Chapter 7: Pt. 2, Ch. 1: A Darkness on the Edge of Town

Part 2: New Jersey, Summer, 1990

Chapter 1: A Darkness on the Edge of Town 

Holy Heart of Jesus, Sweet Sanctuary of rest, 

Bring peace to my soul and settle my spirit…

Daniele made a silent prayer as she sat in the back of a bus leaving Newark Penn Station, her son asleep with his head on her shoulder. It was years since he had done that. He would have thought himself too old for it, nearly eleven now, but she supposed it had been hard enough for him to keep his eyes open until the bus came after being awoken so abruptly in the middle of the night. It had to be that way. If she had waited until morning to leave, she would have changed her mind. 

It had been an accident after all. Don had never raised a hand to her son before. But there had been so much blood. And he was still so small. 

“Alex, wake up.” She shook him gently by the shoulder, realizing she should never have let him fall asleep. He could have a concussion. “We’re almost there,” she lied. 

He made no sound, but lifted his head and opened his eyes, the same blue green as her own. She had been told more times than she could count that never had there been a boy who looked more like his mother. They had the same olive skin, the same light brown curls, the same square jaw. Now he narrowed his eyes in precisely the same way she did when she suspected she was being lied to. “Almost where?” He sat up and looked out the window. “You never said where we were going.”

She had not known herself until she had poured over the maps at the station. When they left Don’s house in Bloomfield, she thought if they could just get to Newark, they could get on a bus or a train anywhere. New York, down south, out west, anywhere at all, so long as it was far away. Instead she chose somewhere familiar. 

“St. Thomas’s Church,” she replied. “In Barrett Park.”

“I know where it is.” Alex turned in his seat and pressed his forehead up against the window. “You think they’ll let us come back?”

“Of course they will,” she assured him, though she had no way of knowing for sure. The nuns had helped her the last time they found her asleep in the pews with nowhere else to go. She had given birth to Alex with a midwife right there in the church. For four years, Father Giovanni and the nuns had kept them fed, helped her with her English, and watched over Alex while she returned their help in any way she could. Father Giovanni was the one who had helped her enroll Alex in school when he was old enough. He was the one who had secured her first job as a waitress in a diner in Newark. He had helped them get into a shelter, and eventually into an apartment. “If Father Giovanni is still there…” She wished she had not lost touch with him after meeting Don. “We just need a place to sleep tonight, and then we can go somewhere more permanent in the morning.”

Alex turned away from the window and sat back in his seat, his eyes fluttering closed. Daniele brushed his hair out of his eyes and saw that they had swelled even more since dinner. His nose was bruised, but at least Don had set it before he stormed out, his profuse apologies to her son punctuated with screams at her to shut up and stop crying. 

“He didn’t mean to,” said Alex, opening his eyes again as his hand went to his nose. “He was mad at you, not me. He’s mad at you all the time now.”

“I know.” He had not always been that way, though. She had been working in the diner for almost a year when Don introduced himself after telling off another customer for harassing her. He had walked her home that night, and every night after for the next six months. When she told him how much she despised waitressing, he brought her to work in his club as his bookkeeper. Not long after, she moved in with him in his house in Bloomfield and he treated Alex like his own son. Looking back, it was hard to pinpoint exactly when the bad days started. 

“Do you think he’ll try and find us in Barrett Park?” asked Alex. 

“I never told him about Barrett Park,” she replied, twisting one of her earrings as she looked out the window. She had never told anyone about her home. It would only lead to questions about why she never returned. 

She had tried returning once. The day Alex took his first steps, she finally found the courage to take him to her old house, to explain away why she had been gone so long, how she had ended up with a child, why she never contacted her parents, her brother, or any of her friends. But her parents were long gone. They must have given up looking for her. 

Don was looking for her now, and with all the resources at his disposal, legal or otherwise, he would have far better luck than her parents. She had been working in his club for the past six years handling his accounts, and he left more and more of his business to her with each passing year, never having had a head for numbers himself. She knew where all his money had really come from, and she knew exactly the type of men who he could send to find her. To make matters worse, his brother-in-law was a cop. 

“Go ahead and try,” was his reply every time she told him she would leave him. “See what happens.” 

The threat had always stopped her before. But this time Alex had been hurt. 

Outside the bus window, concrete overpasses gave way to lush forests and rows of houses with perfect green lawns. Daniele recognized familiar stores tucked between all the new ones that had popped up since she left. 

“This is us,” she said to Alex as they came to a stop in front of a bakery. “The church is only a few blocks from here.”

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He followed her off the bus. “Are you sure they’ll let us stay?” he asked as they turned off Wessex Avenue. She wondered if he was beginning to recognize the streets and houses, or if he had been too young to remember anything when they left. 

“They did before.” The last time she had sought refuge at St. Thomas’s, she was fifteen years old, eight months pregnant, and terrified. It was sunset when she arrived, and it was setting fast, late in September as it was, the nights set to overtake the days. It seemed fit she and her son would return on the shortest night of the year, the same night she had gone missing all those years ago. 

Daniele hung back from the tall, stained glass doors. The bell tower rose high into the night sky, blocking the moon and most of the stars from view. A cross adorned the top of the steeple, reminding her to cross herself as she took a deep breath and pulled one of the big, brass handles. 

It was locked. 

It had never been locked before. She knocked on the window. When no answer came, she knocked again, louder. No one was there. But no one had been there eleven years ago either, and the doors were never locked. She had let herself in and slept in the pews. 

“It’s after midnight,” said Alex. “Is anyone here?”

She shook her head, but knocked again. The nuns were there, but the convent could only be reached through the church, and they would never hear her knocking from where they slept. 

“It’s not cold out,” said Alex. “We could find somewhere to spend the night, couldn’t we? Like a playground, or a dugout, or something.”

They were going to have to. She had no idea when the next bus would come, and sleeping on the front steps of the church was out of the question. If they went to the police, would they take her son from her? Would Don’s brother-in-law find out? There was no way of knowing until it was too late. She should have felt panicked, but the ease with which Alex accepted the turn of events kept her heart calm, her mind clear. 

“I wonder…” She led Alex away from the church and down the street towards Adams Terrace. It was too close, far too close to the forest for her comfort, but being enclosed by trees could not hurt if they did not want to be found, and no one who had not grown up in Barrett Park would ever think to look there. Alex would never wander into the forest if she cautioned him against it. But if anything or anyone were to wander out…

No, she was safe now. It had been eleven years. And they would only stay for one night.

“Whose house is this?” asked Alex when they reached the end of Adams Terrace. A small house could be seen just through the trees. It was even smaller than she remembered. One of the windows was broken, the blue paint was chipped and faded by the sun, the roof was in desperate need of repair, and the garden was so overgrown with weeds it was hard to tell it had once been a garden at all. 

“There used to be a vegetable garden here when I was young.” A victory garden. Once it had been full of tomatoes, squash, carrots, and corn. She and the other children would help with the harvest and then inside the little house they would can or freeze enough food to last them and their families through the winter. She wondered how long it had been out of use as she searched through the weeds around the front porch.

“What’s that for?” asked Alex as she picked up a rock. “Are you gonna’ break another window?”

“No, there’s a key. See?” She showed him where the rock opened. As it turned out, the door had not been locked at all, but still she kept the key in her pocket and locked the door behind them. 

The only room in the house was a kitchen. It had still been in use for a while after the war, but now it was as neglected as the rest of the property. There was water damage on the walls and ceiling, and the floorboards were rotted in places. There was no furniture at all, let alone beds to sleep in, not that she would go anywhere near a mattress that had been sitting in this place all these years. 

“It’ll do for the night. Here, take my coat.” She laid out her coat on the part of the floor that looked the least likely to crumble beneath them. Alex sat down next to her, leaned back up against the wall, and made no protest when she put her arm around his shoulders. He was asleep almost immediately. She wished he had stayed awake a little longer.

The moment her son’s breathing took on the steady rhythm of sleep, all of the anxieties that lurked deep inside her came floating back to the surface. What on earth had made her think she could come back to the church in the middle of the night and pick up where she had left off all those years ago? 

She had a plan when she went to wake Alex earlier that night. They were going to ride south. They were going to get a motel. She was going to get her bearings in the morning, and by nightfall they would be out-of-state, out of the reach of Don or anyone in his family. Now they were sleeping less than an hour away from him, planning to visit a church in the morning where any one of his cousins or friends could be a member. Why had she not stuck to her plan?

It was too late to change anything now. They had only lost one night. Come morning, she would get them back on the right path. Even with her newfound resolve, she was awake until dawn. 

 

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