Darkness My Old Friend

Ray laughed a little. “I picked up on that. The mean old lady next door.”

“I’ll try to talk to her,” Michael said. “One more time.”

A red van drove slowly down the street. It pulled in to a driveway, then turned around and headed back more quickly. Someone lost, finding his way. Michael couldn’t see the driver as the vehicle passed them by.

“Mike, look,” said Ray. “I’m at a bit of a dead end here. I don’t have anyone else left to talk to. None of the database searches, the classified ads we’ve run, or the people I’ve interviewed from back then have led us to anything new. Unless Eloise gets any closer, I don’t know what’s left for me.”

Michael felt a wash of fear. He didn’t want to be alone with this. Ray was the only person who didn’t think he was crazy for wanting to find his mother. “Are you quitting?” Michael asked.

“No. I’m just being honest with you about where I’m at.”

“I was thinking of putting up a website, you know, with pictures of her from back then, details about the case. I could get it up on the search engines. Maybe I’ll even make a Facebook page.”

“And you’d do this because…?”

“Because everyone’s online these days, maybe even her if she’s still alive,” he said. He felt a welling of excitement now. This was a good idea. “Maybe one day she searches herself on the Internet and she sees everything we’ve done to find her, and she’ll know we want her to come back to us, that we’re not angry, we just want to understand.”

Ray wasn’t good at hiding his feelings. Michael pretended not to see the unmasked pity in the other man’s eyes.

“That’s a good idea,” Ray said even so. “You never know what can break a case. It’s the little things that do it sometimes. All it would take is for her or someone she knows to sit down at a computer and enter her name.”

“Right,” Michael said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“So we’ll wait on Eloise a day or so and revisit. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said. Then, “I’m sorry. I’m not going to have the money to pay you until I sell this house.”

“I know,” Ray said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll work it out.”

There were two mourning doves cooing on the telephone wire above the street. And the day, coming on noon, seemed unseasonably warm to Michael, even though he noticed that Ray was wearing a dark wool jacket and a knit cap. The leaves on the trees around them were turning from gold to brown. His mother had always hated autumn. Everything dies, she said. But it comes back in the spring, he’d remind her. She’d nod, as though she weren’t convinced. Of course it does, darling.

chapter twenty-one

Jolie wasn’t in school the next day. But that wasn’t unusual. Sometimes it seemed she was out more than she was in. Jolie skated by on C’s, though Willow thought that maybe she could do better. Jolie didn’t care. If Willow got a C, her mother would flip out. She’d be happy with nothing less than a B. And you shouldn’t be happy with anything less, either, young lady. Willow thought this was pretty funny, because her mother was so much the “rebel,” the “artist,” and had always taught her to ask questions and not bow to authority. But when it came to grades, she was as conservative as Laura Bush. Your education is your ticket to anywhere. Do well in school, learn as much as you can, and the world belongs to you. Was that true? she wondered. Had all those homeless people in the parks and subways of Manhattan just not paid attention in class? Wasn’t there more to success in life than algebra and biology?

Willow slogged her way through the day. She didn’t see Cole, either, though she kept looking for him in the hallways. Maybe Cole and Jolie had cut together, she thought. They probably had. They’d probably hooked up after her mother humiliated her and dragged her home and grounded her forever. She really hated her life so much.

Mr. Vance was no longer her friend. Even though he was just as nice to her in class and complimented her on her essay, she knew that she was no longer invited to linger after the bell and talk about her thoughts on what they were reading. A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Seminal coming-of-age tale. Intense adolescent friendship gone awry. Having to face yourself because of your own ugly deeds. Did Gene bounce the branch on purpose? Of course he did. Whether he realized it or not. No one else in class wanted to believe it.

“It was an accident,” the pert and pretty Jenna said. She sounded almost desperate. “He couldn’t. He just wouldn’t. They were friends. Friends don’t hurt each other. Friends don’t lie.”

Willow saw Mr. Vance looking at her, waiting for her to play the devil’s advocate, to say what she was thinking. But Willow didn’t say a word. She knew all about why people do bad things, why people lie. She knew all about that dark place inside, that angry storm cloud. Inside the storm you were capable of anything.

It wasn’t until the end of the day when she’d given up on seeing Cole that he appeared beside her locker.

“Hey,” he said. He had dark circles under his eyes. His shirt was wrinkled.

“Hey,” she said. She felt her heart start to do a little dance in her chest. “What’s up?”

“Just wondering if you wanted a ride home from school.” He leaned against the locker beside her and kept his eyes on her.

Oh, yes!! I would love, love, love a ride home!!!

“I can’t.” She looked away from him. There was a river of kids moving past them, shouting, laughing, horsing around. All the pent-up energy of the day was crackling in the air. “I’m grounded. My mom would kill me.”

He looked down at his feet. “That’s cool.” She liked that he didn’t push her, the way Jolie would have.

“You could come over later, if you want.” It just spilled out of her. It was so stupid and lame. What were they going to do, play Barbies? “I mean-you probably don’t want to.”

When she could bring herself to look at him again, he was smiling a little. Was he laughing at her?

“Would it be okay?” he said. “I mean, with your mom?”

“Yeah,” she said quickly. “She said I could have people over, just not go out.” Bethany hadn’t in fact said that. She’d said they’d work something out if Cole called.

“I’m sorry about that,” said Cole. “About you getting in trouble.”

“It’s my fault,” she said. “I knew I should have gone right back.”

“My mom’s pretty strict, too,” he said. He wrapped his arms around his middle, rocked back and forth slightly. “So I’ll come by at four?”

She felt a rush of giddy excitement. She was embarrassed to feel heat rise to her cheeks. Was she blushing? Please, no.

“Do you know where I live?” she asked. She turned back to her locker to hide her face.

“Jolie told me,” he said.

“Oh,” Willow said. She closed the locker door. “Where is she today?”

“Dunno.”

And then he was gone, disappeared into the mob of students rushing out the doors to the buses. A moment later she drifted out, too. Floated, glided, danced. If her mom didn’t let him come over, she was going to totally die.

chapter twenty-two

The Groves weren’t hillbillies. Bill Grove was a general contractor, had a thriving business building gigantic homes for the people moving to The Hollows from the city. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at his own house, the same place Bill’s parents and grandparents had lived. It had gotten bigger, was improved inside. He’d built other structures on the land-his office, a house for his son’s family. But as Jones came up the long drive, it still