by Lisa Unger
“I can’t miss the bus,” she said, even though it killed her. “Let’s go tomorrow.”
“I’ll get you home before your mother misses you,” said Cole. “I promise.”
“He has a car,” said Jolie. She gave a pragmatic nod in his direction. Mixed signals from her friend. Did Jolie want her to go or stay?
“A Beemer,” Jolie went on. “His dad is rich.”
A flush came up on Cole’s pale skin. “It’s an old car. He’s letting me use it until my mom gets back. I’m just staying here with him until she comes home.”
The way he said it had a charge; the flush deepened and spread down his jaw. Willow picked up on it right away. It was something bad.
“Where is she?” asked Willow. She immediately regretted asking. She should have kept her mouth shut.
He cleared his throat, looked at his shoes. “My mom is in Iraq. She’s in the military.”
Jolie narrowed her eyes again, pulled her head back a bit. “I didn’t know that. How come no one tells me anything?”
“I’m telling you now,” he said, echoing Willow. He gave Willow a smile; she knew it was just for her. Jolie started pouting then. Out of the corner of her eye, Willow saw the other girl slump a little.
“Wow,” said Willow. “That must be really hard. Really scary.”
She couldn’t imagine her mom going somewhere like that, being so far away in such a bad and scary place-a place from which she might not return. The idea of this made her think she should go back to school and get on the bus home.
Cole shrugged. “My mom’s a badass. Special Ops.”
And right then-the way he said it, the way his eyes shifted-she knew he was lying. Takes one to know one. It made her feel sad for him, made her think that wherever his mom was, it was way worse than if she’d gone off to war.
“That’s cool,” she said. “When does she come home?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The wind picked up, and she thought about her mother again and about the promises Willow had made. She stood and shouldered her backpack. Jolie and Cole were both looking at her. They were different from her. Willow was old enough to know that. No one would notice if Jolie or Cole came home late; no one was keeping track of their whereabouts, calling the school librarian to make sure they were where they said they were. She wanted to be like them.
“Come on,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I remember where he was digging.”
“Really sure?” said Jolie, glancing back at the school. “It’s getting late.”
“Don’t worry,” said Cole. “I’ll get her home in time.”
Willow watched Jolie turn an odd gaze on Cole, while Cole kept his eyes on Willow.
There was a moment where she could have said, I’ll take you tomorrow. But I’ve gotta go.
And she could have walked off, and neither of the other two would have stopped her. Jolie and Cole would have passed the afternoon together, because Willow could tell that Jolie liked Cole more than she wanted to admit and that she was sorry that she had invited Willow at all. All of them knew that going home was the right thing for Willow to do. She belonged with her mother, who loved her. And Jolie and Cole belonged to themselves, for whatever reason.
But that moment passed. Willow looked up at the darkening sky and the cute boy who was gazing at her with interest.
And instead of saying what she should have said, she said, “I remember where it is. It’s not far. There’s time.”
She started walking, and the other two followed her into the woods.
chapter twelve
Jones was always getting text messages from his son on the cell phone that Maggie had bought and made him carry. The phone would issue a tone and shudder a little, and then the screen would light up: TEXT MESSAGE FROM RICKY. Often these missives were unintelligible to Jones, containing bizarre abbreviations and acronyms for which he had no reference. HIH, D? MISS U GYS. STDYING HRD. LOL. What did it mean?
What was more frustrating was the fact that at first he’d had no idea how to answer. He could not figure out how to use the keys on the phone to create a message or how to send it. So he usually just wound up calling his son back and talking to him, which was always awkward for reasons Jones didn’t really understand. He always felt like he was rousing the kid from sleep, no matter what time of the day it was, or found that he really didn’t have anything to say that seemed cool or interesting. Or later he’d send Ricky an e-mail if he couldn’t reach him on the phone. But for some reason, uncomfortable phone conversations notwithstanding, Jones felt closer to Ricky now that he was away at school than he ever had when they’d lived under the same roof. Maybe it was just all the different ways they could communicate now. When it came to talking face-to-face with his son, he was still hopeless. But he could manage a fairly decent e-mail.
Today the message was, IZ DA RIDE RDY, D? CW!
Jones interpreted this to mean: IS THE RIDE READY, DAD? But CW? Can’t wait, maybe? Jones didn’t know for sure. But he managed to text the letter y for yes and send it the way Maggie had shown him. A few minutes later, he got a message back: SWEET! Jones laughed a little. Ricky was happy. Happy at school, happy to be coming home for the weekend. Something about that filled him with pride. Jones thought it was an accomplishment to be a happy person, a choice. He couldn’t say he’d accomplished the same thing in his own life yet. Not that he was unhappy. Anyway, what did it even mean? To be happy?
He suspected that it was a new idea. That it was very young to think you had a right to happiness, that one might make decisions to that end. Certainly his mother was never happy, never took any steps to make herself happier. As for his father, he had no idea. He didn’t know anything about the man who’d left when Jones was twelve; his father had been more or less absent before that.
Lately he and the good doctor had been talking a lot about Abigail, Jones’s mother, who had been dead more than twenty years now. The smell of cigarette smoke could resurrect her; he could still hear her voice in his head. That’s what I love about you, Jones, she’d say right before she’d say something nasty. The day before she had her stroke, she’d complained of a headache. He’d told her to take a Tylenol. She’d said, That’s what I love about you, Jones. You’re the soul of compassion. Possibly those were the last words she’d spoken to him. He couldn’t remember. By that time he’d been so worn down by her incessant litany of problems, her endless list of symptoms and issues, her ever-increasing visits to doctors, that he’d barely registered the complaint-or the comment that followed his inadequate response.
“Do you feel bad about that?” the doctor had asked in a recent session.
“No,” answered Jones. “Not really.”
Dr. Dahl waited for him to go on. Jones shifted in his chair. “I mean, she’d had a symptom a day all my life. She had to be right sometime, didn’t she? Eventually she was going to call it.”
A slow blink from the doctor. Then, “I meant do you feel bad that those were the last words your mother ever spoke to you?”
The question landed like a shaming slap to the face. Jones felt heat rise up his neck. He found he couldn’t answer.
“You spent the better part of your life caring for her,” the doctor went on. “You’ve as much as admitted that you subordinated most of your ambitions and desires for your life because you felt compelled to stay with her.”
“It wasn’t just that.”
“I know. We’ve talked about the other reasons. Sarah’s death and how it haunted you, how you were swallowed by your guilt. But your mother was at least partially responsible for how you handled that situation as well. Let’s not forget that you were just a kid. With the right guidance, you might have come through that incident better.”
Jones found himself slowly nodding; he kept a neutral expression. That incident. It sounded so mild, like a fender bender or a baseball he’d thrown through a neighbor’s window, some white lie he’d told. He’d watched a girl die and t
hen left her body alone on a darkening spring night. Sarah’s death, his cowardice, all the things that were never revealed until decades later, laid waste to his life, his career. That incident.
The doctor was still talking about Abigail.
“You were a good son. Did she ever thank you? Did she ever say anything kind to you?”
It took every inner resource available to maintain a calm façade. The depths were roiling, a potent brew of rage and fear. Jones couldn’t even say why, just that it frightened him. He frightened himself. As a young man, he’d been buffeted by these feelings, resulting in bar fights (he’d punched a complete stranger right in the jaw for some comment Jones couldn’t even remember), road-rage incidents (he’d all but rammed someone for cutting him off, got out of his car to find a teenage girl crying in the driver’s seat), even problems on the job (as a young cop he’d been before civilian review twice for unnecessary force). Oddly, his recall of the particular incidents was fuzzy. But he remembered the feeling that preceded them. It was just like this. It was Maggie who’d calmed him, who’d saved him from that anger and the damage he could have done.
“I don’t think it was in her DNA. Gratitude.” His tone had sounded so mild, so easy. “She never had anything but complaints for anyone. I didn’t take it personally.”
More pointed silence from the shrink.
“And what about your father?” Dr. Dahl continued eventually. Jones had found himself looking at the guy’s shoes. Very expensive. He could tell. Probably Italian leather, hand-stitched. It was another mark against the doctor. Vanity. “We don’t talk about him very much. It’s an area that bears some exploring.”
Jones had talked a little about the old man, the familiar story of the cop who drank too much, who was only home, it seemed, to raise his voice about whatever and then was gone for good.
“But there was more to him than that. You can’t just cast him as a bad cliché in your life. Maybe you want to find out more about him. Understand him better. You were a detective, after all. You could probably find out anything you wanted to about him.”
It took everything Jones had not to leap over the coffee table and start pummeling the guy.
“Our time is up.” The doctor shut his notebook with a satisfied slap. “Think about it. We’ll pick up here next week.”
But they hadn’t revisited the topic. In fact, that had been the point at which Jones had decided that therapy was maybe not for him. He had to admit that it was the point where he’d “shut down,” as the doctor had accused.
Even now, sitting in the idling car, he felt that ugliness rise within. He realized that just the memory of his conversation with the doctor had him clutching the phone in his hand. His knuckles were white. He forced himself to relax. He still hadn’t decided whether or not he was going to keep his next appointment with the doctor. After all, he had this case now. There wasn’t an unlimited amount of time to do what Chuck had asked. Maybe he could just reschedule the appointment, not cancel it. Maggie didn’t have to know.
The house looked as he’d expected it to somehow: brittle, lonely on a small hill. The trees had littered the lawn with dead leaves, and no one was making any effort to stay on top of it. A wind chime hung on the porch, silent in the still air. He got out of his car and walked up the drive. He didn’t feel the kind of dread he thought he would. Instead he felt the buzz of curiosity that he’d always loved about the job.
He walked up onto the porch and was regarded by an enormous cat in the windowsill. The cat blinked at him with lazy disdain as Jones raised his fist and knocked three times, not seeing a doorbell. He waited a beat and then knocked again.
Her car was in the driveway, the beige Toyota he’d seen yesterday. If anyone told him after her visit that he’d have reason within the next twenty-four hours to knock on Eloise Montgomery’s door, he wouldn’t have believed it. He was about to knock again when he remembered his place. He wasn’t a cop. She had a right not to talk to him if she didn’t want to. But then she opened the door, looking even smaller without her winter coat.
“Hmm,” she said. “I wouldn’t have predicted this.”
“Even psychics don’t know everything.”
“So true.”
She stood back and held the door open for him. He would have expected her to keep him on the porch. He hadn’t been very polite with her yesterday. Not polite at all.
“I’m not here about your predictions for my future,” he said. He stepped over the threshold; it seemed colder inside than out.
“No?”
“No. I’m consulting for the Hollows PD. I have some questions about your involvement in the Marla Holt case.”
She seemed to hold back a smile. “Just to be clear, Michael Holt hired Ray Muldune, who consulted me. My involvement is minimal. I didn’t have anything on her until after I saw you yesterday.”
Clean hardwood floors, a wall of old pictures, a tidy and sunny sitting room, furniture on feet, doilies on end tables. Just as he imagined it-but somehow not, somehow more run-down, more staid than he expected. She must make money on this racket. People had to pay a fortune to connect with the dead, to answer the questions no one else had been able to answer for them. Had he wanted to see more flash?
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” he said.
She walked down a long hallway past a staircase and motioned for him to follow. As he did, he noticed the shabby condition of the house-the chipped baseboards, hairline cracks in the wall, flooring in the kitchen coming up, a water stain in the ceiling. If he’d been her friend, her neighbor, or if he’d been taking care of her house while she was away, he’d offer to do the repairs or mention something that might have been beyond his abilities, suggest that she have it looked at. He’d already amassed a book of contacts-carpenters, painters, plumbers-people he knew and trusted, many of whom he’d known since childhood. But he reminded himself that she wasn’t any of those things and that he should just keep his mouth shut.
In the kitchen he sat at the table where she motioned for him to do so. The first thing he noticed was the row of medications on the windowsill. The bottles were too far for him to see. But there were too many of them, maybe ten little plastic tubes of varying size with green caps. She sat across from him and blocked his line of sight.
“After I came to see you, I saw her running.”
He tried to keep the smirk off his face. “Really. Just jogging by?”
She gave him a flat blink to show that she didn’t find him amusing. “Running through the woods. Afraid. Someone chasing.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. A dismissive, condescending sound, Maggie would accuse. And she’d be right. “I was the detective on her case. It was one of my first. In fact, I’d say it was my first major case.”
“And you never solved it. That must have stuck in your craw.”
It hadn’t, really. He’d never been one to let the job eat at him. He said as much. “Some people don’t want to be found,” he told her. “It was a lot easier to disappear in 1987 than it would be in 2011.”
“What do you remember?” she asked. He was surprised by the question. After all, he’d come here to question her. But he didn’t mind talking about it.
“I remember that she was a bombshell. Really gorgeous. Too gorgeous for The Hollows. Too gorgeous for Mack Holt. He said she ran off, that he’d suspected she had a boyfriend, and that one night the other guy came and picked her up in a black Mercedes. Holt said she had aspirations to act and model.”
He remembered the small house, the boy lurking at the top of the stairs, the smell of cigarette smoke. Holt hadn’t reported her missing. It had been a friend from her part-time job at the library.
Jones remembered that he’d thought it strange that she hadn’t taken any of her jewelry. He wasn’t sure why that struck him. But there had been a leather box filled with all manner of baubles, some cheap and gaudy, some tasteful and on the more expensive side. It would have been easy to grab the box and shove it
into her suitcase. But she didn’t. Most of her clothes still hung in the closets, organized by color. A few empty hangers waited. Her shoes were in a careful row, a couple of pairs clearly missing. Holt claimed that she’d packed a small bag and announced she was leaving, told him that she’d come back for the children when she was settled. She was sorry. But she couldn’t live the life he wanted her to live, a hausfrau, the same day after day. She didn’t even love him anymore. Holt had sent the baby girl to stay with his sister, who lived just a few miles away. He couldn’t take care of her during the week, what with work and all. Michael was old enough to take care of himself after school. Some of this Jones remembered, some of it had come back to him as he read his own notes. He told all of it to Eloise.
Eloise shook her head.
“No,” she said. “That’s not how it was. There might have been a boyfriend, but he didn’t come for her that night.”
“So what happened, then?” He decided to play along. Why not?
“I don’t know, but whatever it was had her running through the woods in the black of night. That rarely ends well.”
“So she’s dead.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”
“But if you’re seeing her, doesn’t that mean she’s gone, crossed over, whatever?”
She offered him a weak smile. “You’re talking like a believer. You think I speak to dead people.”
“Don’t you?”
“I told you that I’m like a radio receiver. I pick up energies, frequencies. Sometimes images, sometimes sounds, sometimes I see people. Always women or girls. Always lost, usually wronged or injured in some way. Not always dead. One girl was found alive in a well. All I could hear was her breathing and the dripping water. She was in shock. Another was being kept in a shed; I just heard her screaming for help over and over. Finally someone else did, too.”
“And so in the case of Marla Holt, last night you had a vision of her running through the woods. She was afraid.”
