The Familiar Dark

by Amy Engel

  It didn’t take Land long, I’ll give him that. Thank God for small mercies, as my mama would say. But he was rough, hand knotted in my hair, pushing down while his hips shoved up, barely giving me room to breathe. Rough enough that my injured mouth started bleeding again, red smeared across his skin by the time I was done.

  In the end, it was worth it. Land was as good as his word, and Jimmy Ray stayed away. Cal kept his job and his life. And Junie was spared watching her mother being beat to hell over and over again. If she remembered Jimmy Ray and what he’d done to me, she never mentioned it. Maybe she’d forgotten, or maybe it was locked inside her mind. One of those hazy early-childhood memories that could be chalked up to a bad dream or an overactive imagination. But I never forgot. Not Jimmy Ray and especially not Land. My wrist still throbbed on occasion, when I slept on it funny or saw Jimmy Ray’s truck in town. But the memory of Land—a swirl of bitterness and shame in the back of my throat—that taste never went away.

  TEN

  I don’t know if it was a product of our chaotic upbringing—never knowing when our next meal might appear, constantly bombarded with strange faces—but Cal and I had both grown into creature-of-habit adults. Neither one of us liked surprises, not even the good ones. We weren’t fans of new places or changes in routine, constantly trying to restore order in our lives. If Cal wasn’t at work or visiting me at the diner, he could reliably be found in a handful of places: his apartment or mine, the bar next to the sub shop having a beer, the laundromat reading the paper and watching his clothes spin around in circles. I’d tried all of those places and seen no trace of his truck. That left our Mama’s trailer, and I wasn’t going there again anytime soon, and Cal’s secret fishing spot.

  He’d been going to the edge of Jackson Creek to fish for as long as I could remember. When we were growing up, his hands smelled like fish guts more often than not. A scent that still made my mouth water and my stomach cramp with excitement because as vile as the smell was, at least it meant I was going to be fed. Cal didn’t need to fish to feed his belly anymore, but I knew the ritual relaxed him; the isolation soothed something inside him, some jagged edge that would never quite be rubbed smooth. I understood it because I had the same rough spot inside myself. Junie had helped smother it, but it was emerging in her absence, a sharp, hard weapon in my gut.

  Jackson Creek was actually a river and it ran for miles, tucked away in the woods in some spots, out in the wide open in others. It ran deep and fast at one end, slowed to almost a trickle, then opened up into a flat, calm pool good for skinny-dipping before it surged into the woods again. Everyone around these parts had a relationship with the creek, but hardly anyone knew of Cal’s spot, or if they did, they lacked the dedication to reach it. You had to hike in, risk ticks and brambles, thorns scratching your arms and catching in your hair. But Cal swore his spot had the best fish around, fat and shimmering in the sun, so close to the surface you could practically pluck them out with your hands.

  And sure enough, his truck was parked in the woods where the trail to his fishing spot began. I sighed, pulling my hair back into a ponytail and yanking down the sleeves of my shirt before I followed him in. By the time I arrived—a twenty-minute trek that felt more like an hour—the sun was high in the sky and sweat was making a slow descent down my back. At least it was still only spring, the summer’s relentless heat only a whisper on the warming wind.

  “Hey,” I said, stepping out onto the flat rock where Cal sat perched over the water, fishing rod extended into the creek. I could see three fish already resting in his ice-filled cooler.

  “Hey,” Cal said without turning around. “I heard you about ten minutes ago. Always know it’s you when it sounds like a herd of elephants is tramping through the woods. You would make a crap spy.”

  “Yeah, well, spy’s never been high on my career list.” I lowered myself down next to him, shoving my sleeves up and swiping a hand across the back of my sweaty neck. “How long you been out here?”

  Cal shrugged. “Not too long.” He looked as terrible as I felt, dark smudges under his eyes and his eyelids puffy from recent tears I knew he’d deny shedding. “I needed a day where no one was looking at me, waiting for me to crack, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  Cal adjusted his hold on the rod, reeled in the line a little. The sunlight made his hair glow gold, his eyelashes making hazy shadows on his cheeks. “Land told me about Hallie and her mom,” he said.

  I sighed, tipped my face up to the sun and let it paint patterns on my closed eyelids. It felt like warm thumbs pressing against my skin, and the sensation brought the sting of tears. I opened my eyes and turned my face away. “What? Are you and Land tag-teaming me now?” I asked. “I’m guessing you’re playing good cop because God knows Land always plays the bad one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled.

  Cal laid a hand on my arm, tugging slightly until I turned and looked at him. “I’m not trying to ambush you or tag-team you or whatever. I was worried when Land told me. You can’t go off half-cocked, Evie, confronting everyone who—”

  I jerked my arm away from him. “I already got the lecture, but thanks.”

  “Jesus, would you listen to me for one goddamn second? I’m not going to lecture you. I’m trying to apologize.”

  That stopped me. “For what?”

  Cal ran a hand through his hair. “For not telling you about Izzy. I promised Junie I wouldn’t.” He raised his hand in my direction when I opened my mouth to speak. “But I would have, eventually. I wanted to figure out exactly what was going on first. And help Junie see that it would be better if you knew. And Izzy’s parents, too.”

  I slumped, all the fight gone out of me. I liked it better when anger was sluicing through my blood. Rage blotted out everything else. “I thought Junie told me everything. Why would she want to keep that a secret from me?”

  Cal paused, and I knew he was doing that thing where he weighed how much to say. Cal was always careful that way, wanting to make sure he got the words just right before he released them. He reached over and tapped the ball of my shoulder with one finger. “You have kind of a big chip right here when it comes to the Logans. Junie wasn’t blind to it, you know. She probably didn’t want to give you any reason to cut off her friendship with Izzy.”

  Welcome heat blazed up my spine, and I twisted away from him. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about the Logans. I don’t even know them!”

  Cal raised his eyebrows at me. “No, but you know the idea of them. Nice little ranch house, two cars, married, maybe some money in the bank.” I stared at him blankly, and he sighed, leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fishing rod almost touching his forehead. “Come on, Evie, you know what I’m saying. They’re the total opposite of how we grew up. Pretty much picture-perfect compared to our disaster.”

  I crossed my arms and tucked my elbows in. A shield made of limbs. “The total opposite of how Junie grew up, too, is that what you’re saying?”

  “See?” Cal said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about with the chip. I wasn’t even thinking about you and Junie, and your mind automatically goes there, comparing, and always assuming you’d come up short.”

  “I did come up short,” I said. “My daughter is dead.”

  “Yeah, well,” Cal said after a pause, “so is theirs.”

  I didn’t want to have this conversation, to be reminded the Logans had suffered a loss equal to mine. I pointed at Cal’s line. “I think you’ve got something.”

  He reeled the fish in with practiced ease, slid the hook from its gaping mouth, and set it next to the others in the cooler. I’d grown up killing things, threading wiggling worms onto barbed hooks, slitting open the stomachs of still gasping fish, pulling steaming guts from barely dead deer, twisting a chicken
’s neck with my bare hands. It had never bothered me before. Animals were food, and food wasn’t always easy to come by. Squeamish meant hungry, and there wasn’t much worse than hungry. But today I had to turn away from the sight of that fish, its mouth still opening and closing as it lay on top of the ice. Had to put my hands under my thighs to resist the urge to throw it back into the water, to give it one more chance to live.

  “I think maybe it was because of the guy,” I said as Cal dropped his line back into the water. “The one Izzy was involved with. Maybe that’s why they were killed.”

  Cal gave a noncommittal grunt. “How’d you know about Izzy’s guy anyway? If Junie never told you?”

  I kept my gaze on the water, watching it flow over rock. Thought about Junie’s diary, tucked now into my top dresser drawer. I wasn’t going to give it up, let strangers pore over Junie’s secret thoughts and feelings. It was one remaining link to my daughter that I didn’t have to share. “I didn’t really. Just heard a few rumors floating around recently and figured if they were true, Hallie would be the one to know.”

  I could feel Cal’s eyes on me, probably trying to decide if I was telling him the truth. “Let me clean you a fish or two,” he said finally. “You’ve lost weight. You can take this home and fry it up for dinner.”

  “I have food.”

  “But you’re not eating it.” He reached over and laid a hand on my back. “Not eating isn’t going to bring her back.”

  Anger sizzled up my spine, hot and fierce enough that I wondered how it didn’t burn his hand right through my skin. “And eating is?”

  “No,” Cal agreed. “But you still have to do it anyway.” He reeled in his line, set his pole down carefully. Growing up, he was the only kid I knew who’d never accidentally hooked someone. He was never careless with other people, only with himself.

  “Do you have any idea who the guy is?” I asked. “The one Izzy was messing around with?”

  Cal kept his eyes on the fish he was scaling, knife glinting in the sun. “You know I couldn’t tell you, even if we did.”

  “Does that mean yes?” I pressed.

  Cal gave me a quick half smile. “It doesn’t mean no.”

  I took a deep breath, one part of my mind screaming at me to shut up, already knowing how dumb and destructive I was being. “When Hallie told me to talk to you, I thought, for a split second that maybe it was you.”

  “Maybe what was me?” Cal asked, forehead furrowed. He was genuinely confused by my comment, I realized, and I felt like one of those men who confess a long-dead affair in an attempt to ease their own guilty conscience. They might feel better afterward, but the wife never does.

  “Never mind,” I mumbled, picking up Cal’s extra knife and reaching for a fish. “It was stupid.”

  “Wait.” Cal’s hand stopped moving, silver scales stuck to his fingers. “You thought I was the guy fooling around with Izzy? A twelve-year-old?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I just . . . You never date anyone, and Hallie said to talk to you . . .” I trailed off, watching shock and anger and a baffled, bruised disappointment skate across Cal’s face. It jolted me, that look. Because while I’d seen it on Cal’s face a handful of times before, I’d never seen it directed at me.

  “I never date anyone because I’m always working!” Cal said. “And who the fuck is there worth dating around here, anyway?” He shook his head, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower, tinged with weariness. “I can’t believe you would think that. Even for a second. What have I ever, ever done that would make you think something like that about me?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, defend myself, but nothing came out. Because the fact was, I had thought it, even if only for a split second. My life with Cal unfurled inside me: nights huddled together in one bed, staying warm with gangly limbs tangled around each other; lessons on how to hook a fish or gut a deer; Cal taking the blame for me, whenever and however he could, always trying to spare me pain; his face lighting up the first time Junie said his name. All the times he’d given me the benefit of the doubt, looked the other way, turned the other cheek. I’d thought my love for Cal transcended my mama’s horrible lessons. Turned out I simply hadn’t been tested. Because Junie’s death had brought it all bubbling to the surface. That fundamental instinct to always watch your own back, never trust anyone, never let your guard down. Our family stuck together against outsiders, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t turn on each other, quick and deadly as vipers. I’d thought Junie’s death had left no room for any other grief, but sadness welled up inside me, pushing against my throat and the backs of my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed, finally. It wasn’t even close to enough, but what else was there to say?

  “Forget it.” Cal flapped a hand at me and then split open the fish’s belly, slippery guts falling into the water.

  I knew we’d never mention it again because that wasn’t Cal’s way. He wasn’t the type to nurse grievances and fling them back at you on some later date. But I knew that this moment would always be there between us like a sharp rock in your shoe, making some steps perfectly normal and others destined to bring a stab of tender pain so that you always have to walk carefully, just in case. The knowledge broke my heart, but I’d had to ask the question. This was bigger than me and Cal. This was about Junie. And I’d hurt myself, and anyone else, a thousand different ways if it meant I could give her some kind of justice.

  ELEVEN

  No one ever tells you about the time you lose. The well-meaning bring food or send flowers. The worried check you for signs you might hurt yourself and squirrel away the pills and guns. The professionals press slick pamphlets into your hands. Lists of support groups and 800 numbers. Signs that prove your grieving is normal. Lack of appetite. Sleeping too much or not at all. Anger. Depression. Hopelessness. But there’s nothing about the way time slips away from you, minutes lost staring at the back of a blond child ahead of you on the sidewalk, seconds ticking past while you stand holding a fresh-from-the-dryer T-shirt that your daughter once wore. Brain blank and empty as a dark room, just her name—Junie Junie Junie—running in an endless loop of longing.

  I don’t know how much time had passed with me staring into the open freezer section at the grocery store. Long enough that my face felt numb from cold, not so long that an employee had asked me if I was all right. I wasn’t hungry, my appetite having disappeared along with my daughter. All my clothes hanging loose, jeans held up by the jutting bones of my hips. But eating felt like something Junie would want me to do, so I stood, staring blankly at the colorful boxes of frozen dinners. Chicken, pasta, Salisbury steak. Waiting for something to click in my head, tell me which one to reach for.

  And then the thing I’d been anticipating, the hand on my shoulder. The tentative voice in my ear. “Hey, are you okay?” But when I turned my head, it was Zach Logan standing there, his brow creased with concern. I let go of the freezer door and took a stumbling step back from him, his hand sliding down my arm and away.

  “I’m fine.” I waved my fingers toward the freezer. “Nothing sounds good.”

  “I know,” Zach said. “Everything tastes like cardboard to me. But it’s important to eat. You have to keep your strength up.”

  I wondered if he and Cal had gotten together, formulated a script between them to keep me eating. Wondered if Jenny was getting the same pressure to stick a fork in her mouth.

  “I hope you came in the back way,” Zach said. “There are reporters out front.”

  When the reporters had first appeared in town, a few days after Izzy’s funeral, I hadn’t connected them to the murders. Cal had driven me past a clot of them, cameras and microphones and faces full of fake concern, and I’d turned to him, confused. “What’s going on? Why do we have reporters here?” The last time I could remember anything newsworthy happening in Barren Springs was when dead fish filled up the river a
nd half the town thought the end days were coming. And even then it was only the local Springfield news who’d shown up.

  Cal had glanced at me. “They’re here for Junie,” he said. “And Izzy.” He spoke slowly, like he wasn’t sure if my question had been a joke.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling like a fool. If it had been someone else’s kid laid open like a hunted deer, I would have known in an instant what the media was doing here.

  I’d managed not to get cornered by the reporters, for the most part. Using the maze of Barren Springs streets to my advantage. The reporters tended to stay close to the businesses clustered along the highway, their news vans crowding the front lots of the laundromat and the now defunct florist. They didn’t seem to realize I parked in the tiny alleys behind the stores, came in through the back doors, and left the same way. Just in case, I’d taken to wearing a baseball hat, hair pulled back in a ponytail, when I ran errands. My half-assed attempt at a disguise.

  Everyone in town helped, too. Told the reporters they’d seen me heading toward the Dollar General one town over, or had heard I was grabbing lunch at the sub shop, when really I was right inside my apartment waiting for their news vans to drive away. Nothing brought the people of Barren Springs together like disdain for a nosy outsider. Cal said he’d overhead one of the reporters complaining that they’d never been to a place with people so reluctant to see their own faces on the front of a newspaper. Because no one was talking, the stories, so far, had been a rehash of the same brutal facts everyone already knew, mixed with increasingly disparaging descriptions of Barren Springs.