Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

“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.

Ray was waiting for her in the driveway 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.

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.