Darkness My Old Friend

and bright. There was no dust even on the books. The visiting nurse had told Michael that his father had pulled out the bed from the couch and slept on it at night, replacing it in the mornings until he grew too weak to do that. Their wedding picture (did they look stiff and unhappy even then?) sat on the end table, beneath a lamp she’d cherished, with its blue-and-white flowers painted on porcelain. It had shocked him when he returned from his father’s hospital room to find this oasis in the center of chaos, this eye in the storm. Michael would have thought the old man had forgotten her or tried to, but instead he’d kept her room like this, just as she’d left it.

He sat on the chintz couch and tried not to smell the old man’s sickness. But it lingered, even with all the other competing aromas. It was there-that smell of medicine and washcloth baths, antiseptic and something else, something rotting from within. Or maybe that was just his imagination.

He found himself thinking about Bethany Graves. He thought she had a quiet energy, not unlike his own. She was careful; she listened, then waited a second before she spoke, absorbing, it seemed, everything that he’d said, and maybe what he hadn’t said.

“What does that mean?” she’d asked after he told her he’d been digging up a body. He’d seen a glint of curiosity, more than a hint of caution.

“That’s what I do,” he told her. “I dig up the past. I’m a caver. The Hollows was originally settled as a mining town. There are tunnels everywhere-some of them just exploratory.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that tunnels were blasted and then for whatever reason abandoned. When you find one, it’s like digging up a grave. Traveling back in time.”

“I’d heard that,” she said. “About the mines around here. Iron, right?”

She seemed interested. But he wasn’t a good judge of those kinds of things.

“Magnetite and some hematite,” he said. “This town has a fairly rich history. And there’s lore surrounding the vein I’m searching for. Two brothers, both looking to strike it rich. One of them did. One of them disappeared.”

And what Michael had told her was true. He was interested in finding the abandoned shaft where some believed a body might have been buried. It was a story Mack had told him, a tale the old man had supposedly unearthed in his exhaustive research. Michael had never been able to find anything about it in the few history books about the industry and the area. But according to his father’s deductions, the tunnel was probably somewhere around where Michael had been digging today. He knew that his father had written about the legend in one of his articles about the area mines, but Michael hadn’t been able to find it in the mountain of papers in Mack’s office.

His father, a geology professor, had a pet interest in the area mines and their history. He had wanted to document that part of the region’s history and wrote voluminously, compiling interviews with the old-timers still living in The Hollows, taking copious photographs, collecting any old documents he could find. He contributed articles to history journals and magazines, had hoped to one day write a book. But it wasn’t exactly a sexy topic. Mack was never able to find a publisher, and even interest in his articles dried up over time. But he kept writing.

Michael was sure that if he could dig past the piles of junk mail and circulars and catalogs and bills and bills and bills that formed a literal wall around his father’s desk, he’d find those articles, which Michael had always loved reading. They had to be under there. Clearly his father had never discarded anything.

Of course, Michael also had the business of settling his father’s estate. He had a meeting with the lawyer, Hank Barrow, an old friend of Mack’s. Their recent phone conversation had been grim.

“Your father was a good man, Michael,” Hank had said. “But his affairs are a disaster. I’m going to do this work pro bono. After the medical bills, though, I don’t know what will be left for you and your sister.”

Yet neither of these things was keeping him in The Hollows. He’d had a passing interest in that tunnel for years. And his father’s matters could be settled from afar. But when he learned from his sister that his father was ill and about to die, that she couldn’t (wouldn’t) with two children travel home to see it through, something powerful drew him back.

They’d both been estranged from Mack, for myriad reasons. But Michael wasn’t drawn home to make amends, or to find peace. He wanted answers to questions he had never dared ask about his mother’s disappearance.

“What happened to her, Dad?” He’d asked in the hospital room while his father lay dying.

Mack had looked at him as if through a fog. The hospital room was dim except for the light washing in from the hallway. The man in the other bed was snoring. His father was in a palliative state, only pain relief now. There was no treatment for a body so riddled with cancer.

“You know,” he said. “You know.”

“No, I don’t,” Michael said. “She left that night, and we never heard from her again. Not a phone call. Not a card. I’ve looked for her, Dad, for years. She didn’t run off. She never divorced you, never changed her name. She never worked again. Cara’s looked for her, too. We’ve hired people to find her.”

He locked eyes with his father. But he wasn’t sure his father could see him. The old man’s gaze was unfocused and watery.

“She may not have loved you,” Michael said. “She may have wanted to leave you. But she loved us, Cara and me. She did love us.”

“She did love us,” his father said. But it was just an echo, a meaningless repetition of Michael’s words.

Michael wasn’t sure how long he sat there with his father, who looked as shriveled and empty as a corn husk. How long did he just sit listening to his father’s rattling breath? Michael dozed in the chair, saw the night nurse come in briefly and cast him a sad smile. She thought him the dutiful son, sitting at his father’s deathbed.

But he wasn’t that. He was a grave robber, waiting for the night watchman to drift off once and for all. Then, and only then, could he dig his fingers into the earth and exhume the truth.

chapter nine

Willow could tell that her mother liked Principal Ivy. Bethany seemed to have a thing lately for geeky-looking guys.

I’ve had my fill of cool, Willow. These days it’s kindness, honesty, and stability that impress me. Read: boring, snorts-when-he-laughs, totally lame. Not that her mother actually dated. She never went anywhere that didn’t have something to do with work. She didn’t even seem to have any friends anymore, except her agent-who was so annoying that Willow wasn’t sure how anyone could stand him.

Mr. Ivy wasn’t a total geek. Still, that sweater had to go. Argyle? Really? He could do something about his hair, too. Maybe mess it up a little. That careful look, parted on the side, brushed back from his face-not working for him.

“I know you’ve been having a hard time adjusting to the move and the new school. So I’m going to be lenient here. Of course, your friend Jolie was suspended last week for cutting school. But that was her third offense. I don’t think we have to go there. Do we?”

Willow shook her head vigorously, did her best to seem contrite. She wouldn’t really mind being at the house for a week, watching television and sleeping late. On the other hand, her mother would make her life a homeschooling hell. So she might as well just come here.

“We really appreciate your understanding, Mr. Ivy,” said her mother. Bethany was doing her good- conservative-mom routine. She was even wearing a skirt.

“Please, call me Henry.”

Oh, brother. He had the goofy smile men often had around her mother.

Willow looked around Mr. Ivy’s office, blanking out on whatever small talk he and her mother were making now. There was a wall of pictures-Mr. Ivy with various students, accepting an award, dressed in the school- mascot costume, with the Wildcat costume’s head tucked under his arm. There was a case of trophies, not for sports but for things like the chess and science clubs and the debate team, dorky stuff like that.

“She’s a good student, Mr. Ivy… I mean, Henry,” her mother said. Could she be any more overeager? “And very bright. But she is struggling.”

“I know it. I’ve seen her school record. Her teachers here see a lot of potential, too. Mr. Vance speaks very