The Familiar Dark

by Amy Engel

  I snuck a glance at Zach, saw the muscle in his jaw jumping. “I took a twenty-minute lunch break. Late, around two. Went down the road and grabbed a sandwich.”

  That took him off the hook, assuming he was telling the truth. The boat dealership was a good thirty minutes away, in the next town along the highway. One with a Dollar General and a McDonald’s and an actual library, small as it was. There was no way Zach could have gotten from there to here, killed two girls, and gotten back in twenty minutes. Not that I’d actually entertained the idea he might have done it. But still, it was good to check his name off the list in my head.

  “And what about you?” Land asked, turning to Jenny.

  “I was home all day,” Jenny said. She still seemed confused about why he was asking. Surely he didn’t think she could have done this awful thing.

  “Didn’t go anywhere after the girls left?”

  “No.”

  I leaned around Zach to look at her. “I tried to call you around three. You didn’t answer.”

  Jenny blinked at me. Her eyes were big and brown and protruded a little, like some kind of innocent woodland creature. “I . . . I was home. Maybe I was doing laundry? The dryer can be loud.” She looked from me to Zach and back again.

  “Why did you call her?” Land asked me.

  “To check on Junie. She doesn’t . . .” I paused, sucked in a breath. “Didn’t have a cell phone. I wanted to make sure she was going to be home by five.”

  “Did you leave a message?” Zach asked, voice hard, like I was the one with something to hide.

  “No,” I said. “I was planning to call back later, but I got busy.”

  “What about Izzy?” Land asked. “She got a cell phone?”

  Zach nodded. “My old iPhone. A 5 or a 6.”

  “A 6s,” Jenny said. “Black. It’s got a crack in one corner of the screen. A pink glitter case. Did you find it?”

  Land didn’t answer, scrawled something on his notepad.

  Jenny shifted back in her chair. The legs caught on the nappy carpet, and she pitched forward as she tried to stand. She put one hand on the table to steady herself. “I need to go home,” she said. “I can’t do this right now. Please. I’ve had enough.”

  The second the words were out of her mouth, Land was standing, saying, “Sure, sure, we can talk more tomorrow.” Somehow I was pretty sure if I’d been the one asking for an end to the conversation, Land would have found a way to put me off, telling me only a few more questions, we’d be done soon.

  I stayed seated as Jenny and Zach shuffled out behind me, no one meeting anyone’s eyes. I waited until they were out in the hall, Land shaking both their hands and patting Jenny on the shoulder, before I looked at Cal.

  “You ready to go?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I want to see her.”

  THREE

  No, you don’t,” Cal said, quick as a whip. “Evie, trust me. You don’t.”

  “I do,” I said.

  Cal pushed off the wall, came toward me with hands outstretched. “Okay, well, at least wait until . . . after. When the funeral people have her cleaned up. Not now.”

  “Now,” I said. “I need to, Cal. I have to.”

  “It’s her, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Cal said. “I saw her. It’s Junie.”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t that. I didn’t doubt that Junie was gone. Already I could feel a gaping hole in the world where she used to be. But I needed to see, to be a witness to what had happened to my daughter. I couldn’t live the rest of my life and not know, go on without having seen it with my own eyes. Junie had endured so much. The least I could do for her was endure this. “Let me see her, Cal.” That stubborn set to my voice that Cal had heard a hundred times before and knew better than to argue against. “I’m not leaving until you do.”

  The bodies were down in the basement, in the embalming room. Cal and Land led me down the steps, the smell of formaldehyde hitting me in the face the second they pushed through the door into the hallway. It reminded me of high school biology, slimy frogs, split open and flayed, organs shimmering under too-bright lights. My vision swam, and I sucked in a deep breath through my nose, let it out slowly through my mouth.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Land asked, eyebrows raised. “I’d advise against it.” He hitched his pants up. “I’ve seen a lot of bodies in my day, and once you see ’em, you can’t unsee ’em.”

  I barely glanced at him. “I’m sure.”

  “Always were a stubborn one,” Land muttered under his breath, but waved me forward to where Cal was standing next to a set of swinging doors. “Don’t touch her.” Land pointed at me. “Not at all. I’m gonna watch through the window just to make sure.”

  “You want me to go in with you?” Cal asked, but I shook my head. “All right, then,” he said. “She’s on the left.” He laid a hand on my back. “I’ll be waiting right out here.”

  The door swung closed behind me, and I paused, took in the cracked linoleum floor with a drain in the center, the rolling cart I assumed held instruments no one wanted me to see because it had been haphazardly draped with a cloth, the same flickering fluorescent lights as the hallway. And two rolling stretchers in front of me, one on the left, one on the right, the bodies still encased in black body bags, although the one on the left had been unzipped.

  I stared at the points of Junie’s toes sticking up from the open body bag. Wondered, fleetingly, if she’d lost her shoes somewhere along the way or if they’d taken them off of her once she got here. Keeping my eyes on the lower half of her body, I moved up next to her, let my hand hover over her arm. I could feel the coldness radiating off her. My girl, who always ran hot, even on the most frigid days.

  “This isn’t fair,” I said, voice low and choked. But it was a stupid thing to say, a worthless lament. Life was never fair. I knew that better than anyone. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and then raised my eyes slowly upward, girding myself one inch at a time. But it wasn’t as terrible as I’d expected, because it wasn’t really my daughter lying there. My daughter—who loved pasta and the color yellow, who was prone to headaches and worried her legs were too long, who snorted when she laughed and hated her freckles—wasn’t there anymore. This was the shell of a girl, one I hardly recognized as my own. Chestnut hair matted with blood, face chalky white from the nose up, a red horror below. Blood smeared across her chin and caked on her left cheek, her shirt soaked black. Her throat was laid open, almost ear to ear.

  I had been the first person to hold her when she came into the world. I witnessed her first word, her first steps, her first fever, laugh, tantrum, crush, disappointment. But not this. Her last breath, her final seconds on earth. I wasn’t there in the moment when she needed me the most. All my years of trying hadn’t mattered because in the end, I had failed her. I leaned forward and kissed the air above her unmarred forehead. I breathed in, hoping for some last remnant of her. But all I could smell was blood and new-fallen snow.

  * * *

  • • •

  Cal wouldn’t let me spend the night alone, trudged after me up the cracked sidewalk to my apartment building, even when I told him I was fine (a lie so pathetic, neither one of us acknowledged it), that I wanted to be alone, to please go home. Most of the outside lights on my building had long since burned out, and repeated calls to the manager hadn’t produced anything other than half-hearted promises to come check it out. The only illumination was from the lone streetlight in the parking lot, but it was enough for me to spy a plate of something left on my front doormat. Word traveled fast around here. Heart-shaped cookies, it turned out, each one frosted in pale pink. More appropriate for the birth of a daughter than the death of one. I kicked the plate out of the way, cookies sailing out onto the cigarette-butt-littered concrete.

  “Hey,” Cal said, and then seemed to think better of it
, his voice trailing off into silence.

  The apartment looked the same as when I’d walked out this morning, and completely forever changed at the same time. It had always been the apartment of a family who only escaped true poverty through sheer stubbornness and the generosity of others. Others being Cal, who bought my groceries half the time and made sure the electricity was never shut off. But the shabbiness felt new to me. The lumpy brown sofa and nicked dining table. The thin curtains and scuffed paint. Had it always looked this threadbare and colorless? This empty? Of course it hasn’t, my mind whispered. Because Junie used to be here. Filling it up with her sound and her voice and her smells. Junie, who was never going to be here again.

  Cal made a noise behind me, something deep and guttural, and I spun, my heart hammering in my throat. He’d slid down onto the floor, his back against the now-closed front door, hands held out in front of him, cupping something invisible.

  “Remember when she was born?” he asked. He didn’t take his eyes from his hands, couldn’t see me nod. Of course I do, I wanted to shout. How could I ever forget? But I reminded myself that he was grieving, too. That although the loss of Junie was something I wanted to clutch tight in my palm, whisper mine through bared teeth, such selfishness would be unfair. She loved Cal, and he loved her. He had a right to his sorrow, but I couldn’t find room inside myself to care about his pain. Not now. Not yet. “She fit right here,” he said, lifting his palms. “She was tiny. I mean, I’d seen babies before, but not like that. Not so new and small and fragile.”

  I’d had the same thoughts the first time I’d held her. I’d wanted to roll her into a ball and pop her into my mouth, swallow her back down into my belly, where she’d been protected. Keep her there, where I could stand between her and the world’s shadows. Maybe somehow I’d known, even then, what was waiting for her. Or maybe I just didn’t know how to hope for the best. God knows I’d never been taught.

  “I told her I was her Uncle Cal and she was my Junie-bug. I’d always love her and I’d always take care of her.” He paused, a sob sliding out of his mouth. “I promised her she’d always be safe.”

  “You did take care of her,” I managed. “You kept her safe.”

  “Before.” His hands dropped to his sides. “But then today came along and made a liar out of me.”

  And what could I say to that? We hadn’t kept her safe and there was no arguing the fact. Junie’s split-open body was the undeniable proof. “Are you going to find out who did it? Are you going to catch him?” I paused. “Or her?”

  Cal looked at me, and I saw the truth swirling in his tear-bright eyes. This is a slippery part of the world. People dart in and out of existence like minnows in a shadowy pool. It’s not uncommon for someone to show up in town who everyone thought was dead, it’s been so long since they’ve been around. Folks here are hard to pin down, even harder to catch. The land itself serves as its own kind of hiding place, full of nooks and valleys, tucked-away places where no one would ever think to look. It’s a place for people who don’t want to be found. But Cal nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Of course. We’ll get him.” The vow came too fast, too easily. The kind of promise it’s easy to make because you’ve already broken it before the words are even spoken.

  It was the first time he’d ever lied to me.

  * * *

  • • •

  Cal woke me in the morning, bright sun streaming in from behind my pale curtains. “What time is it?” I muttered, putting one hand over my aching eyes. I still hadn’t cried, not a single tear, and my lids throbbed. My whole face felt swollen with unshed grief, like an overfilled balloon waiting to pop.

  “Almost eight,” Cal said, holding out a mug of coffee that I waved away. “I called and talked to Thomas, told him you wouldn’t be in for a while.”

  I shoved myself up onto my elbows. “I can’t miss work.”

  Cal shook his head. “I’ll cover you if you need some money. Thomas said he’d help, too. You can’t go to work, Evie. Come on, you know that.”

  He was right, of course. I could imagine what a mood killer I’d be. No one wanted to eat pie and shoot the shit with a murdered girl’s mother hovering around, eyes red-rimmed and soul cut out.

  “I’ve gotta go in, though,” Cal said. “But I’ll come back tonight.” He paused, looked away. “Can I trust you alone?” he asked quietly. “Trust you not to do anything crazy?”

  “Are you asking me if I’m going to kill myself?” I asked, voice even. I waited until he looked at me, his brow knotted up with worry. “No,” I said. “I won’t do anything crazy. Not today.” That’s all I could give him. One day. I didn’t know about tomorrow. I was done making promises. I’d made Junie a thousand and not one of them had mattered in the end.

  “Okay,” Cal said, blowing out a breath. He kissed my cheek and set the mug on my bedside table. “I left the sheets and blankets on the sofa,” he said from the doorway. “I’m staying here again tonight. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I told him. “Always.”

  After he left, I burrowed back under the covers, breathed in my own unwashed smell. Closed my eyes and sank into oblivion. Going, going. Gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  Three days passed before I got out of bed for more than a trip to the toilet. Three days where the only person I talked to was Cal and one quick call with the funeral director. Cremation, I told him. Plain urn. No funeral. He paused after that last instruction, cleared his throat. Asked me to repeat. “No funeral,” I said again, louder. Later, when Cal walked through the door, I knew the two of them had talked.

  “I heard you don’t want a funeral,” he said. He put a plate with a grilled cheese sandwich and a small bunch of grapes on my bedside table. Picked up the one holding a blueberry muffin, uneaten, that he’d put there this morning. I wasn’t sure why he was bothering.

  “I don’t want a funeral,” I confirmed.

  Cal sat on the edge of my bed, slid his fingers through my greasy, matted hair. “Evie, honey, a funeral is everyone’s chance to say good-bye. To celebrate Junie’s life.”

  “She didn’t have a life,” I told him. “She lived twelve years. That’s it. Twelve.” The number sounded even worse out loud. Twelve summers, twelve Christmases, twelve trips around the sun. It was nothing in the scheme of things. Nothing.

  “She had a life,” Cal said. “She lived.”

  I shrugged out from under his hand, turned away. “I didn’t say never. I said not now.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  To know who did it. To say good-bye to my daughter with at least the knowledge that whoever killed her wasn’t still walking around, thinking they got away with it. “I’m not sure. But when the time is right, I’ll let you know.”

  FOUR

  The next morning I waited until Cal was gone and then I unfurled from my cocoon. My legs were weak from being in bed for days. I stunk of sweat, and there were purple bruises under my eyes even though all I’d done for three days was sleep. I didn’t want to move, but grief was a luxury I couldn’t wallow in forever. I stood under a scalding-hot shower until my skin turned a bright lobster pink, and I scrubbed at my hair until my scalp screamed.

  The day was bright and sunny, as every day had been since the snowstorm. As if nature were trying to make amends for her colossal fuckup. My eyes protested the light, and I slipped on a pair of sunglasses, slid behind the wheel of my car, which Thomas had dropped off a few days ago. I sat with my hands on the steering wheel, feeling like I did at fourteen when I first learned to drive. Confused and unsure about how it all worked. It seemed unfathomable that I had been driving around town just a week ago, everything normal, Junie next to me fiddling with the radio, her feet forever propped up even when I told her a thousand times to put them down. If I peered closely enough, I could still see the outline of her tennis shoe on the dash.

&
nbsp; I bent down and pressed my forehead against the steering wheel, hard enough to leave a mark. Hard enough to push the memories back where they belonged. I needed to be in control. The place I was going didn’t allow for weakness.

  It was only fifteen miles to my mom’s trailer, but it took more than forty minutes to make the trip. The last five miles over terrain that could only be loosely termed an actual road. Dirt and pitted gravel, not featured on any Google map or adorned with a single road sign. What little mail my mom got was picked up at a post office box in town. She didn’t have an actual address. Growing up, I didn’t know a single person who did. Locations were given in terms of landmarks and miles traveled: Take the first right at the rusted pickup; head south for about a mile; veer left at the gravel fork in the road; if you pass a burned-out double-wide, you’ve gone too far.

  “Damn it,” I whispered over and over again as my car slammed against the rough road. I was getting close now, and tension curled between my shoulder blades, stretched its talons up into my neck. A headache throbbed behind my eyes. To the right I saw Carl Swanson’s trailer, one end completely rotted off, the hole patched with a tattered tarp and ribbons of duct tape. There was a new sign in his yard, black paint on an old piece of plywood. Rabbits $2. The greasy taste of rabbit rose in my throat, even though it had been years since I’d eaten one. Around here rabbits weren’t sold as pets, to be cuddled and loved by small children. They were meat, cheap and readily available. Chopped up in stew, legs boiled on the stove, stringy gray meat slopped over plates of gummy rice.

  I glanced to the left, looking at the view where the land dropped off, a valley of ripening green stretching out, dotted with old-growth woods, a glint of silver reflecting off the river snaking through. I’d seen it a thousand times—from winter bare to summer lush—but the view never got old. The kind of unblemished beauty that tethered people to this part of the world. Nature that still felt untouched and pure. It was this exact valley, apparently, that had given Barren Springs its name. As the legend went, when the first settlers found this place, there was only one almost-dry little creek and a bunch of dead trees. Soil too hard and rocky to grow much of anything but weeds. But the settlers were tired, out of provisions and choices. So they stayed. And prayed. Begged the Lord to bless them any way he saw fit, but, hey, some water, plentiful game, and better land would be a nice start. Beat their breasts and wept and gave it all up to God. Woke up the next morning to this green abundance. Rivers and creeks flowing, woods full of animals, soil still crap, but beggars can’t be choosers, and two out of three ain’t bad. They decided to name this place Barren Springs to remind themselves how easily things could go bad and how God answered prayers if you truly believed. Most of the town had been praying to God ever since with crappier and crappier results, as far as I could see. For her part, my mama always subscribed to the theory that the settlers were such dumb shits they mistook a simple change of seasons for divine intervention.