Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

In the margin of her notebook, she’d doodled, Sticks and stones may break my bones. But words can break my heart .

She’d zoned out in science lab, hadn’t done the reading, anyway. The teacher put a zero in the book, and Willow would have to do extra credit to get it removed.

By the time she was at her locker, removing her things to go home, she was barely holding back a flood of angry, frustrated tears.

“Rough day?” The voice behind her was smoky and mischievous, full of invitation.

“No more than usual,” she lied. She turned to face Jolie with a smile.

“I saw you come in with your mom. You looked miserable. Still do. Don’t let them do it to you, girl. Don’t let them bring you down.”

Willow shrugged. Jolie chewed at her cuticle, looked at her with glittering green eyes through lashes caked with dark mascara. Willow noticed that Jolie’s black polish had chipped to tiny islands in the center of each nail.

“I like your coat,” said Willow. It was a vintage black wool A-line with enormous buttons.

“Salvation Army,” said Jolie. She did a little spin. “Twelve bucks. Cute, huh?”

It would have been cute if it weren’t scattered with stains and white pet hair. This could be said of Jolie, too. She had a kind of beauty, but she looked dirty. She had creamy white skin but a constellation of acne on her chin. Her raven hair always looked like it needed washing. Something about her made Willow itchy.

“Let’s take a walk,” Jolie said.

“I gotta get home. I promised my mom and Mr. Ivy that I’d work harder.”

“So call your mom and tell her you’re going to stay and study at the library. Take the late bus.”

There was that smile. Willow liked Jolie; Willow felt relaxed and easy when she was around, didn’t have that need to make things up to feel better about herself.

“Come on,” Jolie said. She gave Willow a gentle nudge with her shoulder. “You can study later. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

So Willow called her mom, who sounded skeptical but just tired enough to let it slide. Then Willow and Jolie hung out in the library awhile. They tried to look studious with their books open, passing notes back and forth, while they waited for Bethany to call and check up-which she did, predictably, fifteen minutes later.

“She’s here, Mrs. Graves,” Willow heard Mrs. Teaford, the school librarian, say. “Studying hard.”

Jolie buried her face in her arms so no one would see her laughing. Then, when Mrs. Teaford was occupied with a flood of students checking out books and asking questions ( what a bunch of geeks! ), Jolie and Willow slipped off. Running and laughing down the long gray hallway, then bursting through the side doors, the cold air greeting them in a rush, pushing their laughter up into the sky. Willow wasn’t even sure why she was laughing, except that she felt good for the first time all day. There was an hour and a half until the late bus; she had that long to be herself. Then she’d go home and try to be what everyone else wanted her to be.

At first glance Jones wouldn’t have said Paula Carr was beautiful. She wasn’t the type of woman who caused you to do a double take. She didn’t invite the three-point appraisal: face, breasts, ass-not necessarily in that order. She was a mom, with a stylish short cut to her brown hair but wearing very little makeup other than a light gloss on her lips. She had on faded jeans, a ribbed turtleneck, athletic shoes-nothing about any of it was sexy or hot. But after twenty minutes sitting with her, listening to her chat nervously, watching her spoon-feed her baby girl, wipe down the counter, hard-boil some eggs, then sit down with some tea for them both after depositing the little one in her crib, he found himself captivated by her-her wide pink mouth, her high cheekbones, the depths of her dark eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said when she’d finally settled. “You’re probably wondering why I called and asked you to come here.”

He was wondering about that. When he’d returned her call, she’d asked him to come by in the early afternoon the next day.

“I’ll pay you for your time, of course,” she’d said. “My baby will be taking her nap, and my two older boys won’t be home from school.” She’d spoken in a hushed tone, as though she didn’t want anyone to hear-or maybe so as not to wake the baby. He couldn’t be sure. He’d called to tell her that he didn’t really take care of any properties off his block, but there was something about her voice. By the end of the conversation, he found himself telling her yes, of course he’d come by.

Maggie said, “You never could resist a damsel in distress.”

“What makes you think she’s in distress? Maybe she just needs someone to water her plants while she jets off to the Caribbean.”

“She’d have asked you that over the phone.”

Jones shifted off his coat when Paula didn’t go on right away. In the sunny dining room, he was feeling overly warm. Paula stared down at her mug, started tracing the rim with one short fingernail. She had a nice big diamond on her left hand. Married, maybe not too happily. He wouldn’t have been able to say why he thought this, that she wasn’t happy. There was something odd about the house, too. He wasn’t able to put his finger on that, either.

“Over the summer my husband’s sixteen-year-old son by another marriage came to stay with us. It was supposed to be short-term.”

“Okay.”

“At first I was pretty anxious about it. I mean, Kevin goes to work all day. So I was supposed to hang out with the kid all summer? I have two other small ones, so I’m pretty much being run ragged all the time as it is. But what are you going to do? His mother was having a hard time; Cole needed his father. So yeah, of course he comes here.”

She looked up at the ceiling for a second, and he followed her eyes until he realized that this was something she did to keep herself from crying. When she looked back down, she wore an embarrassed smile but had managed to keep her tears at bay.

“I’m sorry.” It was maybe the fourth time she’d apologized for various little things since he’d arrived. She was sorry that it had taken her a minute to get to the door, that she was running behind with the baby’s schedule, that she hadn’t offered him tea right away. He didn’t think someone with so little to apologize for should be rushing to do it all the time.

“You’re fine,” he said. “Take your time.”

She took a sip of her tea. “Anyway, so Cole arrived. And guess what? He’s a total doll. All summer he helps around the house. He’s great with the kids. After a few weeks, I was leaving him with Cammy-that’s my oldest-while I ran to the store with the little one. Cole’s mother is a disaster, but she must have done something right, because the kid’s a gem.”

“That’s great,” he said. “It could have been a difficult situation.”

He still had no idea what the woman wanted. But if he had learned anything over his years as a cop and a husband, it was that women wanted to take a scenic route to the point. If you were smart, you kept your mouth shut.

“Cole was supposed to go back to New Jersey at the end of the summer. His mother was scheduled to pick him up on August fifteenth. But the day came and went; she never showed. The home phone was disconnected. The voice mail on her cell phone was full. The next weekend Cole and Kevin drove out to her place, only to learn that she’d been evicted. All their stuff was gone. And Robin, that’s Kevin’s ex, had stopped showing up to work a couple of weeks earlier.”

“When was the last time Cole talked to his mother?”