All the Dark Corners

by Emerald O'Brien

He cranes his neck back and plasters a fake frown on his face. “Now that’s too bad. I feel like we could have had some fun. Like old times.”

  A vision of fire and Al’s laughter echoes through my memory for just a second.

  When the visions happen, I usually can’t remember anything else, but I’m slipping back into this one… Maybe because he is standing right in front of me, wearing the same clothes, the same spicy, overpowering cologne…

  Where Al went, especially during the week of the town’s anniversary, mayhem followed. I guess it followed me, too, since we were together most of the time. I guess I was looking for male attention my dad rarely gave.

  Eager to please.

  Al poured the gasoline around, but I lit the match.

  We set the high school on fire one week during the town’s anniversary, burning one of the classrooms down before the volunteer fire department even got there. We made out in the back field behind some trees, high as kites, while we waited for someone to notice what we’d done.

  I felt more alive that day than I had for most of my life, and I told myself if we were caught, it would still be worth it.

  But we weren’t. And then we escalated our activities, chasing the high.

  Helping Al get revenge on those who had wronged him that year. Hurting people to intimidate them, wrapped up in the moment, and forgetting consequences that never seemed real. That could never touch us…

  The whole thing comes back to me, and I need to push it away—bury it again.

  I grip the bottle of alcohol in my fist as I try to bring myself back to the present moment. Al’s eyes light up now, and if he can see through me like he used to, he knows I’m thinking about those old times. Aside from the fire, which now turns my stomach, all the memories seem to run together. Maybe, if he’s looking close enough, he can tell there’s nothing he can do to make me partake in his antics again.

  I set the small bottle down and pick up a larger one, turning away and marching to the register. The bottle drops from my hands with a thud onto the conveyor belt, and the blonde stares like it’s a foreign object. I peel a ten-dollar bill from my pocket, grab change from the other and count it out.

  “Paper or plastic?” she asks, holding her hand out.

  I drop the exact change in her hand, saving myself any extra time to be recognized by some stranger I’d like to keep forgetting, and take the bottle. Before she can even open the register, I’m out the door, striding to my car as the wind whips my hair against my face, over my eyes as I fish around in my pocket for my keys.

  A horn honk startles me, and a car screeches to a halt before me as I pull the hair away from my face, catching my breath. An older couple inside exchange dirty looks with each other and then me. I round the front end of their car, and they honk again, making me flinch. I fight the urge to key the hood as I walk around it, taking my time. My hand shakes as I fumble to insert my key in the hole to unlock my door, and relief washes over me as I turn it, yanking the door open and hopping in, slamming it closed again.

  I hold the bottle up and stare at the clear liquid sloshing around inside. You have no idea how much I need you, Tito, but I need to get out of here even more this time. I place it on the passenger’s seat and drive out of the lot, turning left, back the way I came.

  Just get Mom and get out before dark.

  Without signaling, I turn right onto Gilbert Road, passing wide-open fields before turning left onto Cherry Street. All four houses sit just as they were the day I left, on alternating sides of the street, nestled close to each other like the neighbors had always been. The wide turn up ahead past the houses lead to a ravine and then into the town’s newest neighborhood build. Amelia and Clifford must have taken their stroll elsewhere because the street is empty.

  I pass the Hutching’s home, and pull into the second driveway on the left of my vinyl-sided childhood home, resting my hand on the gear shift.

  She’s in there waiting for me to rescue her. If I’d argued any more with her on the phone last night, she would have eventually reminded me that you don’t turn your back on family. Something she thinks I should abide by, but she doesn’t understand I don’t believe it. Not anymore.

  She wasn’t there for me when I needed her most.

  No, if she wasn’t at work in the flower shop, she was having fun with the neighbors, or watching her stories, or passed out in her bed, up there in the back room of the second story after each drinking binge.

  The first drops of rain spatter against the windshield, and all at once, it pours down on the top of the car, pounding against it. Wanting inside.

  I could go. I could leave right now.

  Looking over my shoulder, the light comes on in the Baker’s house across the street, and two figures stand by the front bay window. Amelia and Clifford are watching me.

  Turn around, Sammy.

  I exhale loudly and turn back toward the house that played the biggest part in shaping the person I am today, or would have been, if I hadn’t gotten away.

  It’s the only way to survive. I have to get her out of here, because whether the stalker she thinks murdered my dad is roaming around here or not, this town takes no prisoners.

  We all have a choice.

  Leave here or die here.

  I made my choice years ago, and I haven’t hurt anyone since.

  It’s not like I’m a good person. I never thought I could be…. But if Mom can do it—leave here and stop the vicious cycle—maybe there’s more hope for me than I thought. Maybe we could finally start to heal.

  I say goodbye to Tito and hop out of the car, locking it behind me as I dash toward the house. Rain soaks the top of my head before I reach the door, and I turn the knob, pushing it open.

  She never locks the damn door.

  The smell of cigarettes permeates my nose as I close the door and lock it behind me. The house is dark except for a yellow glow, matching the smoke smell radiating from the kitchen.

  “Sam?” she calls to me from the kitchen. “Is that you?”

  You better hope it is.

  I sigh and slip my sneakers off, pushing the hair out of my face, and sniffle away the dampness that lingers on my skin. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  Pictures of our family and the neighbors stare back at me from their spots on the wall, just before the basement door, suspending us in a different time. A time when I believed what my parents said.

  One weak link in the chain will break us all. That’s why we must always be here for each other.

  In a family portrait, Dad smiles at the camera with his handsome wavy chocolate brown hair, and Mom stands beside him with her long, mousy brown hair I inherited. We’re even wearing it in the same way.

  The famous first picture of Will and me playing together on the backyard swing set hangs beside it. His gangly stature and piercing green eyes almost make me smile, but an ache in the middle of my chest forces me to turn away.

  That was back when I still thought this place was normal. That our family was normal.

  But there is no such thing, and certainly nothing close to that lives here. Just ghosts and memories I’d do anything to forget.

  I walk toward the kitchen, wiping the rain beading under my chin.

  What will she look like, now that almost four years have gone by? Years since her only child abandoned her. Years that made her a widow and twisted her into someone more stalwart than ever before, further proven by her decision to stop contact with me when I refused to return for my dad’s funeral.

  Her late-night call broke the grudge, or so it seems.

  I step out of the shadows, squinting into the light, and the woman before me is not my mom.

  The woman sitting at the round kitchen table has one swollen leg resting up on a chair and short gray hair—all gray—in a tight perm.

  “You actually came,” the woman mutters, and I recognize the voice as my mom’s, but the woman still looks like the ghost of her. “Little worse for wear, aren’t I?”


  I lick my lips and shake my head no, but it’s worse than that.

  Have a little decency and hide your shock.

  I press my hand against my lips and rock my weight back and forth to each foot, unsure of what else to do or say.

  “Arthritis got me pretty good since you left,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “But the diabetes caught up with me. My foot’s not doin’ too well and my damn leg won’t let me stand for more’n a minute or two without getting all shaky. Price of getting old, Sam. Don’t ever get old.”

  She means it, too, as if at her insistence, I could just decide to stop aging. She stares at me with her crystal blue eyes, and I see a glimmer of my mom.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I am.

  She chastised me for leaving before I’d even left. Reminded me I was abandoning my friends and family, and that, not only would I no longer be protected, but they were also more vulnerable around this time of year without an extra pair of eyes to watch out for each other.

  And it was true.

  Ted and Mitsy Hutchings, Cliff and Amelia Baker, Toothy Talbot, and Mom and Dad. They would party every weekend together on Cherry Street, taking turns having barbeques in each of their backyards, never failing to make a bad decision by the end of the night. Embarrassing themselves. Driving drunk. Taking out frustrations over constant construction on people in the new build. Driving the bulldozers into the middle of a field. Slashing tires of luxury cars owned by the people moving in, just because they didn’t take kindly to outsiders.

  They all stood up to other townspeople who didn’t like the way they did as they pleased, refusing to ever back down from a fight because they didn’t have to.

  They had each other.

  “Well, glad you’re here. How was the drive?”

  “Fine. Listen, I’d like us to get going. Did you decide where you’ll stay?”

  “I was about to call Linda, but tell you the truth, I don’t want to put her out like that, and I felt awful just calling out of the blue for something so…silly.”

  “Silly?”

  She’s not serious about leaving. I should have known it was too good to be true.

  I cross my arms over my chest as she opens her mouth, the gears working in her head to recover from that admission.

  “Well, I just meant, she might not understand. If you’re not from here, you can’t understand. Not completely.”

  That’s the truth. The town works in ways outsiders couldn’t fathom.

  Until you’ve been forced to stay up late at night, every night during the week leading to Founders Day, waiting to find out if someone’s out to get you, you can’t understand the place of fear some of the people operate from their whole lives.

  Until you’ve gone out at night, every night during that same week, looking for trouble or daring it to find you, you’ll never understand how the rest live, either.

  “Would you sit down, Sam? You’re making me nervous.”

  I shake my head. “Where are your bags? You’ll come home with me.”

  “I haven’t been able to pack since we spoke,” she says before puffing on her cigarette.

  “What have you been doing?”

  “It was all the effort I had to get down here and make myself a cup’uh’tea to ease my nerves.”

  “For the past ten hours, you’ve been walking downstairs, making tea, and drinking it?” I gawk at her, willing her to tell me the truth. Admit you have no intention of leaving.

  “You’re young’n able-bodied. You wouldn’t understand how hard it is to pack for yourself, so I’ll give ya that one, but watch how you speak to me. You’re under this roof again, and you’ll show some respect.”

  I bite at my cheek and lean back against the wall, staring at her. I should pity her, but I don’t. She shouldn’t have been drunk all the time with her diabetes, but she’d say she couldn’t help getting drunk every weekend, or that it seeped into her day to day life. She would still defend her choices and would never admit that she was addicted—if I was foolish enough to ask.

  “I’ll pack for you. Just tell me what you need, and I’ll make sure we bring it.”

  “Oh, Sam, I don’t know from down here. I’d have to be up there to see.”

  “Then come upstairs with me,” I say, trying to control my frustration.

  “That would take a while, and I’m afraid you still haven’t got any patience, so I’ll wait until I’ve got the energy again. It comes in short bursts, and right now, I’m exhausted.”

  I push myself off the wall and take a step forward. “Mom. Do you want to leave this place or not?”

  “I do…” her voice waivers, and she picks at her nail beds.

  I huff. “But?”

  Her eyes gloss over, reflecting her fingers in front of her, and I drop my defenses.

  She never cries. When Dad died, sure, but I never saw that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this.

  The tears spill over and run down the wrinkles in her cheeks to her jaw. She looks up at me and presses her lips together, her shoulders shaking as she works to keep it in. I open my mouth, ready to tell her it’s okay. To let it out.

  “I can’t leave your father,” she blurts out, and more tears come after that. She wipes them away with the hand holding the cigarette, and I wince as it waves by her eye.

  “Try to breathe,” I say, walking over and pulling out the chair across from her.

  She nods and sputters, “I know, I know.”

  I wait for her to regain control, and as she sniffles, I lean in under the Tiffany-knock-off stained glass light fixture over head. “You’re not leaving him. You’re getting yourself to safety. You know he’d want that for you.”

  “Yeah,” she says with a sigh. “That’s why I called you, but our lives were here. Our whole lives, and now that he’s gone, I still feel him here, watching over me and the street.”

  I nod, but I’m not sure I believe that. Haunting the street, maybe.

  “I know it’s stupid to stay, just because’uh that,” she says, her voice back to normal, “but I think that’s what’s stopping me.”

  The town is stopping you. Keeping you here, but you don’t see it. You can’t while you’re in it.

  “It’s just for five days. Then we’ll come back, I’ll help you tidy up, and we’ll sell it. You can move anywhere you like. Close to Aunt Linda, even. You don’t have to decide that right now. You just have to decide to leave with me. Today.”

  She nods. “I need to eat something. I feel weak.”

  No wonder.

  “I’ll make you a sandwich.” I stand up and grab the loaf of bread from the top of the fridge.

  “And I need to pack my clothes, and I need my medications.”

  “Right, okay,” I say, opening the fully loaded fridge and grabbing a few items. “Who’s been helping you out, with your leg as it is?”

  “Amelia and Cliff are godsends, and the Hutchings are so good to me, too. The whole street pitches in. Took over right after…”

  Dad was murdered. Yeah.

  I slap the sandwich together for her, and it takes less time for her to eat it than it did to make.

  “I’m going up to pack some clothes. It’ll just take a bit, and then we can go. Medication’s still in the cabinet?”

  The stash I’d pillage when I needed a fix.

  “Yeah, but it’s not all there. The Hutchings were going to pick up my scrip for me,” great, she doesn’t have her meds, “but they called and said Will was coming for a visit with Stacy, so I told them not to worry.”

  I tuck my hair behind my ear and turn away from her. I don’t want her to try to read the expression on my face after she said their names. “Maybe we could go over there for a visit,” she says in a higher pitch than usual.

  She’s always wanted Will and me together. She thought we’d end up together before and after he got another girl, Beth, pregnant. She still believed it after a drunk driver killed the mother of Will’s baby before she carried to full t
erm. After, the doctors delivered Beth and Will’s baby girl, Stacy, making him a widowed, single parent. That’s probably when she was more convinced than ever we’d end up together, but it was never like that with us.

  I played the role of Aunt Sam, but Will and I never played house. As next door neighbors, he was a life-long friend. Growing up, we always had each other to go on adventures, and once we hit high school, even after joining separate friend groups, we always saw each other through the week. Even when we stopped hanging out together, we knew we could talk to each other if we needed someone.

  But it was never anything more than a friendship. Even after he confessed his crush on me the summer before high school, when I didn’t share the same feelings, things slowly went back to the way they were. The way they always had been. Besides, after Stacy was born, I had Albert, and Will had his grief to keep him company.

  “No,” I say, turning around with my hands on my hips. “We’re not going for a visit. How could you go over to the neighbors, but not upstairs to pack? Really got your priorities straight, don’t ya, Mom?”

  “What did I say about that tone? That attitude’ll get ya in trouble, and I won’t have it under my roof.”

  I roll my eyes. “I don’t live here anymore, and you haven’t been a mom to me in years—if ever.”

  “Glad your Dad’s not around anymore to hear you talk to me like that.”

  “You’re probably glad he’s not around anymore period.”

  She gasps, and I know it’s too late to take back what I said, so I double-down. “You always fought, always nagged him, and were never around to take care of us the way you should have been. Did you even miss a beat when he died?”

  “He was murdered—get it through that thick skull of yours—and I hope you’re proud of all the despicable things you just accused me of. Terrible mother, was I? If that’s what you think, why did you even come?!”

  “Because I thought you might have come to your senses after Dad was killed and moved out of this hell hole before someone killed you, too! But no. You stuck around.”

  “I don’t care! I want to die!” She slams her fist down on the table, and it wobbles. “You always drove him away from us, but after you left, he stuck around more. He and I got closer than ever. And y’know… I’d rather be dead than without Craig. I wish it was me Lawrence killed instead of him!”