Lisa Unger - Fragile

Chuck stood, put up two placating palms. “There are detectives at your house right now, going through Charlene’s room, looking at her computer, trying to figure out where she might have gone.”

Melody looked confused for a minute. “At my house? I didn’t give permission for that.”

“When we realized that Graham was missing, that the credit card on Charlene’s account belonged to him, that her friends seemed to feel she was afraid of him, we obtained a warrant from a judge. We don’t need your permission, Melody,” Jones said.

He might have handled someone else differently. Someone he liked, trusted, respected. Someone he didn’t know as well as he knew Melody Murray. He might have asked her permission before obtaining a warrant. Most parents of runaways would throw open their doors. But he didn’t ask. Whether he’d acted on instinct or bias, he couldn’t be sure.

He felt her eyes on him, and he looked back at her, daring her to open her mouth in front of Chuck, who was looking back and forth between them. Chuck was too smart, too canny, not to be picking up on the subtext. But Melody didn’t say anything else; she just turned and stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the thin walls.

Jones got up after a beat and pulled on his jacket. He’d follow her home, see what the other detectives had found there.

“Lots of history in this town, huh?” said Chuck, trailing behind.

Jones didn’t feel inclined to answer.

She wouldn’t write that, Mom.”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know. But think about it. ‘Charlene is large and in charge’? She would never use such clichéd language.”

But Charlene was a cliché, a living cliché, though Ricky and Charlene herself were both too young to realize it. Maggie didn’t say as much, of course. And he was right; it didn’t really sound like Charlene. She didn’t say that, either. The day was starting to take its toll. She had a low-grade ache behind her eyes, a fatigue-induced nausea.

“Ricky,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen table. It was a small banquette, tucked into a window seat. Behind them outside, leaves fell in streamers of red, orange, gold, and brown. They’d sat together at this table since he was a baby, first in a high chair, then in a booster seat, then beside her. She remembered all the milled vegetables she used to make-peas, carrots, squash. Then it was grilled cheese, peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese-the happy, clean, innocent foods of childhood.

Now he sat across from her, watching her with the same intensity he’d had since he was a child. When he wanted something from her, he was relentless. Right now, he wanted her to tell him that Charlene had not broken up with him and run away to some imaginary life in New York City without so much as a backward glance. At the moment, he wanted to believe that something had happened to take her away. Even though Maggie was certain he didn’t understand the ramifications of wishing such a thing. He didn’t really know what that would mean.

“The best thing we can do right now is avoid jumping to conclusions. We need to keep the lines of communication open for Charlene so when she does reach out-and I believe she will-we’re here for her.” With her thumbnail, she chipped away at some dried piece of food on the wood surface of the table. It was only the three of them. Why was it so hard to keep things clean?

“But what if she can’t reach out? I mean, everyone has assumed that she ran away, but what if something else happened to her?”

He seemed to have forgotten altogether about the message she’d written him. Maggie thought about reminding him, but then decided against it. She reached across the table and put her hand on his. Her eyes drifted to the tattoo. It still looked red and inflamed. She looked away and tried to catch his eye.

“Your father and the rest of the department are looking for her. They’re not just blowing her off as a runaway. They’re investigating the disappearance. We have to trust them to do their jobs well.” She stopped short, too, of telling him about Graham’s being missing as well, about the credit card on Charlene’s cell phone account. It wasn’t yet public knowledge anyway, and it would only hurt or frighten him further.

He started kicking the bottom of the banquette with his heel. It made a hollow knocking noise. He’d always done this absently, when he was reading or thinking. It drove Jones crazy.

“He hates her,” he said.

She felt a flash of something; her cheeks went hot. “No, he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.”

“You know he does.”

“You don’t understand your father,” she said. She released a tired breath. “Sometimes he doesn’t know how to show fear or concern. It just comes off like anger or judgment. He cares about people. He helps them. That’s who he is.”

Her son turned angry, dark eyes on her. “Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t understand him.”

He got up from the table before she had a chance to respond.

“He’s probably glad Charlene’s gone,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Stop it,” she said. She reached for him as he moved toward the door. He slipped out of her grasp. In the turned-up corners of his eyebrows she saw the depth of his sadness. It wasn’t just about Charlene. She felt her heart clenching.

“He doesn’t care about people,” Ricky said, his voice coming up an octave. “He doesn’t care about Charlene. He doesn’t even care about me.”

“Your father loves you.” It sounded lame, and she hated having to say it. She shouldn’t have to convince him; he should know it. Why didn’t he?

He turned in the doorway. “I know you believe that, Mom. I guess the problem is that I don’t.”

“Ricky,” she said. But he was already heading fast down the hallway. By the time she reached the front door, he was getting in his car. She walked out after him, bracing herself against the cold air. The sky was a flat, dead gray. The air tingled with the promise of snow, though just yesterday they’d all been wilting, wondering if fall would ever come.

“Where are you going?” He was sitting in the car Jones had helped him buy for his birthday, a restored Pontiac GTO. Ricky bought the gas, paid the insurance. She couldn’t keep him from leaving. She felt small, weak, unable to control anything in her life, including her own child.

“I have to work,” he said.

That was a relief, at least, a sign that he was not going off the rails. He’d been working at the same music store since he was fifteen. Sound Design sold CDs, books, high-quality instruments; it had been there since she was a kid, sitting in a strip mall off the main highway that ran through town. She still thought of it as a record shop, which made Ricky laugh. He was helping them to design a website to keep the store more current, to keep it from going the way of all small businesses being dwarfed by Internet giants. She’d gone to school with the owner, Larry Schwartz, who’d inherited the store from his father.

For a second she’d thought Ricky was headed out to find Charlene. And there would have been nothing she could do to stop him. That was exactly what they’d feared, that chasing Charlene would lead him off the path, into the woods. She put a hand on his arm.

“I know how hard this is. I’m afraid for her, too,” she said. “Just try to stay calm. Don’t do anything crazy,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Just stay put, Ricky. She’ll come back when she’s ready. She’ll call you.”

Warm air drifted from the car. She heard a mournful strain of music she didn’t recognize from the radio.

“And what if she can’t? What if something has happened to her?”