Darkness My Old Friend

“I can pay you, of course. I have my own money.” She stuck her chin out a little. “I wasn’t always just a mom.”

He gave her a smile, stopping short of reaching out to pat her hand, which is what he wanted to do. “Nothing wrong with being a mom. It’s the most important job in the world.”

“Yeah, that’s what they say.” There was more than a slight edge of bitterness to her words. Then she forced a smile. “Not that I don’t love being a mom.”

She seemed to drift inward a moment, got that long stare. He felt something inside him shift. He couldn’t leave here without helping her, or at least trying.

“So I’ll need a couple of things from you,” said Jones, against his better judgment. He reached into his pocket and took out a notepad he carried with him everywhere.

She brightened a bit. “You’ll do it?”

“I’ll make some calls. Really, that’s all I can do.”

He flipped open the cover of his notebook, turned through the pages: a list for Home Depot, a license-plate number for a suspicious vehicle he’d seen on his block a couple of times, things Maggie needed from the store.

“And your fee?” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jones, lifting a hand. He didn’t like it when people offered him money. It made him feel cheap. “If I incur expenses, you can pay me back. And I’ll check with you before I incur expenses.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cooper. Thank you so much.”

“I’m going to need a full name, last known address and telephone number, and a Social, if you have it. Last employer, any known associates. That should give us a good start.”

“Okay. I’ll write down what I have.” She got up quickly from the table and moved from the room.

“No promises, Mrs. Carr,” he called after her.

“I know,” she called back. “I know.”

And as he put on his coat in the sunny dining room, he thought how natural it all was, this kind of thing. He hadn’t realized how anxious he felt on the days that he had nothing to do, how the emptiness of the house and the list of mundane tasks weighed down upon him sometimes. For the first time in a year, maybe longer, he actually felt happy.

chapter eleven

About a mile from the school, down a winding rural road, there was an old graveyard surrounded by a low, crumbling stone wall. Jolie had taken Willow there before, and on that occasion they’d smoked a wrinkled half joint that Jolie had stolen from her brother’s jacket. Hazy and giggling, they’d walked among the crooked tombstones looking at the faded names and sad inscriptions:

ANNABELLE LENIK, BELOVED DAUGHTER,

BORN 1912, DIED 1914.

SHE SINGS WITH THE ANGELS.

SAMUEL ABRAMS, DEVOTED HUSBAND, FATHER AND SON,

BORN 1918, DIED 1948.

HE DID HIS DUTY WITH HONOR AND LOVE.

And so many more-inscriptions so worn as to be unreadable, grave sites just masses of weeds. At first Willow found it more sad than eerie, since on that first day it was sunny and hot. Toward the north end, there was an old clapboard house, sagging on its frame, windows boarded, door padlocked. A sign on the door warned that the building was condemned.

“It’s haunted,” Jolie had told her on their last visit.

“Of course it is,” said Willow.

“No, seriously. The night watchman killed himself there.”

“Okay.”

“Like, two years ago,” Jolie said. Willow waited for the mischievous grin to erupt on her face, but it didn’t. “They haven’t been able to get anyone else to work here. That’s why the place is such a mess.”

Jolie had kicked a beer can at her feet; it clattered against one of the tilting stones. And just then Willow felt a chill on her neck.

“He shot himself. And the people who tried to take the job after him? They kept seeing him, walking around the graveyard looking for the pieces of his brain.” She delivered the information with a grim seriousness.

“Give me a break,” Willow said. But the image took hold, and then Jolie was smiling like a maniac. Willow had released an uneasy laugh.

“Give me a break,” she’d said again. She’d wanted to leave then, her buzz abandoning her completely.

“It’s messed up, isn’t it?”

It turned out that Jolie hadn’t just been trying to scare Willow. When Willow had returned home that night, Willow searched the story on Google. And everything Jolie had said was true, even down to the fact that no one would work there now and the historic site was falling into disrepair due to late-night vandals. Every time Willow drove by the little graveyard with her mother since then, she held her breath. The dead want to steal the air from your lungs. Hadn’t someone told her that once?

Willow wasn’t thrilled to be visiting again. She hadn’t felt right about it the first time, even before Jolie’s grim story. All those lives, reduced to grassy patches that stoned teenagers stumbled over, laughed about. It seemed disrespectful, arrogant, something her mother would frown at-as if their lives would amount to more.

But Jolie liked it there. And so, on this day, when she huddled up on the steps of the old house, Willow sat next to her. She didn’t want Jolie to think she was afraid, a dork. Jolie formed harsh, cement judgments: Jayne was a slut; Chloe was an airhead; Ashley was a bitch. So far Jolie seemed to think Willow was fairly cool. Willow wanted to keep it that way.

Jolie produced a roach clip attached to the tail end of a joint and a lighter from her pocket. The air was just cold enough for Willow to feel it on her cheeks and nose, the tips of her fingers.

Jolie offered a shrug of apology. “This is all I could get off of him.” Meaning her brother.

Willow didn’t care. It took hardly anything for her to get high. Jolie lit up and drew a deep drag, then handed it off to Willow. All she tasted was burning paper, feeling the heat of it on her lips. But she held the smoke in, anyway-only a total dork couldn’t hold it in. She felt the burn at the back of her throat. Instead of the warm feeling she wanted, she just started to feel nauseated and remembered that she’d had hardly any lunch. She and Jolie leaned against each other, and through the haze of smoke she saw a dark form moving up the street.

“That’s him,” Jolie said.

“Who?”

“The guy I wanted you to meet. Cole. He’s a friend of my brother’s.”

Willow watched his slow, rangy approach. It made her think of the way wolves walked, long and easy but full of intent. As he approached, she listened to the song of a chickadee somewhere in the trees above her. Among the chattering, indistinct cries of the other birds, it sounded almost human, someone looking for attention.

“You like him?” Willow asked.

“Nah, not like that. Too young for me.”

Willow knew that Jolie went out with older boys, some of them from other towns. Or so she said. She had a look about her, like she already knew things she shouldn’t know. That she’d done things a girl her age shouldn’t have done. And Willow thought maybe there was something sad about that, even though it made Jolie seem cool and worldly. Her eyes are old, Willow’s mother had said. And even though Willow wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, she sort of got the idea.

“I thought maybe you would like him,” Jolie said. Her tone was wistful, a note off, as though she were giving something she wasn’t sure she wanted to give.

“Why?”