The Familiar Dark(9)

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.