Fragile

26

He mostly talked. He talked about his mother, about his father, about how he’d always felt like a loser, an outcast.

Without the usual mask of black makeup, Charlene looked about twelve. She sat curled up on Maggie’s couch, wearing sweatpants and an old black T-shirt, clutching a pillow against her center. Her hair was freshly washed, pulled back with a barrette in a girlish way. Maggie had the urge to hold her.

“Once he asked me to sing while he masturbated.”

She looked up at Maggie with a flat stare, as if daring her to be shocked.

“And how did that make you feel?”

She blew a breath out of her nose. Charlene was going for jaded, unaffected, but Maggie could see her hands shaking.

“It made me sick.” She spat the last word. “But you know what’s weird? Part of me was, like, flattered. Does that make me a freak? I mean, I was tied up in a boat. Tied up, you know, singing, while this asshole spanks the monkey, and I was thinking, Wow, he really likes my songs.”

Maggie nodded her head, holding back a smile. Charlene was tough; she had a strong inner spirit. And this was a good thing for someone who’d endured what she had.

She told the girl as much. “You’re not a freak, Charlene.”

“I got in touch with him because I didn’t know who else to ask. I cared about Rick too much to ask him to help me.” She cast Maggie a sheepish look. “I know I hurt him. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not about that right now, Charlene,” Maggie said. She gave the girl a smile. “Right now, it’s about helping you sort out what happened to you, so you can deal with it and move on in a healthy way. Your relationship with Rick is your business. Okay?”

Charlene sighed, as if releasing some tension she’d been holding. “Okay. Thanks.”

She sat for a second, looked down at her nails. Then she went on.

“I fell asleep in the car. I was so tired. I’d already been sick to my stomach by the side of the road. When I woke up, it was so dark. And we weren’t on the highway anymore. I didn’t know where we were.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked out the window. “Is Rick here?”

“No. He’s at the hospital with his grandmother.”

Charlene leaned forward and picked up a crystal lotus flower that sat on the end table. She held it to the light and watched the rainbow flecks that hit the far wall. She turned it back and forth so that they danced over the shelves of books, the wall of family pictures and Ricky’s crayon drawings, the wood door that led to the waiting area.

“He said he wanted to show me something,” she said, still turning the piece in her hand. “I was really afraid all of a sudden. No one knew where I was, and I realized that I didn’t really know that much about Marshall. But I decided to pretend like I was curious, to play it off. I figured I’d wait and watch for an opportunity to run if things got weird.”

Maggie noticed that the delicate features of her face looked strained and pale, her eyes shining. She gave the girl the respect of silence.

“It’s fuzzy.” Charlene put the lotus flower down, rubbed the back of her head. “He hit me from behind, I think. The doctor said I have a concussion, that my memory might be murky for a while, maybe always about this. But I think he hit me from behind with something. The next thing I remember was being on the filthy, smelly boat. I woke up in the dark, tied and gagged.”

Maggie went to get a box of tissues from her desk and handed it to Charlene, who had abandoned her tough façade and started to cry.

“Sometimes he would just sit there, staring at me.”

More silence. Maggie heard her computer ping, announcing the arrival of an e-mail.

“He never touched me,” Charlene said. She paused to wipe her eyes and nose. “I mean, after he hit me and tied me up. He just wanted to talk about the stuff I told you, and whether he was a good person or a bad person, and how did we know those kinds of things. But he didn’t want me to answer him. He only took the tape off once to give me some water, and that time he wanted me to sing.

“Then he’d leave me down there for long stretches. He never brought me food.”

She put her head in her hands, and her shoulders started to shake.

Maggie abandoned her professionalism and joined Charlene on the couch, took her thin form into her arms and held her while she sobbed.

“I felt so scared.” The words came out in a kind of wail into Maggie’s shoulder. Charlene was healthier than Maggie would have imagined. She had a good handle on her emotions, was not afraid to let them out. “I never knew if he’d come back or I’d just die down there.”

“I know, kiddo. You’re going to be okay,” Maggie said. She found herself rocking a little. When Charlene pulled away after a bit and her sobbing subsided, Maggie patted her on the leg and returned to her chair.

“Then his father found us,” she said. She let go of a grim little laugh. “I thought I was saved.”

“What happened?”

“He raped me,” she said. She said it flatly, matter-of-fact. “Twice. And you know what was weird? He hardly said anything. He came one night, right after Marshall left me. He must have followed Marshall out to the lake and been waiting, listening.”

“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said. She knew she was dangerously close to crossing the line between personal and professional. She realized that she should have referred Charlene to a colleague, that she cared too much to be her doctor.

“The only thing he said was, ‘I fucked your mother, too. But you’re a sweeter piece of ass.’” Charlene began to sob in earnest.

Maggie felt a wave of anger and sadness so intense she might have channeled it directly from Charlene. But she tried to keep her composure and gave a careful nod. “Do you want to talk about how you felt while this was happening?”

Charlene looked at her; there was something injured and confused on her face.

“I don’t know. Grossed out, I guess. He was so frightening, so cold. I was freaked out that he had this connection to my mother I didn’t know about. I don’t know. It was like it was happening somewhere else, to someone else. I felt so disconnected from it. It hurt. But it hurt someone else.”

Charlene shifted on the couch, folded her legs beneath her.

“There were rats down there. They were everywhere, scurrying on the dock, on the boat. I was afraid they would crawl on me, bite me. But they stayed away.”

The mention of rats got Maggie thinking about the attic at her mother’s house. She tamped back another sick swell of fear and anger. She’d deal with all that later. She could help Charlene. She couldn’t help Sarah.

“The second time he raped me, Marshall was there.”

Maggie thought about Marshall’s phone call, tried to figure out the timing. He’d already had Charlene. Where had he been calling from? She didn’t suppose it mattered now.

“Marshall was there when his father walked in. I remember hearing something just before. A loud bang. But I was so out of it by then, just numb. Starving, so thirsty, in pain-but in this really distant way.”

She was starting to get a glassy look. Maggie got up and took a small plastic bottle of water from the little fridge she had by the coffeemaker. She opened the lid, and Charlene took the bottle from her, drank nearly half of it in one gulp, as though she were still dying of thirst.

“He said something like, ‘Let me show you what they’re good for, Son.’ But then Marshall had a gun. I saw it, but his father didn’t. He was already… at me. I didn’t even have the strength to fight.

“Then Marshall started firing. God, I never knew how loud gunfire was. It was awful. I don’t know how he didn’t hit something, but his father ran past him. Marshall turned to fire at him again, but the old man was there instead. Marshall shot his grandfather. Got him right in the chest. I remember that Marshall started wailing and wailing. And then he just walked off.”

She shook her head at the memory, as if she were trying to knock the pieces into place. “It’s like it all happened on a show I saw, a bad picture.”

“Just take your time with it. The mind distances itself from horror. It’s a survival mechanism.”

Charlene took another long sip of water.

“The next thing I remember is Mr. Cooper. He was hurt, too. But he saved me. I always thought he hated me.”

Maggie smiled. “He never hated you. He’s-he’s a difficult man to understand sometimes.”

“Well,” she said. “Tell him thanks for me.”

“I will. Or you can tell him yourself.”

Then, “What’s going to happen to Marshall?”

Maggie shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

She knew he’d face charges: kidnapping, manslaughter, illegal firearms possession-these were all on the table. He needed a lawyer, that much was certain. She didn’t know if he’d be charged as an adult or a minor. Maggie was certain that her evaluation of his condition would have some impact.

“It’s weird, but even after everything that happened,” Charlene said, “I feel bad for him. He seemed so sad. So lost. I think he really needs help.”

“There are people who care about him.” Even as Maggie said it, she wondered if it was true. “There’s a system in place.”

“That’s good,” Charlene said. She sounded young and uncertain.

“Let’s talk about why you left in the first place.”

Charlene leaned back on the couch. “I had a fight with my mom. About the phone.”

“The phone Graham got for you.”

“Right. It was stupid. Everyone has a phone. Even Graham knew that.”

“Your friends-Britney and Rick, in particular-said you were afraid of him. That he was inappropriate with you. Is that true?”

Charlene shrugged. Maggie noticed that her eyes started moving around the room, looking everywhere but at Maggie. “I don’t know. He’s all right, I guess. Stupid. He and my mom have a really bad relationship. They bring out the worst in each other.”

Maggie wondered what she was holding back. “Your mother told Jones that she hit Graham with a baseball bat.”

Charlene looked up, surprise lifting her eyebrows. “She told him that?”

“They found blood in the kitchen.”

She nodded, looked back down.

“That’s when I left. Last time they fought, I got in the middle and wound up with a black eye. I promised myself it wasn’t going to happen again.”

“How was he when you left?”

“He was on the floor, moaning and cursing at my mom. She was screaming at him. I don’t even think they noticed me pack and leave. I don’t know what happened then. There was blood. He didn’t look good.”

Charlene shook her head. “Mom said he left and said he wasn’t coming back. I don’t really blame him.”

She was quiet a minute. Then, “I didn’t know my real father. He died. I think she really loved him. She talks about him all the time, even now. She thinks things would have been different if he was still here.”

Maggie had a vague memory of the man Melody had married, someone she’d met at college. She found she couldn’t remember his name. Brian, maybe? Or Ryan? He’d died in a car wreck, killed on his way home from work by a drunk driver. Strange. Maggie hadn’t thought about it in years. Melody had experienced a lot of loss.

“It doesn’t do us much good to think that way, how things might be if this or that hadn’t happened. We have to deal with circumstances as they are and adjust.”

Charlene didn’t answer right away, picked at a thread on the hem of her pants.

“But you almost can’t help it, right, when things are bad, to wish they could be better?” she said finally. “It’s natural.”

“It is natural. But it’s more productive to look ahead than to look back. We can make that choice even when it seems to go against the natural tendencies.”

“That’s why I wanted to leave, go to New York.”

“To be with your boyfriend?”

Charlene looked down at her feet again. She put her thumb to her mouth and started chewing on the nail. Maggie remembered that Melody did the same thing.

“He wasn’t-isn’t-my boyfriend.” She gave a little laugh. “He was just some guy I met who said I could crash at his place. They all say that.” She looked at Maggie and rolled her eyes, offered a self-deprecating smile.

“He had a band that plays at a couple of bars in the East Village. He said he was about to be signed.” She took her thumb from her mouth and released a sigh. “But I think that was bullshit. Anyway, he never even returned my calls. I thought I loved him. I always think I’m in love at first. It feels all fiery, so life-changing. Then it’s just gone. That’s not love, right?”

Maggie couldn’t help but smile. She remembered being Charlene’s age, remembered when every feeling was so powerful that you couldn’t believe anyone had ever felt the same.

“Probably not,” Maggie said. “Love is not just initial intense feelings, not just about that early rush. There has to be more to it.”

“Like friendship.”

“That’s right.”

Charlene gazed out the window again. “I’m so tired,” she said. “I feel like I’m going to be tired and sad forever.”

“You won’t be,” Maggie said. “But you have a lot of healing to do. I’m going to recommend counseling for a while to help you process everything.”

Charlene glanced back from the window; she wore a worried frown. “Can’t you be my shrink?”

Maggie hesitated. “Let’s have a few sessions and see how it goes. I’m a little worried that we might be too close for me to be an effective therapist for you.”

Charlene uncrossed her legs and slipped into the shoes she’d worn there, a beat-up pair of Chinese slippers with embroidered roses.

“Okay,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Maggie told her, keeping her voice light. “We’re going to get you through this.”

Another silent nod. But Charlene kept her eyes down.

“I was a virgin-before this.” She spoke the words softly; Maggie had to lean forward to hear her. “I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t some slut. I was always afraid you thought that about me, that I was sleeping with Rick.”

Maggie struggled to keep the surprise off her face. But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway; the girl didn’t look up to see the reaction her words had caused. She just folded over and started to cry again. Maggie came to sit beside her, put an arm around her back. Charlene shifted to lay her head on Maggie’s lap, and Maggie let her cry it out, rubbed her back while she did.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through this, Charlene,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Maggie felt like she was saying that a lot these days, apologizing for how ugly the world was, how bad things could get, how unfair. She thought about her mother and Jones, about the terrible things she had discovered in the attic and what they meant for all of them. Out the window, the light was growing dim, and she felt a sudden urgency to face the things she was hiding from in this room, in the space where she helped others but often ran away from herself.

Everything looked different. She wouldn’t have been able to say how. But as she stepped out of Dr. Cooper’s office and into a misty rain, everything-the trees, the sky, the grass on the lawn, the wet driveway, even her mother’s car-seemed altered. She’d felt this way since she was first aware of herself again in the hospital. When she woke up in the semidark to see her mother sleeping in a chair by her bed, lights washing in from the half-open door, the edges of everything seemed indistinct, the colors not quite right, like in one of those old movies. There was an empty bed beside her, and her first thought was to wonder why her mother hadn’t stretched out there. She looked so uncomfortable in the hard chair. It was a strange thing to think under the circumstances, but that’s what she wondered first.

Then she’d been aware of how much she hurt. How her body ached-her wrists, her back, her neck. Even down there she felt pain, inside and out, a bruised tenderness. Then she’d been aware of a scratchy dryness in her throat, a dull pressure behind her eyes. Everything hurt, but just a little, like after she and her mother were in that fender-bender a couple of years back. She felt as if her whole body had been shaken once, really hard. She knew she would get up and walk out of there. And it seemed wrong, because what she felt inside was so black and cold and ugly that she wished she was in traction, wrapped in a full-body cast, on life support. Because that’s how she felt inside, damaged beyond repair. It wasn’t fair that people couldn’t see that.

Charlene paused in the doorway, dreading the walk from the safety of Dr. Cooper’s office to the overwarm, smoky interior of her mother’s car. Somehow, now, the world seemed too big, too menacing. There were too many wide-open spaces where bad things could happen. And she felt so small. But she drew in a breath and moved quickly toward the car. She didn’t run, though she wanted to. Charlene didn’t realize she was holding that last draw of air in her lungs until she’d closed the door behind her and locked it. As she put on her seat belt, her heart was pounding as if she’d sprinted a mile.

“How was it?”

Her mother was staring at her in this new way she had, as if Charlene were some kind of alien, someone whom she didn’t recognize and didn’t quite know what to do with. But it wasn’t mean. It was tender, somehow, careful.

“It was-I don’t know. Good, I guess, to talk about it. You know, with a doctor or whatever.”

Melody gave a slow nod. On impulse, Charlene reached out for her mother and took her hand. Melody’s eyes widened a bit in surprise, then she almost smiled. But it dropped from her face quickly, as though it had no business being there.

“Did you tell her everything, Charlene?”

Her mother seemed so sad, all the power drained from her somehow. The lines around her eyes had deepened. And she hadn’t bothered with any makeup for a couple of days, leaving herself to look washed out and plain.

“You mean about Graham? No,” Charlene said. “Of course not, Mom.”

“It’s my fault. All of this. I know that.”

“No, Mom. It’s mine.”

Charlene felt that quaking within her again. She had the strong urge to put her head in her mother’s lap like she used to, even though a few days ago she’d have rather set her own hair on fire than cuddle up to her mom. Now she didn’t like Melody to even be out of her sight for too long. She didn’t want to be alone.

Melody put her hands on Charlene’s shoulders, gave her a gentle shake.

“No, Charlene. None of this is your fault. There are things that were set in motion before you were ever born.”

Charlene shook her head and fought back another rush of tears. It was exhausting to be crying all the time.

“Charlene,” Melody said. She looked down at the seat between them. “God, there’s so much you don’t understand.”

But it wasn’t true; she understood everything. She’d been there.

When Charlene came down the stairs, she’d found her mother on the kitchen floor weeping. At first Charlene thought something had been broken, spilling a dark, red, viscous fluid across the floor. Then she saw the bat beside her mother. And for the next few moments, she thought her mother was hurt-the way she was folded onto herself, as though doubling over in terrible pain.

And then she saw Graham, pale and moaning on the floor, a hand to his head.

“You goddamn crazy bitch,” he was saying, soft and low, over and over like a mantra.

“What happened?” asked Charlene. She kept her distance, standing by the doorway. This was new, Graham down and bleeding, looking like he was hurt bad. She remembered the price she paid for getting between them the last time. So she kept her distance.

Melody looked up at her quickly, surprised, as if she didn’t realize Charlene was in the house. And maybe she hadn’t. They might not have known she was upstairs painting her nails. Her mom’s purse was on the counter, a pile of mail next to it. It looked like they’d just gotten home from work. Charlene saw it then; the bill for her phone on top of the pile. She had forgotten to intercept the mail when she came home from school. She felt her stomach bottom out. Melody saw her looking at it.

“Where’s that phone, Charlene?” Her voice was surprisingly soft, almost sweet. “Bring it to me right now.”

“Mom. No.”

She wouldn’t give up her phone; it was hers. God knows she’d earned it by putting up with Graham. “It’s not a big deal. Everyone has a phone. I don’t use it in school.”

Charlene looked over at Graham. He looked really bad. Was all that blood coming from his head?

“Charlene,” he said. “Call 911. I’m hurt bad.”

But her mother started shrieking to bring the fucking phone. And the sound of it, like an alarm, and the sight of all the blood shook Charlene to her core. She ran upstairs and fished it out of her purse. Why didn’t she dial 911 right then? She should have. She’d had a lot of time to think about how if she’d done that, nothing that happened later would have happened at all. But she didn’t do that one thing, the right thing. She never could do that.

She brought the phone downstairs. She still didn’t want to walk into that kitchen, so she slid it across the floor to her mother. Her mother stood up, pitching and wobbling like a drunk, though Charlene knew she was sober. Melody lifted the bat high over her head and Charlene started to scream, No, Mommy, don’t! Because she thought Melody was going after Graham. But then Melody proceeded to pound the phone to bits, yelling, You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing to her? You think I don’t see? It stops here, you stupid shit. How much further did you think I was going to let this go?

Charlene fell silent, drowned out anyway by her mother’s rant, and looked on, fixated, sick to the core with guilt and fear as her mother kept shouting, pounding on that phone, barely hitting it at all because it was so small and in so many pieces, until she seemed to just run out of gas and sank back down, weeping.

“I never touched her,” Graham said. He struggled to push himself up. Half his face was smeared with blood. “Tell her, Charlene.”

She shook her head, opened her mouth to speak, but wound up issuing a sob instead. Finally, “He didn’t. Mom, he didn’t.”

Melody looked up first at Charlene and then back at Graham.

“I know that,” she said. She had pulled her face into a nasty grimace, her voice more like a growl. “If you had touched her, you’d be dead.”

“Mel, please, get me to the hospital. I’m hurt.”

He fell back then against the floor, his eyes looking blank and glassy. The moan he was issuing almost didn’t sound human; it was otherworldly.

“Mom,” Charlene said. “We have to help him.”

Still, Charlene couldn’t bring herself to cross the threshold into the kitchen. Melody just looked at her, and Charlene was sure she was going to start raging about what a slut she was, about how she’d ruined all their lives.

But instead, Melody said, “I’m sorry, Char. I’ve failed you in all sorts of ways.” And Charlene didn’t know what to say to that; they both cried.

“I’m going to call 911,” Charlene said.

“No, Charlene.” Melody stood and wiped her eyes. She sounded calmer, stronger. “Just help me. Pull the truck into the garage and help me get him in. I’ll drive him.”

“I think it’s better-”

“Just do it, Charlene!”

And she’d done it, pulled the car into the garage even though her mother hadn’t even let her get her learner’s permit yet, and shut the door. Charlene had helped her heave Graham into the car, both of them straining under the effort, while he continued to groan. The side of his face looked purple and swollen, but the bleeding from his head and his nose had slowed.

“Charlene,” Melody said from the driver’s side window, “Graham and I will work out what we say about what happened. You weren’t even here.”

“But-,” started Charlene.

Her mother lifted a hand. “Please, Charlene, don’t say a word about this to anyone. You can’t. Do you understand? Just pretend you weren’t here. Things are going to be different for us from now on.”

She didn’t like the frightened, desperate expression on her mother’s face; she looked unhinged. Charlene nodded her agreement.

“Mom,” she said. But then the garage door was opening, and Melody was backing down the driveway. And then they were gone down the street.

Charlene went inside. Looking back, she didn’t remember feeling anything then. She was just hyperfocused on the task of cleaning all that blood. She went to the computer and looked up how to do it. Then she got some of the cleaning supplies from the laundry room and managed to do a fairly decent job of it, though she thought she could still see the shadow of the stain in the linoleum. After a certain amount of scrubbing with bleach, she felt light-headed and sick. She threw everything-gloves, rags, and scrub brush-in the trash outside.

When she was done, she looked at the clock. It was after seven; she knew Rick was waiting for her at Pop’s. She could call him there, have him come get her right then. But no. She wouldn’t do that. Charlene knew somehow that she’d passed through a doorway with her mother. Rick couldn’t follow her through, and Charlene could never go back with him. Thinking about that, about Rick waiting for her, about how she couldn’t just go and have pizza with him, fool around in the back of his car, laugh and complain about The Hollows and their stupid parents-fear and sadness left her. Anger filled her back up.

She went to her room and threw some things into a backpack. She had almost a thousand dollars in her drawer, rolled up in a plastic Hello Kitty bank saved over years from allowance, birthday, and Christmas money. She stuffed that deep in the bottom of her bag. This was it, the end of her life in The Hollows.

She wrote Rick a note and posted an update on Facebook. She tried to call Steve, the guy she was crushing on in the city, but he didn’t answer. It seemed like a bad omen. But she left a message, convinced herself he’d be waiting when she got there.

She remembered Marshall Crosby had promised her a ride anytime she needed it. She saw the way he looked at her, with a kind of desperate hunger. She knew he’d come and drive her where she needed to go. So she wrote him a message and didn’t wait for a reply. She didn’t want him to come to her house-she needed to be gone before her mother got back. And she needed to walk, to think. So she picked a random point between their houses and figured it would take her a while to walk there.

Then she left her room without a second glance. She remembered thinking that she had to get away from these people, this ugly life, before it killed her. And then she’d walked out into the cold night, alone.

“I did an awful thing, Charlene.”

They hadn’t really talked about that night. When Charlene had asked about Graham, Melody told her that they’d fought again in the car. He’d kicked her out and she’d walked home. He’d said he was going to go hunting and to think about the future of their relationship. He’d gone off and not yet come back, couldn’t be reached on his phone-and good riddance.

But Charlene knew, as daughters do, that this was a lie. Graham was in no condition to get up and fight again after they got him into the cab of his truck. And he was certainly in no shape to kick Melody out and start to drive. But Charlene didn’t call her on it. Besides, she wanted it to be true. She really did.

“What happened to him, Mom?”

Melody blinked at Charlene, as though she wasn’t quite sure what her daughter meant.

Then, “I’m not talking about Graham.”

Charlene felt confused. “Then what? What did you do?”

Melody put the car in reverse and backed out of the Coopers’ drive. Charlene looked up at Rick’s window and saw that it was dark. She wasn’t ready to see him yet, but she found she missed him more than she would have imagined. Maybe love, real love, wasn’t what she thought it was at all. Maybe it wasn’t a brushfire, a shift of tectonic plates. Maybe it was a held hand, a strong shoulder, a soft voice in your ear. Maybe it didn’t change the world; maybe it just made two lives a little better, a little softer, not so horribly lonely.

“I don’t want there to be any more secrets, Charlene. Can I tell you something that I’ve never told anyone?” Her mother wasn’t looking at her but at the road ahead of them.

Charlene was tired, feeling like the load she was carrying was too heavy already. But her mother looked so sad, so alone.

“Of course you can, Mom.”

She reached out for her mother’s hand. And, as she drove them home, Melody told Charlene all about another girl she’d failed, a lifetime ago.

Years earlier, Maggie had watched a documentary about psychics who solved crimes. It was a cable show, low-budget, lots of melodramatic music and bad camera angles. But Maggie watched it because it featured the solving of the Sarah Meyer case, with shots of The Hollows and interviews with people she knew.

It was the psychic, a woman named Eloise Montgomery, who’d led the police to Tommy Delano, who’d claimed to have a vision of Sarah’s murder. She had a connection to Sarah’s family, occasionally cleaned for them and other families in town.

His name begins with T, she told them. A crackling recording of her statement made her voice sound otherworldly and strange. He knows her well. He’s been watching her, wanting her. I see woods, a flight of terror. Oh, God. He’s so angry. She’s so terribly afraid. He’s sick. He wants to be close to women, to girls. But he hates them, too. He hates himself for wanting them.

Eloise claimed to have had visions on the night Sarah disappeared, only to learn the next morning that Sarah was missing. It took a few days for her to convince the police to listen to her, and it was only desperation that caused them to do so.

But there’s more to the story. It’s unclear. It may always be unclear. But I’m sorry. She’s gone. She’s not with us anymore. She’s at peace. The dead see us with loving detachment. There’s no pain for her now. Just music.

Once she said that the killer’s name began with the letter T, suspicion turned immediately to Tommy Delano. He’d been spotted on a road near where the body was found. When they went to question him, he’d already fled.

No one was sure why or how he knew suspicion had turned to him. They found his room full of clippings about Sarah, photographs of her and other girls at the school, her underpants in the trunk of his car. He’d disappeared on foot into the hills behind his house. It was a strange thing to do, when he had a car at his disposal.

He’s scared and tired. He wants to go home. He knows you’re looking for him. He just wants it all to be over. You’re going to find him. Very soon.

And they did. His confession came some hours later.

Eloise Montgomery still made her living as a psychic detective, traveling the world to help police with cold cases and cases that couldn’t be solved. For some reason, her gift was limited to women and young girls-the missing, the murdered, the abducted. Her website made this clear: Please don’t contact me about any other type of case. My talents are very specific. A few years later, after another high-profile case, Eloise had teamed with the retired detective who’d worked Sarah Meyer’s case at the Hollow’s PD, Ray Muldune. Maggie recognized him vaguely from his photograph.

But there’s more to the story. It’s unclear. It may always be unclear. Those were the words Maggie had in her mind as she drove in the twilight out of town. And then there was the odd feeling that lingered from the call she’d made. She’d found Eloise Montgomery’s number on her website and dialed on a whim, expecting to get voice mail. But instead, an older woman answered. Maggie could hear a television in the background, a dog barking somewhere distantly.

“Is this Eloise Montgomery?” Maggie asked.

“It is.” She had the tone of someone who was used to waiting patiently while people figured out what they wanted to say.

“This may sound strange,” she said. “But I have some questions about an old case.”

“What can I do for you?” Maybe that was her shtick, to sound as though she’d been waiting for your call, to sound as though she already knew what you wanted.

“It’s about Sarah Meyer. About her murder.”

“Ah,” Eloise said. “Yes.”

Eloise sounded as though she could go on. But she didn’t, and Maggie felt tongue-tied all of a sudden, didn’t know how to continue the conversation. She wasn’t going to tell this stranger what she’d found in her mother’s attic. Why had she done this? Why had she made this ridiculous call?

“You have new information about the case,” the other woman said. “You’re concerned about people close to you.”

Her voice was soft, almost coaxing. But Maggie still couldn’t get any words out. Her heart was a bird in a cage, flapping, panicked. She had the irrational urge to slam the phone down.

“I’m free now,” Eloise said into the silence. “Do you know where I live?”

Maggie was staring at Eloise Montgomery’s address on the website.

“I do.”

“Can you come?”

“I can be there in an hour.”

“Okay,” she said. “See you then.”

And Eloise ended the call. Maggie stood, gathered her things, and left her office before she could change her mind. The urge to go to this woman, to hear what she had to say about the case, was magnetic, a draw powerful enough to lead Maggie away from her family in an acute crisis. The part of her that was always tending, managing, fixing, controlling was quiet for once.

• • •

On the drive, she had time to rationalize the things Eloise had said. Probably most of the people who called out of the blue about old cases thought they had new information. A large majority of those people were likely motivated by concern for someone they loved. Maggie had heard that this was the technique of many so-called psychics, to play the odds, to use verbal and visual clues to make educated guesses about people. It wasn’t so different from being a psychologist. People were unique, each with an impossibly complicated inner life, a mosaic of personality, history, and perceptions. Their inner lives were vast, nebulous symbioses of memory and the present moment, no incident or experience standing alone from the incidents or experiences that formed them. But the problems people faced were often the same. And things like appearance, tone, body language, facial expression spoke volumes to the trained observer, to someone with empathy. Maggie’s fear and hesitance to speak must have told Eloise Montgomery everything she needed to know about why Maggie was making that call.

By the time she pulled into the short drive in front of a small white house, Maggie felt more solid, more in control of herself and her intentions. The house was off a narrow rural road about twenty miles from The Hollows. It sat prim and proper on a small rise; everything-white clapboards, black shutters, a red door-looked freshly painted. A few piles of raked leaves lay beneath the towering oaks on the property.

Even as Maggie made her way up the stone path to the porch, golden and orange leaves were fluttering around her. The sun had already dipped below the horizon. But the air had gone balmy again, the frigid cold from yesterday forgotten.

As she rang the bell and waited, Maggie noticed that three large pumpkins and a collection of gourds sat by the door and thought how she hadn’t bothered to put out their fall decorations. And something about that thought brought tears to her eyes. She was wiping them away as Eloise opened the door and led her inside.

• • •

“I’ll start by telling you that there is no confidentiality here. So anything you don’t want me to know, you should keep to yourself. I’m not a lawyer or a priest.”

Eloise ran thin fingers over her short, salt-and-pepper hair as she sat across from Maggie. Maggie remembered her as bigger, more powerful. She had the look now of someone who didn’t think much of food, with lean limbs and thin lips. Her collarbone pulled her skin taut. But there were three pies cooling on the counter in the kitchen where Eloise had led her, filling the air with the scent of warm pastry. Eloise had offered coffee, and Maggie had declined. But Eloise had placed a cup in front of her anyway, prepared with milk and one spoonful of sugar. Maggie sipped it to be polite and found that it was just what she needed.

“I was a junior in high school when Sarah was murdered. My mother, Elizabeth Monroe, was the principal of Hollows High.”

“I remember her. She’s a good woman.”

“Yes, she is,” Maggie said. “Thank you. Recently, she hurt herself. My son found her and she was delirious. She told him some things, things that have me worried. Things that have me remembering Sarah.”

Eloise nodded slowly, looked down at her fingernails. Maggie noticed they were ragged and bloody, bitten to the quick.

“She told my son, ‘She was already dead when he found her.’ She claims now that she doesn’t remember saying it. But it resonated with me.”

Eloise looked at her with dark eyes, as though she knew something more powerful had led Maggie here. Maggie looked away, cast her eyes about the kitchen. A ceramic hen, a chalkboard covered with scrawled notes, a countertop peeling at the corners-she looked everywhere but back into those dark pools.

“Once, a long time ago, your mother sat where you’re sitting now. She didn’t believe Tommy Delano killed Sarah Meyer.”

Maggie issued a surprised little laugh. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. No offense, but I just can’t see my mother visiting a psychic.”

Eloise smiled. “She came here to ask me why I’d said what I did. She accused me of being a fraud.”

“Are you? Are you a fraud?”

Maggie was surprised at herself for asking the question. It was disrespectful, crass, and unlike her. It was more like Elizabeth.

But Eloise just shook her head slowly. “I wish I were. I wish this were all just a scam I came up with to make money. I wish I didn’t spend half my life seeing things no one would ever want to see.”

There was no anger or bitterness in her tone, just the level of sadness of someone resigned to her condition. Maggie noticed a battalion of prescription bottles by the sink, all lined up.

“What did you tell my mother?” The refrigerator started to hum, and Maggie heard some cubes drop from the ice maker in the freezer.

“I pick up frequencies, images. The best way I can describe it is to say that there’s something inside me like a scanner. I see things with varying degrees of lucidity. Some things make sense; some things don’t. Sometimes I’m connected, like I was to Sarah’s family. Sometimes the things I see are a world away. There’s no pattern.”

Eloise caressed the edge of the table with her fingertips, seemed to have finished what she was saying.

“Did Tommy Delano kill Sarah?” Maggie asked.

“I used to think so, though I knew there was much more to the story than I could see. I knew he had a terrible rage inside him, something that had lived in him since he was a small boy. It didn’t belong to him; his spirit was cursed with it. It was something inherited, that he couldn’t exorcise, didn’t know how. I knew that he had a hunger for her, that he’d been watching her, following her for a long time. He kept that demon caged for so long, but it was thrashing inside him. I saw him touching her, cutting her.”

Eloise’s eyes had taken on a shine; she was staring beyond Maggie as though she was no longer there. But her voice was as steady and unemotional as if she were talking about something she’d seen on television.

“And that’s all I told them. Because that’s what I saw. He later confessed.”

“And now what do you think?”

Eloise lifted a finger, got up, and left the room. When she returned a moment later, she held an envelope in her hand.

“A few days after Tommy Delano died in prison, I received this in the mail. He hanged himself, maybe you remember. It hanged him. That terrible anger.”

Maggie felt a cold shiver, an urge to get up and run. But she stayed rooted in her seat. Outside, the sun had set and it was dark. She felt like they were the only two people in the world.

“This is his suicide note. He sent it to me.”

“Why? Why would he send it to you?”

“He wanted someone to know the truth, to know who he was, what he’d done. He claimed he could feel me inside his head. I don’t know if that was true or not. I doubt it, but I’ve learned not to judge. There are too many things we don’t understand.”

Eloise handed Maggie the letter. As Maggie reached to take it from her, Eloise held on to her hand. Her grip was gentle but firm. Maggie looked up to meet the older woman’s eyes and saw only kindness there.

“I knew you’d come here and want answers one day,” Eloise said. “I knew it the day your mother came to see me.”

Something about her words or her tone brought tears to Maggie’s eyes again. “How could you know that?”

Eloise sat back down and wrapped her arms around herself. “Because I told your mother to stop looking for answers. I told her to accept things the way they were, and let Sarah and Tommy Delano go. I told her that if she didn’t, she’d lose you. I didn’t know the specifics, how or why. I just knew that it was not her place to keep looking, and if she did, she’d pay an awful price.”

The information landed hard and dead center. Maggie remembered what her mother had said to her in the car when she’d asked Elizabeth if Tommy Delano hadn’t killed Sarah, then who had. She’d said, Now, the answer to that might just be what kept me from asking the question in the first place.

But Elizabeth was not a superstitious woman, not one to bow to the prophecy of a psychic. Maggie said as much to Eloise, who offered a deferential nod of her head. Maggie realized that Eloise was a woman accustomed to being disbelieved. It didn’t faze her in the least. The longer Maggie spent with Eloise, the more credible she seemed. Maybe Elizabeth had come to feel the same way.

Maggie held the letter in her hand for a moment, then slipped the page from its envelope. Tommy’s message was written in a looping, childish hand.

Dear Miss Montgomery,

I believe you’re the only person alive who knows me. I can feel your eyes on me and I know you can see who I am, but you don’t judge me. There are things I need to say, things I need you to understand. You see a lot, but you don’t see everything.

I will tell you that I did not kill Sarah Meyer that night. But I’d killed her a hundred times already in as many different ways. I want to tell you that I loved her and that I thought about her all of the time. A lot of times, like you told the police, I followed her. I was nearby when she died. It was an accident. She was with some boys, I won’t say who, and there was a fight. She ran from one of them. And then she fell, hit her head on a rock. They left her there, alone in the dark. So I took her. She belonged to me. I wanted her warm and screaming. But I took her as I found her, so cold and so quiet.

You know what I did to her. You were there. I felt you even though I didn’t understand it at the time. I won’t write those things here. They are nightmares. I hate who I am. I always, always have.

There was pressure to confess. They were at me for hours and hours. But that’s not why I said I killed her. I said I did it because I would have one day. And if not her, then someone else. I couldn’t keep the animal in his cage much longer, especially not after he’d tasted blood. It’s better that I’m here, caged with the other animals. Don’t feel bad that you got it wrong. You were right in all the ways that count.

This is the last anyone will hear from me. And I know no one will miss me. Everyone thinks I’m a monster. I am. I hope my mom is waiting for me. But I doubt it. I remember how she looked before I pushed her down the stairs. I know she loved me. But when she looked at me she was so sad.

Sincerely,

Tommy Delano

Sorrow seemed to leak from the page into her fingers. Maggie found herself thinking of Marshall, another damaged boy turning into a dangerous, unstable man. She thought of Sarah’s violin in her mother’s attic, Charlene weeping on her couch, her mother and husband lying in their hospital beds. She thought of Ricky going off to college, and she was glad that he was going to be far, far away from this place, even though she knew the loss of him was going to lay her low. There was something about The Hollows that held on tight, kept you here though you’d intended to leave, or brought you back when you weren’t paying attention. It made promises that it didn’t keep-safety, peace of mind, tranquillity-until one day you were too tired to even want to find another place to live.

“Did my mother know about this letter? She must have.”

Eloise nodded. “I shared it with her after some time had passed. Even now, I’m not sure why. It only caused her more pain. But I tend to follow my compulsions; I’ve found that there’s usually a reason, even if I never understand it myself.”

Maggie thought of her mother, her will so powerful, her sense of right and wrong so clear. How could she have lived with this?

“Eloise,” Maggie said. “Do you know who killed Sarah?”

Eloise looked out the window over the metal kitchen sink, then back at Maggie.

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

Maggie believed her.