Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

He’d wanted to tell Jones about it that night in the woods. When they were out there, maybe feet from where they’d found those bones. He’d wanted to say, I was with her that night, Jones. I held her in my arms. She was so unhappy with Mack, with herself, with the life they’d made. She told me that she’d made mistakes, that in certain ways she’d been unfaithful. I held her, and I wanted her so badly. I could have had her. I didn’t care that there was someone else, someone not her husband. She was already opening up to me like a flower .

Henry had wanted to tell Jones how it had taken every ounce of restraint in his body not to kiss her, not to feel the softness of her lips on his. His whole body had ached with desire as she wept in his arms. What would have happened if Michael hadn’t come home and found them there, holding each other, swaying in the dim light of the living room? Would he have been able to walk away from her? Would he have been able to hold himself back? He knew that nobody thought of him as someone with the same drives and needs as any man. Henry’s so sweet. Henry’s so kind. Henry’s such a good friend . But he did have needs, desires, always ignored and repressed. And he’d been alone so long.

“Mom?”

The word had rocketed through both of them, sent them reeling back from each other like an electric shock.

“Michael,” she said. It sounded more like a breath exhaled, shocked and afraid. “What are you doing here?”

“Mom,” the boy had said. “What are you doing ?”

There was something strange and electric about the moment.

“It’s nothing, sweetie,” Marla whispered. “Henry’s just a friend.”

Henry’s just a friend . The words sliced him, even though he knew in his heart of hearts that it was true. That’s what he was to women. Just a friend. Even though he’d been burning with desire, she’d only been seeking comfort in her misery.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

And he’d moved quickly past the boy, who was already taller and thicker than Henry, with his face burning. The kid was panting like an animal. He was only thirteen, or maybe fourteen already. He was still in middle school, not yet at Hollows High.

“Don’t, Henry.” Her words followed him out the front door. And then he was running. He’d come over in his jogging clothes, because he hadn’t expected to stay long, because he didn’t want anyone to see him going to her house wearing street clothes. He ran and ran, did hard, sweaty miles through the neighborhood and out onto the road that led to the more rural areas of The Hollows, past the grazing fields and dairy farms. Later, when questions were asked, people had seen him running, as he did most nights. They had seen him running alone, not with Marla Holt. When he got back to his house, he saw that the Holt house was dark. And Mack’s car was in the driveway. And that’s when Henry saw Claudia Miller, standing in her upstairs window, a black silhouette against a glowing yellow light, watching, always watching.

The bell rang, and he snapped back to the moment. He wondered if he should cancel with Bethany Graves. What kind of company would he be with all this on his mind? He’d spent so much time wondering about that night with Marla. What would have happened if he’d stayed, hadn’t run like a coward? Maybe she’d be with him right now, be his wife, instead of running off with whomever she’d finally chosen.

Honestly, he’d never believed that she had fallen to harm. He believed as everyone else had that she’d tired of her life in The Hollows and moved on without her children. She’d as much as told him that she’d been seeing someone else. Claudia Miller had watched her get into a black sedan, carrying a suitcase.

Maybe that night was just the last straw. Michael told Mack that another man had been in the house, and they’d fought. Maybe Marla had called her boyfriend and finally left, as she so desperately wanted to. She’d taken her beauty and her charm and left her suburban hell. If Henry had been a different kind of man, he’d have been the one to take her away. If he weren’t Henry Ivy, bully bait-turned-high-school teacher, living in his parents’ house, he’d have been the man to take her to New York City or Hollywood. But he was Henry Ivy, and try as he might, he had never been able to make himself into anything else.

Now he had to consider the idea that if he hadn’t left her that night, he might have saved her life. He wasn’t sure if he could live with that.

He forced himself to concentrate on the screen in front of him. He scrolled through the absences listed on the spreadsheet and saw that both Cole Carr and Jolie Marsh had not been in school for two days. Willow Graves had been in class-focused and attentive, if quiet, according to her teachers. He was glad for that. Henry knew that Willow was having a hard time, having problems adjusting to her parents’ divorce, her new school. But he didn’t think she was troubled, or at risk like Jolie Marsh. They could lose Jolie Marsh, as they’d lost her brother, Jeb. He’d make a call to each family. Neither absence had been explained with a phone call or an e-mail.

Thinking about the three young people made him remember their afternoon in the woods. He and Jones had discussed the legend told to Bethany Graves by Michael Holt. Henry had offered to research it, but he hadn’t done anything more than a cursory Internet search that had, not surprisingly, yielded nothing. He’d even looked up Mack Holt online, wondering if some of his papers or research had been digitally archived at the university. But he found nothing except the man’s obituary, sad and perfunctory. He’d died alone, estranged from his children. The only reason Michael Holt had returned at all, according to the endless Hollows rumor mill, was that he was still asking questions about his missing mother-questions that might be answered now, by the discovery of human bones in a clearing in the woods.

Henry reached for the phone to call Maggie. But he couldn’t bring himself to dial her number. Maybe he should talk to Jones, tell him what he hadn’t told them years ago. But how could he say it now? That he was there that night, holding Marla Holt? How could he explain keeping that secret all these years, revealing it only now, when her bones turned up? How could he expose his terrible cowardice? He’d always wondered why Michael Holt had never mentioned that he was there, had never told the police or his father. Then he’d heard that Michael had no memory of the night and what had happened to his mother.

When the boy started high school, Henry feared that Michael would recognize him, that it would jog his memory. But the boy had never even seemed to notice him. He’d never had Michael in his AP history class. When they passed in the hall, the boy only glanced at him in blank unrecognition, even though they had lived in the same neighborhood for years.

But this was all so long ago. A lifetime, it seemed. Until that afternoon in the woods with Jones, it had been years since he’d thought about Marla. She was just another woman he’d wanted who remained out of reach.

His intercom buzzed.

“Mr. Ivy, Bethany Graves on line one.” He almost told his assistant, Bella, to take a message. But he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.

“Thanks, Bella.”

He took a deep breath and picked up the phone. “Ms. Graves? What can I do for you?”

She giggled a little, and he felt a warmth rise inside him.

“You sound so… like a principal,” she said.

He glanced over at the door. Bella was on the phone, probably talking to her boyfriend, who was a rookie cop with the Hollows PD. Bella was the one with the inside information about the bones found at the Chapel. And the girl, sweet and efficient as she was, never stopped talking.