Fragile

Everyone thought that. But it wasn’t true.

“Hey, let me ask you something,” he called after her. She stopped and turned.

“I gotta get my girl something. What’s the best gift anyone ever bought you?”

She walked back over to the car, happy for an opportunity to end their encounter on a more positive note. He turned on the interior lights, and she moved toward the open passenger-side window. Closer, she saw that the upholstery was grimy, literally black along the edges and in the creases. Even from where she stood she could smell the reek of years-puke, cigarettes, fast food. She’d been about to lean into the car, but instead she found herself recoiling. Not at the filth, necessarily, but at the unpleasant unfamiliarity of it all-this boy with his ill-fitting clothes and bad skin, his old car, the ugly odor. She knew instinctively that she didn’t belong in his world and was glad for it.

“Who’s your girl?” she asked, moving back again.

“You wouldn’t know her.”

Figured. There probably wasn’t any girl; she knew that.

“The best gift I ever got was a pair of diamond earrings, from my parents.” She knew she sounded haughty, like the snob everyone thought she was.

“From a dude,” he said with a sneer. “From your boyfriend. What’s his name-Josh?”

The question made her a little angry, a little self-conscious. Everybody knew, didn’t they, that she and Josh had broken up? She’d caught him flirting with another girl on Facebook, leaving sweet, sexy notes on her message board. I love your pix. You’re such a cutie! Can I have your number? Josh swore it wasn’t him, was still calling every day.

Just thinking about it made heat come to her cheeks. Everyone had been talking about the breakup all week. She was certain that even her best friends were gossiping about it behind her back, consoling her, then laughing about it together. Amber knew Tiffany had her eyes on Josh, too. Was he making fun of her?

“A locket,” she lied. “A gold locket with his picture inside.” It was the kind of gift she would have liked from Josh, something grown-up, something with meaning. But he always gave her drugstore teddy bears and supermarket flowers, boxes of candy she wouldn’t dream of eating. Of course, she was always grateful. Aw, Josh! You’re so sweet. Thank you soooo much.

He nodded. “That’s cool,” he said. “I like that.”

He didn’t say anything else, just kept his eyes on her. She noticed the stubble on his jaw, the size of his hands. He reached for the cigarettes, and she moved away from the car and headed toward her house again. She heard the engine start, and she broke into a run for home. She couldn’t say for sure what scared her, but she didn’t stop running until she reached her front door. She pushed on the great knob and walked into the tall, bright foyer. She could smell her mother’s tomato sauce, heavy with garlic and basil. She locked the door and looked out the window. She watched him drive slowly by, then gun the engine and rumble off.

“Josh called. Again,” her mother said from the kitchen. Amber thought tonight she might call him back. She didn’t like not having a boyfriend. As she walked toward the kitchen, she wondered suddenly if Marshall Crosby had been there to see Justin at all.

7

Rinsing the dishes, Maggie cut her finger on a chip in one of the dinner plates, and she bled into the soapy water. It looked like nothing, little more than a paper cut, but she couldn’t stop the bleeding. She put her finger in her mouth, tasting the salty sweetness of her blood, a little soap. The offending dish was a piece from the casual dining set they’d received at their wedding, a discontinued line of Royal Doulton stoneware. She wondered how it had chipped.

“You okay?” asked Jones, coming up behind her.

“Yeah,” she said, showing him her finger. He lifted it to his mouth and gave it a little kiss. Then he finished loading the dishes in the dishwasher as she pressed a dry napkin against the cut until the bleeding stopped. She wiped the countertop with a tattered old dishrag that needed replacing, passing it quickly over the appliances, too, just like she would have had to do in her mother’s home. Keep on top of the surfaces and your house will always look clean, her mother would say. Upstairs, Ricky’s music had stopped. He’d never come down for dinner, and Jones had told her to leave him alone, let him sulk it out-whatever it was.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and Charlene dumped him,” Jones said, starting the dishwasher.

“Jones.”

“Well?”

He poured them each a glass of red wine, the merlot they’d opened last night, and she followed him out to the deck, even though she thought it was too cold to sit outside. She didn’t like to miss their ritual if she could help it. Maybe it was the wine, or the semidark in which they sat, but in recent years, this place after dinner was where he was most open, most relaxed. Later, the television would go on and he’d blank out. Maybe she’d sit beside him and watch whatever he had on-usually something on the Discovery or History Channel; he wasn’t into sports, didn’t like other television shows, or even movies for that matter. Or maybe she’d go to bed and read or maybe, if she had a lot of paperwork, back to her office.

She’d told him about Marshall over dinner, the scene in her office, how he’d appeared across the street. She’d mentioned Travis as well, his new business endeavor.

“As if anyone in this town would hire Travis Crosby,” said Jones. “You’d have to be the biggest moron alive to bring that guy into your business.”

Her husband had always disliked Travis, though she remembered that in high school they’d played on the lacrosse team together, been occasional friends. They’d both joined the police department in the same year, Travis staying on the street, Jones moving over to the small detective division and eventually rising to head detective, a post he’d held for ten years.

Travis had been pulled over on the interstate, driving the wrong way at more than eighty miles an hour, blood alcohol over 0.2, his service revolver exposed on the seat beside him. Had he been in The Hollows, the incident would have been swept aside. But he was unlucky enough to run into a state trooper. It was his third offense in a decade, and this meant mandatory jail time, as well as the loss of his job.

“I don’t know if that guy is more dangerous on or off the job. But I guess we’ll see soon enough,” said Jones.

“I’m worried about Marshall.”

“You do what you can for him, Mags. But keep your distance. You’re his doctor, not his friend. It’s a professional relationship.”

He was right, but she still bristled at the comment. She quashed the urge to snap at him. You think I don’t know how to keep a professional distance? But after the fight last night, she was weary of angry words. It had started with Ricky about the tattoo, then morphed into something larger between the two of them. It was the old argument about how he was too hard and she was too easy, how she always took Ricky’s side and he was always the bad guy. Thinking about it, she couldn’t even remember who said what, the memory was just an angry blur, like a landscape seen through the window of a car driving too fast. They’d been up late arguing and finally come to grudging peace before bed. She didn’t want another night like that.

He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t be mad,” he said. “I know you care about your patients. I just need you to protect yourself, too.”

Her annoyance dissolved instantly. “I know,” she said. “You’re right.”

She knew where the professional line was in terms of behavior, of course. But she didn’t seem to have a stopgap internally, didn’t always know when or how to stop caring on a personal level. It left her feeling drained sometimes, though she was better at protecting herself than she had been when she was younger.

“What about you?” she asked. She shifted in her seat, thinking the cushions were getting stiff and needed replacing. “Are you doing okay?”

There were leaves floating in the pool. They’d need to have someone out to clean and winterize, cover it for the season. Every autumn, she thought about her private promise to swim laps every day in the summer, enjoy the pool more on the weekends. And at the end of every season, she looked back with regret, thinking she could count