Lisa Unger: Fragile

“I’m so sorry,” he said. He sounded dull, was probably heavily medicated. “I didn’t mean any of it. I hurt my mom, Charlene. Even though I loved them, I still hurt them. It feels like a curse.”

It is a curse , she thought. Violence is a curse; it curdles the blood, damagesthe DNA. From father to son, to son, to son, stretching backward and forward until someone says, No more .

“I know, Marshall. I understand.” She was gripping the phone with both hands.

“He was raping her,” he said. His voice cracked with emotion. He started a frantic ramble that Leila struggled to follow. “My father , even though he knew I loved her. I just started shooting. I couldn’t believe how loud it was. And I was so angry, so afraid. I never would have hurt her. I just wanted someone to talk to. I thought she’d understand. She’s a poet. And then I was firing that gun that I got from my mother’s house.”

He paused and took a shuddering breath. “I wanted to kill my father, Aunt Leila. I thought if he was gone, I’d stop hearing his voice in my head. But instead I killed Grandpa. I didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, God, Marshall.” Finally then, the tears came. A great river of them that flowed from a time before she was even born. And the tears washed in a red tide of anger and grief so powerful it almost took her away.

“I know I’ve done bad things, Aunt Leila. But I don’t think I’m a bad person. I mean, I think I can do better. Dr. Cooper says that we’re more than what we do. That there’s more to us than our mistakes. Do you believe that?”

She took in a sharp inhale. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him say so much. He was a reticent boy, seemed to struggle to put words together so that it was almost painful to talk with him. You wanted to help him finish his sentences.

“I do believe that, Marshall. I do.”

“I know I don’t have a right to ask you. But can you help me, Aunt Leila?”

Part of her didn’t want to. Part of her wanted to end the call and shut him out-him, her brother, her father, all these damaged men who left so much wreckage in their paths. This part of her knew that the best thing was to get as far away, as fast as possible. Just hearing him now, she understood for the first time how sick, how unstable, he was. She didn’t know if the damage could be undone, or even managed. But another part of her, the mother in her, the part of her that wanted to believe that with enough love anyone and anything could change, held on tight.

“I will, Marshall. I will help you. I’ll do anything I can.”

Once upon a time, he’d loved his mother. He remembered loving her, thinking she was the prettiest woman in the world. He loved the smell of her perfume, the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand on his forehead when he was sick. And that love had never died, exactly. It had just been buried, smothered under layers of resentment and anger, shame and emotional exhaustion. But when he thought of Abigail now, all he could feel was a flat, stubborn apathy. Even the negative feelings he’d had for Abigail had long ago burned themselves out. In life, she had been a black hole of need; she’d sucked so much of him into her void that when she died, huge parts of who he might have been went with her-the part of him that knew how to love a child well, the part of him that could bear the peaceful day-to-day of a life lived outside the hurricane of Abigail’s ceaseless health crises and emotional dramas, the part of him that could stand the intimacy of a real relationship.

He watched Matty Bauer being lifted onto the gurney from the collapsed hole in the ground. It was only about twenty feet down, but the light above looked far, far away. He shouldn’t even be down here. The other men had protested his decision; he was barely well enough to be back to work. But he had to go. If that hole was going to cave in on anyone, it was going to cave in on him. Buried alive. He was that already.

With Travis and Melody in jail, and Maggie and Elizabeth finally knowing the full truth of what happened to Sarah that night, Jones felt as though the sky above him was filled with enormous thunderheads, waiting for the slightest drop in pressure to fill his world with light and sound and sheets of rain. But there was only silence. They all held it close, he, Melody, and Travis. They wouldn’t, couldn’t, release their grip on the secrets they’d carried for so long. He suspected that none of them even knew how. The ugly truth of that night had woven itself into their individual self-narratives; none of them even knew who they were without it.

“You must confront and release this, Jones,” Maggie had said to him when he confessed to her. “You cannot carry it with you any longer. How you face it, what you need to do, is up to you. I support you.”

“You want me to tell someone the truth. Admit to the authorities what happened that night.”

She hadn’t answered right away. She’d looked small and sad sitting in the chair beside his bed. Even he didn’t know what the consequences would be, what he would have to answer for now, a lifetime later. It would be up to politicians and lawyers to decide who paid now for what. Sarah Meyer, Tommy Delano, Chief Crosby-even Sarah’s parents-were all dead and gone. Whom did it serve to dredge up the dead? Was it right to resurrect a horror just to ease his guilty conscience through confession and whatever punishment might be doled out? He would at least have to step down from his job, wouldn’t he?

He was guilty of cowardice, of inaction, of allowing an innocent man to be convicted of murder. But Tommy Delano was not an innocent man; he was innocent of murder but guilty of different things. He’d said himself in his letter to Eloise Montgomery that it was only a matter of time before he would fail to control his appetites. Maybe, in a sense, their silence had saved the lives of other girls. But, no, that was a wishful rationalization. They’d done wrong, pure and simple.

“I don’t know what I think you should do,” she’d said finally.

She’d pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged her legs, looked at him with wide eyes. There was something about her expression, like she was preparing herself to say good-bye.

“We’re coming for you, Detective. Hang in there.”

The voice above him brought him back to the moment.

“How’s Matty?” he called up. His words seemed to bounce and spiral. Every so often, small bits of dirt broke off from a ridge and rained down on him.

“He’s okay.” Jones wasn’t sure who was calling down to him. “He’s with his mama, on the way to the hospital.”

“Good. That’s good.”

It was cold and quiet down at the bottom of the hole. Jones found his mind clear here; he could think clearly for the first time in years. There was no place to hide in the quiet solitude, a place he’d avoided at all costs through the years. He always had the television or the radio on, a newspaper or a book in his hand, a glass of wine or beer on the table before him. He’d made a life out of avoiding himself, partaking of any and all of the daily distractions offered in a busy-addicted world. But he knew. He knew himself, knew what he was, knew what he was going to do. Had there ever been any question?

He’d toyed with all the options before him. When Leila Crosby (no, not Crosby; her married name was Leila Lane . Why could he never remember that?) had brought by the jacket she’d found while cleaning out her father’s place, he’d felt as though it had all come full circle. He saw that the jacket was as clean as the day he’d received it, not bloodied and covered with dirt, as he’d imagined all those years. The chief had lied. But it might as well have been soaked in gore; the sight of it made him sick, made him want to weep and scream in pain. He could barely keep himself together in front of Leila.