by Lisa Unger
Mostly, it was peaceful, easy. Even now when Main Street was bustling with people walking home from the train station, doing last-minute errands and shopping before dinner, walking kids home from after-school activities, there was a harmonic aura to the town, none of the frenetic energy of the city at this time of day. And that’s what Bethany had needed when she made the decision to move-peace, harmony, a shift to a quieter, more normal life. After the chaos of the last eighteen months, it’s what she’d truly believed they had both needed. Willow passionately disagreed.
Bethany found a spot in front of the coffee shop and stopped the engine. She looked over at her daughter to see that she was making no move to exit the vehicle, was maintaining her beleaguered slouch. Willow rested her head against the glass.
“Well, let’s go,” said Bethany. She made a hoisting motion with her arms.
“No way,” Willow said. She turned her body away. Bethany could see her staring at the window of the coffee shop. “I’m not going in there.”
“Willow.”
“If you want to go have a cup of coffee with the friendly neighborhood ax murderer, be my guest.” But Willow had those worried eyes. What she’d seen in the woods had frightened her; she was too cool to admit it.
Bethany supposed it was her fault that her daughter had no qualms about asserting herself in their relationship. A generation ago her mother would have said, Don’t you dare talk back to me. Get your butt out of this car. And Bethany would have complied, because that’s who she was.
But Bethany didn’t talk to Willow that way, and neither did any of her friends talk to their children that way. Today it was all about communication and negotiation, at least when it came to the luxury issues-such as whether to wait in the car or not.
She and Willow were close, maybe too close. But that’s how it was sometimes with an only child. Their relationship had almost a sibling quality, because they’d always spent so much time together, Bethany’s love and attention never diffused by other children. And Bethany had never hesitated to get down on the floor with Willow to color or make Play-Doh animals. She had never been the disciplinarian. That had been her husband’s role, once upon a time. Bethany picked her battles.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “But do not get out of this car for any reason. Do you understand? I’ll be two minutes. I’m just getting the phone that you lost.”
Willow made a W with her two thumbs, wiggling her figures. Bethany was just hip enough to know that the gesture meant “Whatever.” But Willow had a sweet smile that kept her from seeming too awful.
“I’m serious.” Bethany took the keys and climbed out of the car.
“Hey, it’s cold,” Willow said. “Leave the car running.”
“Ha,” said Bethany. “As if. You’re cold? Come inside.”
“Mom!”
Bethany shut the door on the rest of Willow’s tirade, turned to see her mock-shivering in the seat. She pressed the lock button on the remote, even though of course Willow could unlock the car from the inside. She wouldn’t be long, just a couple of minutes. She looked back at Willow before she entered the coffee shop. Willow was watching her but quickly averted her eyes.
***
A little bell rang as Bethany stepped from the damp cold into the warm interior-the aroma of coffee beans, glowing amber lights, the hiss of a milk steamer. She looked around the room, realizing that she didn’t know whom she was looking for, precisely. A couple of young girls were giggling by the fireplace, a pile of books and notepads unopened on the table between them. A young mother fed her toddler some yogurt. Willow had described the man she saw as large (GI-normous), with long, dark hair (like Vlad the Impaler or something). There was a man sitting in the far corner of the shop, his head down over a book. He did have long hair, tied back. But wearing wire-rimmed glasses, with a pencil in his hand, he hardly looked menacing.
“Hey, Beth,” said the guy at the counter. What was his name again? Todd. That was it. “How’s the writing going?”
“Good. Thanks for asking,” she said. She walked over to the counter.
“The usual?” Todd asked. This unnerved her a bit about The Hollows. She and Willow had lived here only six months, and everyone seemed to know her name already, seemed to be familiar with her habits and things about her life, her career. Duh, said Willow. They’re reading your blog, visiting your website. Bethany found this surprising, though of course she shouldn’t. She was used to the anonymity of New York City-no one knew who you were at the neighborhood coffee shop, and furthermore no one cared. In this little town, people seemed to keep up with one another. Was it weird or normal? Did she like it or hate it, the fact that people knew who she was? She hadn’t decided yet.
“Sure. That’d be great,” she said. Todd thought her usual was a double espresso with a little splash of half-and-half to take the edge off. And she supposed it was her usual at the moment.
“Bethany Graves?”
The man with the wire-rimmed glasses had walked over to stand beside her. Willow was right. He was tall, over six feet. But more than that, he seemed powerful, with wide shoulders and thick arms. In his large palm, he held Willow’s cell phone. Bethany took it from him.
“Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate this.”
She dropped the phone into her bag. And looked up at him to see him smiling. It lit something up on his face. She found herself smiling, too.
“I didn’t get your name when we spoke,” she said.
“Michael Holt.” He offered his hand, and she shook it. His grip was warm and firm. Not too hard, nothing to prove. She couldn’t stand a weak handshake-from a man or from a woman. Limp handshakes meant weak spirits. And weak spirits couldn’t be trusted. But some men squeezed too hard, putting on a show, wanting you to know how strong they were. If she looked back, way back, she thought of it as the first bad sign about her ex-husband. From their initial encounter, she’d pulled her hand back smarting.
Michael stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels a bit. The action made him seem boyish, though she could see more than a little gray in his long dark hair, a cluster of lines around his eyes. She put him in his late thirties.
“I think I scared your little girl,” he said. “Your daughter, I mean. She probably wouldn’t want to be called a little girl.”
“You have kids?” she asked.
He shook his head, casting his eyes down. “Nieces. Twins about that age. Thirteen going on thirty.”
Willow was a very young-looking fifteen; it drove the kid nuts that people always mistook her for younger. There’s no rush to grow up, Willow, Bethany always told her. Easy for you to say, Willow would come back. You’re already grown up. Nobody ever tells you what to do. That’s what kids think it means to be grown up, that no one ever tells you what to do. There was no way to tell them otherwise, to explain the price of freedom.
“Well, thanks for this,” she said.
“Double espresso, splash of half-and-half. That’s $2.09,” said Todd.
She pulled a twenty out of her pocket and handed it to him. “I’ll take this gentleman’s check as well.”
“That’s not necessary,” Michael said quickly.
“It’s my pleasure,” she said. “I insist.”
He looked like he was about to offer more protest, but then he was wearing that grin again. “Thank you,” he said.
When Todd handed Bethany her change and she was getting ready to say good-bye, Michael pointed toward his table. “Would you like to join me?”
She sensed that he was just being polite, that he expected her to decline the offer. Bethany glanced out the window to see Willow still slouched in the seat. She had her earbuds in. She was nodding her head lightly to whatever rhythm was playing on her iPod. But she was watching, staring at Michael Holt. Bethany was surprised she’d stayed in the car. She’d half expected to see her daughter lurking outside the picture window, peering inside.
“My daughter’s waiting
for me in the car,” she said. She didn’t want to seem rude. But Bethany really didn’t talk to men anymore, had decided that she wouldn’t bother for a good long time. On the other hand, there was something interesting about him. It wasn’t attraction that she felt-not at all. It was curiosity. He was odd. She couldn’t say how, exactly. She liked odd people.
They stood awkwardly a second, he looking down at his feet, she looking around the room. Todd was eavesdropping, she thought, hovering near the sink with nothing apparent to do. The toddler at the far table issued a little shriek of delight over something. “Indoor voice,” his mother whispered.
“So what were you doing out there in the woods?” she asked. She hadn’t moved toward the table. She took a sip of her espresso, peered at him over the cup. “Willow’s sure you were burying a body.”
He let go of a nervous laugh, which was kind of sweet in its way. He removed his glasses and used the bottom of his sweatshirt to rub the lenses. Bethany found herself laughing a little, too.
“Daughter of a mystery writer,” he said.
And Bethany’s laughter stopped short.
“How did you know that?” she asked. She took another sip of her coffee, looked back at the door instinctively. She could still see Willow in the car.
“Sorry,” he said. He looked sheepish and pointed back to his table at a laptop she hadn’t noticed. “I Googled. Actually, I’d already heard about you. There aren’t any secrets in The Hollows. Well, at least not when it comes to an author moving into town. And I don’t even live here anymore.”
Bethany felt herself flush. So they were talking about her. She decided right then and there that it was weird, and she didn’t like it at all. But what could she do? Maybe that was the price of the silence she so prized. Bethany gave him a careful nod.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He seemed to mean it. She thought about thanking him again and excusing herself. But she stayed rooted, that curiosity getting the better of her.
“So what were you doing?”
“I wasn’t burying a body, that’s for sure.”
Bethany found herself staring at him as he looked down into his now-empty cup. She liked the gray rivers through his hair, the lines on his forehead. She even liked the rough calluses she saw on his hands, the dirt beneath his nails. He looked real, solid, earthy, like The Hollows itself. When he gazed back up at her, something on his face sent a shock through her. She couldn’t have said what it was-pain, sadness, fear? But then it was gone. He had that grin again. This time it didn’t seem as sincere and boyish.
“Quite the opposite,” he said. “I was digging one up.”
chapter seven
Maggie hadn’t said much. She was loading the dishwasher, placing the dishes in their little slots, unhurried, never banging anything together. She was always careful like that, slow and easy. Jones was wiping down the table, going over the same area again and again, just to keep moving. Her silence worried him a little, because his wife was not a woman to hold her tongue. She was a talker, a communicator. Of course she was. It was her business to communicate. He found himself rambling a little bit, going on and on about the doctor, and what a fancy-pants he was, and his manicured nails, and could she believe he’d say such a thing. He’d been there, faithfully doing the work for months and months. And maybe he was right, maybe the doctor couldn’t help him. But that wasn’t about him, was it? That was about the doctor.
She came to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. She had a dishcloth in her hand. She folded it in half, then folded it again, kept her eyes on it.
“What are you trying to tell me, Jones?” she said.
The light from the halogen bulbs in the kitchen caught on her copper curls. She was wearing her hair shorter these days; it just danced about her shoulders. When he’d first met her, it spilled down almost to the middle of her back. He remembered the first time she’d unfurled it before him, took it down from the bun it had been in and let it cascade around her shoulders. He’d been breathless with desire.
He cleared his throat. “Just that things are maybe not working out with Dr. Dahl.”
She folded the towel again, still didn’t lift her eyes.
“I mean, you said yourself that if we’re not compatible, I should find someone else,” he said into the silence that hung between them.
“So that’s what you’re going to do?” she said. “Find someone else?”
He thought about going for the broom, to sweep up the floor. But Maggie had him locked in the look now.
“When?” she asked.
“I don’t know… in a couple of weeks? Honestly, I think I need a break from therapy. I certainly don’t need to be going twice a week anymore.”
His next scheduled appointment was in two days. Twice a week was supposed to be temporary, to help him through the initial crisis. But it was overkill, wasn’t it? How much talking can a person do?
Maggie sat down at the table. He stayed standing, holding the can of Pledge. The chemical lemon in the air was making his nose tingle.
“What?” he said.
She seemed to have to gather herself together, closing her eyes and issuing a light sigh. Maybe he’d better sit after all. He pulled up a chair, though he would have preferred to walk away and turn on the television, hope she’d disappear into her office. He’d prefer to leave the communicating for a day when he didn’t feel so drained. Though he couldn’t say when that might be.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t been sleeping in our bed.”
He hunched up his shoulders. “I noticed. The snoring, right? The waking up.”
“Yes, partly.”
There was a time long ago, when Ricky was a toddler, that she’d stopped sleeping in their bed. Jones would wake up in the night to find her downstairs on the couch or in the guest bedroom. And he’d watch her sleeping, then go back to bed himself. He’d never asked her why, but he remembered that the sight of her asleep alone had frightened him. It reminded him that she was someone separate from him, someone with an inner life to which he didn’t have access unless she invited him in. He had that feeling now, that creeping fear. Sitting across the table from him, she seemed suddenly very, very far away. He wanted to reach his hand across the table, take hers. He could say, Hey, what’s going on? I love you. He could use that soft tone that he knew would put her at ease. But he didn’t.
“This year has been hard,” she said. “For you. For me.”
He watched as she started to twirl her wedding band, the tiny muscles in her hand shifting, her nails pink and square, the milky quality of her skin. He tried to remember the last time they’d made love (a week, maybe two?), the last time they’d had any fun at all (longer than that). He couldn’t. In the reflection of the sliding door that led out to the pool deck, he saw himself thick and hunched across from her like some ogre. Beauty and the beast.
“I know it has been,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She reached her hand across to him, and he took it.
“You don’t have to apologize,” she said. “I know you’re struggling. But I am, too… with the secrets you kept for so many years, with the things I’ve learned about my own past-with your… retirement.” She paused before the last word, as if she weren’t sure it was the right one. And it wasn’t, really. But he couldn’t think of a better one.
He found he couldn’t meet her eyes. They were the prettiest denim blue; he’d seen them shine with love and anger and fear. He didn’t want to see what played out there now.
“There’s a space growing between us, Jones. And if it gets much wider, we might not be able to bridge it again.”
He shook his head but couldn’t find any words. This was something that had never occurred to him, that something between them might break and not be mended. He didn’t even know who he was without Maggie.
“Look at me,” she said.
And he looked at his wife. She loved him, he could see that. But he cou
ld also see that she was sad, almost desperate. In the kitchen the dishwasher hissed. The refrigerator dumped ice cubes into the bin with a clunk-clunk.
“What are you saying?” he asked her.
“I’m saying listen to your doctor. He’s right. You’re stuck in the past, picking at scabs. You need to find a way to create your future. For yourself, for us.”
“I’m trying.”
“It’s easier to wallow, to place blame on the people who caused our pain, to reflect on all our mistakes. It’s easier than it is to leave it behind and find a different road ahead where we have to do better.”
“You think I’m wallowing.”
She closed her eyes a second. “What I’m saying is that who we were before, what we were, it doesn’t exist any longer. We need to move forward as who we are now, find a new us, a new life-without Ricky living in our house, without you as the town cop, without you carrying this secret burden. And if you can’t help me to do that…”
She let the sentence trail with a sad shake of her head. She looked back at that cloth in her hand, folded it again, smoothed it flat.
Estrangement didn’t always break and enter. It didn’t smash your windows, come in with a gun and steal your love. It slipped in through the open back door. Under cover of night, it took the little things that you might not miss at first, until one morning you woke up and everything you thought you had was gone.
“Maggie.”
She leaned back from the table and looked at him hard. “Do you hear me, Jones?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t stop seeing Dr. Dahl. Let him help you. Let him help us.”
“Okay.”
She got up and walked away from the table. She passed through the kitchen, and he heard her walk slowly up the stairs.
He knew he should go after her; he wanted to. He knew he could soothe her, make her feel better. But an odd inertia held him back, made his limbs and his heart feel so heavy. He managed to heft himself up from the table, move down the hallway, and stand at the stairs. From the bottom landing, he could see that the bedroom door was closed. He heard the shower running.