Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

She came over and leaned on the counter with a sweet smile. “Help you?”

“Just a coffee,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Are you sure? You look hungry.”

Jones glanced over at the trucker. “I’d have what he’s having. But I’d drop dead on the spot.”

“And just look at him,” she whispered. “I bet he looks better in a skirt than I do.”

“I doubt that.” But he said it in a gentle, fatherly way. Non-intimidating, nonsuggestive.

“Charmer,” she said with that same sweet smile. “I’ll get you some egg whites and toast.”

“Sounds good.”

When the trucker left and Jones had finished his meal, they were alone in the diner, except for whoever was cooking in the back. He could see why she couldn’t make rent. There were no businesses in the area to attract a lunch crowd. The diner was perched across from the motel on a lonely two-lane road. Truckers pulling off the highway, motel guests, the stray tourist heading up to the mountains for camping or hiking-that was probably the extent of their clientele.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

“I’m not here just for the meal. Can we talk?”

Fear pulled her face long. She looked toward the back, stepped away from the counter.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. He lifted a hand. “Paula Carr asked me to find you.”

She still didn’t say anything. He decided to go on. “The best I can figure is that she wanted to get away from her husband, but she didn’t want to leave your boy behind.”

He watched her eyes fill with tears.

“But now she’s gone. I don’t know where.”

“And where’s Cole?” Her voice was a tight whisper.

Jones hadn’t considered that point. Stupid. “I’m assuming he’s still with his father.”

“He wouldn’t have left his dad,” she said. A single tear fell down her cheek, and she batted it away. “He loves Kevin.” He heard sadness and not a little bitterness in her voice.

“I saw Cole the other day,” he said. “He seemed healthy, well cared for.”

She offered a relieved smile. “I miss him so much.”

“Kevin told Paula that you had asked him to take Cole because your new boyfriend couldn’t be bothered. He implied that there were drug and alcohol problems.”

She started to sob in earnest then. “No,” she managed. “No, never.”

He motioned for her to come sit at one of the booths, and she came around from the counter and sank into one of the red vinyl seats. No one came from the back to see what was happening. The parking lot was empty of cars.

“I have to pull myself together,” she said. She took a napkin from the dispenser and wiped her eyes, blew her nose. She was pretty even while crying. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jones Cooper,” he said. “I’m an investigator hired by Mrs. Carr.”

The words felt like a lie, even though they were as close to the truth as possible. She seemed to accept his answer without question. He guessed he fit the part.

“It was just supposed to be for the summer,” she said. She stopped then, laced her fingers, and seemed to consider how to go on. “Cole and I were battling constantly. He was hanging out with thugs at school. I found a joint in his backpack. We were fighting every day. It was terrible. I was thinking of sending him to one of those discipline camps.”

Jones found himself watching her body language, the lacing and unlacing of her fingers, rubbing at her forehead. The inside points of her eyebrows turned up in the middle. She was stressed and sad.

“Then Cole told me he’d gotten in touch with his dad, even though we hadn’t heard from him in years. He wanted to spend the summer away. Away from me.”

“And you agreed?”

“Cole wanted to go. Kevin showed up in his shiny car and laid on the charm. Said all the right things, like how he’d been an absent father, maybe that’s why Cole was so out of hand. Maybe a summer together would straighten him out. He wanted the chance to be a better dad, for Cole to know his half brother and sister. After all, I couldn’t really afford to send him to one of those camps.”

She stopped, looked out the window. “And honestly, I was tired . Working so hard just to meet our bills, fighting every day with him. Cole is smart, wants to go to college. I had no idea how I was going to pay for that. Kevin said he’d pay. He always knew how to say what I wanted to hear. I should have known. In my heart maybe I did.”

“Known what?”

“That either you go along with Kevin when he’s being nice or he gets ugly and you go along the hard way.”

“Meaning?” But Jones had a feeling he knew exactly what she meant.

“At the end of the summer, the day Cole was supposed to come back, Kevin came alone. He said he wanted Cole to finish school in The Hollows. And if I let him do it, Kevin would pay for college.”

“I said no. I wanted my boy back. Even though it was a relief in some ways to have him gone for the summer, I missed him terribly. It was like an ache in my heart to walk past his room and see it empty.” Her eyes filled again, but she seemed stronger.

“You have kids,” she went on. “I can tell. You love them so awful, don’t you? It takes everything to raise them well, but, man, that love fills you up.”

“So true,” he said. And it was. “Did he get ugly with you when you said no?”

“Not at first,” she said. “He implied he’d come alone because Cole was so happy in The Hollows. He loved Paula and the kids; they had such a stable, loving family. He said it like he was trying not to hurt my feelings, but that’s what he was trying to do. And he did. It cut me deep. I thought about letting Cole stay. But no, that was my son. Plus, we’d been talking and e-mailing. He’d said he missed me, was ready to come back and do better at school. I knew my boy. We fought, but we always had a good relationship at the core. Lots of love.”

She told him how Kevin had seemed to accept this, left a while later, and said he’d come back with Cole tomorrow. But he didn’t. She started calling Kevin’s office, his cell phone that night, but the calls went straight to voice mail. Then strange things started to happen. First Cole’s cell phone number was disconnected. And her e-mail messages to him bounced. She figured he was avoiding her.

But then her phone was disconnected. She called from a neighbor’s house, and the phone company told her that records showed she’d called to have her service turned off; the caller had had her Social Security number and password. It would take a few days for service to be restored.

“That’s when I started to get scared,” she said. “I got in my car to drive to The Hollows. I was going to get my son back. I had legal custody, and I would fight for my boy. I remembered what Kevin was, why I’d left him. He was cold. Cold at his center. I mean, he doesn’t feel. People don’t change. How could I have forgotten?”

“We always want to think the best of people,” said Jones. “It’s normal.”

But she didn’t seem to hear him. Her face was pale with anxiety, her words rushing out as though she’d been holding them all back for too long.

“Next my car wouldn’t start. When the mechanic came out to tow it, he told me that the motherboard, the main electrical component that controlled the car, had been fried and that it would take days and thousands of dollars to fix.”

She shook her head as though she were still incredulous about it.

“I was in a state of pure panic. For three days I had to call in sick to work.”

Jones thought of what he already knew about Robin O’Conner. “So you lost your job.”

He thought she would start to cry again. But she didn’t. “I’d already missed so much time because of my problems with Cole. I was on thin ice. I think Kevin knew that. I think I’d even told him.”