Darkness My Old Friend

fingers.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Willow turned around then.

“I don’t want you to be sorry, Willow. I just want you to keep your promises to me.”

“I know. I just…” Willow dipped her head into her hand.

“I know. You want friends. You want people to like you. That’s why you lie to them, to me. That’s why you break all your promises. We’ve been through this with the doctors, with each other. I know. But now it’s time to grow up, Willow. You are enough. You are exactly who you need to be. And anyone who doesn’t see that, who doesn’t like you for who you are… well, those people are not meant to be your friends.”

Willow worried a thread on her sleeve. Bethany knew that Willow couldn’t hear her. At that age nothing your mother said got through. But Bethany thought that if she kept saying it, one day it would sink in.

“I’m taking away your phone-for real this time-and the Internet access in your room. I’ll be driving you to school and picking you up. And you’re not going to see Jolie anymore outside school.”

Willow looked up with wide eyes. “She’s my only friend.”

“Friends like that you don’t need.”

She expected Willow to explode again. But she didn’t.

“How long without phone and Internet?” she asked.

“Indefinitely.” She kept her voice calm but firm. She wanted Willow to know that she wasn’t backing down this time. “You can use the computer in here for research when I’m in here, too. And you can talk on the home phone, of course.”

“If anyone calls, you mean.” Willow leaned her head back against Bethany’s hip.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said again.

Bethany didn’t want to think it, but she’d heard those words too many times from her daughter. They sounded hollow and insincere. She didn’t say anything, just kept stroking Willow’s hair. It was as soft as it was the day she was born. It’s angel hair, Willow’s father had said. And she had been their perfect cherub, plump and so pretty. It was all so much easier when she was small, even though Bethany hadn’t realized it at the time.

“I want you to talk about all this with Dr. Cooper tomorrow. Okay?” she said.

“Okay,” said Willow.

“Willow?”

“Yeah.”

“Who was that boy?”

When Willow turned to look at Bethany, she wore a wide smile. Bethany felt her heart fill. She hadn’t seen her daughter smile like that in so long. It almost brought tears to her eyes.

“His name is Cole. Isn’t he gorgeous?”

Bethany couldn’t help but smile back at Willow. She reached a hand out to touch her cheek. When Willow was small, she used to climb into Bethany’s bed at night and lie on top of her, pressing her cheek against Bethany’s chest. I can hear your heart, Mommy… Go to sleep, Willow.

“He is cute,” Bethany said. “How old is he?”

“I don’t know. He’s a junior.”

“So what were you guys really doing back there?”

“We really were looking for that mine you told me about.”

Bethany was kicking herself. She should have known better than to mention something like that to Willow. “Do you know how dangerous those old mines are, Willow? I mean, people die, get buried alive. I’d have thought after your encounter you’d be scared out of there forever.”

She had thought that. She’d figured that the silver lining of the whole incident would be that Willow never went into those woods again.

“We didn’t find anything,” Willow said. “I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him. Jolie thought I was lying. She got mad. But I wasn’t lying.”

“Well, don’t worry about Jolie. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.”

Willow rolled her eyes. It was one of those things that kids never believe. Because to a teenager it’s the only thing that matters. Even most adults never learn that lesson.

“Look,” said Bethany. “This is what we need to do moving forward. You need to focus on school. I need to focus on work. We’ll make friends and settle in eventually.”

“What about Cole? What if he calls me?”

“Well, we’ll deal with that when it happens. Okay? Just be up front with me, and we’ll work something out.”

He was going to call; Bethany knew that. He had that goofy look that boys get when they like girls, and he’d been shining it on Willow. But Bethany was planning to keep her daughter under lock and key for a while. She just didn’t want Willow to know that. Willow didn’t need an excuse for sneaking around.

“You promise?” asked Willow.

“If you keep your promises to me and do well in school, I’ll keep my promises to you.”

Willow smiled again. And Bethany smiled back. There was nothing like a cute boy to brighten the mood of a teenage girl. Maybe The Hollows was going to turn out to be the right place for them after all. Willow was going to settle in and adjust, even after this rocky, unpleasant start. Bethany was going to finish her novel. Even after the events of the day, it seemed possible, even hopeful.

“Mom,” said Willow, “you know I don’t hate you, right?”

“I know, Willow.”

chapter seventeen

At dusk Jones and Henry made their way through the trees. After everyone had cleared off, Jones had asked Henry if he’d like to take a walk. And Henry had agreed.

“It’s always a good idea to know what’s going on in the woods behind the school,” the other man had said.

As they moved deeper in the direction Willow Graves had indicated, Jones was aware of a low-grade buzz of uneasiness. As he’d mentioned to Eloise, Jones didn’t think much of coincidence. He didn’t believe in it. Didn’t like it when it occurred. So, necessarily after the graveyard encounter, he felt annoyed, off center. First there was the boy, Cole Carr. He’d just been talking to the kid’s stepmother a few hours earlier, was unofficially going to look for the kid’s mother. Then there was Michael Holt, whom Willow Graves had seen digging up something back in the woods. Jones had the cold-case file for Holt’s mother sitting on the passenger seat of his car. Willow Graves was one of his wife’s patients; he’d seen the girl and her mother, Bethany, several times coming and going from appointments. Then again, The Hollows was a small place. And it had its ways, this town. Jones Cooper wasn’t a superstitious guy, but sometimes it seemed like The Hollows had a way of encouraging paths to cross.

Henry and Jones had both walked these woods hundreds of times, in spite of endless parental and teacher warnings about the abandoned mines and condemned structures scattered throughout the acreage. But as kids they all went back there to drink and smoke and make out. They went back there to explore, to escape the eyes of authority, to make believe. There was something about it, the sighing quiet of the old-growth trees, the coolness, the light through the canopy. How suddenly you could come across a sagging barn or an old house. And yes, the mines, of course.

There wasn’t a boy in The Hollows who hadn’t walked into one of those death traps. Most of them walked out unharmed, he supposed. Now, as a parent and a cop who’d personally pulled two boys from bad falls back here, he found that the thought of kids exploring filled him with dread. But that was the hypocrisy of adulthood: You never wanted the children you cared about to do things you’d done when you were heedless of the fragility of life. He’d been hard on Ricky, too hard, only because he’d made so many mistakes himself as a young man, mistakes for which he’d paid a heavy price, for which others had paid with their lives.

“I haven’t been back here in so long,” said Henry. “I think you stop doing that when you grow up, you know.