Fragile

12

Sarah had stood among them but always, somehow, apart. She didn’t belong there-in The Hollows, in that school, and she knew it. Everyone knew it. And yet no one could accuse her of being a snob or stuck-up in any way. It was her gift that kept her separate; maybe she didn’t even want it that way. But how could someone who knew the passion and discipline of an artist before she was fourteen stand anywhere but apart from the rest of them, who barely knew who they wanted to be or what they might be good at?

Music had claimed Sarah when she was too young to know anything else. Maggie saw that clearly, looking back. When Sarah played the violin, she disappeared, became a portal through which her prodigious talent passed. Maggie remembered the way Sarah’s face would contort, her eyelids flutter, her head move willowy and slow; she was utterly unself-conscious with a violin beneath her chin and a bow in her hand. She was lost and found. It was a special thing, an uncommon thing. And everybody, even those who would normally taunt and tease, torture a thing they didn’t understand, kept a reverent distance.

Her parents had moved from the Pacific Northwest so that Sarah could have proximity to New York City but chose the suburbs so that they could keep her safe from all the threats and temptations of an urban environment. Sarah was absent every Friday, when she commuted to Juilliard for the day with her mother for the precollege program. Sometimes they spent the weekend, returning Sunday afternoon. It was impossibly glamorous, yet she sat in the same cafeteria, failed to climb the rope in gym class, got detention for passing notes to Melody during study hall. Among them, but apart.

Maggie hadn’t thought about Sarah for years, not in that way. She didn’t remember often the way Sarah had lived, who she had been. Sarah was forever defined by the way she died. She was every parent’s nightmare, a warning, a cautionary tale. She was proof that everything parents feared was possible, even in this quiet, not quite suburban, not quite rural town. The worst happened, even here.

Maggie was thinking this as she watched Ricky slumped on the long suede couch of their great room. The large stone fireplace on the far wall was flanked by shelves filled with books and photographs, Jones’s old sports trophies, Ricky’s various art class creations-an ashtray, the sculpture of a frog. The high, beamed ceiling gave it a spacious feel, but it was a warm room, a real room, where they ate pizza and watched movies, spilled soda on the carpet-nothing like the showplace where Denise and Britney lived. It was designed for comfort with the sectional and plush carpet, a cozy love seat, a new flat-screen hanging on the wall.

“If you know something, Son,” Chuck was saying as Maggie walked into the room. Both man and boy raised their eyes to look at her, but neither acknowledged her. Chuck kept talking. “Now’s the time to let us know before this gets out of hand. If she’s taken off and you know where, you’re not helping her by keeping it to yourself.”

She sat beside her son. “Do you know something, Ricky?”

He offered a shake of his head, kept his eyes blank and staring at the ground. He was a charismatic kid when he wanted to be. When he didn’t, he was a locked box with the key inside. Just like his father.

“I told you,” he said, an annoyed edge creeping into his voice. “Charlene stood me up tonight. She didn’t answer any of my calls. If I knew where she was, I’d tell you. Especially with her mom so upset.”

“Let’s go through it again. You were supposed to meet her where?” asked Chuck.

“At Pop’s Pizza.”

“How was she going to get there?”

“Her mom was going to drop her off, I guess. I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t ask? Didn’t offer to pick her up?”

“Char’s not allowed in the car with me. Her mom doesn’t want her to ride in cars with boys.”

Chuck issued a conspiratorial chuckle, a kind of I remember how it was smile, and a roll of the eyes. She saw Ricky smile in return.

Then, “So you never drove anywhere together?”

“No, we did,” Ricky admitted. “All the time. But her mother doesn’t know that. I don’t pick her up at the house.”

Chuck nodded slowly. He was a heavyset guy, with a thinning head of dark brown hair, a round, sweet face. He always had a slightly disheveled look about him, even more so now, as he’d clearly been roused from sleep, the shadow of stubble on his jaw, the back of his head matted. He had a demeanor that seemed to encourage people not to take him too seriously. But Maggie knew it was a mistake not to.

“What else doesn’t her mother know?” Chuck asked.

“That’s enough, Chuck,” Maggie said. “Are you interrogating him? Do we need a lawyer?”

“Come on, Maggie. There’s a girl gone missing.”

“And Rick says he doesn’t know anything.” She didn’t like the pitch of defensiveness she heard in her own voice.

“Well,” Chuck said. He glanced over at her son, who seemed to be sinking deeper into the couch. “I think he does.”

In the silence that fell between them, Maggie heard the ticking of that old grandfather clock. She and Chuck locked eyes. He hadn’t grown up in The Hollows. He was a beat cop from New York City who’d moved to town after his second son was born. His wife didn’t want to wait up nights for him, worried sick, wondering when two of his buddies would come to the door with the bad news. He drove patrol in The Hollows for two years, was promoted to detective last year after scoring high on his exam.

“She broke up with me, okay?” Ricky said. His voice was faint in that way it always was right before he was about to cry. “She stood me up, and then I got a message on Facebook.”

Maggie turned to look at her son. The blank outer shell had dissolved; he looked the way he had when his best friend in kindergarten had moved away, or when Patches, their dog, had been hit by a car and died in his arms. The profound, unapologetic sadness of youth pushed down the corners of his mouth, sloped his shoulders; it crushed Maggie to see it on his face. It also ignited a flash of anger at Charlene-a silly, selfish girl who had caused all this drama, all this pain, because she had a fight with her mother.

“What did her message say?” asked Chuck gently. “Let’s take a look at it.”

They followed Ricky upstairs to his computer. Jones hadn’t wanted Ricky to have a computer in his room. Jones had wanted it left in a common area so that they could monitor Ricky’s online activity, keep him safe from the Internet predators, prevent him from downloading porn. But when he’d turned sixteen, they’d decided to give him his privacy, considered him trustworthy and smart enough to be granted that small privilege.

In the mess of his room, rock posters covered every inch of wall space. A shelf held a slew of soccer trophies he’d won in middle school before he fell in love with the drums. A hamper overflowed with dirty clothes. A cup sat filled with some congealed liquid. The room held the scent of sweat and old food. Onions, Maggie thought. It smells like onions in here.

Ricky sat in front of his computer and showed them the screen; her message was already open, as if he’d been reading it over and over. Maggie looked over his shoulder, just as she had done with Britney earlier. Chuck stood behind her.

I’m sorry I didn’t meet you. Something happened at home. I can’t go back there tonight. Maybe never. It’s better if we say good-bye anyway, Rick. I’ve got to go my own way. You’ve got to go yours. Go to college and be a good boy. Maybe our paths will cross again someday. I do love you. I’m sorry.

Love,

Char

“Where would she go?” asked Chuck, backing up to let Ricky pass as the boy stood up from the chair.

Ricky sank onto the bed and put his head in his hands. “I don’t know. She always said she was going to the city. She said she had friends who could get her into the music business. But I don’t know who.”

“You never went to the city with her?” said Chuck. “You never met any of these friends?”

Ricky looked at his mother. “We’ve been to the city to see bands and stuff. But I never met anyone she supposedly knew. Honestly, I thought she was making it up. She makes stuff up, you know, to make herself feel better.”

“She lies, you mean?” said Chuck.

“Yeah, but just, like, stories. You know, dreams. She hates it here, hates her stepfather. I always thought of them as kind of escape fantasies.”

“Britney said Charlene was afraid of Graham,” Maggie said. She sat beside her son and draped an arm around his shoulders. She was surprised when he moved in closer to her, didn’t squirm away from her embrace. Chuck stood, dominating the doorway now. He was a very big man, with a protruding belly and a barrel for a chest. Intimidating now that he was frowning.

“Was she afraid?” Chuck asked.

“She wasn’t afraid, exactly. I would say she distrusted him. She said he was inappropriate with her. That’s the word Charlene used. He’d hit her mom, but she’d hit him a bunch of times, too. It’s a violent relationship.”

Chuck issued a sigh, bent his head and rubbed the crown. A chime coming from somewhere on his person caused him to reach for his phone in the pocket of his jeans, pull it out, and glance at the screen.

“Okay, Son,” he said, distracted, still looking at the device in his hand. “When you hear from her-and I think you will-you need to let someone know. Try to get her to come home. A girl can get herself into a world of trouble out there.”

“I will,” said Ricky.

Maggie felt a flutter of panic now for Charlene, her anger dissipating, and she followed Chuck as he descended the staircase.

“So what now?” she asked him at the door.

“Everyone’s looking for her. The whole department will be putting in hours tonight knocking on the doors of neighbors and friends. We’ll find her.”

“She could already be on a train to New York, if that’s where she’s headed.”

“We’ll put out a tristate runaway bulletin, enter her name into NCIC and DCJS.” Maggie knew these were information databases, but she couldn’t remember what the initials stood for. “We’ll contact the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, get a picture up there. You know the stats, Maggie: seventy-seven percent of runaways come home within the week.”

She knew the statistics, of course. But numbers didn’t mean anything when you were talking about a girl you knew, someone you cared about. There were people-predators-waiting out there for someone like Charlene, a girl with big dreams, not sure if anyone really cared about her, afraid of her stepfather, fighting with her mother. The anger Maggie had felt toward Charlene had passed. Left in its wake was something like fear. The worst happened, even here.

When she closed the door on Chuck and turned to go back to her son, to comfort him, the grandfather clock read 1:05 A.M. She hadn’t heard the hour chime.

The day would come. He’d known that it would, of course. That it had to come. Because even then, when he was young and clueless, he knew you couldn’t bury that much wrong and make it right. And though there was no real reason to suspect that today was the day, he knew it was. It was Melody’s face, that terrible contortion of rage and misery. Her face, her voice-it brought him back. You shouldn’t have to bear witness twice. He should have left The Hollows long ago, gone away to college like Maggie but never come back. But he didn’t.

He had a laundry list of excuses-a bad knee had derailed his hopes of a scholarship, the old cliché; his mother was sick, couldn’t be on her own; he’d always dreamed of being a cop in the town where he grew up, of giving back. All of these things, all noble, with kernels of truth at their centers, were lies. The reality was that he hadn’t needed a scholarship; there was money. Anyway, he’d never been as good as all that; he’d just been better than his below-average teammates. His mother was sick, mentally ill, unstable-it shouldn’t have been his job to watch over her and then to watch her die. But he’d taken it on, even though other family members had offered a hand. He did like the idea of policing The Hollows, a way of atonement, he supposed. But it wouldn’t have been enough to keep him here. No, the truth was that he was afraid to leave. He was a coward.

Not a run-from-battle kind of coward-not afraid of heights or airplanes or small, enclosed spaces. He was not afraid of duty or responsibility. All of that was easy. What he feared were the long, empty spaces between those things where life was lived.

Melody’s wailing had turned to a low whimper. They were driving through the neighborhood around her house while the other guys knocked on doors and made phone calls. As he drove, his eyes scanned the sides of the road, looking for a dropped book bag, a shred of clothing, anything; he’d asked Melody to do the same. In a busier jurisdiction, there wouldn’t be the manpower or the time to pay so much attention to a kid who’d run away before and probably would again. It wasn’t even protocol. But in a town like The Hollows, where most people knew one another, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

“Where’s Graham?” Jones asked.

“How should I know?” Melody snapped. There was an edgy defensiveness about the way she said it that made him take notice.

“Didn’t you call him to tell him Charlene was missing?”

“Of course I did. His phone was off.” When he didn’t answer, she added, “He said he might go hunting this weekend.”

“It’s after one in the morning and you don’t know where your husband is?” The words sounded hard, judgmental.

“Not everybody has a perfect marriage like you and Maggie,” she said. She had a nasty smile on her face as she drew a pack of cigarettes from her purse.

“Can’t smoke in here, Mel.”

She lit the cigarette anyway and lowered the window. He fought the urge to grab it from her and toss it out onto the street. She had always been a rude, inconsiderate bitch, and he didn’t think Charlene was much better. Smarter, maybe. Better looking than Melody had ever been. But really Charlene was just out for herself, a con looking for a mark; if he’d suspected it before, he knew it now.

They took the road that ran out of the development and wound toward the more rural farm country. Then he took a right onto an unpaved passage that passed over a stone bridge into a thick area of woods. It was a link of wild land between two development neighborhoods, a twenty-acre strip that ran in back of the more expensive homes, so city folks could think they were in the country.

Where Melody and Charlene lived, Whispering Acres was more lower middle class. Back at the precinct house they called it Whimpering Acres because of all the domestic violence calls-an angry husband answering the door, a woman crying behind him. These days you didn’t need the wife to press charges, because they almost never did. But cops rarely hauled the husband away unless they had to, unless the woman was so obviously battered that you couldn’t get around it, unless you knew the next time you came you’d be calling an ambulance or the coroner’s office.

Patrol had been out to Melody and Graham’s plenty of times. Sometimes he was bleeding; sometimes she was. It was always a neighbor who called to complain about the noise. Jones knew what it was like to grow up like that. He felt an unwanted twinge of empathy for Charlene. At least she had the guts to run away from it; he never had. Finally, it was his father who left and never came back.

The Acres wasn’t a bad neighborhood; the streets were lined with average ranches and split-level tract houses. You might find the occasional junker in the drive up on blocks, or clotheslines in the back, a rusty old shed, a side yard cluttered with toys, twisted bicycles. Acres folks didn’t have the time or money to pay much attention to landscaping or to chipping paint or weeds poking through the sparse gravel on the drive-they were working two jobs to make ends meet.

By contrast, in The Oaks, a mile south, the single-story dwellings of The Acres were replaced with towering houses-four or five thousand square feet-surrounded by old-growth trees, meticulous yards, late-model vehicles in three-car garages. Trash cans disappeared as soon as the garbage truck had passed. Driveways were paved with multicolored bricks. Mailboxes stood in carefully groomed flower beds. These were the doctors, the lawyers, the financial professionals who commuted into the city for work each day. During the day, the neighborhood was abuzz with activity, a parade of service professionals-nannies, maids, landscapers, pool cleaners-most of whom lived in The Acres, or in one of the outlying areas around the high school.

Jones’s family didn’t live in either of these neighborhoods, having chosen instead the hipper area off the main square. They called it SoHo, short for South Hollows, which Maggie always found funny, because to her there was only one SoHo and that was in Manhattan. Their restored Victorian sat on a quiet, tree-lined street, just a few blocks from shops, restaurants, the library, a yoga studio. Maggie needed that, having left her life in the city to be with him here. She wanted to be near what little activity the town had to offer. He liked it, too, though initially he didn’t want to live that close to the precinct house. But now that he was watching his weight, it was easy for him to stroll home and eat a healthier lunch. With his total cholesterol over 250 and his weight not far behind, there were no more Philly cheesesteaks, fries, and a large soda sitting in his car with one of the guys. Now it was turkey lasagna at home alone. He wondered if a longer life was worth living if you couldn’t eat whatever the hell you wanted to eat.

Melody released a hacking cough and tossed her cigarette out the window.

“The world is your ashtray, right, Mel?”

“Shut up, Jones. When did you turn into such a self-righteous prick?”

In between The Acres and The Oaks, on the dark, unpaved road, Jones stopped the car. He rolled down the window and took in the cold, quiet air. He could hear the babbling of the little creek that flowed through town. Somewhere deep in the woods, something moved light and quick. A deer, fleeing the sound of the engine, the high beams. Maybe something else.

“What are you doing?” Melody asked.

“I’m just going to look around here a minute.”

He flipped on the rack of lights on the roof, and the area around them flooded in harsh white. Everything beyond the beam disappeared.

He stepped out of the car and looked into the black around them, listened to it. Then he walked down the slope to the bank of the creek, peering under the bridge.

“Why are you doing this?”

Melody had exited the vehicle and came to stand above him, leaning on the stone edge of the bridge.

“This is where they found her body. You remember?”

When he looked at her, she was as white as death.

“Why are you doing this?” she said again. Her voice was a raspy whisper, her face melting in fear and grief. He felt a little jolt of regret. He hadn’t done it to hurt her or to frighten her. He just wanted someone to remember with him, wanted not to be alone with it for once. He saw how wrong that was now.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, stared at the black water, the slick stones beneath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-She’s fine, Melody.”

But she had already turned from him and gone back to the SUV. The slamming of the door bounced and echoed all around him. It would have been an ugly thing, a dark and hateful kind of poetry, to walk down here and see Charlene. Was that what he thought he’d find?

Back in the SUV, Melody was weeping again. He climbed in the driver’s side and closed the door, cranked the heat. He’d been sweating this afternoon. Now the air was frigid. Winter was settling over The Hollows.

“Am I being punished?” she asked. He had no urge to comfort her, to apologize again. He just wished he hadn’t offered to drive her around. He wished she would stop crying.

“Do you ever talk to Travis?” she said when he didn’t answer her.

“Don’t,” he said. “I didn’t mean-”

“You feel it, too. I can see it on your face. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Stop it.” He put the vehicle in gear and started to drive. “Pull yourself together.”

Jones and Travis Crosby had never been friends, exactly. No, never that. But something magnetic and irresistible drew them together over and over, either in conflict or in complicity.

Travis’s dad was the Hollows police chief, a grim and sour man who retained his post for almost thirty-five years. During his tenure, crime in The Hollows was well below the statistical average. And revenue from parking and moving violations was higher than anywhere else in the state. But his cruelty, his rages, were well known. And everyone knew that Travis got the worst of it.

Jones’s father, before he disappeared just shortly after Jones’s thirteenth birthday, had worked at the dairy just out of town, a family farm where kids would ride their bikes to the ice cream shop on summer afternoons or for the questionable entertainment of cow tipping on moonless nights. Once upon a time, town legend held, their fathers had been friends. But some rift had placed a distance between the two families. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, or because of some unspoken, shared hatred of their fathers, Travis and Jones wound up killing time together now and again. Almost always getting into trouble when they did.

That afternoon, lacrosse practice had gone late. They were in the play-offs the following weekend, and the coach was busting their balls every afternoon. Jones walked to his car in the near dusk, legs shaking, feeling light-headed from exertion. He didn’t see Travis sitting on his hood until he was just feet away.

“Nice ride,” said Travis.

“Birthday gift from my mom.” It was a restored ’67 Mustang, fire-engine red, mint condition, custom stereo and speakers. Jones loved it but was embarrassed by it, by the attention it drew, by its cherry shine. He hated it a little, too, because of how she lorded it over him all the time. Aren’t you lucky to have a mom who would buy you something like that? You better be nice to me. Don’t leave me like your father did.

“Must be nice to be filthy fucking rich.”

Jones gave a little laugh. Nobody in The Hollows was rich, not back then. A few new residents were building nice houses in the hills. But people who came from The Hollows were descended from German settlers-they were peasant stock.

“My uncle restores antique cars,” Jones said. “I don’t think it cost that much. Just a lot of hard work on his part.”

Travis gave a slow nod, ran his hand along the hood. “Seriously, man. It’s nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I get a ride?”

Travis still bore a red half-moon scar under his eye from the beating Henry Ivy had given him at the homecoming game. It seemed to have humbled him a bit, that beating. Jones, like everyone at Hollows High, was glad for it. Travis was a bully and an asshole. Though Jones couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the guy, too. It was the ultimate humiliation to get beaten down in front of the whole school by someone who had previously been regarded as the biggest geek on Earth.

Jones nodded his chin toward the car and walked over to pop the trunk. They both dropped their lacrosse gear inside.

He often thought about how normal everything was that afternoon, how right everything was with the world. They were just two ordinary kids. Each had his sets of problems; both were children of dysfunction. But it was a cold, pretty evening. They were well exercised, sober, healthy. They weren’t aimless or needing to blow off steam. They were both tired from school and practice, and Jones couldn’t wait to get in the shower. Any other day, each would have been home within the half hour. Jones would have eaten with his mother, then gone to his room to do homework-because if his grades fell, he couldn’t play.

But as they pulled out of the school parking lot and made the left turn to go home, they saw a late bus stop briefly in the distance, then start moving on its way. And then they both saw her, her thin form weighted down by a heavy backpack, a violin case in her hand. Sarah Meyer walked with slow determination.

“She walking?” asked Travis.

“Looks like it,” said Jones. He didn’t know her at all. Once he’d walked past the music room and heard her practicing. It didn’t sound that great to him; he wasn’t sure what the fuss was all about.

“You know what I heard about her?” said Travis. He’d dropped his voice low though they were alone in the car.

“What?”

“That she gives great head.”

Jones laughed, but at seventeen, just the thought of it caused his crotch to ache a little. Of course it was a lie. Because Travis was a liar, always making up the craziest shit just to get a reaction.

“No way.” Sarah was a small girl, skinny, with fine, mousy brown hair, forever clad in corduroy pants and some girlie sweater her mom had obviously picked out. She had this distracted air about her; even in class he’d sometimes notice her staring out the window, daydreaming.

“I’m not kidding. She sucked Chad Donner off under the bleachers after school last week.” Travis let out that hoot of laughter he was famous for, was getting himself all excited.

“Whatever.”

“He said she liked it. Loved it. No, no. He said she was crazy for it.”

“Shut up, Travis.” Jones regretted giving him a ride. This happened all the time. He’d find himself hanging out with Travis and wondering why he didn’t remember from the last time that he didn’t like the guy at all.

“What? You don’t believe me? Let’s ask her.”

By the time they reached her, Sarah was just about to turn off the main road and head up the unpaved drive that led to her house. It was nearly a mile long, running first through a field and then into a thick wooded area. Wasn’t she scared, Jones wondered, in the gathering dark? She didn’t seem to be, her shoulders square, her pace steady.

“Slow down, slow down,” said Travis, as he rolled down the window.

Then, “Hey, Sarah,” he called. “Want a ride?”

• • •

But Jones didn’t allow himself to blame Travis for what had happened on that very normal evening. There had been decades to marvel at the minutiae, the little things that had led them all there: if Jones hadn’t dawdled in the locker room, reluctant to go home to his waiting mother and endure her smothering attentions-or if he’d lingered longer; if Travis’s car hadn’t been in the shop; if Sarah hadn’t missed her bus; if Melody hadn’t come strolling up from her place to meet Sarah on the road, having seen her from her bedroom window.

But there was another part of him, too, that suspected none of it could have been altered, that no matter what any of them had done that day, they all would have arrived together at the same point in time. That there was no way to have avoided the moment when their unique combination of energies, desires, and fears unified to create something awful.

Thinking that kept him from remembering that he was the one with all the power, literally the one in the driver’s seat. All he would have had to do was keep going, endure whatever ribbing Travis had to offer up. Aw, you always were a pussy, Cooper. He could have ignored Travis’s directive and taken them both home. Except he didn’t.