Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

“Okay,” said Henry. “Let’s try to think a second. Where might Willow go? I know that some of the kids like to hang out at the old graveyard up the road.”

Bethany remembered Willow mentioning it, that it had scared her a little. She didn’t think Willow would go there again. She said as much.

“Well, let’s just take a quick ride up there and see.”

She hit “send” on the phone again. As she did, she watched a man approach them. He cut a big, dark figure in the hallway, seemed to dominate the space with a slow and easy approach. When he reached them, Bethany thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him.

“Hey, Henry,” he said, extending a hand.

“Good to see you, Jones,” Henry said. He took the other man’s hand and patted him on the back in one familiar gesture. “We’ve got an issue here. I know you need to talk, but can it wait a minute?”

“Sure. Anything I can do?”

Jones Cooper, Bethany realized then, Dr. Cooper’s husband. Bethany had seen him working around the yard when she brought Willow for her appointments.

Henry introduced them. She liked his handshake, his barn jacket, and his barrel chest. He had a nice face. Rugged was the word that came to mind. Reliable .

“We’re looking for a couple of kids,” said Henry. “Willow Graves didn’t come home on the late bus.”

She saw a shadow of something cross Jones Cooper’s face. It made her own heart start to pound.

“We were thinking of checking out the old graveyard,” Henry said. “Just going to head up that way now.”

Jones pointed toward the door. “My truck’s right outside. I can take a quick run up there with you.”

The graveyard was a tired, dilapidated little place, and Bethany could see immediately why Willow hadn’t liked it, not that anyone sane had much of an affinity for graveyards. It looked lonely and abandoned, a resting place for the forgotten dead. As they exited their vehicles-Bethany and Henry followed in her car behind Jones Cooper-she could see that the ground was littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts.

“They haven’t been able to get anyone to do the job of caretaker here,” Henry said. He stopped and peered at a plaque pushed into the stone wall. It was so weathered and calcified as to be unreadable. “It’s a historic site. Shame that it’s fallen to disrepair.”

Fallen to disrepair . As though everything tends that way if we don’t hold it back. If we just release our grasp on anything, it falls apart. Jones pushed open the gate; it protested with a squeal. And just then, with the sun nearly gone from the sky, standing in that terrible place, Bethany thought she’d implode with anger and worry and regret. Why had she moved them to this place? She must have been crazy to think Willow would ever adjust to The Hollows. She’d been scared; that was the truth. After that night when she realized how much trouble a girl like Willow could get into in New York City, she wanted her as far away from that place as they could reasonably get. But now here they were, in a graveyard looking for her daughter. She should have known. If you’re looking, you can find trouble anywhere. It’s waiting-not just on city street corners, in subways, in nightclubs, but on quiet country roads, in a peaceful stand of trees.

Just as she was about to dial Willow again, she saw her daughter emerge from the woods. For a moment she didn’t believe her eyes, somehow thought she was willing the vision of Willow and Jolie and some strangely beautiful boy she’d never seen before. They looked ethereal, all of them pale-skinned, dressed in black.

“Mom?” Willow managed to squeeze embarrassment and trepidation into a single syllable. The three teenagers exchanged a look-that too-cool glance, that half smile of rebellion, as if all your parental emotions are ridiculous and contemptible. No, that was just Jolie. Willow looked scared, sheepish. And the boy, Bethany couldn’t read his face.

“Willow, get in the car.” It was all she could manage-her anger and relief were so powerful she thought she might vomit.

“Mom.”

“Get. In. The. Car.”

“Where were you?” Henry asked Jolie as Willow made her way to Bethany’s vehicle.

“We were just taking a walk ,” said Jolie. “That’s not a crime. Is it?”

Jones Cooper hadn’t said a word all this time. He’d just stood watching. Now he stepped forward. He had his hands in his pockets, looked unassumingly up at the sky.

“It’s not safe back there,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at them. “You kids should know that. There are abandoned mines. Some of that is private property, and folks around here aren’t too friendly with trespassers.” He kicked at the ground, and Bethany heard the tinkle of metal. Shell casings. Once she noticed them, she realized that casings littered the area around them.

“We were just walking around,” said the boy. He didn’t say it with an attitude. He was confident, but not a punk. Bethany noticed Jones give the kid a hard once-over, taking in the details-denim jacket, some graphic T-shirt, dirty, ripped-at-the-knee jeans that probably cost a hundred dollars, thick leather boots. His blue-black hair was carefully styled and gelled to look like a mess. His eyelashes were so long and dark he looked like he was wearing mascara. But he wasn’t. In other words, he was teenage-girl catnip.

“What’s your name, son?” Jones Cooper said.

“Cole Carr,” he said. The boy offered his hand, and Jones shook it.

“Cole just started here in September,” Henry said. “And this is Jolie Marsh.”

Jones looked at Jolie. “I know your father.”

“Good for you.”

Jones raised amused eyebrows at the girl, turned that assessing stare on her. Bethany was happy to watch the girl squirm after a moment and avert her tough-girl glare to the ground. She looked dirty-dirty under her nails, her hair unwashed, stains on her coat. Who was taking care of this kid?

“I just wanted to show them what I saw yesterday,” Willow said from the car. She’d rolled down the window.

“What did you see?” asked Jones. No one seemed to question who he was or what right he had to be asking questions. Even Bethany found herself deferring to his natural air of authority. In the car on the way over, Henry had told her that Jones Cooper was a retired detective from the Hollows Police Department, that he was a part-time PI now. She thought she remembered Dr. Cooper saying something about that. He looked the part, especially now that he was asking questions.

Bethany told Jones about Willow’s encounter in the woods, about Michael Holt returning her phone and his search for the mine shaft. Jones watched her with keen interest. What she was saying meant something to him; she had no idea what.

“Of course, now I regret ever telling her what he told me,” Bethany said. “I should have known better.”

Jones gave her an understanding nod, a low chuckle. “Kids.”

“Can we go?” said Jolie. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We were going to get Willow back for the late bus. It just took us longer than we thought. There’s nothing back there anyway. It was a big waste of time.”

Bethany heard Willow roll up the window; she turned to see Willow looking angry and sullen in the passenger seat. When she turned back, she noticed Cole staring at Willow and Jolie watching him watch Willow. Uh-oh , thought Bethany with a thud of dread in her belly. The trouble here has just begun .

That day, a lifetime ago now, had started like any other day. That’s what Eloise always marveled at. In her life before, there was nothing to indicate that she’d been marked to live the life she was living now. She had been an ordinary girl, born to ordinary working-class parents. She’d married her high-school sweetheart, Alfred Montgomery. She worked as a receptionist at a trucking company, while Al earned his degree at community college. Then she happily gave up her job when her first daughter was born.