Fragile

armed.”

“I don’t want to call the police on my son, Dr. Cooper.”

“You don’t have a choice. This is not just about Marshall anymore.”

Maggie found herself staring at a picture of Ricky, Jones, and her that hung on the opposite wall. Ricky was maybe three at the time. They were all dressed up, smiling. She used to think when Ricky was small how hard it was to protect him-from falls, from disappointments-how she worried about things like what he was eating and whether he was watching too much television. Compared with the things that came later, that time seemed idyllic and innocent. It was amazing how many different ways you could fail your child without even realizing it.

“Angie,” said Maggie, trying for a tone that was calm but stern, “report the guns stolen and alert the police in your area, in case he’s still nearby. And I’ll do the same here in The Hollows.”

The other woman was silent; Maggie could hear her breathing.

“Angie.”

“I thought you would want to help him,” she said, sounding petulant and angry now. Poor Marshall, Maggie thought. Did he ever have a chance with parents like this?

“This is helping him. We’re helping him not to hurt others or himself.” Was it not obvious?

“Okay,” Angie said. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

Maggie heard Angie slam the phone down hard and fought back a tide of anger.

She dialed Jones first and got no answer, left a message on his voice mail. Then she called the nonemergency number at the precinct and alerted Cheryl, the woman who answered, to the situation with Marshall. Then she called Chuck, for lack of any other options. His number was posted over the phone.

“Ferrigno,” he answered. He somehow managed to infuse fatigue and annoyance into the syllables of his name.

“It’s Maggie.”

“What’s up?”

She told him about Marshall and the stolen guns. “Does Jones know about this?” asked Chuck when she was finished.

“No, I can’t reach him.”

“Okay. I have to go.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“Just stay put, Maggie. I’ll call you in a while.”

He ended the call then without another word. In her frustration at being hung up on again, Maggie slammed the phone down on the table, releasing a little roar of anger. She got up and grabbed her purse from the counter. She couldn’t just sit there waiting for a phone call for the rest of the night. She had to do something. She didn’t know what. She dug around for her cell phone and, when she found it, realized that it was dead. She’d charge it in the car.

But before she headed out the door, something made her turn around and pick up the phone again. She glanced at the clock as she dialed the number she, for whatever reason, knew by heart, though she rarely had reason to call Henry Ivy at home. Maybe it was because he’d had the same number since he was a kid, living in the house where he grew up, though his parents had long ago retired to Florida. He answered quickly, sounding alert and wide awake.

“It’s Maggie.”

“Maggie. What’s wrong?”

“I’m coming to get you. I need your help.”

She heard the squeaking of his mattress, the pushing back of sheets. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be ready.”

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