Lisa Unger - Fragile

On the night her body was found, Jones moved Sarah’s things deep into the attic of his mother’s house. She never went up there, and even if she did, she’d pretend not to see, because that’s who she was.

He knew he should have been rid of those things, burned them or driven them far from The Hollows, somewhere they’d never be found. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. As long as he held on to them, he could hold on to hope, too. Hope that he might find the courage to do the right thing, to be the man he wanted to be, the man he should have been. But that day never came. He was a coward. He had always been that, just like his father. His father couldn’t manage the simplest thing, just to be around for his family. He didn’t have the strength for even that. Why should his son be any different?

Jones never said a word. Even when the psychic fingered Tommy Delano and he told them where the body was, so far from where Sarah had actually died. Even when he learned that someone had mutilated Sarah, cut her with razors, sexually violated her, he stayed silent. Who had done those things to her? He thought of her, so pretty and so sweet, so strong and honest. He could barely stand to think of her as he’d seen her in the open casket, gaping wounds in her face filled with putty, bloated, unnatural. He knew how Sarah had died. Travis hadn’t violated her. Unless… unless he’d come back later and done those things to her while she lay bleeding? But he wasn’t that, was he? He couldn’t have done those things, could he?

Jones never understood Tommy Delano’s role in it all, why he’d say he killed her when he didn’t. Through the confession, the trial, the sentencing-they all stayed quiet. Only once, after Sarah’s viewing, did Jones and Melody Murray ever discuss the horror of it all. She was waiting by his car. He’d parked far down the road from the funeral home, and she stood in the dark by the trees.

“What do you want, Mel?” he said. He didn’t look up at her, just unlocked the car door.

“I need a ride.” He opened the door, considered getting inside and driving away without a word. He didn’t want to be close to her, to talk to her. But he couldn’t leave another girl alone in the night.

“Get in,” he said. And she did.

He pulled onto the road; behind him people milled out of the funeral home, returning to their cars, going home stunned and horrified.

“Why would they have her like that?” Melody asked. “Why did they want us to look at her face?”

She looked sunken, wrecked by grief and fear.

“Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“Where’s yours?” she shot back.

Then there was quiet, a horrible quiet between them, when they both realized how alone they were with their dark knowledge.

“Who did all of that to her, Jones? Who cut her that way? Who raped her? Tommy Delano didn’t kill her. Did he do those things?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“I heard there are over two hundred cuts on her body.”

“Stop it.”

“We did wrong by her, Jones. We left her there.”

“You wanted to leave her there.” He pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car.

“No.” She shook her head. “No.” Then she started to cry. “I was so scared,” she wailed. “I was so scared.”

He took a deep breath and, for an ugly moment, wished that Melody had been the one to die that night, that Sarah was sitting beside him. She wouldn’t be hysterical; she would be strong, brave. She’d have done the right thing, the good thing, that night. She wouldn’t have left her friend behind to be scavenged and violated. But the truth was that the only one of them who was any good at all was gone forever.

“Don’t ever talk about it, Melody. Don’t ever tell a soul. And don’t ever bring it up to me again. She’s gone. Nothing we do will change that now. Nothing.”

Melody looked at him with such naked despair that he looked away. Every time he looked at her again over the years, that was the expression he saw. It was always there, right beneath the surface. But she never talked about Sarah again, not to him.

Later, when Tommy Delano hanged himself in prison, his death created a seal that could not be broken.

The Crosby boathouse was in worse shape than the carriage house had been, on a dramatic tilt to the left. When Jones entered, he saw that the roof was riven with holes, the sky visible in jagged patches. The wood beneath him groaned under his weight. The lake water lapped against the dock, and the boat, loosely tied, knocked a slow beat against the rubber bumper surrounding the slip.

“Crosby,” he said, making his voice boom. “You missed. A bad shot even at point-blank range.”

His voice bounced back at him. He sounded strong, powerful. But he was scared, heart hammering. Everything was shadows; Travis could step out, gun drawn, from anywhere.

On the dock, down by the stern, Jones saw what looked like a pile of sailcloth. As he moved closer, he realized that it was the chief, his giant chest and belly rising like a mountain. Jones heard a horrible wheezing, a deep rattle coming from the old man. In the dim light, the blood spilling from his center was black.

Jones knelt down beside him. He knew that blank look, the stare of eyes that were already seeing something the living cannot. He put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. He knew he should be feeling something-compassion, regret, sorrow-something other than the cold indifference he often felt in the face of suffering.

“Where’s my jacket, old man?” Jones asked.

It was all he could think to say. The other man moved his jaw, as if to say something, but then he just sighed. And Jones could swear that, just before Chief Crosby released his final rattling breath, he smiled. Then he felt something, the bile of rising hatred. Hatred for Chief Crosby and what he’d asked all of them to do years ago, and hatred for himself for having done it.

“Is he dead?”

Jones spun around with the rifle. There was a dark form at the entrance to the boathouse.

“Don’t move,” said Jones. “Put your hands in the air.”

The figure quickly complied. “Jones, it’s me. Henry Ivy.”

Jones felt a wave of relief. “What are you doing here, Ivy?”

“I came with Maggie.”

He said this as though it should make some sense. There was a mist descending around Jones. He found himself hyperfocusing on the sound of the water hitting the dock, the strange scent coming off the chief. Why was Ivy riding around with his wife in the middle of the night? But Jones found himself nodding. Of course she wouldn’t wait alone by the phone. She could never do that. And who else would she call to ride shotgun but Ivy? Her childhood friend who she was too naïve to know had loved her for decades.

“Where is she?” Jones asked, lowering his gun. “Where’s my wife?”

“With Marshall,” Ivy said. He moved into the light. “Are you hurt, Jones?”

“Is she okay? Is Maggie all right?”

“She’s fine. She’s taking care of Marshall. Is the chief… dead?”

“Looks that way,” Jones said, glancing back down at the body.

He wondered if Ivy had heard the question he asked of the chief, wondered if it would mean anything to him if he had. Ivy was staring at the body on the dock, his expression blank. Jones wondered if anyone would cry for Chief Crosby, and if it was his son or his grandson who’d killed him.

“I need you to call for backup,” said Jones.

“Already done. As soon as we saw your vehicle, we called 911.”

Jones could hear the wail of sirens then.

“You don’t look well, Jones. Let me help you.”

“Travis shot me.”