Liz and I walked back home. Around Blackbridge, the tall hills were blanketed in winter white, and the antenna farms stood placidly at the summits. Christmas tree lights blinked in our front windows, and the land was smooth and dazzling. But as we walked to the house, Liz let go of my hand and placed her hands in her pockets, and, for some reason, the bright sunlight and white land seemed darker than ever.
***
"When do classes at Coxton start again?" I asked.
Liz rolled over in bed to face me. "The middle of January," she said.
"You think you'll get one of those research positions?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. I'll have a better idea in a few weeks."
"Do you have your books?"
"Not yet, Darling."
"If you need money just take it from the checking account, you know that."
"I'll be fine," she said.
We lay facing one another, her face glowing in a full moon's light, shadows gently curving over her cheeks. "They say when Chief Lorenzo died, he was just sitting at his desk," I said. "He just slumped over and that was that. Just sudden. Didn't even say he was feeling poorly. Just gave up the ghost."
"I haven't heard anyone use that term in a long time," she said.
"I was thinking, when we were walking back home today, what I'd do if you died. And, really, I don't know what I'd do. I thought about . . . thought about how before you I had nothing to look forward to every day. I was like a wind-up machine going through motions. When this house was empty—"
"It was never empty, Milt," she said. "You were in it."
"It's not—"
"You were in it. You're not nothing."
"I had nothing."
"You had more than you think. We all do. If I died, you'd still have more than you think." She reached up and brushed hair away from my forehead. "You'd move on, you'd live, you'd fall in love again."
"Stop it."
"You would, Milton. All the things you've been through and you moved on. You always will." She turned away, grabbed my arm and wrapped it around her waist like a blanket. I pulled her close, listened to her breath, felt her heartbeat through her skin, felt her hair on my nose, my mouth, my face. "You always will," she whispered.
A cloud moved over the moon, and the room darkened as I fell asleep.
Chapter Thirteen
"Tell me," I said to Claire, "will Bentley ever come out of there?" I pointed at his office, the glass door shut, the window blinds closed. We'd completed the first issue in record time, and it was rough, but it was taking shape. I'd marveled at the strangeness of the newspaper, how it was more commentary and fiction and essay than actual news, and I still worried how long Bentley could pay my salary if no one bought into his odd vision. I had a guarantee of two years, but bankruptcy was known to break guarantees.
"He will if he wants," Claire said, straightening a stack of flash fiction submissions on her desk. Claire had been working especially hard getting submissions for her section from college friends, professors, and literary journal readers, and trying to find enough pieces for every issue was difficult, even though the tide of submissions gathered pace as desperate English and creative writing majors sought publication anywhere. She'd managed to get university and college libraries to buy subscriptions to the paper and built buzz in the literary marketplace. Subscriptions started trickling in the first few weeks and then built to a steady stream.
"He's changed quite a bit from high school," I said.
"Has he really?" she asked. "Maybe he was always that way. You ought to know, Milt. People see a façade, project what they want onto it. From the first day I met him, he was always the same."
"He just seemed more social back then."
"Maybe he just felt pushed into making appearances."
"Do you think this'll work?" I asked. "This paper?"
"It might, it might not. Sometimes the point is to make a mark, even if you fall flat on your face. Think about what we're doing, Milt. It's a complete throwback to a different era. It's a last stand."
"People die in last stands, Claire."
"But they're also remembered when the smoke clears. We're getting noticed. One issue out the door, and people are noticing." Claire reached over, grabbed my arm and shook it. "Come on, Milt, stop being scared all the time and enjoy the ride. You've got a book out, you're being allowed to write anything you want, and you've got a platform all your own."
"Why'd he offer me this job in the first place?"
"You're local, you're a good writer, and you're a known commodity."
"He really doesn't know me, Claire. He spoke to me a few times in school. That's it."
"Maybe he knows you better than you think he does." She leaned back in her antique wooden office chair, filling the office with squeaks. "And maybe you're not as different from him as you think you are."
"Care to elaborate?"
She shook her head. "It's not my place to, Milt. All I can say is this: Remember when you were younger? Remember when people just looked at you and made a spot judgment without ever bothering to say 'Hello'? Don't make that same mistake with Bentley." Claire patted my arm, stood up, and pulled her pack of cigarettes from her front pocket. "I need a visit with Doctor Nic," she said, walking to the stairway, cellophane crinkling in her hand.
***
I stood in the entryway to the Blackbridge Police Station, waiting just inside the glass doors, looking at outdated Most Wanted posters hanging over the reception desk. The room smelled of old paint and floor wax, the lighting dim and jaundiced. The receptionist sat in the break room in the back eating lunch. She'd been the receptionist at the station for at least thirty years, and the age and inactivity had sagged her body and paled her skin. She popped open a soda can and began to dig into a bag of potato chips just purchased from the aging vending machine. She watched me lazily before turning to the romance novel in her hand while I waited.
The front doors opened, and Maria stepped in, pulling thick gloves off her hands.
"Should I call you Chief yet?" I asked.
"Better wait until the town council finalizes it next week," she said, unzipping her heavy black coat and unwrapping the gray scarf from around her neck. She walked past me and led me to what was once her father's office. "Did Jean have you wait out here?"
"Guess she didn't want me to rob the armory," I said.
"If only we had one." We walked into the office, which had been stripped clean of her father's belongings except a picture of the Lorenzo family on the desk, and the thickly painted gray walls were bare except for a calendar on its last month and a clock stuck on the last hour. "Have a seat," she said. I sat across from her, pulled out my digital recorder and weathered notepad.
"Big news," I said softly. "We haven't had a new chief in a while." Maria placed her coat and scarf on a coat rack behind the desk and sat down. Her black hair was draped over her shoulders, falling like dark ribbons. I pointed at it. "You going to let your hair grow again?"
"When I'm chief, I'll change the regulation that says I can't. No one'll care." She smoothed her hands over the desk. "My dad sat at this desk for over thirty years," she said. She examined the surface as if looking through a window.
"And how do you feel about that?"
"I feel like he's still here," she said.
"You'll be the youngest chief we've ever had."
"Yes."
"The first woman."
"Yes."
"Why d'you think no one else threw their name in the hat?" I asked.
"Crime here's pretty much nonexistent," she said. "Beat cops just drive around a bit, put in their hours, go home. But the chief puts in longer hours, does the paperwork, the budgeting."
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Because my father did," Maria said. "And, I guess—"
Maria looked away, fell silent, tapped the desk with one of her fingernails. I let her th
ink.
"I wanted to get bumped up to major crimes for the state police," she said. "I was doing the whole highway patrol thing, handing out citations, arresting drunk drivers, and things just got uglier every month. I know there's ugliness out there, I'm not naïve. But the more I ran into it, the more I thought of being back home. I know Blackbridge was a different place for you, but for me it was the one place where I felt safe, where I felt part of something. Outside Blackbridge, people see us all as freaks, cut off from the rest of the county, our ghost stories, the whole deal."
"True," I said.
"At first it bothered me, but then it didn't. I took pride in it. Took pride in being from someplace so different, in being from a place where rapes and murders aren't an everyday occurrence."
"That you know of."
"I know, I know," she said. "I know bad things happen here, but it's not woven into our town identity like some places. I know your life was rough here, but for me, it was everything. Go ahead and laugh, but I missed the rivers and the hills and the vapors and the wisps. I missed driving down the quiet streets. I missed having neighbors wave to me, the weird shrines and voices that pop up out of nowhere, all of it." Maria took a deep breath. "I'd been thinking about leaving the state police for a few months, Milton, maybe going to law school—"
"But then this happened," I said.
"Then this happened. I don't want this to sound selfish or evil, Milton, but it's almost like Dad gave me a final gift. Like he knew the job would be mine if I ever wanted it. That ever happen to you?"
"Did what ever happen to me?'" I asked.
"Where things just kind of happen unexpectedly, and you find yourself where you want to be?"
"Or with someone you want to be with," I said.
"Exactly."
"Sure," I said. "I do."
***
When I got home, a hole had been dug into the front yard, the snow around it transformed into brown slush. Small footprints led to the front door where Liz had left her muddy boots and a shovel and a pick axe.
She was sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea, looking out the window at the cemetery below.
I leaned down, kissed her head. "We could have waited for the weekend to start planting the tree," I said. "When I had the day off."
She shrugged, sipping absentmindedly and staring out the window. "Gives me something to do over the break."
I sat next to her and took off my coat. "I didn't think you'd wear that sweater," I said. She looked down at her garish red and green sweater. On the front was an off-kilter image of a green Christmas tree surrounded by overly bright gift boxes. We bought gag holiday sweaters for each other for Christmas, and I wasn't sure if I'd ever get around to wearing the blue and white sweater with the battery-powered Bethlehem star affixed to the front that she'd given me.
"It's warm enough," she said. "I wanted to get the tree planted before the new year, before everything changes."
I placed my gloves on the table. "Every new year feels the same to me," I said. "Nothing ever changes."
"Walk with me somewhere," she said, "placing the cup on the table."
"Where?"
"Anywhere. I just want to walk with you."
I thought about the long day and how I just wanted to sit in a chair for the evening, but I nodded. I slipped on my coat and gloves again, Liz slipped on hers, and we walked out the front door, leaving the kitchen and front porch lights ablaze.
***
We walked gloved hand in gloved hand to the west. The sidewalks were clear, the sun already below the hills, and dusk painted in the west with thin bands of pale orange and bright purple. Venus glared as twilight darkened, and house windows glowed with television blue and light bulb yellow while residents began locking their doors against the night. Sparse streetlights bathed us in dim orange, and we walked through their light pools quietly, listening to the lights hum as we passed.
"Did you have a good day?" Liz asked.
"It was a day like every other," I said. "The same."
"Is Maria the new chief yet?"
"The council will approve it next week," I said. "It's weird."
"What is?"
"It's been less than six years and everything's changed. Maria's a police chief, her brother's trying to repent to everyone in sight, and Bentley's back and off in his own little world. Usually wealthy eccentrics go off the deep end a little past middle age."
"And what about you?" she asked.
"Still living in the same house, driving the same car, living in the same town."
"You really think you're the same person? It sounds like they're all the same and that you're the one who's changed."
"I don't feel different."
"Who does, Darling? Sometimes people and things change but we never see it coming, or we do and don't recognize it. I don't think you're the same person you were in high school. You're still dealing with it, but you're not the same. People around here sense that. I know Maria did when I spoke to her."
"You two must have had quite a conversation," I said.
"She was surprised at how angry you still were, but she was also surprised how you said what you were feeling, how you didn't shrink away." We kept walking under the darkening sky, under the humming streetlights. "She really cares about you," Liz said.
"Maybe she feels she's got to atone for the family's sins."
"I don't think so."
"She doesn't even know me."
"After your book," Liz said, "I think she does. I think a lot of people do."
"If I ever get a parking ticket, maybe she'll care enough to rip it up."
"Maybe," Liz said. "Maybe." I put my arm around her and drew her close. We'd walked all the way to the town's northern edge, so we turned on Rook Street and stopped where Polaris Avenue continued north into the darkness of The Swamps. The treeline was already alive with glowing blue orbs that bounced like balloons tethered by strings.
"When I was a kid I thought about running away with those things," I said. "Stupid, isn't it? Wanting to run away with balls of light. But then I thought, 'Wait, they don't go anywhere, they just stay here, like they're looking for something they'll never find, never at peace, just spinning in place'. You wonder if they'll ever find whatever it is they're looking for, do whatever it is they want to do, then move on. Not much of an existence." I let out a cloud of breath and looked down at Liz, who stared up at me, her eyes wide. A smile crossed her face, and she pulled off a glove and ran her warm hand over my cold cheek.
"You know you're a good man," she whispered. "Wherever you are, I want you to know that." She stood on her toes, pulled me down, and kissed me lightly on the lips. "Thank you for walking with me."
I blinked at her, saying nothing, feeling my heart race as it did when I first met her.
"I wanted to walk under the stars with you," she said.
"I'm glad I could accommodate you." We walked again down Rook Street, turning on Taurus Street, past businesses closing up for the night. "What's your New Year's resolution?" I asked.
"I'm still working on it," she said, looking up the eastern hills at The Heights, at the old asylum, at the antenna farm that burned red pulsing stars into the night.
That weekend, Liz and I planted the blue spruce in the front yard, silver tinsel strands still hanging from some of the needles. We cleaned off the tinsel, filled the hole with mulch and soil, covered the base in plastic, and left it to stand in the approaching January cold.
As the clock struck twelve on New Year's Eve, the sounds of faraway fireworks thundered through the river gaps, and the cemetery glowed with the light of a procession of vapors that floated through the entrance gate single file, past our house, and through yards and empty lots to Cardinal Street, where they paced the pavement like sentinels before fading at dawn.
Liz never told me her resolution. The new year passed with my arms around her in bed, her breaths marked with quiet sighs
. As I drifted to sleep, she whispered, "I'll always love you, Milt."
And I slept, dreaming of shadows on empty roads and soft whispering above my head.
***
"We'd make good friends, don't you think?" Liz asked.
I kept my eyes on the road, watching for black ice patches and for hungry deer that would bound across Lowland Road, but the pavement seemed dry and clear of wildlife, the early New Year's Day sky a bright robin-egg blue and ice cold. The week's weather was supposed to be clear all the way through the following Sunday.
"Sure," I said. "We were good friends before we dated, right?"
"We were," she said. "I think I was your only friend."
"Unless you count Mr. Bradbury."
"But you've got friends now. You've got Maria. Claire. Bentley."
"No, I don't think it's like that with them."
"Don't sell them short."
"I think I'm more Bentley's employee," I said. "I don't think he has friends anymore. Don't know if he ever had any. So strange," I said, "how I'd see people around him all the time in high school. Probably not one of them was a friend."
"When I'm gone"—she said, pausing before continuing—"when the semester starts, I hope you won't sit around the house waiting for me all the time. Do things with your friends, go places."
"In Blackbridge?" I asked. "Not a lot to do there when the sun goes down."
"You can sit with people anywhere. You can talk anywhere, have a drink anywhere. Life doesn't start and stop at bars or nightclubs. It starts and stops where you want it to." She blew fog against the passenger's side window, traced curves into it with her fingers, then wiped it clean. "I don't want you to be alone anymore," she said.
"I'm not alone."
"Life's got a lot of pain in it," she said. "You know better than I do. I don't want you facing that pain by yourself anymore. I don't want you falling into your old self when life throws you another curveball."
"I'll try not to, "I said, steering the car through the turns and twists.
"Make sure you don't."