warm. Can you get some Motrin?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “I think that’s it. I did manage to get us all to the grocery store today.” He heard water running in the background, the clinking of dishes in the sink. “And we got through it without a meltdown-if you can believe it. Cammy was such a good boy. But I forgot the diapers.”

  He could see them there. Claire still in the baby carrier mounted on the cart, Cameron trailing behind Paula-pulling stuff off the shelves, clowning around. Paula was always together, with her hair brushed and her makeup done. She wasn’t like the other mothers he had seen the few times he’d dropped Cameron off at preschool-circles under their eyes, stains on their shirts, hair wild. He wouldn’t allow that.

  “Make a list next time,” he said.

  In the silence that followed, he heard the baby start to mew. The sound of it, that wheedling little cry that would turn to screaming if someone didn’t figure out what in the hell she wanted, made him cringe. It was an accusation, an indictment, and a conviction all at once.

  “Okay, Kevin,” Paula said. Any initial brightness had left her voice completely. “Thanks for the advice.”

  “I didn’t mean-”

  But she’d hung up already.

  In the grocery store, Elton John thought that it was lonely out in space. Elton sang about how he was not the man they think he is at home. Kevin knew too well what he meant. He wandered the massive aisles. They were stacked with garishly packaged, processed promises-low-fat, no carbs, sugar-free, no trans fats, no cholesterol, ultra-slimming, buy-one-get-one-free, all-natural. In the baby aisle, everything went pink, blue, and yellow, little ducks and frogs, Dora the Explorer, Elmo. He searched for the green-and-brown packaging of the diapers Paula liked for the baby-organic, biodegradable. This was his personal favorite, the whole organic thing. Corporations had been raping and pillaging the environment since the industrial revolution-spewing waste into the air and water, mowing down the rain forests, poisoning the earth. And now, all of a sudden, it was up to the individual to save the planet-by paying twice as much for “green” products, thereby increasing the profit margin of the very companies that were responsible for global warming, the almost-total depletion of natural resources, not to mention obesity and all its related diseases. It killed him, it really did.

  At the gleaming row of cash registers, the young, pretty girl was free, thumbing through the pages of some celebrity rag. What was her name? He didn’t have his glasses on, so he couldn’t read her name tag. Tracie? Trixie? Trudie?

  “Hey, Mr. Carr. I saw your wife and kids earlier,” she said. She dragged his purchases over the sensor. Diapers: $12.99. Motrin: $8.49. Looking at twenty-year-old tits: priceless. He didn’t need his glasses to see those.

  Paula had nursed Cameron until he’d turned two, just a month before they’d realized she was pregnant again. And now she was going on eighteen months with Clai
re (though she’d promised him she’d stop after a year). They’d both come to see her breasts as something utilitarian, the way they came out of her shirt without a second thought as soon as Claire started fussing. Gone were the lace push-ups and silky camisoles. Now, if Paula wore a bra at all, it had this snapping mechanism on the cup to unlatch, so the baby could nurse. Tracie Trixie-Trudy was probably wearing something pink and pretty, her breasts like peaches, no baby attached sucking away her sexiness.

  “You’re so lucky,” the girl was saying. “You have such a beautiful family.”

  “It’s true,” he said. He looked into his wallet. No cash, as usual. He stared at the tops of seven credit cards peeking, colorful and mocking in their leather slots. He couldn’t remember which one wasn’t maxed out. “I’m blessed.”

  With a smile he swiped the Platinum Visa and held his breath until the signature line showed on the electronic pad.

  Kevin knew what the girl saw when she looked at him, why she was smiling so sweetly. She saw the Breitling watch, the Armani suit, the diamond-studded platinum wedding band. The sum-total cost of the items hanging off his body was greater than what she might earn in half a year. When she looked at him, she saw money, not the mounting, uncontrollable debt his purchases represented. That’s all people saw, the glittering surface. What lay beneath, what was real, mattered not in the least.

  “Did you remember your reusable sack?” she asked. She gave him another beaming smile and shook a finger of mock admonishment at him.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. Playing her game, he tried to look contrite. “That’s all right, though. I don’t need one.” He picked up the two items and headed for the door.

  “You saved a tree, Mr. Carr!” she called after him. “Good for you.”

  Her youthful exuberance made him feel a hundred years old. Just as he stepped from beneath the overhang, it started to rain, hard. By the time he’d climbed into the car, he was soaked. He tossed his purchases onto the seat beside him. Then, looking in the rearview mirror, he ran his fingers through his dark hair, smoothing it back. He grabbed a towel from the gym bag on the seat behind him and mopped off his suit jacket, the raindrops on the leather all around him.

  He turned on the engine and started to shiver. It wasn’t even that cold. He just felt a familiar chill spread through his body. He sat, blank for a moment. He just needed a minute, this minute of quiet, before he put the mask on again. He was about to back out and head home. Then, on a whim, he reached under the passenger seat and retrieved the small black bag he kept there. He just wanted to check, just wanted to see it.

  He’d had it under there since they drove to Florida and took the kids to Disney over the summer-a trip that cost Kevin more than three thousand dollars between the park, the hotel, and the meals. The whole venture had been a masquerade of normalcy. The endless ride down south was a chaos of Goldfish crackers and juice boxes, the manic sound tracks of Cameron’s DVDs, Claire’s eternal crying and fussing. They spent their days at the park; Cameron had a good time. But the baby was really too young; what with the incessant heat and the slack-jawed crowds, Claire fussed constantly, driving him nearly mad. He plastered a smile on his face and pretended that he didn’t feel like his head was going to explode. When he’d met Paula, she was young and hot, smart and vital. Now she was a mom at Disney, two full sizes bigger. When had her legs gotten so thick? It was then that he realized he had to get out. He couldn’t live like this. Of course, divorce was not an option. What a cliché.

  He’d gone out one night to bring in a pizza and stopped at one of the many gun shops he’d seen around.

  “This is the most popular handgun in America,” the dealer had told him. “The Glock 17 fires seventeen nine-millimeter Luger rounds. It’s lightweight, perfect for the home. Hope you never need to, but you’ll be able to protect your family with this, even without much gun experience.”

  The dealer, who looked to be in his twenties and had an unhealthy enthusiasm for his work, also sold him a box of ammo.

  A couple of days later, the night before they were about to head home, he stopped back and picked it up. Kevin could hardly believe that he was able to walk out of the shop with a gun and bullets, carried in a small canvas bag. In the parking lot, he’d stashed everything under the passenger seat. And there it had all stayed for the better part of six months. Paula never drove this car. Even on the weekends, they always used her Mercedes SUV, because that’s where the car seats and diaper bags and all the other various kid gear-strollers, sippy cups, extra wipes-were kept. You’d think she was planning to go away for a month with everything she had back there.

  Now he unzipped the small duffel and removed the hard plastic case, opened it. In the amber light shining into his car from the parking-lot lamp above, he looked at the flat, black gun in its case, its neat lines and ridged, ergonomic grip. He could hear the tapping of the rain on his roof, the muted sound of a woman talking on her cell phone as she walked to her car. I can’t believe he would say that! Her voice echoed. What a jerk!

  The sight of the gun gave him a sense of comfort. He felt his shoulders relax and his breathing come easier. Some of the terrible tension he carried around all day seemed to dissolve. He couldn’t say why. Even if someone had asked, he wouldn’t have been able to say why a blessed sense of relief washed over him at the sight of that gun.

  chapter one

  Jones Cooper feared death. The dread of it woke him in the night, sat him bolt upright and drew all the breath from his lungs, narrowed his esophagus, had him rasping in the dark. It turned all the normal shadows of the bedroom that he shared with his wife into a legion of ghouls and intruders waiting with silent and malicious intent. When? How? Heart attack. Cancer. Freak accident. Would it come for him quickly? Would it slowly waste and dehumanize him? What, if anything, would await him?

  He was not a man of faith. Nor was he a man without a stain on his conscience. He did not believe in a benevolent universe of light and love. He could not lean upon those crutches as so many did; everyone, it seemed, had some way to protect himself against the specter of his certain end. Everyone except him.

  His wife, Maggie, had grown tired of the 2:00 A.M. terrors. At first she was beside him, comforting him: Just breathe, Jones. Relax. It’s okay. But even she, ever-patient shrink that she was, had started sleeping in the guest room or on the couch, even sometimes in their son’s room, empty since Ricky had left for Georgetown in September.

  His wife believed it had something to do with Ricky’s leaving. “A child heading off for college is a milestone. It’s natural to reflect on the passing of your life,” she’d said. Maggie seemed to think that the acknowledgment of one’s mortality was a rite of passage, something everyone went through. “But there’s a point, Jones, where reflection becomes self-indulgent, even self-destructive. Surely you see that spending your life fearing death is a death in and of itself.”

  But it seemed to him that people didn’t reflect on death at all. Everyone appeared to be walking around oblivious to the looming end-spending hours on Facebook, talking on cell phones while driving through Starbucks, reclining on the couch for hours watching some mindless crap on television. People were not paying attention-not to life, not to death, not to one another.

  “Lighten up, honey. Really.” Those were the last words she’d said to him this morning before she headed off to see her first patient. He was trying to lighten up. He really was.

  Jones was raking leaves; the great oaks in his yard had started their yearly shed. There were just a few leaves now. He’d made a small pile down by the curb. For all the years they’d been in this house, he’d hired someone to do this work. But since his retirement, almost a year ago now, he’d decided to manage the tasks of homeownership himself-mowing the lawn, maintaining the landscaping, skimming the pool, washing the windows, now raking the leaves, eventually shoveling the snow from the driveway. It was amazing, really, how these tasks could fill his days. How from morning to night,
he could just putter, as Maggie called it-changing lightbulbs, trimming trees, cleaning the cars.

  But is it enough? You have a powerful intellect. Can you be satisfied this way? His wife overestimated him. His intellect wasn’t that powerful. The neighbors had started to rely on him, enjoyed having a retired cop around while they were at work, on vacation. He was letting repair guys in, getting mail, and turning on lights when people were away, checking perimeters, keeping his guns clean and loaded. The situation annoyed Maggie initially-the neighbors calling and dropping by, asking for this and that-especially since he wouldn’t accept payment, even from people he didn’t really know. Then people started dropping off gifts-a bottle of scotch, a gift certificate to Grillmarks, a fancy steakhouse in town.

  “You could turn this into a real business,” Maggie said. She was suddenly enthusiastic one night over dinner, paid for by the Pedersens. Jones had fed their mean-spirited cat, Cheeto, for a week.

  He scoffed. “Oh, yeah. Local guy hanging around with nothing to do but let the plumber in? Is that what I’d call it?”

  She gave him that funny smile he’d always loved. It was more like the turning up of one corner of her mouth, something she did when she found him amusing but didn’t want him to know it.

  “It’s a viable service that people would pay for and be happy to have,” she said. “Think about it.”

  But he enjoyed it, didn’t really want to be paid. It was nice to be needed, to look after the neighborhood: to make sure things were okay. You didn’t stop being a cop when you stopped being a cop. And he wasn’t exactly retired, was he? He wouldn’t have left his post if he hadn’t felt that it was necessary, the right thing to do under the circumstances. But that was another matter.