Darkness My Old Friend

a mile from where he worked every day? Had he stayed with her that night, as she had wanted him to, would she be alive right now?

All day he went through the motions: morning announcements, going over attendance records, disciplining the usual out-of-control students, chatting with his assistant. And all the while there was this terrible hum in the back of his head. He had plans that night with Bethany Graves. He felt like he was being punished for trying to be happy. There was something cosmic, wasn’t there, that just wouldn’t allow it.

“I can’t go out,” Bethany had told him. “Not with so much happening with Willow. Not with her being so unhappy.”

“I understand,” he’d said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He figured it was just a polite blow-off.

“But you can come here,” she’d said. “For dinner? Tomorrow night?”

He felt a happy lift in his heart, the lofting of hope. “You don’t think it’s… inappropriate.”

“No,” she’d said. There was a smile in her voice. “I don’t think it’s inappropriate at all. I think it’s fine.”

When he woke up in the morning, he’d felt light and happy. He’d blasted through his 6:00 A.M. workout, had a power breakfast of egg whites and a fruit smoothie, gotten to work early to get a jump on some of his teacher evaluations. But by 9:30, after the office started to fill and people were talking about the rumors, he felt a kind of gray veil of grief and sorrow descend.

What he’d never told them was that he had loved her-in a way. It was not in the way he had loved Maggie Cooper. Once upon a time, he’d had a real hope that Maggie would love him, too. When they were teenagers, he’d imagined that one day their friendship would turn into something more, that one day they’d get married and have children. Of course, that had never happened. But their friendship had endured. And he had taken that as a kind of consolation prize.

He had loved Marla Holt like you love a movie star, never imagining that there could be anything between you. She was older than he was, seemed wise and worldly. And she was so beautiful that he almost didn’t believe she was real. Even her imperfections-the tiny laugh lines at her eyes, the beauty mark on her lower right cheek (her witch’s mole, she’d called it)-only made her more gorgeous. When she spoke to him, he was transfixed by her… by the way her mouth moved, by the way her hands danced to her throat, by the blinking of her eyes.

The night she’d disappeared, they were supposed to jog. He’d called her to ask what time, and she’d said she couldn’t go. That Michael was at a sleepover and she had Cara. Mack would be late at work. But he could come by for a bit, couldn’t he? Just to talk. Because that’s what they did on their jogs. They talked and talked about everything.

At first he’d hesitated, because it seemed inappropriate. But she’d said, Please, Henry. I so look forward to our time together. And he had agreed. He enjoyed their time together, too. He looked forward to being with her, even though he knew he’d never touch her and that she was so far above and beyond him. Every instinct in his body told him not to go, that it was wrong, that it could lead someplace unseemly. But he did go, because she’d asked him to go and she had sounded so sad when she did.

He’d wanted to tell Jones about it that night in the woods. When they were out there, maybe feet from where they’d found those bones. He’d wanted to say, I was with her that night, Jones. I held her in my arms. She was so unhappy with Mack, with herself, with the life they’d made. She told me that she’d made mistakes, that in certain ways she’d been unfaithful. I held her, and I wanted her so badly. I could have had her. I didn’t care that there was someone else, someone not her husband. She was already opening up to me like a flower.

Henry had wanted to tell Jones how it had taken every ounce of restraint in his body not to kiss her, not to feel the softness of her lips on his. His whole body had ached with desire as she wept in his arms. What would have happened if Michael hadn’t come home and found them there, holding each other, swaying in the dim light of the living room? Would he have been able to walk away from her? Would he have been able to hold himself back? He knew that nobody thought of him as someone with the same drives and needs as any man. Henry’s so sweet. Henry’s so kind. Henry’s such a good friend. But he did have needs, desires, always ignored and repressed. And he’d been alone so long.

“Mom?”

The word had rocketed through both of them, sent them reeling back from each other like an electric shock.

“Michael,” she said. It sounded more like a breath exhaled, shocked and afraid. “What are you doing here?”

“Mom,” the boy had said. “What are you doing?”

There was something strange and electric about the moment.

“It’s nothing, sweetie,” Marla whispered. “Henry’s just a friend.”

Henry’s just a friend. The words sliced him, even though he knew in his heart of hearts that it was true. That’s what he was to women. Just a friend. Even though he’d been burning with desire, she’d only been seeking comfort in her misery.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

And he’d moved quickly past the boy, who was already taller and thicker than Henry, with his face burning. The kid was panting like an animal. He was only thirteen, or maybe fourteen already. He was still in middle school, not yet at Hollows High.

“Don’t, Henry.” Her words followed him out the front door. And then he was running. He’d come over in his jogging clothes, because he hadn’t expected to stay long, because he didn’t want anyone to see him going to her house wearing street clothes. He ran and ran, did hard, sweaty miles through the neighborhood and out onto the road that led to the more rural areas of The Hollows, past the grazing fields and dairy farms. Later, when questions were asked, people had seen him running, as he did most nights. They had seen him running alone, not with Marla Holt. When he got back to his house, he saw that the Holt house was dark. And Mack’s car was in the driveway. And that’s when Henry saw Claudia Miller, standing in her upstairs window, a black silhouette against a glowing yellow light, watching, always watching.

The bell rang, and he snapped back to the moment. He wondered if he should cancel with Bethany Graves. What kind of company would he be with all this on his mind? He’d spent so much time wondering about that night with Marla. What would have happened if he’d stayed, hadn’t run like a coward? Maybe she’d be with him right now, be his wife, instead of running off with whomever she’d finally chosen.

Honestly, he’d never believed that she had fallen to harm. He believed as everyone else had that she’d tired of her life in The Hollows and moved on without her children. She’d as much as told him that she’d been seeing someone else. Claudia Miller had watched her get into a black sedan, carrying a suitcase.

Maybe that night was just the last straw. Michael told Mack that another man had been in the house, and they’d fought. Maybe Marla had called her boyfriend and finally left, as she so desperately wanted to. She’d taken her beauty and her charm and left her suburban hell. If Henry had been a different kind of man, he’d have been the one to take her away. If he weren’t Henry Ivy, bully bait-turned-high-school teacher, living in his parents’ house, he’d have been the man to take her to New York City or Hollywood. But he was Henry Ivy, and try as he might, he had never been able to make himself into anything else.

Now he had to consider the idea that if he hadn’t left her that night, he might have saved her life. He wasn’t sure if he could live with that.

He forced himself to concentrate on the screen in front of him. He scrolled through the absences listed on the spreadsheet and saw that both Cole Carr and Jolie Marsh had not been in school for two days. Willow Graves had been in class-focused and attentive, if quiet, according to her teachers. He was glad for that. Henry knew that Willow was having a hard time, having problems adjusting to her parents’ divorce, her new school. But he didn’t think she was troubled, or at risk like Jolie Marsh. They could lose Jolie Marsh, as they’d lost her brother, Jeb. He’d make a call to each family. Neither absence had been explained with a phone call or an e-mail.

Thinking about the three young people made him remember their afternoon in the woods. He and Jones had discussed the legend told to Bethany Graves by Michael Holt. Henry had offered to research it, but he hadn’t done anything more than a cursory Internet search that had, not surprisingly, yielded nothing. He’d even looked up Mack Holt online, wondering if some of his papers or research had been digitally archived at the university. But he found nothing except the man’s obituary, sad and perfunctory. He’d died alone, estranged from his children. The only reason Michael Holt had returned at all, according to the endless Hollows rumor mill, was that he was still asking