Fragile (40 page)

Chief, please. It’s Christmas
, her mother said. Even she called him Chief. At some point, it had become his name. There were pictures of him young—in uniform, at their wedding. He was handsome once, strong and virile with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He had a wide forehead and a wide, long nose that somehow looked right on his face. But those eyes. Those ice water eyes, they were always small and narrowed, as though he saw through your skin and flesh to every bad and rotten thing that even you didn’t know was there. She didn’t know what it was like to be loved by her father, to be held and comforted, to be adored like they say little girls should be. He’d never once told her he loved her, never hugged or kissed her except in the most awkward way. She’d given up wanting or hoping for that long ago. But the knowledge that his life had passed the way it had, leaving her with only an empty space inside where he should have been, slumped her thin shoulders, drained her of energy. Still no tears, no sadness at all.

“You grieved years ago,” her husband had said. “He’s been dead all your life, honey.” Mark was right. He was always right.

She saw her warped reflection in the picture tube, ran a hand through her dark hair, which had pulled away in strands from her ponytail. There was a smudge of dust under her right eye. She wiped it away.

“Mom?” It was Ryan. “You okay?”

He sat down heavily beside her, threw his feet onto the coffee table, making the candy dish rattle. She was about to scold him. But why? He could jump up and down on that table, reduce it to scrap, shatter that dish beneath his boots and what did she care? What did anyone care? It was all garbage. She wouldn’t keep a thing.

She looked at her son. She remembered when he was a tiny bundle in her arms. Now when she reprimanded him, she had to look up at him. Sometimes when she needed to get tough, she tried to do it from
halfway up the staircase, to give herself more height.
Ryan and Tim, clean up those rooms! You’re a half hour past curfew! You’re grounded!

But they were good boys. They listened to her. She’d managed to keep them away from Travis and her father, kept them closer to Mark’s family, where men treated their loved ones with affection and respect, not distance or violence. In marrying Mark, she’d broken the chain of misery and violence for her family. She was proud of that.

“Look what I found in the closet upstairs,” said Ryan. He still had sun on his skin from his summer job as a swim teacher and lifeguard at a local sleepaway camp. On his lap was a varsity jacket,
HOLLOWS HIGH LACROSSE
.

“Your uncle’s, I guess.”

Ryan shook his head and flipped it over. The embroidered name on the front was
JONES COOPER
. It looked new, the white leather arms still shiny, the navy blue wool body still stiff and pristine.

“Hmm,” she said. “That’s strange. How did that get here?”

Ryan offered a shrug, his communication of choice. “I bet he wants it.”

“I’ll bet he does. Put it in the car. I’ll bring it over to their house tomorrow.”

As Ryan crashed off—what was it with those boys, why did their very existence create so much noise?—she thought guiltily of her last conversation with Maggie Cooper. Leila had hung up on a good doctor who was trying to help her nephew. She wondered if Maggie understood why she’d had to do that. She’d taken a big risk by reaching out to Marshall, by exposing the boys to a disaster Travis had created. She only did it because she knew they were all strong enough to help Marshall—as long as Travis was out of the picture.

Was she in some way responsible for what had happened—the abducted girl, the murder of her father? Now her brother was missing, probably still on the property somewhere. She walked onto the porch and heard the rotting wood groan; one of them could step right through some of those old boards if they weren’t careful. She leaned against the railing and looked out into the thick stand of trees. The sky above was clear and riven with stars, the moon waning. It was a pretty watercolor night in a place where she’d never found beauty or love or comfort. And the sight of the black trees
left her cold and angry. She’d have this place on the market as fast as she possibly could. They’d make a fortune on the land alone. And she’d use some of that money to help her nephew. She wouldn’t leave him to the system. Lord knew Marshall’s mother, Angie, wasn’t going to be of much help.

Leila heard the calling of a barred owl, eight sad notes on the air.
Who mourns for you? Who mourns for you?
She thought about yelling Travis’s name into the night. But she knew, even if he could hear her, he wouldn’t come. There was no connection there, their sibling relationship strained and confused by their father’s abuse, their mother’s failures. They didn’t know how to be family for each other; they’d never been taught. Angie, for all her many shortcomings, had called it years ago.
You two aren’t even speaking the same language. The old man never hit you, never humiliated you. You might be brother and sister, but you didn’t grow up with the pressure of being the chief’s only son
.

In her pocket, Leila’s cell phone started to vibrate, startling her. She pulled it from her jeans and looked at the screen: Hollows General Hospital. She answered quickly.

“Aunt Leila?” A young voice on the line, sounding faint and afraid.

“Marshall.”

She was surprised by the wave of relief she felt at the sound of his voice. His voice always sounded sweet to her ears. Even now, with the knowledge of all that he had done and all that he had become as Travis’s child, she could still remember when he was born. She could remember when they were all born—Marshall, Ryan, and Tim—how it was in their wide eyes and round cheeks that sweet innocence resided. Sometimes, especially when they slept, she could still see the light of childhood on Ryan’s and Tim’s resting faces. Her boys had been sheltered, adored, blessed with good looks and charming personalities. Because of this, they were younger than their years. They slept on their backs, arms slung wide open, faces slack and peaceful. Marshall slept curled up in a ball, a frown on his face, blankets wrapped around him like a protective cover.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. He sounded dull, was probably heavily medicated. “I didn’t mean any of it. I hurt my mom, Charlene. Even though I loved them, I still hurt them. It feels like a curse.”

It
is
a curse
, she thought.
Violence is a curse; it curdles the blood, damages
the DNA. From father to son, to son, to son, stretching backward and forward until someone says, No more
.

“I know, Marshall. I understand.” She was gripping the phone with both hands.

“He was
raping
her,” he said. His voice cracked with emotion. He started a frantic ramble that Leila struggled to follow. “My
father
, even though he knew I loved her. I just started shooting. I couldn’t believe how loud it was. And I was so angry, so afraid. I never would have hurt her. I just wanted someone to talk to. I thought she’d understand. She’s a poet. And then I was firing that gun that I got from my mother’s house.”

He paused and took a shuddering breath. “I wanted to kill my father, Aunt Leila. I thought if he was gone, I’d stop hearing his voice in my head. But instead I killed Grandpa. I didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, God, Marshall.” Finally then, the tears came. A great river of them that flowed from a time before she was even born. And the tears washed in a red tide of anger and grief so powerful it almost took her away.

“I know I’ve done bad things, Aunt Leila. But I don’t think I’m a bad person. I mean, I think I can do better. Dr. Cooper says that we’re more than what we do. That there’s more to us than our mistakes. Do you believe that?”

She took in a sharp inhale. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him say so much. He was a reticent boy, seemed to struggle to put words together so that it was almost painful to talk with him. You wanted to help him finish his sentences.

“I do believe that, Marshall. I do.”

“I know I don’t have a right to ask you. But can you help me, Aunt Leila?”

Part of her didn’t want to. Part of her wanted to end the call and shut him out—him, her brother, her father, all these damaged men who left so much wreckage in their paths. This part of her knew that the best thing was to get as far away, as fast as possible. Just hearing him now, she understood for the first time how sick, how unstable, he was. She didn’t know if the damage could be undone, or even managed. But another part of her, the mother in her, the part of her that wanted to believe that with enough love anyone and anything could change, held on tight.

“I will, Marshall. I will help you. I’ll do anything I can.”

29

O
nce upon a time, he’d loved his mother. He
remembered
loving her, thinking she was the prettiest woman in the world. He loved the smell of her perfume, the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand on his forehead when he was sick. And that love had never died, exactly. It had just been buried, smothered under layers of resentment and anger, shame and emotional exhaustion. But when he thought of Abigail now, all he could feel was a flat, stubborn apathy. Even the negative feelings he’d had for Abigail had long ago burned themselves out. In life, she had been a black hole of need; she’d sucked so much of him into her void that when she died, huge parts of who he might have been went with her—the part of him that knew how to love a child well, the part of him that could bear the peaceful day-to-day of a life lived outside the hurricane of Abigail’s ceaseless health crises and emotional dramas, the part of him that could stand the intimacy of a real relationship.

He watched Matty Bauer being lifted onto the gurney from the collapsed hole in the ground. It was only about twenty feet down, but the light above looked far, far away. He shouldn’t even be down here. The other men had protested his decision; he was barely well enough to be back to work. But he had to go. If that hole was going to cave in on anyone, it was going to cave in on him. Buried alive. He was that already.

With Travis and Melody in jail, and Maggie and Elizabeth finally knowing the full truth of what happened to Sarah that night, Jones felt as though the sky above him was filled with enormous thunderheads, waiting for the slightest drop in pressure to fill his world with light and sound and sheets of rain. But there was only silence. They all held it
close, he, Melody, and Travis. They wouldn’t, couldn’t, release their grip on the secrets they’d carried for so long. He suspected that none of them even knew how. The ugly truth of that night had woven itself into their individual self-narratives; none of them even knew who they were without it.

“You must confront and release this, Jones,” Maggie had said to him when he confessed to her. “You cannot carry it with you any longer. How you face it, what you need to do, is up to you. I support you.”

“You want me to tell someone the truth. Admit to the authorities what happened that night.”

She hadn’t answered right away. She’d looked small and sad sitting in the chair beside his bed. Even he didn’t know what the consequences would be, what he would have to answer for now, a lifetime later. It would be up to politicians and lawyers to decide who paid now for what. Sarah Meyer, Tommy Delano, Chief Crosby—even Sarah’s parents—were all dead and gone. Whom did it serve to dredge up the dead? Was it right to resurrect a horror just to ease his guilty conscience through confession and whatever punishment might be doled out? He would at least have to step down from his job, wouldn’t he?

He was guilty of cowardice, of inaction, of allowing an innocent man to be convicted of murder. But Tommy Delano was not an innocent man; he was innocent of murder but guilty of different things. He’d said himself in his letter to Eloise Montgomery that it was only a matter of time before he would fail to control his appetites. Maybe, in a sense, their silence had saved the lives of other girls. But, no, that was a wishful rationalization. They’d done wrong, pure and simple.

“I don’t know what I think you should do,” she’d said finally.

She’d pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged her legs, looked at him with wide eyes. There was something about her expression, like she was preparing herself to say good-bye.

“We’re coming for you, Detective. Hang in there.”

The voice above him brought him back to the moment.

“How’s Matty?” he called up. His words seemed to bounce and spiral.
Every so often, small bits of dirt broke off from a ridge and rained down on him.

“He’s okay.” Jones wasn’t sure who was calling down to him. “He’s with his mama, on the way to the hospital.”

“Good. That’s good.”

It was cold and quiet down at the bottom of the hole. Jones found his mind clear here; he could think clearly for the first time in years. There was no place to hide in the quiet solitude, a place he’d avoided at all costs through the years. He always had the television or the radio on, a newspaper or a book in his hand, a glass of wine or beer on the table before him. He’d made a life out of avoiding himself, partaking of any and all of the daily distractions offered in a busy-addicted world. But he knew. He knew himself, knew what he was, knew what he was going to do. Had there ever been any question?

He’d toyed with all the options before him. When Leila Crosby (no, not Crosby; her married name was Leila
Lane
. Why could he never remember that?) had brought by the jacket she’d found while cleaning out her father’s place, he’d felt as though it had all come full circle. He saw that the jacket was as clean as the day he’d received it, not bloodied and covered with dirt, as he’d imagined all those years. The chief had lied. But it might as well have been soaked in gore; the sight of it made him sick, made him want to weep and scream in pain. He could barely keep himself together in front of Leila.

“What in the world was it doing there, Jones?”

“I have no idea. Maybe Travis took it? I lost a jacket in my senior year. Did my mom ever go ballistic, having to fork over another hundred and fifty dollars.” Lies came so easily to him; they always had.