Fragile

23

The sky above them was a field of stars. Jones stared up at the swaying tips of the towering pines. If he just kept looking up, maybe when he looked down again, it would all be a dream, a mistake, a horrible imagining. But no. Melody sat cross-legged beside Sarah, holding her white hand. She was rocking, singing something softly.

“We have to get out of here,” she said when she saw him watching her.

“We have to call the police,” said Jones, rising. He realized that he was crying, that his face was wet with tears. He wiped at them with his sleeve, but they just kept coming.

“Did you kiss her?” Melody asked, apropos of nothing.

“No.” He looked at Sarah’s body and knew that they were all standing before a chasm of pain and grief, that life as they knew it had ended. He’d see her again and again over the years, every time he looked at a corpse lying crooked on the ground. It was always the same feeling, the pointless rise of wishing things were different, of knowing that things could not be undone, that these were the last peaceful moments before someone, somewhere, would be crushed by sorrow.

“We have to go,” she said. “He’ll find a way to pin the blame on us. He’ll bring his father back here, and they’ll find a way. He weasels out of everything.”

Jones was about to protest. But Melody interrupted.

“It’s your car. You picked her up. I brought the weed. I’m high right now. We have to leave. Sarah’s gone. There’s nothing we can do for her.”

Looking back now, he remembered that she was level, logical even, far beyond her years. He felt near hysteria, about to shake apart at the seams. She stood and started leading him away from Sarah’s poor, broken body.

“We can’t just leave her here,” he said. “We’ll call the police and tell them it was an accident. It was an accident.”

“We have to go. I don’t want my life to end here tonight, too.”

Later, during the one and only conversation they had about that night, Melody would swear that it was he who wanted to leave, she who wanted to stay and call the police. Melody would claim that he was the one who dragged her toward the car, while she protested loudly. But Jones didn’t remember it that way. As he remembered it, they both walked back to the Mustang. He opened the door for her, as he’d been taught to do, and she climbed inside. They left Sarah. They left her there in the woods, in the dark, alone. Jones fought the rise of bile all the way back to Melody’s place.

“Follow his lead,” she said. “If we follow him, we’ll be all right.”

He agreed. Even as she left the car, the events of the evening seemed distant and strange, as if it were something he’d watched on television as he drifted off to sleep-fuzzy, indistinct, unreal.

When he pulled into his driveway, his mother was waiting at the door. She was always waiting at the door, or at the window, as if she expected daily for him not to return home.

“You’re late,” she said. She pushed the screen door open for him. “I kept a plate warm.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I gave Travis Crosby a ride home.”

“Where’s your jacket? It’s cold.”

Where was his jacket? He remembered, then, wrapping it around Sarah’s tiny shoulders. She’d cast it to the ground when she ran from Travis. He’d forgotten it. He didn’t remember seeing it in the parking lot when they returned to the car. But he didn’t remember much; he’d left there in a shocked daze. Did Travis take it? That’s when he remembered that her things-her book bag, her violin case-were still in the trunk of the car. He felt his knees start to buckle with the weight of it, and the next thing he knew, he was kneeling by the stairs, his head in his hands.

“Jones! What’s wrong? What is it?”

He told her. He told her everything that happened from the minute he picked up Travis until he dropped off everything. And when he was done, he sagged with relief. His mother had come to sit beside him on the staircase, pulled her knees up inside her tattered white housedress. He was afraid to lift his eyes from his hands to look at her face. Instead he looked at the papery skin of her ankles, all the millions of purple spider veins along her legs. When he found the courage to lift his eyes, she was staring at him, the look on her face unreadable.

“Mom. We left her there. She’s still there,” he said.

“How could you do this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t-,” he said. “What should I do?”

“After everything I’ve done for you. How could you do this to me?”

He stared at her, incredulous. “To you?”

“They’ll take you away from me.”

“Mom.” He couldn’t believe what she was saying.

She had a crazed light in her eyes. “You’ll do what that girl said. You’ll keep your mouth shut and follow Travis Crosby’s lead.”

“But-,” he said. The ground beneath his feet felt like it was made from fog; he couldn’t find firm footing. “She’s still out there.”

His mother came to kneel beside him and grabbed him by the shoulders. Her breath in his face reeked of cigarette smoke.

“You listen to me. She’s dead and gone. There’s nothing you can do for her. Do you want to flush your whole life down the toilet?”

But they both knew it wasn’t about him or about his life. Somehow it had become about his mother and what he had done to her, how this might ultimately take him from her. He looked at her, her hard, dark eyes, her thin line of a mouth pressed tight, her white skin flushed with emotion. She didn’t care about him, or about a girl left dead in the dark.

“It’s not right.” The words sounded weak and lame because he stayed rooted on the stairs.

But she didn’t seem to hear him anyway. “If it ever comes down to it, I’ll swear you came right home. Who do you think they’ll believe-that little druggie tramp and that delinquent Crosby kid, or me?”

He just sat listening to her go on. She ranted as she ushered him into the kitchen and put a plate of food before him. It smelled vile. Abigail was a horrible cook, everything either overseasoned or undercooked. He pushed his food around his plate, swallowed a few bites to appease her.

The rest of the evening passed in a blur-a shower, homework, then to bed like any other ordinary night. Except he was still in the park with Sarah, and she was alive, and he kissed her. And maybe he’d ask her out for Friday night. She was a nice girl; he liked the way he felt when she was sitting in his car. He wondered what it would be like to hold her hand. And then she was lying on the ground, stiff and growing cold.

After his mother went to sleep, he looked out his window to see that a light snow had started to fall. He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t leave her there. He grabbed a coat from the closet and left the house, letting the Mustang roll in reverse from the drive, starting it only when he was in the street. Even so, as he drove off, he saw his mother’s bedroom light come on.

When he got to the park, the lot was covered in a brittle layer of glittering snow. The vehicle gate had been closed and locked. In all the years he’d been coming there, it never had been before. He left the Mustang at the gate and easily climbed over. He felt the cold prickle of snow on his face, neck, and hands.

He expected to see his jacket by the trailhead where Sarah had shed it in her run from Travis. But it was gone. He followed the trail to the stone staircase. He stared at the place where they’d left her. But Sarah’s body wasn’t there.

With the light snow covering the ground, there was no evidence that any of them had ever been there. He felt a lift of hope in his heart. Had they been wrong? Had she gotten up from where she lay and found her way home? He walked to the edge of the staircase and looked down. He could see all the way to the bottom, but no one was standing there. He walked up the trail awhile, looking in the brush, wondering if, disoriented maybe, she’d gotten up and walked farther into the park. But he was alone. Finally, after a while, he left, the snow crunching beneath his feet, the wind picking up and moaning through the trees. As he walked back through the lot, the falling snow was already covering his tracks. By the time he’d returned to his car, his footprints were nearly gone.

It took a second for Jones to realize that he was on the ground, outside in the cold. He immediately reached for his gun, but his holster was empty. His hand flew to his waist for his cell phone next. That was gone, too. He felt more angry than afraid. How could he have turned his back on Travis Crosby? And then there was the pain-a burning ache in his side, a terrible tightness in his chest. He wondered coolly, Is this it? Would he meet his end as Sarah had, alone on the cold ground, miles from anyone who loved her? He knew he didn’t deserve better. But no, he wasn’t going like this. No way.

The Explorer was just twenty feet away. Inside the vehicle was the radio, of course. In the hatch there was a rifle, hidden in a locked compartment beneath the carpet. He heard voices, distant, outside. They carried up on the trees and into the air. It was hard to know from which way or how far. Then he heard a slicing scream, rage or agony, male or female, he couldn’t be sure. But it electrified him, shot adrenaline through his system, and he was up on all fours, crawling for the SUV.

Somewhere, he heard a cell phone start to ring; it sounded like his own. He didn’t have the time or the strength to try to find it. Travis must have tossed it into the woods nearby. Radio or gun? He decided to go for the gun first.

When he reached the back of the Explorer, he used the bumper to pull himself to his feet. The whole world tilted with his pain. His breath came ragged, and even that caused his chest, back, and abdomen to ache. His shirt and coat were soaked with blood. But he suspected that the bullet had just grazed the flesh of his belly. There were some advantages to being fat. He pulled the keys from his pocket and, with effort, pushed open the hatch. He flipped back the carpet easily and unlocked the compartment, removing the loaded gun. In his weakened state, it felt impossibly heavy. If he had to fire it, the recoil might do him in.

Now that he was armed, he was about to head to the radio, request backup. But another scream sliced the night, and Jones felt a chill down his spine, a painful throbbing in his chest. In its wake, the air seemed preternaturally quiet. Then, the sharp crack of a gunshot. Then another. Then nothing. Jones gripped his own gun and headed off into the woods behind the Crosby home.

Maggie watched Henry exit his front door and lock it behind him. She wondered how many times she’d watched him do that over the years of their friendship. He didn’t have a car in high school; she was always driving him somewhere in their senior year, often picking him up on her way to school. She felt a familiar wash of affection for him-and gratitude for their enduring friendship. Sometimes, like tonight, she felt closer to him than she did to her own husband.

I always thought you’d marry him, Elizabeth had said to Maggie just before she married Jones.

Henry? No.

Why not?

There’s no heat, Mom. No chemistry.

That’s what young people don’t understand. You don’t need heat. In fact, you’re better off without it.

What? You and Dad didn’t have heat?

Oh, we had heat, her mother said with a mischievous grin.

Mom!

At the time, Maggie had thought it was a ridiculous thing to say, that you don’t need passion. She was smart enough to know that chemistry didn’t sustain a marriage, but without it there was nothing. Even an eternal flame needs an igniting spark. But nearly twenty years into her marriage and her practice, she understood what her mother meant. Some people thought the spark was everything, kept wanting it again and again, leaving behind a wake of failed relationships. Her patients would have these steamy affairs, leave the relationships they were in, only to find that once real life-bills, blending families, work-crept in, it was the same old thing.

Henry jogged to the car and got in the passenger seat.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He reached over and fastened his seat belt.

She told him everything-about Jones and Ricky, about Angie Crosby’s claim that Marshall had stolen her guns. He took it all in with a careful nod, looking down at some point between them.

He was quiet for a moment after she’d finished. “So what are we going to do?”

She studied him, noticed the lines under his eyes, the gray at his temples. She thought he was better looking now than when they were kids, as though he had settled into his looks. When he looked up at her, she glanced away, embarrassed that she was thinking anything of the sort in a moment like this.

“I was hoping you’d have some ideas.”

Henry tugged at each cuff on his jacket.

“Well, I went to the Crosby residence earlier today.” He told her about his encounter with Travis. She could tell it had disturbed him, stirred up old memories and feelings. But he kept his recounting neutral, and she didn’t dig.

“Marshall wouldn’t be with Leila and her family,” said Maggie, when he was done. “They’re distancing themselves from him. If he’d come to her, she’d have called me.”

She remembered her cell phone then and rooted around in her purse for it, plugged it into the charger that dangled from the cigarette lighter.

“I don’t know whether to look for Ricky or to look for Marshall,” she said, staring at the phone’s screen. The charge was so low that, even plugged in, it wasn’t coming on right away.

“Rick is smart and solid,” said Henry. “He’s not going to do anything stupid.”

She was grateful to hear him say it. She trusted her son; she was happy to know it wasn’t just a mother’s denial.

“Marshall, on the other hand, is in major trouble,” said Henry. “If the police find him with guns, that’s pretty much going to be the end of him.”

“Henry,” she said, looking at her friend. His brow was creased with worry. “The police finding him with guns is the best-case scenario. I’m worried about what will happen if they don’t find him. Soon.”

“Okay,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “The only thing I can think to do is to go to Chief Crosby’s house. The property is totally isolated. It’s late. I know Marshall has a relationship with his grandfather. I can’t think of where else he would go.”

It made sense, though she dreaded an encounter with the chief. There was something about those milky blue eyes that always made her want to run from him. Maybe it was just her mother’s passionate dislike for the man. Maggie always found her mother’s opinions contagious. She started the engine.

“I was thinking Ricky might have gone to my mother’s house,” she said. She was really just thinking aloud. “But I can’t imagine him disturbing her in the middle of the night. And if he was there, she’d have called.”

Maggie put the car in reverse and backed out of the drive. Henry put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s okay,” he said. “Maybe he snuck in there and went to sleep. Should we drive by and look for his car?”

It was tempting, but Elizabeth’s house was on the other side of town. If Ricky was there, he was safe. The urgency to find Marshall was high. Maggie said as much.

“Where’s Jones now?” asked Henry.

“I have no idea.” She didn’t mean to sound clipped and angry. But she was angry. Why should she have to lean on her friend in this crisis? She should be with her husband.

“This is all going to turn out all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”

But the stone in her gut told her something different.