Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  “So what happened? Did he catch you with someone?” Eloise said gently. If she didn’t try to move it along, it could go on forever. And the longer it took, the more exhausted she’d feel afterward.

  “That would be easy, wouldn’t it?” Marla said with a mirthless laugh. “Husband catches me in the act, kills me in a jealous rage. Or miserable wife runs off on her husband and two kids, disappears forever.”

  “Then what? What happened?”

  Marla got up and started walking toward the door. Then she turned to look at Eloise with a pleading expression.

  “I was wondering if I could convince you to let this one go,” Marla said.

  It was little phrases like that that disturbed Eloise the most, so familiar but off the mark. Let this one go? She’d let them all go if she could. She wasn’t the one who couldn’t let go of the people who had passed. It was everyone else.

  “It’s Michael who can’t let you go,” Eloise said.

  “I mean, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Marla said, as if Eloise had argued the point. “Mack’s gone. He suffered the most with all of it. If the truth comes out now, it’s only going to cause more pain.”

  Eloise lifted her palms. “What can I do?”

  But Marla wasn’t listening. They never did.

  “You know what my biggest mistake was?” she said. She was crying now. “I let him love me too much. I catered to it. I loved how much he loved me.”

  “Mack did love you,” Eloise said. She wasn’t sure what Marla meant. “I always saw love there.”

  She shook her head. “No, Eloise. Not Mack. Michael.”

  Eloise was lying on the floor then. The vacuum cleaner was still running beside her. She reached over to turn it off and then lay back down in the silence that followed. Her head ached, presumably from the fall, which she did not remember. She’d met a woman, another so-called psychic, who’d taken to wearing a helmet at home, where most of her visions occurred. So many blows to the head cannot be healthy for the living. The dead have no regard for us whatsoever, so we must protect ourselves.

  Prior to her accident, Eloise had had little faith and less religion. She didn’t believe in the Catholic God she’d been raised with. The concepts of heaven and hell, a divine system of punishments and rewards, seemed overly simplistic. The world, life, was so complicated. How could the afterlife be any different? She’d been firmly agnostic for most of her remembered life. Her visions and encounters, the sight she had after her accident, did nothing to change her position.

  In the industry there were plenty of psychics who claimed to talk to the dead, to know the geography of the world beyond. Some of them were quite convincing-millions bought their books, attended their seminars; some of these people had appointments scheduled for years with the grieving who had unfinished business with the dead. And Eloise couldn’t say for certain that they weren’t doing what they said they were. Maybe souls did linger, to say good-bye, to offer an apology, to seek justice-all those things we don’t always get in life. And the living do cling, unable to face the possibility that after death there is nothing. That sometimes there is no forgiveness, no resolution, no justice. It just ends, it just goes dark.

  What Eloise did believe in was energy. Energy cannot be destroyed; it can only change its form. So life, as the ultimate form of energy, must find another shape, another dimension, when the body dies. She believed in a net that connected everyone in the universe to everyone else, living and dead. Something had happened to her during the accident, or in her coma, or maybe in the moments where she’d been closest to death, that altered her biochemically, turned her into a receiver of energies. She still did not necessarily believe in God or the afterlife. People often found that odd. Coming to her for solace, they didn’t get what they expected. They found her cold, left her disappointed. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t a regular talk-show guest.

  “Eloise?”

  Ray was standing over her. He was accustomed to finding her in odd places-once in the shower with her clothes on, once in the basement closet, often on the kitchen floor. You’re like a cell phone. Sometimes you have to move around to get the best signal, he’d said once. That probably made sense.

  “I saw Marla Holt.”

  Ray gave her a hand up from the floor. She was wobbly on her legs for a second, so he helped her over to the couch.

  “She asked if I’d let this one go.”

  “Maybe we should.” This was not like him, a complete reversal from their last conversation. Ray was not one to let things go.

  “I’m at a dead end,” he said. “The next-door neighbor, Claudia Miller, was the last person I had to talk to, but she’s not talking.”

  Eloise remembered what Marla had said about her “flirtations,” her “dalliances.” She recounted this for Ray.

  “What does that mean? Did she have an affair or didn’t she?” He sounded irritated with Eloise’s apparition. Which was irritating to Eloise.

  “How should I know?” she asked.

  He released a long breath, leaned against the couch, and tilted his head back. “I had one last idea,” he said.

  Oliver sauntered into the room and made a graceless leap onto the coffee table, nearly slipping off the other side and then catching himself with a last-minute shift of weight. The magazines on the table-Time, Newsweek, TV Guide-all fell softly to the floor. Eloise let them lie. Oliver regained his composure quickly, began glaring at Ray.

  “That cat is fat,” said Ray. Ray was a powerfully built man, big in the shoulders and the middle. No one would accuse him of being svelte. Eloise suppressed a smile.

  “Beauty comes in all sizes,” she said. Oliver started to purr, daintily licking his paw. The clock on the mantel chimed the quarter hour.

  “Let’s go to the Chapel,” Ray said. He turned to look out the window.

  She followed his gaze. “It’s raining.”

  “Wear a raincoat,” he said. “When’s the last time you left the house?”

  It had been a couple of days since she’d gone to see Jones Cooper. Sometimes this happened; she didn’t leave the house for a while. Then she didn’t want to leave. Then she was almost afraid to leave, couldn’t think of what to wear that would be acceptable to other eyes. Sometimes she was afraid she had forgotten how to talk to people, real people, not ghosts or holograms or whatever they were, or herself.

  “Last-ditch effort,” he said. “If you don’t get anything out there, you’re off the hook. I’m going to tell Michael Holt he’s going to have to keep pushing the Hollows PD. I don’t have those files, so I don’t know what other leads they had back then. Your visions are vague at best. We move on, like you said. There are other people waiting who maybe we could help.”

  It had been raining since the early afternoon. It was coming down harder now. On the news they’d said it wouldn’t let up for the next three days. She rose from the couch and went to the hall closet, with Ray and Oliver following behind. She put on her hideous yellow slicker and matching rain boots.

  “Good,” said Ray.

  The only thing that was motivating her to do this was the hope that it would be their last involvement in the case. Marla Holt had asked her to let it go, and she wanted to do that. She didn’t want to tell Ray what Marla had said about Michael. She didn’t know why. But if there was one thing she’d learned in her old age, it was to follow her instincts.

  chapter twenty-four

  Jones walked into his house and closed the door. He felt a heaviness settle on him, a low-grade despair. The Hollows PD was probably reopening the Marla Holt case, on his advice, and that left him where? He didn’t know. Chuck hadn’t said, Okay, I’ll call you and let you know what we find. He’d said, Thanks for doing this, Cooper. Stop by and we’ll get you a paycheck. Jones knew that it was nothing personal. Budgets had been slashed. They could afford a few hours from him, but probably not much more. Still. He was itching to get up to that dig site, had half expected to be invited.

  He hu
ng his coat in the closet, heard Maggie making lunch in the kitchen. This had been their habit for many years, even when he was on the job. They met in the kitchen for lunch, if they could. Unless one of them was busy with work. Or unless Maggie was mad at him. He hadn’t expected her to be waiting for him today. But there she was.

  He walked into the kitchen. When she didn’t look up at him from the soup she was stirring on the stove, he went to the pile of mail on the counter, starting sorting. Bills, catalogs, advertisement postcards. Was there ever anything good in the mail anymore? Seemed like everything important or timely came over the phone or by e-mail. No one wanted to wait days for letters to be delivered anymore. Everything was now, now, now.

  He walked over to his wife and wrapped his arms around her, kissed her cheek. “Still mad at me?” he asked.

  He felt her body soften against him. In the glass of the microwave oven door, he could see her reflection, the reluctant smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said. “I’m struggling with this, Mags.” He held her tighter.

  “I know you are,” she said. She still stirred the soup. “I’ll try to be more patient.”

  He breathed onto her neck; she’d always loved that. “I rescheduled my appointment with the doctor.”

  She put down the spoon in her hand and turned in to his embrace, wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “I’m so glad,” she said. It sounded like she might cry. “Thank you.”

  But when she pulled back to look at him, she was smiling. It was that smile, warm and proud, which had always motivated him to be a better man. It was the gold medal, the mark of highest personal achievement. When they were younger and first in love, he saw it every time she looked at him. She could see something in him then that he hadn’t seen in himself. And he strove every day to be that man. In the years they’d shared, he hadn’t always succeeded. Sometimes he’d failed miserably.

  He made the salad while she finished the sandwiches and poured the soup into red stoneware bowls. Then they sat at the kitchen table as the rain tapped at the window beside them. Over lunch he told her about everything that had transpired that day, even how he was feeling about it.

  “So go up there,” she said when he was done.

  “They didn’t ask me,” he said.

  “So? You’re the one Bill Grove trusts. He asked you to make sure they respect the land. It’s your responsibility to make sure they do. If you’re going to be doing this kind of work here in The Hollows, people need to trust your word.”

  He loved his wife. “Good point,” he said. “You’re right.”

  She gave a quick, self-satisfied nod and got up to clear the table.

  “So do you think you might hang out a shingle?” she said from the sink.

  “What? Like a private-detective kind of thing?”

  He came up behind her with the glasses, put them in the sink.

  “Yes, something like that.”

  He gave a little chuckle. “It’s a small town. I’m not sure how much call there would be for my services.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  He thought about Paula Carr then and the call he’d seen on his phone. When he’d checked his messages, he found that she hadn’t left a voice mail. His old buddy at the credit bureau hadn’t gotten back to him yet. Hands down, that was the fastest way to locate someone. If you had the right contacts, you could find out someone’s last charge and where. In a culture where people used their cards for virtually everything, it was almost impossible to hide unless you went off the grid-lost your cell phone, switched to cash.

  “Anyway,” said Maggie, “part-time wouldn’t be bad.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He was trying for nonchalant, but he kind of liked the idea, and he could tell that Maggie knew he did, too. She gave him a fast kiss on the cheek, a light squeeze around the middle.

  “I have a patient,” she said.

  And then she was gone, slipped through the door that took her to her other life. Dr. Cooper. He used to have another life, too. Detective Cooper, local cop, former jock, hometown boy. He’d been those things for so long he didn’t know how to be just Jones Cooper, husband, father, retired (not by choice). He thought about what Maggie had said earlier. What you were before, what we were, it’s gone. We have to find a new way forward together, as the people we are now. He was starting to understand what she meant.

  There was a list of phone messages on the counter: The plumber apparently hadn’t been paid; the Andersons were going out of town, so could Jones feed their cats? And then another, which gave him pause. Kevin Carr had called. Paula’s husband. Could Jones please call him back?

  Jones took out his cell phone and scrolled through the numbers to find Paula’s, then quickly hit “send.” He’d get in touch with her first before he called her husband.

  “Hello?” It was a male voice, presumably Kevin Carr. Jones toyed with the idea of hanging up. But with caller ID there wasn’t much point in doing that anymore. Jones stayed silent.

  “Is this Jones Cooper?” The voice on the other line was edgy, nervous.

  “It is,” Jones said reluctantly. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Kevin Carr. I saw your name and number on my wife’s cell phone bill. Has she been talking to you?”

  What was he going to do, lie?

  “That’s right,” he said. He put on his cop voice-distant, almost, but not quite to the point of rudeness. “What can I do for you, Mr. Carr?”

  “I want to know what you’ve been talking to my wife about.”

  Jones didn’t like the sound of the other man’s voice. He heard insolence and anger in Carr’s tone. He remembered what Paula had said: Kevin cares about what he cares about, and that’s it.

  Jones kept his voice light and level. “I think that’s something you should discuss with her, Mr. Carr.”

  There was a long pause on the line. “My wife’s gone,” Carr said finally.

  “Gone?” Jones felt his blood pressure go up a bit.

  “She left me yesterday,” he said. Carr could barely contain the heat of his rage; Jones could feel it. “She assaulted me. Then she took my two youngest children and left. She kidnapped my children.”

  Jones couldn’t imagine Paula Carr assaulting anyone-unless she had no choice. He could see her defending herself, her children. He was always suspicious of men who accused their wives of kidnapping the children. When a woman like Paula Carr left her home and took her kids, there was generally a damn good reason. Usually that reason was her husband.

  “Why did she leave, Mr. Carr?” Jones asked. “Why did she assault you?”

  “Look,” said Carr, his voice going peevish and high-pitched. “I’m calling you because I want to know who you are and why you were talking to my wife.”

  Jones noticed that Carr hadn’t used Paula’s name once. He’d referred to her as “my wife.” That said something to Jones about Carr, about how he viewed Paula.

  “At the moment I’m not willing to discuss that with you,” said Jones. “Have you called the police to report the assault or to report your children missing? If you have, they can get in touch with me and I’ll answer any of their questions.”

  Jones heard Carr take a deep breath. When he spoke again, the guy was crying. Jones really hated it when men cried. It made him extremely uncomfortable.

  “Look, Mr. Cooper,” Carr said. This time his voice was soft and pleading. “My wife is not well. I don’t know what she told you, but she’s unstable, has a history of depression.” Carr paused to take a shuddering breath. “I’m afraid of what she might do-to herself, to the kids.”

  Jones felt the first trickle of fear for Paula Carr and her children. Had Carr hurt them? Was this call a setup, a play to make himself look innocent when things got ugly?

  “I can’t help you, Mr. Carr,” he said. “But what I will do for you is contact the police.”

&nb
sp; “No,” Carr said quickly. “I don’t want to get her in trouble. It’s against the law, right, to leave the home with the children without your spouse’s permission?”

  Or was Carr trying to set her up as unstable, as someone who had kidnapped and might harm the children, when what she was doing was fleeing an abusive marriage?

  “That depends upon the circumstances,” said Jones.

  There was another heavy silence on the line. Jones could hear the other man nearly panting.

  “You’re a private detective, right?” Carr said. Why did everyone think he was a private detective? Jones chose not to respond.

  The other man went on. “It doesn’t matter why she was talking to you. Just… can you help me find my wife? All I want is for her to come home so that we can work things out.”

  Jones stayed silent, as if he were considering it. But he had no intention of helping Kevin Carr. On the other hand, he had promised to help Paula. And he was a man of his word.

  “Okay, Mr. Carr. I’ll help you find her,” he said. “I will need some information from you, like her parents’ hometown, her maiden name.”

  Carr got all mushy with gratitude. A moment later he was firing off the information.

  “I’ll be in touch this afternoon, Mr. Carr,” said Jones when he had what he needed. “Just do me a favor until then. Stay put and wait for my call.”

  “And you won’t call the police?”

  “At this point I can’t see why I’d have to do that.” Maggie had accused him of being the king of noncommittal answers. It was a cop thing.

  What he did first after he hung up was call Denise Smith, the receptionist at Hollows Elementary. He and Denise had known each other since they’d attended kindergarten together at the same school where she now worked. After the standard pleasantries had been exchanged, he asked her who had picked up Cameron Carr from school yesterday. It was an unusual request, probably information she wasn’t authorized to give. But Jones had found that so many people were used to him in his role as cop that they answered his questions as if they had to answer.