Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  I’m sorry, she could have said. I’m sorry, Mom. And her mother would have accepted her apology and put on a good face for the rest of the meal. Then she’d come to talk about it all later. But Willow didn’t apologize. She just looked down at her plate, pushed around the bok choy she had no intention of eating. She wouldn’t put a bite of her mother’s food in her mouth, even though she liked it and was really hungry.

  Outside, the rain that had been threatening for days with an on-and-off drizzle had finally committed. It was hitting the roof and windows so hard that it sounded like the pounding of feet.

  “Wow, that rain is really coming down,” said Mr. Ivy. He cleared his throat and rubbed his forehead. He probably had a sinus headache.

  “Isn’t it?” said Bethany. She jumped on the sentence like a drowning person looking for a lifeline. Her voice sounded tight and faint.

  Willow let her silverware clank to the plate, and she pushed her chair back loudly. “Can I be excused?” she asked.

  Her mother looked at her darkly. “Please, Willow, be my guest.”

  She made as much noise as possible stomping from the room. She pretended to storm up the stairs, but then she snuck back down to stand in the hallway outside the door to listen.

  “I’m really sorry, Henry,” said Bethany after a minute.

  “No, don’t apologize. Really,” he said. “I get it.”

  “It’s my fault. I did kind of spring it on her,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Maybe you were thinking we’d all have a good time,” he said. His voice was soft and comforting.

  “I was hoping.”

  “Should I go?”

  Willow heard her mother sigh.

  Yes! Yes! Go! Get out and don’t come back.

  “You know, Henry, I can see why you’d want to. And probably I should tell you yes, for Willow’s sake. But I don’t really want you to go. And I’m not sure Willow should act that badly and get what she wants. I think it might be time, though I know things have been hard for her, that she grows up a little.”

  There was a moment of silence. They were touching; she could feel it. Maybe they were holding hands. Or, God forbid, kissing!

  “I’d like to stay,” he said. “Can I help you clear the table?”

  If Willow could have shrieked with rage, she would have. Instead she went quietly back upstairs. Inside her room she flung herself on her bed and started to weep. She couldn’t even say why she was so upset. Eventually she cried herself out and lay spent on the bed, hating her mother, hating The Hollows, hating her whole miserable existence. Was there anyone on earth more miserable than she was right now? She doubted it.

  The rain was hammering on her window. The sound of it was frightening and depressing, so she turned on the television but found that the cable was out. Of course it was. She threw the remote across the room, and it landed harmlessly on the basket of laundry she was supposed to have put away before dinner. She sat on the edge of her bed, feeling trapped and sorry for herself. Then at the window a flashing light caught her eye. A rhythmic flashing-light, then dark. Light, then dark.

  She walked over to the window and looked down. In the glow from the front porch stood Cole and Jolie, under a large umbrella. Cole was flashing the light, and Jolie was holding the umbrella. She had that smile on her face, the one that Willow just couldn’t resist. It promised a good time, no matter how awful everything else was. And then there was Cole. His smile promised something else altogether. She waved to them both and held up a finger. She grabbed her raincoat from her closet and moved quietly down the stairs. She could hear her mother and Mr. Ivy laughing. She didn’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt as she slipped out the front door.

  “How is it that you’ve never married, Mr. Ivy?” She’d been alternating between calling him Henry and Mr. Ivy. He liked the way his name sounded from her mouth. Usually the question would bother him, make him feel self-conscious. But there was something about her, something so wide open and nonjudgmental that he found himself really thinking about it.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Always in the wrong place at the wrong time or never in the right place.”

  He’d successfully pushed back his thoughts about Marla Holt to come to dinner. He’d decided after he hung up the phone with Bethany that whatever cosmic force had decided he wasn’t allowed to be happy could just fuck right off. He liked Bethany Graves, and she seemed to like him. And he’d be damned if he was going to go home and brood over what had happened to Marla and what he might have done to prevent it. What good did that do now?

  Then, on the way over, he’d heard on the radio that the medical examiner had confirmed that the bones found did in fact belong to Marla. She was up there. She had been up there all this time. Even that he’d managed to put into a box within himself. He’d look at it later.

  “Have you ever been in love?” Bethany asked.

  He’d had too much to drink, which for him was more than two glasses of wine. He was on his third, and he had that warm, light feeling. From the flush on Bethany’s face, he’d say she was feeling the same. They’d been touching since Willow went upstairs. He’d dared a soft caress to her arm. There was a quick lacing of fingers while she told him about her husband who’d died so young, leaving her with a small child. Since they’d moved from the table to the couch in the living room, the desire to kiss her was almost an ache. The air between them was electric.

  “I have been in love,” he said. “Yes.”

  She frowned when he said it, put a hand to his face. “Love shouldn’t make you look so sad,” she said.

  It was something about that sentence. Or maybe it was her tenderness, the openness of her expression. Everything that he’d been tamping down rose up inside him.

  “It’s not that,” he said.

  The music playing in Willow’s room, something predictably raucous and angry, drifted down the stairs. He looked around the living room-the tall shelves of books, the flat-screen television, the warm amber recessed lighting. They sat close on the plush sectional, her leg pressing against his. He could sink into this place, this moment with her. If only he could shut off his mind.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Really, tell me. It’s not like we can do anything but talk, with Miss Willow in seek-and-destroy mode.”

  Her smile was wide and trusting. She was expecting him to tell her about his unrequited love, or the one he’d lost, or how hard it was to meet someone in a small town. Something normal.

  “Did you hear about the bones?” he said. “Back in the Hollows Wood.”

  A shadow crossed her face, like she was recalling something that disturbed her. And it was then that he remembered. It was Willow, really, who had found Marla Holt. If Willow hadn’t run from school that day, made her way home through the woods, she would never have stumbled on Michael Holt near the Chapel. She never would have brought her friends back there, leading Henry, Bethany, and ultimately Jones Cooper to that place. If Jones Cooper hadn’t gone back there and alerted the police, those bones might never have been discovered by anyone other than Michael. It struck Henry as almost funny, even as a blistering headache debuted behind his eyes.

  “The bones?” she said. “What bones?”

  It was almost too much for him to get his mind around. Marla and Bethany. Michael and Willow. It was some kind of cosmic joke. Here he was with this smart, beautiful woman, with the first romantic feelings he’d had in so long. And because Bethany Graves’s child and Marla Holt’s child had crossed paths, he couldn’t simply sit here, maybe kiss her, tell her how pretty he thought she was and how much he enjoyed just talking with her. That it was enough. It was more than enough. He wasn’t allowed even that simple thing.

  “The police found bones back by the Chapel,” he said.

  She took in a breath. “Back where Willow was?”

  He nodded, and the frown she was wearing deepened. He told her everything.

  chapter thirty-two

/>   Ray came in from the rain, soaked and cranky. Eloise took his jacket and hung it in the laundry room. Then she put on a pot of tea.

  “Dental records confirm that the bones belonged to Marla Holt,” he said. He sat heavily in the chair. She handed him a towel, and he used it to mop himself off.

  She already knew that, of course. Not that anything was ever certain in her line of work. But she was as close to being sure of that as she was of anything.

  “And Michael?”

  Ray shrugged. “It’s my second night out there looking for him, walking through those goddamn woods calling his name. Tonight I finally convinced Chuck Ferrigno to send some men out. After all, Marla Holt’s body was out there, so there will have to be an investigation. Michael’s a witness, at the very least.”

  Eloise sat across from Ray.

  “Did he kill her, Eloise? He was just a kid. Did Michael Holt kill his mother?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “But what do you think?”

  She didn’t say anything. He knew better. She wouldn’t speculate. She’d told him everything Marla Holt had said to her. It would be easy to jump to conclusions.

  “How could I have missed it? It never even crossed my mind.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  The kettle started to whistle, and she got up to pour the hot water into the teapot.

  “He walked in on her with someone, went into a rage, and killed her. But he adored her, couldn’t stand what he had done. So he repressed the memory.”

  Eloise knew that Ray was just talking, sounding it out.

  “There was another man there, too,” she reminded him. She looked at the steeping pot, the blue and white flowers on porcelain. It had been a gift from her daughter. Eloise missed her girl so much. For whatever reason, in that moment, the ache of it was almost unbearable. Eloise was going to call her. They needed to talk. Maybe she would go to see her daughter, invited or not; maybe it would help Amanda not to have to come to this house where so many ghosts lived and visited.

  “Mack.” Ray’s voice brought her back. She wanted to be present for him, but somehow she couldn’t stop thinking about what Jones Cooper had said to her. His words had wormed their way into her thoughts about who she was, about what she was doing, about her relationship to Ray, whom she really did love.

  “He was working that night,” she said.

  “Maybe he came home? Maybe he covered for Michael all these years. That’s what sent him over the edge. A fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t have the wherewithal to bury his mother.”

  “Maybe not.” She didn’t want to think about these things anymore tonight.

  “Michael thought the answers were in that house,” Ray said. “He also suspected that Claudia Miller knew more than she ever said.”

  “So maybe you should pay her one more visit,” Eloise suggested. “Tell her about the bones.”

  “You think she’ll talk now? Now that we’ve found Marla Holt?”

  Eloise had no idea. She just knew she didn’t want to talk anymore-not about death, not about murder, not about pain and suffering and decades of lies.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  He didn’t need much more encouragement; he was in that agitated state. He wouldn’t rest, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sit still until he knew he’d exhausted every avenue. And then he’d brood. Karen was right to have left him. He’d never cared as much about anyone as he’d cared about this work. Not even Eloise.

  He was walking past her then, to get his coat from the laundry room. And then he was at the door. Before he left, he glanced at her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. His hand rested on the doorknob.

  She took a step toward him. “You know, Ray, I’m thinking about taking a little time off. Maybe I’ll go to Seattle to see Amanda and the kids.”

  Something played out on his face, a pull of sadness, a shade of regret. She expected him to argue, to remind her about their waiting list, about their responsibilities to everyone who needed justice and answers. But no.

  “That sounds like a great idea, Eloise,” he said. He gave her a warm smile, came back to hold her wrist lightly in his hand. “You should do that. It would be good for you. It would be good for Amanda.”

  “Ray.”

  He drew her into a quick, tight embrace and then opened the door. She was about to ask him if he’d consider going with her. But by the time she got the words out, he was gone.

  “Did you hear?” said Jolie. “About the bones?”

  Jolie was sitting in the front seat with Cole. The car reeked of stale cigarette smoke. It lived in the upholstery, tickled the back of Willow’s throat, made her sinuses ache. Jolie lit another cigarette, let the smoke drift from her mouth into her nostrils.

  “Crack the window,” Cole said. She rolled her eyes at him but did as he said. Willow watched as the smoke was sucked out in a thin, flat line.

  “What bones?” asked Willow. She was already there, in that place of regret she knew so well. It sat in the pit of her stomach. In the rearview mirror, she saw Cole staring at her, though he’d barely acknowledged her since she slipped out to meet him. She hadn’t asked him why he didn’t show up the other day. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “Out by the Chapel,” Jolie said. She had the ghost-story face. A gleeful, wide-eyed menace lit her gaze. “Where you saw that freak Michael Holt digging? They found bones.”

  Willow felt the tingle of curiosity. “Just like he told my mom.”

  “No,” said Jolie. “The bones belonged to his mother. Everyone thought she’d run off ages ago. Turns out she was murdered.”

  Cole brought the car to a stop by the side of the road, and Willow saw that they were back at the awful graveyard. Oh, no. What’s wrong with me? Why do I do things like this?

  “What are we doing here?” Willow asked.

  “Don’t you want to see where he was digging?”

  “No,” she said.

  “He’s still back here,” said Jolie. “He ran off when they found the bones. They think he went down into the mines, that he might be living down there.”

  “Yeah, like the mole people,” said Cole. “Did you ever hear about that? People live in the abandoned subway tunnels beneath New York City.”

  “That’s an urban legend,” said Willow, even though she knew it wasn’t. Her voice came out more sharply than she’d intended. She didn’t like it when people who’d never lived there pretended to know things about New York City. He was still staring at her in the mirror, but she forced herself to look at Jolie.

  “You don’t want to go?” said Jolie. She seemed incredulous.

  “Last time we were out here, you thought I was lying,” Willow said. “You didn’t believe me.”

  “Well, I believe you now.”

  Cole turned to look at Willow; his face was pale in the dim light. He had dark shiners of fatigue under his eyes. If she didn’t hate him, she’d have asked him if he was okay. But she did hate him, a little. The rain was drumming on the roof of the car. Out the window she could barely see the tombstones. Why would anyone want to go tramping through the dark woods in the pouring rain when a crazy murderous freak could be lurking out there? She asked Jolie as much, and Cole issued a laugh.

  “That’s what I said,” said Cole.

  Jolie started to get sullen. “That’s the problem with this place. Everyone is so fucking dull, dull, dull. Where is your sense of adventure?”

  Willow found that she didn’t really care what Jolie thought of her anymore. The whole enterprise was asinine. It was stupid, and beyond that, she had been so awful to her mother and now she was out here in the middle of a huge storm with these two. She’d run off on her mother again, let her down again. She didn’t have her cell phone. When her mother discovered she was gone-and it wouldn’t be long-she was going to be terrified.

  “Those kids are lost,” her mother had told her. “No one’s looking after them. You might think that’s
cool. But you’re wrong. It’s sad.” In this moment Willow finally understood what her mother meant. But it was probably too late. Her mother was never going to forgive her for this night. She looked at Cole in the rearview mirror.

  “Can you take me home?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said. He turned on the ignition.

  “What?” said Jolie. Her voice went shrill, her eyes narrowing to two small points of anger. “You guys are such pussies.”

  And in the next second, Jolie pulled on her hood and stepped out into the rain. Willow saw the bouncing of her flashlight beam in the night as she stalked off.

  “She’s crazy,” said Willow. She rolled down the window. “Jolie!” she yelled. “This is nuts! Come back!”

  “Fuck you guys!” Jolie’s voice sounded small and childlike in the rain, barely a whisper on the air. Willow brought the window back up when the beam disappeared into the trees. Cole was looking out after Jolie, too.

  “Let’s go get her,” said Willow, yanking up her hood.

  “Hold on,” he said. “She’s going to be back in like one minute. Trust me.”

  She didn’t say anything, watching the night, willing Jolie to come back. Otherwise Willow knew they were going to have to go out after her. They wouldn’t leave her out there. And Jolie knew it, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Cole said after a moment.

  “For what?” Now he was looking at her over the seat. Willow tried not to stare at him. Those eyes thick with lashes, that nice soft mouth.

  “For not coming to your house the other day,” he said. “I wanted to, but…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He just blew out a long breath, looked down at his nails.

  “But what?”

  For a second she thought she was dreaming. Sitting here alone with him, the rain beating down outside-it felt like something she could make up.

  “I lied to you,” he said. “About my mom.”

  Willow knew that. She remembered that she thought he was lying.