Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  The girl at the counter was too shy to hold his gaze for long. Her eyes drifted to the roses and then down to the screen in front of her. “What room are they in?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me?” He pulled down the corners of his mouth, lifted his eyebrows. He was going for sheepish. “She told me, and I can’t remember.”

  “If you give me her name, I’ll call the room and let her know you’re down here.”

  “Hmm,” he said. He wrinkled his forehead a bit. “What time is it?”

  He looked at his watch and saw her noticing it.

  “The kids will be sleeping,” he said. “If you call up there, you’ll wake them.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I can’t tell you the room number. That’s our policy.”

  “Oh, I understand,” he said. He made a show of trying to figure out a solution. He pretended to text his wife. They waited. He could tell that the girl wanted to please him, to help him out. But she was still clinging to that policy.

  “You’re too young to have kids, I’m sure,” he said. He saw her blush; the red came up unattractively from her neck. “But when you do, and they’re asleep? You’ll remember this encounter. Trust me, I’d rather sleep on that couch right there than wake them up.” He pointed to the lobby sitting area.

  “My sister has kids,” she said. She smoothed out her hair, which was thick and wooly, probably the bane of her existence. “I hear you.”

  He looked at the phone again. “Poor thing,” he said. “She’s probably sleeping, too. She’s exhausted. I’ve been so worried about her lately. She’s under so much stress with the kids.”

  He looked lovingly at the roses. “It’s our anniversary. Ten years. Hard to believe.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s so sweet.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a little laugh. He gave her a funny eye roll. “If she doesn’t kill me for being late.”

  “What was the name?” she said. He’d made a point of staying at the counter, not sitting in the sitting area. The immediacy of the situation would help move things along. Nobody wanted some person with a need hovering around. And this girl was too much of a mouse to get rude, to call her manager.

  “Paula Carr,” he said.

  She turned to smile at him, put a finger to her mouth as she made him a key card. “They’re in Room 206.”

  He gave her a wide smile, pulled one of the roses from the bouquet, and handed it to her.

  The woman started to giggle, girlish and sweet. “Oh!” she said.

  “Thank you so much,” he said. “I can’t even tell you. You just saved my life.”

  ***

  The hallway was quiet except for the sound of someone’s television, the volume up too high. That always aggravated him, people who kept the volume up too loud, like the people who put their seats all the way back on airplanes. Or the people who let the door close behind them in a public place without looking to see if there was someone there. What was wrong with those people? Inconsiderateness was a national blight.

  She’d have the secondary latch on as well. But he’d found a video on YouTube about how to unlatch a chain with a rubber band. There was a tool that looked like a crowbar, which easily undid the folding metal latch. He had one of those, too. Something he’d fashioned himself in the garage.

  He’d have the upper hand. She wouldn’t hurt him in front of Claire and Cameron. And if she called the police, he’d accuse her of kidnapping the children, tell them how depressed she was, that he was afraid of what she’d do to herself and their babies. She’d get hysterical, and they would believe him. People always believed Kevin Carr. Not that he wanted the kids; they were a major pain in the ass. But it would be worth it to really zing it to Paula.

  He stood at the door, put his ear against the cool surface, and heard only silence. He put the roses and his bag down on the floor and took the key from his pocket.

  “What do you think you’re doing, son?”

  He didn’t recognize the man at the end of the hall.

  “Excuse me?”

  The guy reminded Kevin of a side of beef, tall and solid. He wore a barn jacket and a pair of jeans, thick brown lace-up boots.

  “I said, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m not sure it’s any of your business.”

  The other man smiled a bit. “I disagree.”

  Kevin lifted his palms. “I think there must be some misunderstanding.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the other man. He was moving slowly down the hallway now. “You need to step away from the door and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  He was one of those men, the no-bullshit kind. The one you couldn’t charm or manipulate; he was the one who had no vanity to be flattered, no illusions to be bolstered. He was the guy who saw right through the mask. Kevin really hated people like that. Kevin didn’t see a weapon on him. Was he a cop? Was that a police siren he heard off in the distance? His heart started to thump. He stepped back from the door.

  “My name is Jones Cooper. You wanted me to find your wife,” he said. “Well, I found her.”

  It took Kevin a second to place the name. He had called this dog. It seemed like a hundred years ago and he’d forgotten all about it.

  “Look,” said Kevin. He lifted the roses. “Thanks, but Paula and I have worked things out.”

  “No,” said Jones. He had a kind of snide half smile on his face. “You haven’t.”

  Kevin heard the siren grow loud and come to a stop somewhere outside. The door opened then, and Paula stepped into the door frame.

  “This woman kidnapped my children,” he said. He took his voice up an octave. “I’m here to get them back. She’s suffering from postpartum depression. I’m terrified of what she’ll do to herself and our babies.”

  Paula just stared at him. “You’re a liar, Kevin.”

  “Where are my children?” he yelled. He even managed to force some tears down his face. A door opened up down the hall; a man with tousled hair stuck his head out and then disappeared quickly.

  “They’re safe,” she said. Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. “I have a lawyer now.”

  He turned to look at her, but she was stone cold.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” said Kevin. He turned back to Jones. “You can’t call the police.”

  “You threatened me with a gun,” said Paula. “I fled in fear for my life. And now you’ve come after me.”

  Someone had obviously coached her, told her what to say. Ever since she’d started having kids, she’d been so foggy and addled. She didn’t seem that way now, more like she had when he’d first met her.

  “That’s a lie,” he said. “She’s the one with the gun.”

  “I have documented your affair.” Paula went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “I have printed copies of e-mails to your girlfriend and the lies you’ve been telling about me. I also know that you’ve been stealing money from your company to pay your debts.”

  How could she know that?

  “Meanwhile, today I had a little chat with Robin O’Conner,” said Jones. “I know what you did to her.”

  The elevator door opened then, and two uniformed officers stepped out, a bald and lanky black man and a petite blond female. Both rested their hands on the large semiautomatics at their waists. Behind them the girl from the counter emerged, along with a man who looked like he must be her manager.

  “That’s him,” said Caroline. Her warm smile and goo-goo eyes were gone.

  Jones stepped to the side.

  “Everyone needs to keep their hands where we can see them,” said the female officer.

  Kevin had had moments like this before, ugly, dark moments when he was backed into a corner. The sinking hole in his center opened. It was the place where all the selves he created and put out there met. And there, where the real Kevin should have been, there was nothing.

  chapter thirty-six

  Ray was waiting for her in the dri
veway when she got home. She pulled up beside him and saw that he was sleeping. The car was running with the heat on, and he had his head leaned back, his mouth gaping open. He could have gone inside. The door was unlocked.

  She got out of the car and walked over to his Cadillac, tapped on the window. He startled awake, looked over at her, and frowned. He rolled down the window.

  “Where were you? Out partying with your new best friend, Jones Cooper?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “Do you want to come in?”

  He turned off the car and followed her into the house. Oliver greeted her at the door, immediately started purring and weaving himself between her legs. She’d forgotten to feed him.

  As she opened up some food for Oliver and changed his water, Eloise told Ray about her night. He made some coffee while she did, even though it was way too late for coffee.

  “I thought you were retiring,” said Ray. He hadn’t looked at her the whole time she was talking. He’d busied himself fussing with the cabinet door that always came off its hinge. He’d pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and was trying to tighten the screw, his brow furrowed with concentration.

  “Vacationing is not the same thing as retiring,” she answered. She checked the lock on the back door and the window over the sink. “Anyway, what choice did I have? I couldn’t just let him drown.”

  “I thought you had a policy about speaking your vision but not getting physically involved. You know, after what happened in Kansas.”

  She didn’t like to think about Kansas. “I changed my policy,” she said. “Just this once.”

  “Because of Maggie Cooper?”

  A lifetime ago Eloise had given a prediction to Maggie’s mother, Elizabeth Monroe. This prediction may or may not have saved Maggie’s life-it was hard to say in the way that these things were. Other unintended possible results of her conversation were that a not-quite-innocent man had committed suicide in prison and Jones Cooper had built his life around a terrible secret. After living in the city and getting her education there, Maggie returned to The Hollows and married Jones. Eloise had always known that Maggie would one day come to her with questions. And last year she had. Since then Eloise had felt an odd connection to Maggie. And then she’d started having her vision about Jones. Ray knew all this. He knew everything about her, she realized.

  Eloise sat down at the kitchen table, and Oliver rubbed against her before heading over to his food bowl.

  “Maybe,” she said. He came behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, began kneading at her tight muscles. She felt heat and release down her back.

  “What about your visit with Claudia Miller?” she asked.

  “She wouldn’t talk to me. And the Holt house? I poked around in there some. The place is a nightmare. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

  “Some boxes stay locked.”

  She didn’t know if he’d heard that Michael had confessed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be the one to tell him. She’d seen Michael sitting in the back of the patrol car as she left the Hollows Wood. For the first time since she’d known him, he didn’t look haunted. Sometimes a confession is as good as an exorcism.

  “I guess you heard,” he said.

  “About Michael?” she said. When he didn’t reply, she said, “Yes, I heard.”

  “You knew all along, didn’t you?”

  “I suspected.”

  “She told you.” He meant Marla. He was the only one who believed in her wholly and completely, without question.

  “She hinted.”

  His hands moved down her arms, and she felt her body relax beneath his palms. “This is ugly work, Eloise.”

  She wasn’t sure if she agreed with this. Death was life. Maybe it wasn’t the end people thought it was. Maybe it was worse than that. People did horrific, unspeakable things to one another. And there was so much pain. But it was just one part of this gorgeous, hideous, chaotic, and wonderful mosaic they experienced from the moment they drew their first breaths until they drew their last and beyond. And wasn’t it a gift, in some ways, to see all the colors, all the sharp and broken bits, the ones from which all others turned their eyes? According to the Kabbalah, every human soul is just a fragment of the great world-soul, just a tiny piece of the cosmos, linked to every other piece. Eloise liked the idea of this and felt that it could be true. And that was as close to faith as she thought she was apt to get.

  “So,” said Ray when she didn’t answer him, “I’ve never been to Seattle.” He cleared his throat. “I heard it was nice. Lots of rain, but good coffee.”

  For the first time in forever, Eloise smiled.

  chapter thirty-seven

  Claudia Miller watched them come, as she knew they would. She’d known as soon as she saw the For Sale sign in the yard. First there was a single patrol car. Then a black unmarked cruiser. Then more. Eventually the others, her neighbors with their too-loud, bratty children, came to stand on porches and stoops, watching, too. She could feel their nervousness, their excitement. Of course, none of them had even come to the window when the paramedics took Mack from that house. No one came to stand beside her at the ambulance while they’d wheeled him down his overgrown walk and carried him away. No one cared about an old man leaving his home for the last time.

  The neighbors all stood. A group of them eventually gathered in the street. Finally the lawyer with the black Mercedes (the one who snuck a cigarette in his side yard at night when he was taking out the trash) walked over to the uniformed officer standing in the drive.

  “Can you tell me what’s happening, Officer?” His voice was strident in the cold, chill air. Now that the rain had stopped pounding on her roof and windows, the neighborhood seemed so quiet.

  The officer lifted a hand and shook his head. But Claudia couldn’t hear what he said.

  “We have a right to know,” said the lawyer. She knew he’d get peevish if he didn’t get his way. She knew why the police were there. Claudia Miller knew lots of things.

  She knew that the pretty blond girl (what was she? maybe sixteen?) climbed out her window some nights, using one of those rope fire-escape ladders that people keep under their beds. Her boyfriend picked her up on the corner, brought her back a few hours later.

  Claudia knew that the big-chested woman at number 180 was having an affair. She was a popular area real estate agent, flitting in and out of her house all day like a bee bringing honey back to the hive. But every Wednesday at lunchtime, she met a man at her house. Claudia would watch as each of them went casually in, casually out. Sometimes the woman’s husband didn’t get home until after midnight.

  Claudia knew that the cat Misty wasn’t really lost, despite the sad signs on lampposts and pinned up on the supermarket bulletin board. It had slipped outside while the housewife at 183 got the mail. Later Claudia watched it get hit by a car, stagger up to the curb, and die. Later still, the housewife came out and saw it lying there and wept in the street. Then she carried the body gingerly and laid it on top of the trash. The truck came soon after. The kids were still looking for their dead cat, hoping Misty would come home.

  Claudia knew their secrets. Each one was like a gem she locked away in a box. They belonged to her, because she was vigilant.

  She’d been watching the night Marla Holt disappeared. Claudia had been waiting for Mack to come home. She waited every night to see him pull in to the drive in his sensible car. What was it that he drove then? She couldn’t remember things like that anymore. He’d climb out slowly, retrieve his satchel from the backseat. She watched him mow the lawn on Saturdays, wash the cars on Sundays. She enjoyed it when he played basketball in the driveway with his boy (even though the sound of that ball almost drove her crazy). She liked to watch him stroll with the baby in the carriage on the nights she was fussy. With his broad shoulders and perpetually tousled hair, Mack reminded her of a man she’d loved once. The one her sister had married, if the truth be told. Married and then drove him to an early grave
with her spending and demands for this and that. At least that’s the way Claudia saw it, even if no one else did. She moved far away from all of them, rather than watch it unfold.

  Mack Holt was the only person on the block to ever show her any kindness. He never failed to wave hello when he saw her, or to offer her a smile. He brought her newspaper to the porch from the sidewalk on rainy Sunday mornings. And so she kept an eye on things for him.

  She was at her window that night. Mack was late in coming home. And instead Henry Ivy came walking up the drive. It was their night to jog. (Claudia thought it was unseemly for a married woman to flaunt herself around the neighborhood like that with another man. But she suspected Marla Holt of much worse.)

  She saw the boy Michael come home, drop his bicycle in the yard. Henry Ivy left. And then the yelling started. Soon Mack came home. There was more yelling, the sound of something breaking. Then Claudia saw the woman run from the back door, the boy and husband chasing after her. She could have called the police, even put her hand on the phone. Nothing good could come of what she’d seen. But a woman like that, always putting on airs, flaunting herself, having men into her house while her husband was out working. Well, maybe she deserved what she got.

  Later, hours later, Mack and Michael came back. The boy was sick, or drunk. Mack was practically dragging him. He brought the boy inside, and a few minutes later he returned to the back deck, leaned heavily against the rail, and looked out into the night. She could see him in the amber light over his kitchen door. But she had her lights out; he couldn’t have seen her, hidden as she was behind the curtain.

  Then he turned and looked over at her house, as though he knew she was watching. He looked at her house for a long, long time. And she knew that he wanted her to be quiet. And because Mack Holt reminded her of what it felt like to be young and in love, because he had shown her kindness when others couldn’t be bothered, she made a silent promise to him that she would take what she’d seen that night to her grave. And she would, even though Mack was gone now. She’d keep their secret, no matter who came calling.