Places in the Dark Read Online Free

mother’s route through a town bustling with activity, people coming in and out of shops, then along a beach strewn with families, children darting in all directions.
    The crowd had thinned by the time we reached the jetty. We stopped at its edge, peered out over its huge gray stones.
    “It looks like the backbone of a dragon,” Billy said. I studied the jetty, decided he was right. “Yes, it does.”
    He climbed onto it, then said, “What do you think it was like between our parents? In the beginning, I mean. Before they got married.”
    “I have no idea.”
    “They couldn’t have known each other very well.”
    “Probably not.”
    “Maybe that’s the way it should be, Cal, when you fall in love.”
    “It’s the way it has to be. Or you won’t.”
    He offered me a hand, pulled me up beside him. “You’re just like Dad.”
    “In what way?”
    “The way you think everything through.”
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “Nothing, except that in the end, you pick everything apart. Bit by bit. Until there’s nothing left.”
    “And you’re like Mother.” I peered down the length of the jetty, where white water surged and retired around the stones. “You trust everything.” I glanced up at the sky. All afternoon a storm had been bearing down from the north. Now it hovered overhead, its clouds thick and billowing, like a poisonous gray smoke.
    “We’d better be getting back,” I said. “The rain could hit any second.”
    Billy paid me no mind, turned, and strode out toward the end of the jetty, where he stood, facing the bay, his coat flung over his shoulders, hanging from them like a cape.
    I lifted my collar against the wind and followed after him.
    He turned suddenly as I drew in upon him. The wind tossed his hair.
    “She’s out there somewhere,” he said, nodding inland.
    I held my eyes upon the bay, where a rusty trawler slogged wearily toward the open sea, its wake flowing behind her, white and ragged, like an old woman’s hair.
    “Who is?”
    “The one,” Billy answered.
    I looked at him quizzically.
    “Don’t you remember what you said?” he asked. “That night, after Jenny Grover? You said that she was ‘out there somewhere.’ My one true love.”
    “I was joking,” I told him.
    “Of course you were,” Billy said. “But what if you were right, Cal? What if she really is out there?”
    I could see that my brother had actually come to believe that there might be such a person, a one love for whom he was destined.
    “Well?” he asked.
    I knew that during the years I’d been away at college he had been pursued by a host of village girls, earthy, willing, destined to work the canneries or marry those who did. According to my father, he’d shown no interest in returning the attentions of such girls no matter how blatantly they’d expressed them. Now I knew why. Romance had become his sword and shield, made of him a true romantic. Simply put, he could not lustfor one he did not love, and had come to believe, with all his heart, that he would love but once.
    “If she’s out there, I hope you find her,” I said, though with no expectation that he might.
    “What about you?”
    “Me?”
    “Do you ever think that there’s this girl out there who’s…”
    “No,” I said firmly. Which was true enough. Such vaporous notions had never had any power over me. As for the last few years, I’d concentrated exclusively on my studies at Columbia Law, torts and the rules of civil litigation, broken contracts, and unsupported claims.
    “Mother believes that for every person there is…”
    “I’m sure she does,” I said, abruptly weary of such talk. “She’s probably as sure of that as she is about everything else.”
    Billy grew quite serious. “The thing is, I believe it too, Cal.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes.”
    I could see no harm in going along with my brother’s romantic suppositions. “Well, perhaps you’re both right.”
    But I didn’t in the least believe that either