Ink and Bone

by Lisa Unger

  She let the chickens out into their outdoor pen and spread their feed around as a milky light broke over the horizon. Out in back, she tipped the water bucket into the trough for the pigs. There were only three, but they were huge, brown and white, dirty, rutting. There was something mean about them, something ugly. They weren’t cute and pink, like she used to imagine them. In school, she and her friends used to draw little pig snouts on the notes they wrote to each other and imagine that they wanted to have pigs for pets. But the truth was, none of them had ever even seen a real pig. Maybe there were other kinds of pigs. Pigs that didn’t have beady, intelligent eyes. Or ones that didn’t make horrible grunting noises, that weren’t twice or maybe three times as large as a girl.

  She was just glad she didn’t have to feed them. Poppa did that. It was disgusting to watch them eat. She didn’t like pigs anymore.

  Stay away from the pigs, the other girl had told her. She’d been blonde like Penny, with sweet, smiling eyes.

  Why? Penny wanted to know.

  The other little girl, who was skinnier and dirtier than anyone Penny had ever seen, swallowed hard and looked like she didn’t want to say. They’re mean.

  Cow was still calling, low and mournful, but more urgently. Penny pulled the stool over and put the other bucket under the big pink udder. Then Penny petted Cow on her big nose and gave her a kiss. She loved Cow, her muscular softness, her gentle presence. Penny wrapped her arms around the cow’s big head—even though the cow was a little smelly—and gave her a hug.

  Cow was the only nice thing. Her mom always asked when they were having a snack after school: What was your favorite thing about today? But Penny tried not to think too much about her mom, because it just made her sick inside, opened a big wide hole in her belly. Anyway, the answer every day now was Cow. If her mommy had asked, that’s what Penny would have told her.

  She sat and squeezed the udders in her hand, they were soft and warm and malleable as clay. She was getting good at it and soon the creamy liquid shot in sharp streams, hitting the side of the bucket with a zing.

  The work was hard, and it used to be that she had to take a lot of breaks—her fingers and arms burning with effort. But she was getting stronger. The other girl had showed her how to do it, the same one who told her to stay away from the pigs. She’d never told Penny her name, even when she’d asked. I don’t have a name, she’d said. Everyone has a name, Penny said. But the girl just shook her head and looked so sad that Penny dropped the subject.

  “The trick is not to squeeze too hard. And don’t yank,” the girl said. “You have to hold the teat in your whole hand, thumb and forefinger closed around the top to keep the milk from going back up into the udder. Pull and let go. Pull and let go.”

  But the other girl was gone now. Bobo said that there had been more girls, too. But they made Momma angry. They thought too much of themselves, or they made too much noise, complained, weren’t helpful. They were too pretty, made Momma jealous. Not ugly like you.

  Penny slowed down toward the end, because she didn’t want to bring the bucket up to the house. She rested her forehead against the velvety brown cow, enjoying every squeeze. But eventually the job was done. So she kissed Cow and lifted the heavy bucket by the handle and carried it to the door that stood open. Her stomach bottomed out when she saw the two upstairs lights on, glowing like two staring monster eyes. All around the clearing was a thick, dark stand of trees.

  Those woods are haunted, Bobo had said. Full of demons and ghosts. She didn’t believe him at first, but she knew now that it was true. In the night, when she lay sleepless, thinking of that faraway place, crying, she’d heard all kinds of things—screaming, weeping, angry voices yelling. Sometimes there was howling. Worse than all of that, on certain nights there seemed to be a strange whispering coming from the trees themselves. The sound was nowhere and everywhere. Even if she covered her ears, she could still hear it, the sound of a million voices talking ever so softly.

  Still every night, she wondered if she shouldn’t just take her chances in those woods. Don’t bother trying to run. He’ll get you. And anyway you have nowhere to go. Bobo was right; her family was gone, she had no idea where in the world she was. In the end, she just lay there praying. We can talk to God, her daddy had always told her. He listens.

  She wasn’t sure that was true. Because she had been talking every night, but the answers that came didn’t seem like they were coming from God.

  With the woods dark around the clearing, and the light breaking, the moon fading, Penny hauled the bucket toward the big house.

  SIX

  Squeak-clink. Squeak-clink. Squeeeaaak-clink.

  “Oh. My. God,” said Finley, pulling the pillow pointlessly over her head.

  Squeak-clink. Squeak—clink.

  When she finally yanked the pillow away, the light in her room was too bright, too golden. She’d overslept.

  “Seriously?” she groaned to no one.

  Her back ached like the worst sunburn or like someone had repeatedly punched her there. And she had a Rainer hangover—head pounding with regret, stomach queasy with self-recrimination. Even though nothing happened, she shouldn’t have gone to see him. Wasn’t it just really leading him on? Why was she so weak when it came to him? She reached for her phone and checked the time. If she hustled, she could go for a run, then make class. But she had no hustle that morning. None.

  Instead, she got out of bed and went downstairs, still in her pajamas, still with the sound in her head. She smelled coffee. Caffeine and sugar, the answer to many of life’s problems—that’s what she needed.

  “I’m still hearing it,” she called out.

  When she pushed into the kitchen, Eloise was sitting at the table with Jones Cooper.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, pausing in the doorway for a second.

  She thought about beating a hasty retreat to change. But then she just didn’t and continued walking over to the coffee pot instead.

  She figured that Jones Cooper, retired cop turned private investigator, had probably seen a few people in their pajamas before—which in her case consisted of a black, long-sleeve tee-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants. And Finley wasn’t exactly shy. Even though she didn’t know Jones that well, there was something safe and familiar about him, like he belonged in the kitchen. He had big energy, took up a lot of space. He filled the chair he sat in and made the table look small. She felt like he could get away with wearing a cowboy hat and she wished he would.

  “How was your night?” asked Eloise. She rose and came to give Finley a kiss, and to get the milk for her coffee.

  “Okay,” Finley said.

  Her grandmother would never ask anything further like where had she gone and whom had she seen—not like Amanda, who would already have her cornered with a hundred questions. Eloise didn’t have to; even if she didn’t know precisely where Finley had gone, she knew the nature of the encounter—good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, safe or unsafe.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cooper,” said Finley, glancing over at him. She could tell it wasn’t a social call. There was a seriousness to him, a gravity, as well as a manila folder in front of him.

  “Good morning, Finley,” he said. “And call me Jones.”

  Finley and Jones had shared a few moments early on when she’d first moved to The Hollows, one where he told her that she was driving her bike too fast, that the consequences for careless behavior were often unforgiving. Coming from anyone else, she’d have blown it off. But after his warning, she’d slowed down for the sake of her grandmother, if not for herself. At least in town, where every­thing she did was promptly reported back to Eloise.

  As she poured her coffee and put slices of bread in the toaster, the sound ceased. It took her a second to realize that Jones Cooper was the reason it was gone. She also became aware that neither Eloise nor Jones had said a word since she entered, that Jones was looking at his cup, and Eloise was watching Finley.

  “Squeak-clink?�
�� she asked her grandmother.

  “Maybe,” said Eloise easily. “It’s been quiet since he got here. For me anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Jones. The way he asked it suggested that he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.

  “Jones has had a visit from a young mother looking for her missing daughter,” Eloise said, ignoring his question. “You might remember; it was in the news last year. The family vacationing from the city?”

  “I thought it was the father,” said Finley. She came to sit at the table with them, her curiosity piqued. “That he’d disappeared with both kids. Custody thing.”

  “No,” said Jones.

  He opened the file, revealing a swath of papers that looked like printed articles from the web.

  “You’re thinking of another case about eighteen months prior to the Gleason girl abduction,” he said. He leafed through the pages and pulled out an article. “The Fitzpatrick family moved here from Manhattan back in 2013, and within a year, they were going through an ugly divorce and custody battle. The husband came to take the kids—a girl Eliza, age nine, and a boy Joshua, age fourteen—for his scheduled visit and didn’t bring them home. It was treated as a parental abduction. I did some research last night. The case is still open, no sign of the husband or the children—which I find odd. It’s really hard for anyone to disappear these days, especially with two children.”

  Eloise made a confirming noise and looked down at the article.

  “There was no criminal history, domestic violence,” said Jones. “There were no allegations of abuse or neglect. Their passports weren’t used, so they didn’t flee overseas.”

  Finley looked at the poor-quality image of the children with their father, obviously on some kind of outdoorsy adventure, since they were all wearing backpacks and leaning on walking sticks. They looked beautiful and marked for some ill fate. But wasn’t that always true of the photographs of the missing?

  “There are similarities between the two cases,” Jones went on when Finley and Eloise stayed quiet. “Namely that Betty Fitzpatrick, the mother, said that the children and their father were planning a hike. Which is the circumstance under which the Gleason girl was abducted.

  Still nothing from Eloise.

  “I’m not saying that the cases are connected necessarily,” said Jones. “But I do know that The Hollows PD took another look at the Fitzpatrick case when Abbey Gleason disappeared.”

  Eloise leafed through the articles, pushing her glasses up on her nose. The expression on her face had gone from lovingly benign to tightly focused on the work in front of her. She was a stranger to Finley for a moment, someone distant and untouchable.

  “The woman who came to see me last night, Merri Gleason,” Jones went on. “Her daughter Abbey disappeared ten months ago when the family was up here vacationing at a lake house.”

  “I remember,” said Eloise. Even her voice sounded different, grim and soft. “I kept waiting to get something. I never did.”

  Jones shifted back in his chair, and it groaned beneath his weight. He folded his big arms around his chest, kept his storm cloud eyes on Eloise. Were they blue or hazel or a kind of misty gray, those eyes that missed nothing, Finley wondered.

  “There was a big police effort, of course,” said Jones. He coughed to clear his throat. “Lots of media. Weeks passed, then months. Leads went cold. I was one of the volunteers who searched the woods where she went missing.”

  Finley remembered but only vaguely. She’d still been in Seattle living with her mother, hadn’t she? She hadn’t been thinking or paying much attention to anything but the drama in her own life. It’s not the Finley Show, her mother used to chide. It’s not just about you.

  “The girl’s brother and father were both shot; she was taken,” said Jones. “Hours passed before the park ranger came out looking for them.”

  “Right,” said Eloise. She took off her glasses and pushed the papers away. “There were two men. One man shot Wolf Gleason and his son, then took the girl as they watched, helpless. But he couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t identify them afterwards.”

  Jones nodded, took a sip of coffee.

  “And allegedly the other man stayed behind with a knife while the older man disappeared with Abbey Gleason.”

  “A nightmare,” said Eloise.

  “Must have been,” said Jones. He said it oddly, not cold exactly, but with the acceptance of one too accustomed to the unfolding of nightmare scenarios.

  Finley didn’t have anything to add, just watched the interplay between them. It was easy, respectful. Eloise and Jones worked a number of cases together, always to good success, their talents balancing and complementing each other’s. There was something powerful about their energy, as if there was no case they couldn’t solve.

  Finley was aware of something else then, an almost giddy sense of relief, the sense of a weight being lifted. She’d heard her grandmother describe this, the feeling that came when you were doing what needed to be done. But she wasn’t doing anything. She was just sitting there.

  “It’s been nearly a year now,” said Jones. “The Gleasons have hired other detectives before. And Mrs. Gleason? She’s brittle with grief. There’s a lot riding on this for her; she feels like it’s her last chance to find her daughter.”

  Eloise nodded, whether in understanding or agreement Finley wasn’t sure.

  “She knows the realities of the situation,” said Jones, looking down into his cup. “That a child not found in the first twenty-four hours is likely not to be found alive. But she hasn’t given up. She says that she can feel her daughter’s life force.”

  He leaned with a very slight skepticism on the last two words. Finley knew that when Eloise and Jones first met, he’d not been a believer, not at all. Because of their many unexplainable experiences together, he now had a grudging acceptance of Eloise’s abilities. He trusted her, even if he didn’t understand her, Eloise had explained. It takes a big person to accept what they can’t intellectualize.

  “Did you take her on?” Finley asked.

  She didn’t imagine he’d be here if he hadn’t. But she had learned long ago not to seem like she knew things she couldn’t know. It made people uncomfortable.

  “I did,” he said. “I didn’t see how I could turn her down.”

  He was a thick man, solid on the earth, the kind of guy you’d call to fix your problems—get your kitten from a tree, watch your house while you’re away, help you find a missing loved one. It seemed to Finley that there were far too few totally reliable people around. People who did what they said they were going to do. People who showed up at the appointed time. That was why she liked Jones Cooper—a lot. He was everything her father wasn’t. Phil was flighty, unpredictable, prone to tantrums. Not that she had daddy issues.

  Jones’s brow was creased with concern as he lifted a big hand to rub at his crown.

  “You’re going to help?” Finley asked Eloise.

  Finley knew that her grandmother was planning her trip to go see Ray, though an exact date had not been set. Soon, Eloise kept saying, as if she was waiting for something and didn’t want to say what. Finley suspected that Eloise was worried about leaving her alone, especially since Rainer showed up a few months ago. Finley had offered assurances; she wanted her grandmother to experience a little freedom, a little happiness. No one deserved it more.

  “This one’s not mine,” said Eloise. She held Finley in a kind but unwavering gaze. Finley’s heart did a little dance. “It’s yours, Finley.”

  Jones and Finley exchanged an awkward look. She saw a micro-expression cross his face. She’s just a kid. I can’t work with her. All the walls came up inside her. No way, she thought. I’m not doing what you do. Then they both turned their eyes to Eloise, who leaned back in her chair, took a sip from her coffee.

  “Squeak-clink is yours,” said Eloise evenly, putting the putty-colored cup down on the table. “I’m just overhearing.”

  Finley chok
ed back a flutter of panic, a deep sense of resistance. She hadn’t done “The Work” yet, as Eloise liked to call it, not really, and she wasn’t sure she even wanted to. At the moment, Finley was thinking about psychology (maybe, probably)—which made her mom deliriously happy. It was a profession where Finley surmised her abilities might be helpful—though she couldn’t say how exactly. It was just an instinct.

  The truth was that Finley wasn’t at all sure how she planned to use her “gifts.” The way Eloise lived, a slave to it, constantly in service to … them? Finley wasn’t certain that she wanted that for herself.

  We are chosen, Eloise said ominously, more than once. We don’t choose. Finley had rankled at the idea of having no choice. The idea of fate, of a predetermined course to one’s life did not jell with her beliefs.

  “How do you know I’m not the one overhearing it,” Finley said. She didn’t like the way she sounded, young and peevish.

  “We both know it’s you, dear,” said Eloise, putting a gentle hand on Finley’s. “I’m sorry. I’d take it from you if I could.”

  There was something strange about the way she said it, something unsettlingly final in her voice.

  Finley glanced back and forth between Jones and Eloise. She expected Jones to speak up, to insist that it was Eloise he’d come for, not Finley. Instead, he cast his eyes down at the table. He grabbed onto the edge and gave it a little wobble. It was uneven. He looked underneath, presumably to determine the problem.

  “You need to put something under there,” he said to Eloise. “To stabilize it.”

  She raised her palms at him to indicate that he was free to do what needed doing but that if it were up to her it would wobble forever.

  Jones got up and opened Eloise’s junk drawer, came back with a folded-up piece of cardboard, and kneeled down on the ground with a groan.

  “How do you know that squeak-clink has anything to do with this?” asked Finley weakly. She pointed toward the papers on the table.

  Eloise smiled, that sad, gentle smile she had. “You tell me,” she said. “Does it or doesn’t it?”