Bentley Little - The Burning

"Oh, my God!" Leslie said as she approached the table. "Jo? Is that you?"

At least she was still recognizable. Jolene smiled. "Yeah. It's me."

"And is this your little guy?"

"This is Skylar." She prodded him gently with an elbow. "This is my friend Ms. Finch. Say hello."

"Hi," the boy said shyly.

"Hi, Skylar. How old are you?"

"Eight." He turned back toward Jolene. "Could I have a Coke?"

"You have milk or lemonade." She smiled at Leslie. "Are you busy? Do you have time?"

"No, I'm not, and yes, I do. Can I join you?"

"I was hoping you would. I thought we could catch up on old times."

"Or new times." Leslie beckoned over the waitress. "Do you know what you guys want to order?" she asked Jolene.

"Grilled cheese sandwich and lemonade," Skylar announced.

"Okay," Jolene told him. She smiled at Leslie. "Pick something for me. You know what's good here."

The waitress returned, they gave their orders, and Leslie informed them in a voice that brooked no argument that the meal would be on the house. "So what brings you back?" she asked as the waitress left.

Jolene did not want to go into detail, not with her son sitting here, so she looked meaningfully at Leslie, shot a sideways glance at Skylar, then looked at her friend again with an expression that she hoped the other woman would be able to read. "I'm making a few changes," she said simply.

Leslie nodded, let it lie, and Jolene could tell that her friend understood.

They were still in sync after all these years.

The conversation shifted to neutral topics: old acquaintances, the restaurant, the town. Leslie assured her as their food arrived that the character of Bear Flats had not changed one whit in the intervening years. "Oh, it's the same as it always was. Everyone's stunningly uninformed, depressingly small-minded and bitterly jealous of ... well, everyone else."

Jolene laughed.

"So why am I still here, right?" Leslie shook her head as she dipped a french fry in ketchup. "I ask myself that every day. Part of it's just ... inertia. It's easier, more comfortable, the devil you know and all that. The coward's way out, I know, but you kind of get used to things the way they are, and it gets harder and harder to change. I often wish that I'd done what you did, just taken off for greener pastures and not looked back."

"It's not all it's cracked up to be."

Again, Leslie let that lie, and for that, Jolene was grateful. The two of them needed to talk later, she thought. Really talk. There was so much she wanted to say.

"You look like you're doing well, though," Jolene offered.

Leslie smiled. "By Bear Flats standards, yeah. And I'm not unhappy. I'm just ... restless sometimes, you know?"

"Yeah."

"So how's your mom doing?"

Jolene shrugged. "The same."

"Are you staying with her?"

"For the moment."

"Ah, the old dynamics never change, do they?"

"Not really," she admitted.

"You could always bunk with me while you're in town. I have plenty of room."

"Lezzie Finch!" Jolene said in a tone of mock shock.

Leslie threw a napkin at her. "I can't believe you remember that!"

Both of them laughed. The frustrated boys on the varsity football team had dubbed her "Lezzie" their senior year because two of them had asked her out and she'd turned them down. It was a nickname that had spread rapidly through Bear Flats High. Jolene's own sexuality had been called into question because of her friendship with Leslie and her complete disdain for nearly everyone and everything in Bear Flats- including the boys. Not that she'd cared. One advantage of having no respect for your peers was that it removed the power of peer pressure.

"So are you back permanently," Leslie asked, "or just here for a visit?"

Jolene glanced at Skylar. "That's up in the air."

Her friend nodded.

They finished eating, going into more detail about people they'd known in high school and what had become of them. A few more patrons had come into the restaurant while they ate, but the place was by no means crowded, and Jolene asked, "Is business always this slow?"

"Lately," Leslie admitted. "That new McDonald's is killing us. It's the off-season, though. Once the mill's at full capacity and people are employed again, things'U pick up." She downed the last of her iced tea. "Why don't the two of you stop by my house? I'd love to show it to you. You're not in any hurry to get back, are you?"

"No," Jolene said. "But can you afford to take time off?" She leaned forward conspiratorially. "That waitress is already mad at you. She keeps looking over here."

Leslie laughed. "Audra? That's just the way she is. Don't sweat it. Besides, this is a special occasion. And, conscientious worker that I am, I have enough sick and vacation time saved up to take a cruise to China. I practically live in this building. Come on, it'll just take twenty minutes or so. If there's a problem here, have my cell. They can reach me."

Jolene nodded, smiling. "Okay. Sounds great."

Leslie went over to talk to their waitress and the other employees before heading back to her office. "I'll meet you outside!" she called out. "It'll just be a moment!"

Jolene took out three dollars for a tip and left it on the table. Their meal might be comped, but she still didn't want to stiff the waitress. Skylar used his straw to suck up the last of his lemonade, and the two of them walked outside to wait. After the dimness of the restaurant, the world seemed impossibly bright, and they were both still blinking when Leslie emerged from the building. She was wearing sunglasses, obviously an old hand at this transition thing.

"I'm just over there on Bluebird Lane, past the Presbyterian church. We could drive, but I usually like to walk. Would that be okay? take a shortcut through the woods behind Ray's."

Jolene laughed. "Is that the path where we used to-?"

"The very one."

"With the graves?"

"Yep."

"Graves?" Skylar said worriedly. It was the first time he'd spoken since ordering his lunch.

"It's daytime," Jolene reassured him. "And we'll just be passing by. Besides, I'm here." She took his hand and squeezed it, and he squeezed back. These days, he usually considered himself too old to be holding his mom's hand, especially in public, but he did not let go as the two of them followed Leslie across the small parking lot and down the sidewalk.

The path had hardly changed. It no longer started in a vacant lot, beginning instead in the narrow empty space between two recently erected buildings, but once she was off the street, everything was familiar. Jolene could not recall the last time she'd been here, but her feet remembered the details and idiosyncrasies of the trail as though it were yesterday, automatically stepping over a half-buried boulder protruding from the hard-packed earth, skirting to the left to avoid a sticker bush around the first bend. She would have expected the trees and underbrush to have become overgrown or burned or cut down or changed in some way-and perhaps they had-but to her eye everything looked exactly the same. The old oak they'd christened the hanging tree silhouetted against the midday sun, the line of knotty pines that delineated the upper and lower halves of the town, the view of the sawmill's smokestack above the woods-everything was just as she remembered it.

Leslie in the lead, they walked through the forested area just above Bluebird Lane. Ahead, in the darkest part of the copse, Jolene could see a square of white picket fence set off from the trail on a small sunken section of ground. Within that square, she knew, were two graves with their weathered granite tombstones reading simply, Mother and Daughter. The graves had been there since before anyone in town could remember, and the rumor had always been that the unnamed mother and daughter were witches. Why else hadn't they been buried in the pioneer cemetery with everyone else? Why else were their names unmentioned on the gravestones? Generations of kids had frightened their siblings, their friends and themselves making up stories about this trail and the grave site, and Jolene and Leslie had been no different. One summer in junior high, they'd even teamed with Jimmy Payton and Cal Smyth and charged a quarter for fake haunted tours. They'd taken kids down the path, making up stories about gruesome events that they said had happened at various spots, culminating in a trip to the grave site, where Jimmy, dressed in black and wearing a mask, had jumped out from behind a tree and sent everyone running screaming up the trail the way they'd come.