Lisa Unger: Darkness My Old Friend

“Cole asked if he could give me a ride home,” she said when she reached her mom. The hall was thinning out, people heading to the buses. They started moving toward the door, in case she said no.

“Willow.”

“We’ll come straight there,” she said.

Willow had been sure she was going to be grounded for life after the woods. But instead she and Bethany had stayed up all that night talking. They talked about things they’d never really discussed-the night Willow first ran away in New York City, the lies she’d told that alienated all her friends, how lost she felt, and how much blame she had felt after Bethany’s divorce from Richard. She’d just wanted to disappear, not die, not end her life. She wanted to dissolve, be invisible. It was hard to explain, but her mother seemed to listen and understand.

When Willow had chased Jolie in the rain, trying to get her to come back to the car, she’d slipped and fallen into the water. And after the shock of the cold, panic set in. And as the water took her away from Cole and Jolie, who chased her through the trees and finally fell behind, she screamed for her mother.

In her frightened mind, she believed that her mother could always hear her when she called and would always come for her. That her mother was just like the mom in that story she loved. And she’d realized she believed that because it had always been true; her mom was always there. Even if she did invite Mr. Ivy to dinner. But she also believed that she had to stay close by for her mother to hear her. And Willow had strayed very far. Her mother couldn’t hear her calling for help.

And then her foot got stuck and she was pulled under. She didn’t remember much after that, except opening her eyes on the bank, seeing Jolie and Cole looking at her in horror like they thought she was dead.

She told her mother all this. And her mother, amazingly , didn’t cry. And because she didn’t, because she seemed strong, Willow told her about that dark, angry place she had inside sometimes. The place that helped her understand Gene in A Separate Peace . She’d been in that place when she was so mean to her mom at dinner with Mr. Ivy. She had never told anyone about that.

They went to see Dr. Cooper together the next day and talked to her about what had happened, how they could move forward together in a better way, what they could do to earn each other’s trust. Grounding for eternity was not on the list of things to do.

She was actually breaking one of her promises right now, by calling in to question a rule her mother had made. No riding in cars with boys.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll take the bus.”

“He can meet you here,” she said. “We’ll bake cookies.”

She was about to make some smart comment about how they weren’t three years old and cookie baking had lost its charm. But she didn’t. She still loved to bake cookies.

“I have to take the bus,” she said to Cole. She stuffed the phone into her bag. “She said you could come over.”

She felt that anxiety well up, that fear that he would think she was a giant dork and that he’d rather be with Jolie, who could go anywhere and do anything she wanted to do.

“Cool,” he said. “See you there.”

He read something on her face, gave her that quick, shy smile he had. “I’ll be there this time. Promise.”

And then he was gone. Mom thought he was too old for her. Next year he’d be a senior and she’d be a sophomore. Mom thought he had too many problems. He’s got a lot on his plate for a kid. His dad’s in jail. His mom is out of work. I don’t want his baggage to become yours . What did that even mean? And then, of course, there was the big talk about sex. And how Willow wasn’t ready, and how it was a special thing that she was too young to understand, and how she shouldn’t make the choice to share herself that way yet. And that she had to promise to talk to Bethany if she was thinking about it, and not to do anything until she did. How disgusting was it to talk to your mother about things like that? Anyway, Willow so wasn’t there. She didn’t even want to think about that .

“Are you going to have sex with Mr. Ivy?” Willow had asked. She drew out his name into a playful taunt.

“Willow!” Bethany had said. Bull’s-eye. Willow was off the hook. A high red blush lit up her mother’s face. “Please! That is so not your business.”

“Are you going to see him again?” she asked. Because that’s what she really wanted to know.

“At the moment we’re just friends.”

“But you like him like him, right? You don’t just friend like him.”

Honesty, that was the other promise. No secrets and half-truths. No lies. Her mother looked away. “Yes, I like him like him. But there’s no guarantee he feels the same way. Our first date did not exactly go seamlessly.”

“He likes you,” Willow said. “I can tell.”

“Whatever,” Bethany said. “Whatever it winds up being, it’s going to be very slow. So you don’t have anything to worry about. It’s not going to affect your life at all.”

Willow got on the bus and sat in the back. She put her earbuds in and listened to Lady Gaga as the bus wound its way home. They passed the silver-gray pond surrounded by trees losing their leaves. And the sky above was blue with high white clouds, and the light was already going golden. The days were growing short. As the bus pulled to a stop in front of her drive, a flock of birds startled and fluttered noisily away. When she stepped outside and the bus pulled away, she was left with that silence she’d grown to appreciate and the smell of pine, somewhere the scent of burning wood. Maybe Mr. Vance was right. The Hollows wasn’t that bad.

Jones was behind on the leaves. The lawn was almost covered with them. Maggie wanted him to get a leaf blower, but he liked the exercise of raking. Going to the gym and logging miles on a machine seemed like a waste of time. Everyone was pounding away on some piece of equipment, staring at a television screen, with headphones in ears. That couldn’t be healthy, could it? At least when he was raking, he was outside, taking in the air, accomplishing something. But it seemed like he’d been raking for hours. And he hadn’t even scratched the surface.

To his dismay and annoyance, the mourning doves had made a nest in the upper corner of the porch roof. He’d heard them cooing when he came out to get the paper and looked up to see them nestled together in a small pile of twigs and scraps of newspaper on a little ledge that Jones hadn’t even noticed before.

“Oh, leave them,” said Maggie. “They’re so cute, and it’s going to be cold this winter. Maybe we should hang a bird feeder.”

“No,” he said. “No way. They have to go.”

“Don’t be such an old crank.”

“They carry lice, you know.”

“Oh, Jones.”

Now the doves sat on the rail, cuddling together, looking sweet. They knew they had Maggie on their side, didn’t they? If he got rid of their nest while they were out doing their mourning-dove things, he’d be in trouble. He leaned his rake against the tree, dropped his gloves on the ground, and walked inside through the garage so that he wouldn’t have to walk past those smug little birds. He’d find a nice way to relocate them, just move the nest somewhere. Maybe when Maggie was over at her mother’s later.

Inside, on the old table in the kitchen sat a copy of the Hollows Gazette . There was an article in there about the discovery of Marla Holt’s remains. He’d been mentioned in the article as the retired cop-turned-private investigator. He didn’t know where the reporter had gotten her information. The phone started ringing a couple of hours after the paper hit the driveways. There was no mention in the article of the circumstances under which Jones had retired. And it seemed that no one remembered or cared.