place as they could reasonably get. But now here they were, in a graveyard looking for her daughter. She should have known. If you’re looking, you can find trouble anywhere. It’s waiting-not just on city street corners, in subways, in nightclubs, but on quiet country roads, in a peaceful stand of trees.
Just as she was about to dial Willow again, she saw her daughter emerge from the woods. For a moment she didn’t believe her eyes, somehow thought she was willing the vision of Willow and Jolie and some strangely beautiful boy she’d never seen before. They looked ethereal, all of them pale-skinned, dressed in black.
“Mom?” Willow managed to squeeze embarrassment and trepidation into a single syllable. The three teenagers exchanged a look-that too-cool glance, that half smile of rebellion, as if all your parental emotions are ridiculous and contemptible. No, that was just Jolie. Willow looked scared, sheepish. And the boy, Bethany couldn’t read his face.
“Willow, get in the car.” It was all she could manage-her anger and relief were so powerful she thought she might vomit.
“Mom.”
“Get. In. The. Car.”
“Where were you?” Henry asked Jolie as Willow made her way to Bethany’s vehicle.
“We were just taking a
Jones Cooper hadn’t said a word all this time. He’d just stood watching. Now he stepped forward. He had his hands in his pockets, looked unassumingly up at the sky.
“It’s not safe back there,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at them. “You kids should know that. There are abandoned mines. Some of that is private property, and folks around here aren’t too friendly with trespassers.” He kicked at the ground, and Bethany heard the tinkle of metal. Shell casings. Once she noticed them, she realized that casings littered the area around them.
“We were just walking around,” said the boy. He didn’t say it with an attitude. He was confident, but not a punk. Bethany noticed Jones give the kid a hard once-over, taking in the details-denim jacket, some graphic T- shirt, dirty, ripped-at-the-knee jeans that probably cost a hundred dollars, thick leather boots. His blue-black hair was carefully styled and gelled to look like a mess. His eyelashes were so long and dark he looked like he was wearing mascara. But he wasn’t. In other words, he was teenage-girl catnip.
“What’s your name, son?” Jones Cooper said.
“Cole Carr,” he said. The boy offered his hand, and Jones shook it.
“Cole just started here in September,” Henry said. “And this is Jolie Marsh.”
Jones looked at Jolie. “I know your father.”
“Good for you.”
Jones raised amused eyebrows at the girl, turned that assessing stare on her. Bethany was happy to watch the girl squirm after a moment and avert her tough-girl glare to the ground. She looked dirty-dirty under her nails, her hair unwashed, stains on her coat. Who was taking care of this kid?
“I just wanted to show them what I saw yesterday,” Willow said from the car. She’d rolled down the window.
“What did you see?” asked Jones. No one seemed to question who he was or what right he had to be asking questions. Even Bethany found herself deferring to his natural air of authority. In the car on the way over, Henry had told her that Jones Cooper was a retired detective from the Hollows Police Department, that he was a part- time PI now. She thought she remembered Dr. Cooper saying something about that. He looked the part, especially now that he was asking questions.
Bethany told Jones about Willow’s encounter in the woods, about Michael Holt returning her phone and his search for the mine shaft. Jones watched her with keen interest. What she was saying meant something to him; she had no idea what.
“Of course, now I regret ever telling her what he told me,” Bethany said. “I should have known better.”
Jones gave her an understanding nod, a low chuckle. “Kids.”
“Can we go?” said Jolie. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We were going to get Willow back for the late bus. It just took us longer than we thought. There’s nothing back there anyway. It was a big waste of time.”
Bethany heard Willow roll up the window; she turned to see Willow looking angry and sullen in the passenger seat. When she turned back, she noticed Cole staring at Willow and Jolie watching him watch Willow.
chapter fifteen
That day, a lifetime ago now, had started like any other day. That’s what Eloise always marveled at. In her life before, there was nothing to indicate that she’d been marked to live the life she was living now. She had been an ordinary girl, born to ordinary working-class parents. She’d married her high-school sweetheart, Alfred Montgomery. She worked as a receptionist at a trucking company, while Al earned his degree at community college. Then she happily gave up her job when her first daughter was born.
Alfred was a high-school math teacher; he never made much. But for the way they lived, it always seemed like enough. It wasn’t like it is now, where everyone needs to live like a celebrity to be happy. They were just happy; they didn’t know another way to be. She didn’t have any angst about staying home with her kids. That’s what her mother had done. That’s what she wanted to do. Why would she want to punch a clock and sell her time to a company while someone else took care of her daughters? What was so hard about making meals and cleaning house, coloring and singing the ABCs? What was so great about having a career? She never understood all that. The mommy wars? How sad.
“Alfie, did you remember your lunch?”
“Yes, yes. Got it.” A quick wave. She could tell by his wrinkled brow that his mind was already on the day ahead. The girls were already in the car. Emily had her headphones on. Amanda had her nose in a book.
This is what she remembered about that morning. Those words hanging on the air that was cool but with an edge of warmth that promises spring. She remembered how he looked back up at her with a smile, embarrassed that his words might have seemed short to anyone but she who knew him so well.
“Thank you, darling,” he said. “Yes, I have it.”
“That’s better.”
Alfie. Al to everyone else except to Eloise and her mother-in-law, Ruth. They alone still called him Alfie, remembering the shy, nerdy boy who was always kind and never picked on by the jocks because there was something to him, wasn’t there? Something tough beneath those wire-rimmed glasses. Instead they came to ask for help with their algebra.
And it should have been that, the three of them, her husband and two daughters, off to school. Except.
“Oh, no! I need the car,” she called.
“What?” he said. “Why?”
“I have my appointment later this morning. Darn it all. Just give me a minute.”
They only ever had the one car. He worked fifteen minutes from the house. If she needed the car, she brought him to work, the kids to school, and picked them all up again at the end of the day. She did that maybe a couple times a week, so she could do the shopping or run errands. Or go to the doctor.
“Hurry, Eloise. I have papers to grade this morning before class.”
Ten minutes changed her life. She was tempted to say destroyed, ended, ruined, wasted… something like that. But no, it wasn’t so. Alfie’s life ended. Emily’s life ended. Her adored and adoring husband. Her pretty, smart, quirky, funny, kind little girl who always smiled even when she was sad. Eloise was left behind with Amanda, her serious, loving, introverted, brilliantly creative younger daughter. The two of them least likely to get back up and live again somehow were left behind to do just that. The two of them who were most likely to want to die for the loss of the others were forced to go on together.
Because Eloise fretted and Alfie laughed it all off. Emily acted out and slept like a log while Amanda quietly worried, lying awake in bed, tiptoeing into the master bedroom to sleep beside her father. It shouldn’t have been the two of them left to hold each other up. But it was. After the accident the world went quietly gray. Eloise didn’t
