Lisa Unger - Fragile

She didn’t like the frightened, desperate expression on her mother’s face; she looked unhinged. Charlene nodded her agreement.

“Mom,” she said. But then the garage door was opening, and Melody was backing down the driveway. And then they were gone down the street.

Charlene went inside. Looking back, she didn’t remember feeling anything then. She was just hyperfocused on the task of cleaning all that blood. She went to the computer and looked up how to do it. Then she got some of the cleaning supplies from the laundry room and managed to do a fairly decent job of it, though she thought she could still see the shadow of the stain in the linoleum. After a certain amount of scrubbing with bleach, she felt light-headed and sick. She threw everything-gloves, rags, and scrub brush-in the trash outside.

When she was done, she looked at the clock. It was after seven; she knew Rick was waiting for her at Pop’s. She could call him there, have him come get her right then. But no. She wouldn’t do that. Charlene knew somehow that she’d passed through a doorway with her mother. Rick couldn’t follow her through, and Charlene could never go back with him. Thinking about that, about Rick waiting for her, about how she couldn’t just go and have pizza with him, fool around in the back of his car, laugh and complain about The Hollows and their stupid parents-fear and sadness left her. Anger filled her back up.

She went to her room and threw some things into a backpack. She had almost a thousand dollars in her drawer, rolled up in a plastic Hello Kitty bank saved over years from allowance, birthday, and Christmas money. She stuffed that deep in the bottom of her bag. This was it, the end of her life in The Hollows.

She wrote Rick a note and posted an update on Facebook. She tried to call Steve, the guy she was crushing on in the city, but he didn’t answer. It seemed like a bad omen. But she left a message, convinced herself he’d be waiting when she got there.

She remembered Marshall Crosby had promised her a ride anytime she needed it. She saw the way he looked at her, with a kind of desperate hunger. She knew he’d come and drive her where she needed to go. So she wrote him a message and didn’t wait for a reply. She didn’t want him to come to her house-she needed to be gone before her mother got back. And she needed to walk, to think. So she picked a random point between their houses and figured it would take her a while to walk there.

Then she left her room without a second glance. She remembered thinking that she had to get away from these people, this ugly life, before it killed her. And then she’d walked out into the cold night, alone.

“I did an awful thing, Charlene.”

They hadn’t really talked about that night. When Charlene had asked about Graham, Melody told her that they’d fought again in the car. He’d kicked her out and she’d walked home. He’d said he was going to go hunting and to think about the future of their relationship. He’d gone off and not yet come back, couldn’t be reached on his phone-and good riddance.

But Charlene knew, as daughters do, that this was a lie. Graham was in no condition to get up and fight again after they got him into the cab of his truck. And he was certainly in no shape to kick Melody out and start to drive. But Charlene didn’t call her on it. Besides, she wanted it to be true. She really did.

“What happened to him, Mom?”

Melody blinked at Charlene, as though she wasn’t quite sure what her daughter meant.

Then, “I’m not talking about Graham.”

Charlene felt confused. “Then what? What did you do?”

Melody put the car in reverse and backed out of the Coopers’ drive. Charlene looked up at Rick’s window and saw that it was dark. She wasn’t ready to see him yet, but she found she missed him more than she would have imagined. Maybe love, real love, wasn’t what she thought it was at all. Maybe it wasn’t a brushfire, a shift of tectonic plates. Maybe it was a held hand, a strong shoulder, a soft voice in your ear. Maybe it didn’t change the world; maybe it just made two lives a little better, a little softer, not so horribly lonely.

“I don’t want there to be any more secrets, Charlene. Can I tell you something that I’ve never told anyone?” Her mother wasn’t looking at her but at the road ahead of them.

Charlene was tired, feeling like the load she was carrying was too heavy already. But her mother looked so sad, so alone.

“Of course you can, Mom.”

She reached out for her mother’s hand. And, as she drove them home, Melody told Charlene all about another girl she’d failed, a lifetime ago.

Years earlier, Maggie had watched a documentary about psychics who solved crimes. It was a cable show, low-budget, lots of melodramatic music and bad camera angles. But Maggie watched it because it featured the solving of the Sarah Meyer case, with shots of The Hollows and interviews with people she knew.

It was the psychic, a woman named Eloise Montgomery, who’d led the police to Tommy Delano, who’d claimed to have a vision of Sarah’s murder. She had a connection to Sarah’s family, occasionally cleaned for them and other families in town.

His name begins with T, she told them. A crackling recording of her statement made her voice sound otherworldly and strange. He knows her well. He’s been watching her, wanting her. I see woods, a flight of terror. Oh, God. He’s so angry. She’s so terribly afraid. He’s sick. He wants to be close to women, to girls. But he hates them, too. He hates himself for wanting them .

Eloise claimed to have had visions on the night Sarah disappeared, only to learn the next morning that Sarah was missing. It took a few days for her to convince the police to listen to her, and it was only desperation that caused them to do so.

But there’s more to the story. It’s unclear. It may always be unclear. But I’m sorry. She’s gone. She’s not with us anymore. She’s at peace. The dead see us with loving detachment. There’s no pain for her now. Just music .

Once she said that the killer’s name began with the letter T , suspicion turned immediately to Tommy Delano. He’d been spotted on a road near where the body was found. When they went to question him, he’d already fled.

No one was sure why or how he knew suspicion had turned to him. They found his room full of clippings about Sarah, photographs of her and other girls at the school, her underpants in the trunk of his car. He’d disappeared on foot into the hills behind his house. It was a strange thing to do, when he had a car at his disposal.

He’s scared and tired. He wants to go home. He knows you’re looking for him. He just wants it all to be over. You’re going to find him. Very soon .

And they did. His confession came some hours later.

Eloise Montgomery still made her living as a psychic detective, traveling the world to help police with cold cases and cases that couldn’t be solved. For some reason, her gift was limited to women and young girls-the missing, the murdered, the abducted. Her website made this clear: Please don’t contact me about any other type of case. My talents are very specific. A few years later, after another high-profile case, Eloise had teamed with the retired detective who’d worked Sarah Meyer’s case at the Hollow’s PD, Ray Muldune. Maggie recognized him vaguely from his photograph.

But there’s more to the story. It’s unclear. It may always be unclear . Those were the words Maggie had in her mind as she drove in the twilight out of town. And then there was the odd feeling that lingered from the call she’d made. She’d found Eloise Montgomery’s number on her website and dialed on a whim, expecting to get voice mail. But instead, an older woman answered. Maggie could hear a television in the background, a dog barking somewhere distantly.