Fragile (21 page)

But when Maggie saw him, she just thought he was a sad man, fixing the buses that sat broken in the yard. He didn’t seem frightening, with his narrow shoulders and grease-stained coveralls, barely raising his
eyes from the ground. He
was
in the woods behind the school sometimes, smoking cigarettes.

Sometimes the senior boys would gather around the bus yard fence and taunt him.
Why’d you kill your mom, Tommy boy? How horrible
, Maggie remembered thinking, the children of people he’d gone to school with taunting him over an accident that had killed his mother. As a girl, she just didn’t understand cruelty, didn’t understand why some people felt good about making other people feel bad. Even now, she didn’t understand it much better. Maggie never saw Tommy react. Sometimes he’d just go inside one of the buses until the boys went away on their own or were reprimanded by one of the teachers.

After the first twenty-four hours passed, and Sarah didn’t return home and it was clear she wasn’t hiding out at the homes of any of her friends, Maggie noticed a palpable shift in energy; the twittering nervousness waxed to cold fear. Maggie spent an entire English class distracted by the empty seat near the window that would have been occupied by Sarah. It struck her as so frightening and strange that someone was missing and that Miss Williams still stood at the head of the class, giving her lesson about metaphor, and Vicki and Michelle were passing notes, and Trevor was doodling in his notebook. Maybe it was just a trick of memory, but by the second day—when the squad cars were parked in front of the school and the students were dismissed early—she remembered knowing on some deep level that Sarah wasn’t coming back, and that everything else would move forward anyway.

Maggie couldn’t remember when suspicion turned to Tommy Delano, but it was at some point after the psychic arrived. Eloise Montgomery looked just like anyone’s mom, with a plaid shirt and high-waisted jeans, a brown faux-leather purse clutched to her side. By lunch, the popular girls had already gathered to make fun of her hair, a blunt, unflattering cut that looked like a helmet. There was nothing else notable about her, not a searing gaze or a glowing aura. On her way to biology class last period, Maggie saw the psychic sitting in the music room, talking to Sarah’s teacher. The woman listened intently
to whatever it was that Mr. Landtz was telling her, nodding slowly.

Maggie remembered dining alone that night with her father, who wasn’t much of a cook. They had fast-food hamburgers, eating them off the wrappers without plates. Since Sarah’s disappearance, her mother had come home late and left early—helping the police, consoling the family, and organizing volunteers. Maggie just wished Elizabeth would stay home.

“How are you doing with all of this?” her father wanted to know.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real.”

“Hmm,” he said. “I know what you mean. Things like this never do, I guess.”

The next day Tommy Delano was taken into custody. The evidence against him was circumstantial. Sarah’s mother regularly brought her vehicle into the garage where he worked for service, often with Sarah in tow. Delano had been in the school office, collecting payment, and had had opportunity to hear Sarah’s phone call to her mother saying she’d missed the bus. They found a collection of newspaper clippings about Sarah in an envelope under his bed. Then, in the trunk of his car, they found a pair of underpants, which Mrs. Meyer identified as Sarah’s. By the evening, he’d confessed, just as that late spring snow began to fall. Then he told Chief Crosby where to find her body.

No, there was not a doubt in anyone’s mind that Tommy Delano killed Sarah. That he was waiting for her in the wooded area between Melody’s house and her own.
We met in the woods. She was glad to see me
. That he’d lured her into a vehicle and held her for more than twenty-four hours, hiding with her in an abandoned hunter’s cabin deep in the woods by Old Creek, confessed his love, repeatedly raped her.
I made love to her. She wanted me to
. He cut her face.
I punished her for talking mean
. And then, when her terror and rage started to feel like rejection, he killed her.
She hit me
, he reportedly told Chief Crosby with hurt and indignation in his voice.
I only wanted to love her
.

Tommy Delano was sentenced to life in prison, his time to be served without the possibility of parole. And The Hollows breathed a collective sigh:
It’s over
.

Maggie had waited to feel that sense of relief everyone else seemed to feel. But instead she just kept noticing, all year, that someone else came to fix the buses now. He was a big guy, with broad shoulders and close-cropped hair. The senior boys had nothing to say to him. And Sarah’s seat was empty and the world went on and on without her, as though she’d never been there all.

“You never said anything about this before,” Maggie said now to her mother.

Elizabeth didn’t answer, just kept looking out the window at the people moving slowly into the school.

“Mom?”

She waved a hand at Maggie. “Don’t listen to me. I’m just being silly and maudlin.”

But Elizabeth was not, nor had she ever been, silly or maudlin. Maggie’s mother wasn’t prone to drama, or to listing off regrets. But she did have a habit of forming cement judgments about people and never, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, changing her mind. And even if those judgments were rarely wrong, it was still not a quality Maggie appreciated in her mother. People changed. She knew this to be true, had witnessed it in others and even in herself. Still, something about what Elizabeth said bothered Maggie, caused an uncomfortable ache, made her remember something she couldn’t
quite
remember.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Elizabeth said. “They’re both gone now. At peace, I hope.”

“The evidence was clear.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Of course it was.”

They pulled into the high school parking lot and moved toward the entrance near the auditorium, where the meeting would be held. There were fewer cars than Maggie would have imagined. She’d expected the lot to be full, people milling about outside. But the doors were closed, though she could see people in the hallway through the small square window. She found a spot near Jones’s vehicle and parked.

“It’s snowing.” Maggie helped her mother out of the car. Elizabeth had railed at help until her last fall, which had fractured her hip and left her limping and relying on her cane. Now she grudgingly accepted the assisting hand, the proffered arm.

“So it is,” said Elizabeth. “So it is.”

16

E
lizabeth Monroe had a secret. A thing she’d never told another living soul. It was a place within her, a whole other dimension to her memory that she rarely visited. It was a cold, dead region, which she could forget about altogether, like her husband’s grave. What foolishness it was to visit that place where his poor body was laid. He wasn’t there; his soul didn’t linger. She knew that, but she did her duty to the plot, tended it, laid flowers on the appropriate days: anniversaries of death and marriage, his birthday. Maggie liked to go on Father’s Day (another load of rot, if you asked Elizabeth, these greeting card–generated occasions). Her husband, the only man she’d ever loved, was gone. And visiting his grave did not make her feel closer to him. At all. People, no one tells you when you’re young, fade as time passes without them—all the little qualities and tics, the happy times, the sweet moments, become blurry and vague. It’s the bad things that stay with you, the ugly things that nag.

Nighttime, not the late hours but the gloaming, when the sun was setting and dinner must be prepared and the long evening stretched out before her—that’s when the loneliness settled in like the ache in her hip on a rainy day, when the regrets, the bad memories, sometimes came to call.

She was glad for nights like this, even though the occasion was grim. It gave a purpose to the evening, something outside her own needs. When Maggie had called, she’d invited herself along to the meeting, though she couldn’t be of much help, maybe just a little support for Maggie and Ricky. God knows where Jones might be in all of this, following
up leads, playing the good cop, the town hero. Everyone loved Jones Cooper, always had.

She’d taken her seat toward the front and tried not to eavesdrop on Maggie and Jones.

“I sent a car out to the Crosby home,” he was saying. “There was no one there. Patrol has their eyes open, though I’m using most of the guys for Charlene at the moment, so we’re pretty light out there tonight. And we’ll have someone at the school tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Maggie uncertainly.

“It’s probably nothing.”

“I know. Except whenever anything awful happens, there are always these clues that seem to have piled up that someone’s about to snap. Clues that no one sees, or brushes aside. I don’t want that to happen here.”

Elizabeth’s son-in-law towered over her daughter, had an attentive hand on her arm. “We won’t let anything happen,” he said.

They were perfect for each other, cops and shrinks always on the front lines trying to save a world that doesn’t want to be saved, that tends inexorably toward entropy no matter what anyone does.

“Why are you frowning, Mom?” said Maggie, coming to join her. Elizabeth heard the edge of annoyance in her daughter’s voice.

“What?” said Elizabeth. She felt immediately defensive. “Now you’re policing my thoughts?”

Maggie released a sigh, pressed her mouth into a line. Elizabeth clutched her bag on her lap and squared her shoulders. At a certain point your child starts to think she can tell you what to do, how to be, everything you did wrong your whole life. Maggie was always on Elizabeth for being sour and judgmental. But there was no one on the face of the earth more judgmental of Elizabeth than her own daughter. The irony of this seemed lost on Maggie. She was so open and compassionate, giving and patient with everyone, even strangers—but when it came to her own mother? Maggie gave Elizabeth a hard time even when she managed to hold her tongue—which admittedly wasn’t often.

“Hey, Grandma.”

Ricky slid past her to sit on the other side of Maggie. He leaned in and offered her a light kiss on the cheek as he passed.

“Hello, baby boy.”

Maggie and Ricky immediately started talking about something to do with the computer, and Elizabeth found herself tuning out, scanning the room. Where was everyone? There were about twenty-five people, all gathered in little klatches, leaning in close, gossiping. Henry Ivy stood on the stage; he’d created a time line of events since Charlene’s disappearance. Elizabeth supposed there would be more urgency if Charlene weren’t suspected of running away. But it was a mistake to be so blasé. It was a mistake they’d all made with Sarah. Elizabeth thought it was a kind of innocence back then, a different idea about the world and how things might unfold. Now maybe it was a desensitization; so many things were wrong and violent and frightening, people just couldn’t react properly to everything.

It was Chief Crosby—he was still that to her, though it had been a dog’s age since he wore the shield—who got her thinking about her secret. She saw him sitting there in the front row, eyes trained on Henry Ivy’s time line. He leaned back, pushing his big belly forward almost with a kind of pride at its girth. His legs were spread wide, his arms folded over his chest. As if sensing her eyes on him, he turned and looked straight at her. She held his gaze, lifted a hand in greeting. He gave her a slow nod.

They were so different than they had been, both of them. They were unrecognizable from the young people they had been together. Elizabeth, for one, was surprised when she looked in the mirror and saw an old woman looking back at her. When did it happen? Chief Crosby was no less deteriorated, though he didn’t seem to be shrinking, as she was. He just seemed to be getting wider and rounder. But his eyes were exactly the same—small, mean, and, worst of all, knowing.

What gave her comfort when she did choose to walk that dark terrain, follow the trail of what-ifs and if-onlys, was that she wasn’t the only person in The Hollows with ugly memories and buried secrets. Not by a long shot.

She gave Chief Crosby a cool smile, and he did the same before turning back around as Henry Ivy called for order.

“Maybe people don’t think a runaway is a reason to call a town meeting,” said Henry Ivy, standing on the stage of the auditorium. He spoke softly, but there was something about him, a quiet way he had, that always commanded attention. Maggie felt the familiar rush of affection for him. She respected and trusted Henry, his motives, his caring for the young people of The Hollows. She often wondered why he’d never married, never even, as far as she knew, dated. For some reason, in their friendship, it was a question she could never bring herself to ask. She sensed that he wouldn’t want to answer.

“But when one of our children goes missing, no matter whether she has run away or is taken from us, it’s reason for concern. Many of you suspect that Charlene has left for New York City. A Facebook message has told us so. For some of you, the youngest among us, this seems like a very romantic notion. But it’s not.”

Someone coughed, and there was a murmur of activity toward the back of the room. Henry looked into the gathering—Charlene’s friends and their parents, mainly, one of Charlene’s teachers, a few people Maggie didn’t recognize.

“Is Melody here?” Henry asked.

Jones walked to the top of the center aisle. “Melody is helping some of our men look through her home for any evidence about where Charlene might be headed,” he said, purposely vague.

But even that was enough to cause a few heads to lean together, some whispering. Maggie saw Amber pull out her cell phone and start tapping on the keyboard. She turned to look at her husband. On her arrival, he’d updated her briefly about Graham, about the search at the Murray home, but he wouldn’t mention that here, knowing that the information would spread quickly, become unmanageable. Maggie herself didn’t know what to make of it. It was inconceivable that Charlene and Graham would have run off together. And, loser that he was, Graham
still wasn’t the type to abscond with a minor. But Maggie had known Graham forever; he was really just a buffoon, harmless. Or so she’d always thought.