In his life, Willow had worn love in all sizes—small, medium and large. A few times, he’d tried to wear all three at once.
But no woman had ever been kinder to him than Dixie Rose Cavanaugh. She felt his woundedness and was mindful of his moods, knowing when to go toward him and when to back away. (She hadn’t become a nurse for nothing, he thought.) Neither wanted to swamp each other—they were happy to have separate places to retreat to—but both thoroughly enjoyed their overnights a few times a week. That worked out anyway because Dixie’s migraines forced her into solitude and darkness, sometimes for days. She was a night owl and liked to read for a few hours before she slept; while she perused her Kindle, she multitasked by petting him with a free hand until he passed out. The first time she did that, after an hour of hypnotic caresses, he guiltily said, “It’s okay, babe. You don’t have to.” Dixie said it calmed her. “I do it to my cat,” she said, with a bewitching smile. “It chills us both out.” He came to believe that it wasn’t a codependent, OCD thing, and only an expression of love. What a concept, as Adelaide liked to say. He didn’t believe that Dixie loved him and told himself that he didn’t really care. But he was starting to get feelings and wasn’t sure what to make of that. It seemed too easy, too simple, too perfect.
Maybe that was true love’s secret.
Once, in the middle of the night, she did something extraordinary. As he lay back down after having a pee, Dixie’s hand reached out from deep sleep to stroke him. How was that even possible? He tried returning the kindness by holding her in his arms when she had “pre-migraine nightmares.” She yelped while dreaming, and he would shush her and rock her until her screen went blank. She never remembered the demons that gave chase. Her dark side appealed to Willow and made him want her more.
He thought about Dixie, and all the women in his life, to distract himself during the half-hour drive to Farmington Hills. He needed to occupy his brain because he was on his way to see the Rummers, an errand that filled him with trepidation. Willow had been astonished when he learned they still lived so close to the ground zero of the Falls; for some reason, he imagined they would have moved to the farthest ends of the Earth. Wasn’t that what he would have done? Maybe not, because the detective knew it was human nature to stay close to the land of the ghosts one still loved. Even the peasants of Chernobyl refused to leave, their desire so strong that the government could do nothing to prevent them from staying.
In a different set of circumstances, the Cold Case Kids would have been the ones making the trip to interview them, but it was incumbent on Willow to make the pilgrimage. He’d been with them on that hellish day and all through the hellish nights that followed, and owed them that much. The cruel, inescapable truth was that upon the disappearance of their kids, Elaine and Ronnie Rummer became sacrificial goats, spit-roasted and carved by the parents of Saggerty Falls and beyond. For a few weeks, it felt like the entire nation embraced the myth of the burnt offering because one couldn’t help having the primitive belief that those children’s abduction and likely slaughter were an inoculation, a protective necklace that could be worn to ward off the same fate befalling one’s own.
The detective wanted to get the lay of the land as well—to reopen his heart and strange gifts to the tragedy. When he made the call from his office, he wasn’t sure how they’d respond. From what he had learned about Elaine at the barbecue, he doubted that she’d be in any kind of shape to meet, and Willow had actually begun to worry that the news of dredging up the case might cause a domino effect ending in her suicide. He was grateful when Ronnie, not Elaine, picked up the phone. They small-talked and Willow tested the waters. He asked about stopping over to say hello.
“Of course, Dubya, come on by! We’d love to see you.”
He sounded weirdly insouciant but Willow didn’t want to read too much into it.
The day had turned windy and haunting.
As he stepped from the car, a premonitory image flooded him (as they often did), but without blue mist, without “the Blue Death.” Simply that of Elaine in bed, cocooned in darkness, a bright patch of light at her feet.
Ronnie Rummer opened the door before he could knock.
They hadn’t seen each other since the event and the week of its aftermath. In the overeager way of old friends long separated, they took each other’s measure, downloading the version they saw before them while tweaking, updating and deleting the one they’d been carrying in their minds’ eye. Ronnie had a little more work to do than Willow in that regard, because the detective’s rugged travels on Alcohol Road had done some damage to the vehicle. Dubya’s awareness of his own haggardness was rekindled in Ronnie’s wide-eyed look, even as his gaze softened with warmth and affection.
The man was genuinely glad to see him, almost deliriously so, and it struck Willow that his former neighbor may not have had a visitor in a long, long while. What really took him aback was his host’s sheer normalcy, if one could call it that—he was so affable, so upbeat and well-groomed. Willow had imagined stepping into the broken house of a broken man, but realized in an instant how silly that was, and overwrought; the wound never heals yet people find ways to move on. What about Elaine, though? Her “way” must have wreaked all sorts of havoc on the man . . . Still, it was a bit topsy-turvy. If they’d been put together in a lineup it was Willow, not Ronnie, who’d have been fingered as the casualty and lost soul.
They shared a pleasant half hour, with Ronnie doing most of the talking. He extolled the quiet life in Farmington Hills and waxed proud over the tool-fitting business that “allows me to spend most of my time at home, which I’ve come to view as the best revenge.” When he finally asked after Adelaide, Willow said, “She’s great. You know, I actually work for Owen now”—a segue designed not only to get the old scandale of his divorce aboveboard and behind them but to serve as entrée to a discussion of the revisiting of the case. Ronnie didn’t bite, which seemed strange. If he already knew that Willow was heading up the task force—hence the house call—he wasn’t yet ready or willing to go there.
They were getting nearer to the heart of the visit when Ronnie said, “How’s Pace doing?” Willow almost whipped out his phone to show him his daughter’s picture—Larkin’s too—but thought better of it. He didn’t want to rub the continuity of life in his face. Ronnie told him that Pace had been sending birthday and holiday cards for years, something she’d never shared with Willow. Through it all, the elephant in the room was Elaine’s absence. He would ask about her in a minute; first things first.
“I don’t know if you read about it in the paper but the City Council voted to fund a Cold Case unit. Since I had somewhat of a career doing that in Manhattan, Owen asked me to come aboard.”
“Well, isn’t that something?” he said, with that Stepfordy smile. The detective got the sense he would have reacted the same if he told him he’d been knighted by the queen.
“And we’ve decided to reopen the case.”
“Uh huh”—again, with a curious, shiny affectlessness.
“It’s kind of interesting how all this came about . . .”
His words trailed off because at the moment he was about to explain how it wasn’t his idea at all but that of his recruits, Willow realized the intense irrelevance of those details.
“Well, we’ve made our peace with it, Dubya,” said Ronnie, this time wincing a smile. “Elaine and I made our peace, best we could. One thing I have to say is . . . I just don’t think I’d be here—well, I know I wouldn’t, and I think I can speak for my wife—we would not be here without the Lord Our Savior. He provided comfort in our darkest hours. And boy, we’ve had a number of them.”
“I don’t doubt.”
“We still have those times—but through His mercy, they’re fewer and farther between.”
“I’ve been circling ‘faith’ myself the last few years,” said Willow, trying to make a bridge.
“Come to church with us! We have a marvelous pastor.”
“I’d like to, Ronnie. I’d like that very much.”
“If the Lord has shown me anything, it’s that all happens for a reason. I know that’s become a cliché but most clichés have tremendous power, have you noticed? We call them clichés because they contain essential truths that sometimes are pretty tough to wrap your head around. The more simple a truth is—well, it’s human nature to either ignore it or make it complicated. So we turn these beautiful truths into greeting cards. But our—the children . . .” His voice broke. “There was a reason and it’s not for us to know. It’s for Him and Him alone. And that’s enough for me. It wasn’t at first—oh, not for a long time. I was too damn arrogant. But it is now. It’s enough. How little we know, Willow. How little.”
“I don’t think we’re meant to.”
“That’s right, sir. Because He’s too big and we’re too small. More will be revealed—there’s another greeting card phrase for you, but it’s a good’n. If I wasn’t in polite company,” he said with a wink and a laugh, “I’d say more will be revealed on Judgment Day—but I wouldn’t want anyone who was listening to think I’m a kook.”
“Nothing kooky about you, my friend. I heard a lot of wisdom there.”
Willow felt comfortable enough to dance around some memories of that afternoon. He lightly touched on the Persons of Interest—Ebenezer Jamison and some known felons who lived in the area at the time. He even brought up Grundy, Roy Eakins’s challenged son. He had to start somewhere and you never knew the quality of light that would refract through the prism of someone else’s memory. The detective was open to both the hard facts and what he called the “ineffables.” It was part and parcel of the black art.
“Ebenezer was short a few cylinders but didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” said Ronnie. “I’d have never sent the kids over there if he did. And Grundy? They jumped the shark with that one. When Grundy Eakins got thrown in the mix, that was the day I knew in my heart that we’d never find who took my babies. That big lunk of a damaged boy? And he was there, at the barbecue, remember? I told Owen, ‘You’re grasping at straws, come on, man!’ None of those felons and perverts ever came to a hill of beans. The one thing I do know, Willow, is that it was someone outside the community. From the outside—the palm prints proved it! Whoever did it is in jail or running a successful business or dead. Only the Lord our God knows.”
Every man in Saggerty Falls had given a palm print to the department for comparison to the one found on Maya’s unicorn birthday card. At the time, it struck Willow as an emotional, largely symbolic act of solidarity, though in later years it bothered him that the women of the Falls hadn’t been asked to do the same.
Willow started to feel like he was flying a little too close to the flame. He made the decision to come back with Daniel and Lydia in tow, and mentally prepared to take his leave.
That was when Ronnie said, “Would you like to see Elaine?”
“Well, yes!”
“She apologizes for not coming out. I’ll walk you back and you can say hello.”
Ronnie brought him to the bedroom door and disappeared.
Willow’s heart was in his throat. He let his eyes adjust and then saw her lying there, just like the image he’d had before Ronnie greeted him at the door. Was she sleeping?
“Come in, come in!” she said, without moving a muscle. Like a ventriloquist’s dummy . . .
He walked to the bed.
“Hi, Ellie.”
“Well, for goodness sake, Willow, take off your damn shoes! Lordie, do you know what kind of gunk lives on the bottom of our shoes? I read about it online and it’s worse than a crocodile’s mouth. Worse than a toilet!” she laughed. “That’s why I love the Japanese culture. They take their shoes off when they come home, leave ’em right at the door. That’s just common sense, don’t you think?”
“I do, absolutely,” he said with a smile.
Same old feisty Elaine.
(The patch of light at her feet was the little television.)
She turned her head to look at him. “Willow Wylde—my, my, my. How good it is to see you.”
“Nice to be seen,” he said, falling back on the AA retort.
“And how kind of you to visit! I haven’t seen my husband so excited since the gal from Mary Kay tried to sell him—well, it must’ve been the whole line. She was here for three hours. If I didn’t know Ronnie better, I’d have thought . . . maybe he was interested.”
He chuckled and said, “I made a play for you a few times. And I wasn’t even working for Mary Kay.”
“No, but you were drinking like a fish. You were a naughty, naughty boy.”
“Still am, I hope.”
“That remains to be seen,” she said flirtily. “Now, do you remember me trying to hook you up with Penny Lancaster?”
“Oh do I.”
She got titillated. “Do you mean to say, naughty man, that something happened between you two without my knowledge?”
“Why don’t we put it this way: something happened, but we were so wasted at the time that it may have been without our knowledge.”
She howled at that. From the side of his eye Willow caught a glimpse of Ronnie lingering in the hall. It probably did him good to hear his wife laugh with abandon.
They bantered some more and then got quiet while Elaine stared at the TV. One of those girl-chat daytime talk shows was on, with too much innuendo and energy. She paid strict attention, tittering along with the studio audience. It gave Willow a chance to sneak a look at her disfigurement. The nose was mutilated; a scar like a yellow lightning bolt bisected her face. Reading glasses rested atop a head that was bald in patches. (Afterward, when Ronnie walked him to the car, he jokily apologized for “my wife’s wacky hairdo.”) Elaine later explained that when Troy and Maya were taken from her, she started pulling it out by the handful, and the habit persisted.
When a commercial came on, she lowered the volume and said, “Have you been well?” The question came from the heart.
“Yes—pretty well,” said Willow. “I guess you could say I’ve had my time in the ‘dark wood’ but I’m beginning to see the light. At least I hope it’s the light.”
“And not the flames of Hell?” she said with a laugh.
How to speak in front of these people, this woman, of dark woods and light, of renewal? Yet it didn’t feel like a faux pas. He could see that Elaine appreciated the intimacy.
“You know,” she said. “I have my reasons for wanting to see you—oh, of course I wanted to see you, Willow, I love you—but that’s not what I mean.” She struggled with her thoughts. “You see, I’ve been thinking of you, I’ve been wanting to tell you something. And when Ronnie said you called and were coming for a visit, I thought, Well, that’s interesting. See how the universe works? Did my husband give you his spiel about everything happening for a reason?”
“Most definitely.”
“It’s become the official mantra around this house.”
“A pretty good one too.”
“When Ronnie said that Willow Wylde was coming to call, well, I just knew. Because it’s been on my mind—I didn’t even tell him about it. I’ve already put my husband through enough.” She grew thoughtful. “How I love that man. Ronnie likes to say that God never gives you more than you can handle, but I think our Creator might have said that before He made me.”
She patted a spot on the bed and told Willow to come sit. When he did, she leaned over and began to whisper, as if aware that her husband might be within earshot.
“What I wanted to say . . . what I’ve been feeling, Willow—and I can’t pinpoint when it started—”
She turned to him full-face and he saw her ruined features in the half light. Her skin looked like the polished stones he used to collect as a boy, embedded with ordered, fossilized rows of spindly creatures.
“I feel them, Willow! I feel my children, I know that they’re here! And it’s—I know that I sound like a character out of . . . like JoBeth Williams in Poltergeist. It’s a wonderful movie and it speaks to me. Lord forgive me, but Poltergeist speaks to Elaine Rummer! When that gust of wind blows through JoBeth and she says that she felt her baby—she could smell her—that her baby’s smell was all over her . . . well, it’s the same, Willow, it’s the very same with me!” Tears filled her eyes. “Look at me, Willow! Look at me.” She took his hands in hers. “Who could live after that? Who could do what I’ve done to myself and live—what I did to myself and to Ronnie? Well, I can tell you, for the first time since it happened . . . I can tell you for the first time, Willow, now, that I want to live. Does that make any sense? Do you believe me, can you believe me? You see, JoBeth saw her baby again and I know I won’t see mine. This I know. But I feel them. And I want to live so that I can keep feeling them. I can smell them, Willow, I can smell my babies!” She laughed with joy as she wept. “Because they are here. I don’t know how and I don’t care to know but they are here. And that’s what I wanted to tell you, that’s what I needed to tell you. I had to tell someone and the Lord chose you.” She turned away and laid her head on the pillow. “I am not a madwoman.”
“I don’t think that, Elaine. Not for one second.”
“Then God bless. God bless you and yours.”
Ronnie quietly appeared. Willow presumed he’d been eavesdropping and prudently decided it was time for his wife to rest. Elaine saw him and smiled. She’d exhausted herself.
“Troy wanted to be a policeman, didn’t he, Ronnie—did you know that, Willow? Oh, he’d have made a fine one. He was always protecting his sister. One day he cut a little sheriff’s badge out of tinfoil and followed Maya everywhere she went, shooting all the imaginary bad guys! Isn’t that the sweetest thing? And did I ever tell you about the time I came home and Maya was in the garden looking terribly sad? You remember, don’t you, Ronnie. I went over and said, ‘What’s the matter, darling?’ and she led me to a spiderweb. Lordie, she was so unhappy! It wasn’t really a web anymore—looking at it, you could hardly see what it once was. Maya was crying her little eyes out. She said that she touched it with her fingers but was too rough and it broke. That’s what she told me, ‘I broke it.’ Then she said the dearest thing: ‘Do you think the spider will mind?’ I said, ‘’Course not! He’ll make another one.’ And Maya just looked at the web and looked at me and said, ‘Well—I guess it’s better than coming home to nothing.’”
She laughed and Willow shivered with emotion.
“Sweetheart,” said Ronnie, “how about a nap? I’ll cook a little something for dinner. If we’re so honored, maybe Dubya will join us.”
“Oh, please do!” said Elaine, turning to their guest.
“That’s awfully kind but I think I’ll have to take a rain check. I really should be getting back.”
Elaine reached out and touched his hand again. “Thank you for coming. And thank you for listening to the ramblings of an old broad.”
“It was so good to see you both,” said the detective.
“G’bye, Willow Wylde. I’d let you kiss my good side,” she said impishly. “If I had one. But as I say to Ronnie, hey, it’s better than coming home to nothing. Though maybe it isn’t.”
He stopped at Early World to mull over the impressions of the afternoon—to integrate—and happened to sit in the same booth he shared with Annie, World’s Greatest Volunteer.
Was he was on his way to becoming that too?
The Underworld’s Greatest Volunteer . . .
He sensed the presence of Nana—sometimes beside him, sometimes sitting straight across, like Annie had—and it felt as if she were trying to say something to soothe him and somehow persuade, like she used to when she snuck into his room after the ague. But he couldn’t make sense of her words.
It was nighttime when he got home.
He parked the car and sat listening to Mahler awhile, lingering on the image of the bedridden Elaine—the tragedy and, yes, the power and delirious beauty of that orphaned woman’s confessions.
Grundy Eakins was rattling around in his head.
As he walked to his apartment, he detoured to Dixie’s. He was about to knock, then thought, I should probably take a shower and make myself pretty. That’s what Dixie was always saying, “Gimme a minute so I can make myself pretty.” When he turned to leave, she ran out.
“Hi, babe!”
“Hello there, Darlin’ Dixie.”
“Sorry I didn’t come over after work . . .”
“No worries.”
“I could see you through the drapes but you were on the couch, all lost in detective-like thought. I didn’t want to disturb.”
“Saw me when?”
“An hour ago?”
“Go back in the house,” he said, drawing his gun.
She did as she was told.
As he got closer, he saw that his front door was ajar.
He slowly pushed it open.
From the sofa, wrapped in darkness much like Elaine was, Annie said, “I’m running out of time—we both are. Soon all will be lost.”