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Precious and Fragile Things

MEGAN HART
Precious and Fragile Things

First, to my friends and family who read this book in its many stages—thank you.

It’s a better book because of you.

To my agent Laura Bradford for not curling her lip when I first told her about the book, and for believing in it all along.

To Superman—

I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.

Thanks for catching the kids.

To my spawn—

I love you both, even if I did throw you out the window as “research.”

As always, I could write without music, but I’m ever so grateful I don’t have to. Much appreciation goes to the following artists whose songs made up the playlist for this book. Please support their music through legal sources.

“Give it Away”—Quincy Coleman

“Take Me Home”—Lisbeth Scott and Nathan Barr

“Everything”—Lifehouse

“This Woman’s Work”—Kate Bush

“You’ve Been Loved”—Joseph Arthur

“Iris”—Goo Goo Dolls

“Look After You”—The Fray

“The End”—The Doors

“One Last Breath”—Creed

“A Home for You”—Kaitlin Hopkins, Deven May

“Over My Head”—Christopher Dallman

And a special thanks to Jason Manns, whose version of “Hallelujah” wasn’t there when I started the book but was there all through the end.

Contents

January

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

February

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

March

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Acknowledgments

January

1

This was the life she’d made.

Cheese crackers crunching beneath her boots. A tickling and suspicious stink like milk that had been spilled in some unfound crack coming from the backseat. An unfinished To Do list, laundry piled and waiting for her at home, two over-tired and cranky children whining at her. This was her life, and most of the time Gilly could ignore these small annoyances that were only tiny details in the much larger overall picture. Embrace them, even.

But not today.

Please, shut up. For five minutes. Just shut up!

“Give Mama a few minutes” is what Gillian Soloman said instead, her voice a feathery singsong that belied her growing irritation.

“I’m thirsty, Mama!” Arwen’s high-edged, keening whine stabbed Gilly’s eardrums. “I wanna drink now!”

Count to ten, Gilly. Count to twenty, if you have to. C’mon, keep it together. Don’t lose it.

“We’ll be home in fifteen minutes.” This would mean nothing to Arwen, who didn’t know how to tell time, but to Gilly it was important. Fifteen minutes. Surely she could survive anything for fifteen more minutes, couldn’t she? Gilly’s voice snagged, ragged with the effort of keeping it calm, and she drew in a breath. She put a smile on her face not because she felt like smiling, but because she didn’t. Kept her voice calm and soothing, because an angry tone to the children was like chum to sharks. It made them frenzied. “I told you to bring your water bottle. Maybe next time you’ll listen to me.”

Gilly made sure she’d signed the check in the right place and filled out the deposit envelope appropriately. Looked over it again. It was only a check for ten bucks and change, but if she messed up the amount written on the envelope, the credit union could and would charge her a fee. It had happened before, unbalancing her checkbook and causing an argument with her and Seth. The numbers blurred, and she rubbed her eyes.

“Mama? Mama? Mama!”

Gilly didn’t even bother to answer, knowing the moment she said “what?” that Arwen would fall into stunned silence, nothing to say.

Fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops. You’ll be home and can put them in front of cartoons. Just hold it together until then, Gilly. Don’t lose it.

From the other seat came Gandy’s endless, wordless groan of complaint and then the steady thump-kick of his feet to the back of Gilly’s seat. Bang, bang, bang, the metronome of irritation.

“Gandy. Stop kicking Mama’s seat.”

For half a second as her pen wavered, Gilly thought about abandoning this venture altogether. What had she been thinking, making “just one more” stop? But damn it, she needed to cash this check and withdraw some money from the ATM to last her through the week, and since she’d already had to stop to pick up her prescription at the pharmacy…

“I wanna drink now!”

What do you want me to do, spit in a cup?

The words hurtled to her lips and Gilly bit them back before they could vomit out of her, sick at the thought of how close she’d come to actually saying them aloud. Those weren’t her words.

“Fifteen minutes, baby. We’ll be home in fifteen minutes.”

Thump, thump, thump.

Her fingers tightened on the pen. She breathed. She counted to ten. Then another five.

It wasn’t helping.

Last night: she fumbles with her house key because Seth locked the door leading from the garage to the laundry room when he went to bed. She stumbles into a dark house in which nobody’s left on any lights, carrying handfuls of plastic bags full of soap and socks and everything for other people, nothing for herself. She’d spent hours shopping, wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart, comparing dish towels and bathroom mugs just so she had an excuse to be by herself for another hour. She took the long way home with the radio turned up high, singing along with songs with raunchy lyrics she can’t listen to in front of the kids because they repeat everything. Scattered toys that had been in their bins when she left now stub her toes, and she mutters a curse. In the bedroom, lit only by the light from the hall so she doesn’t wake her sleeping husband, the baskets of clean, waiting-to-be-put-away laundry have been torn apart by what, a tornado? Clothes all over the floor, dumped as though she hadn’t spent an hour folding them all.

Even now as she remembered, Gilly’s fingers twitched on the ATM envelope and rage, burning like bile, rose in her throat. Seth’s excuse had been “I needed clean pajamas for the kids.” She’d gone to bed beside him, stiff with fury, the taste of blood on her hard-bitten tongue.

She’d woken, still just as angry, to the sound of Seth slamming dresser drawers and his plea to help him find a pair of clean socks, though of course they were all in the very basket he’d trashed the night before. In the shower Gilly had bent her head beneath lukewarm water that too quickly ran to chill. She’d been glad when he didn’t kiss her goodbye.

At breakfast the children each wanted something different than what she’d put on the plate in front of them. Shoes wouldn’t fit on feet, coats had gone AWOL, and every pair of Arwen’s tights had managed to get a hole. The cat got loose, and the children cried, no matter how much she tried to reassure them Sandy would be just fine.

They’d been late to Gilly’s doctor appointment. On any other day being on time would’ve meant a fifteen-minute wait. Today, the sour, scowling nurse informed them they’d almost forfeited their appointment. Arwen pinched her finger in a drawer, and Gandy fell off the rolling stool and cracked his head. Both children left the office in tears, and Gilly thought she might just start to cry, too.

The day didn’t get better. There was whining, there was fussing, there were tantrums and yelling and threats of timeouts. And of course, though she’d spent hours in Wal-Mart the night before, she’d still forgotten to buy milk. That meant a trip to Foodland. That meant children begging for sugary cereals she refused to buy. More tears. Pitying looks from women in coordinated outfits without stains on the front and well-behaved children who didn’t act like starving beggars. By the time they’d finished their grocery shopping, Gilly was ready to take them both home and toss them into bed. She’d made one last stop at the ATM.

One last stop.

“Mamaaaaaa!”

The whining rose in intensity and persistence. The kicking continued, ceaseless. Like all of this. Like her life.

Count to ten. Bite your tongue. Keep yourself together, Gilly. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it.

Gilly made herself the Joker. She wouldn’t have been surprised to feel scars rip open on her cheeks from the smile she forced again. “Ten more minutes, baby. Just ten. Let Mama do this, okay? Now listen. I’ll be right back.”

She turned in her seat to look at both of them, her angel-monsters. Arwen’s eyes had gone squinty, mouth twisted into a frown. Gandy had snot dribbling from his nose and crusted goo at the corners of his lips. He’d spilled a juice box all over his pale blue shirt. They looked like the best of her and Seth combined. This was what she had made.

“I’ll be right back,” Gilly said, though frankly she wanted to start running down the highway and never look back. “You both stay here and keep your seat belts on. You hear me? Seat belts on. Do not get out of your seats.”

Good mothers didn’t leave their children in the car, but the ATM was only a few feet away. The weather was cold enough that the kids wouldn’t broil inside a locked vehicle, and she locked them in so nobody could steal them in the five minutes it would take her to finish her task. Besides, she thought as she slid her ATM card into the machine and punched in her PIN, dragging them both out into the freezing, early evening air would surely be worse than leaving them warm and safe in the Suburban.

Frigid wind blew, whipping at her hair and sending stinging pellets of winter rain that would’ve been less insulting as snow against her face. She blinked against it, concentrating on punching in her PIN number with fingers suddenly numb. She messed up. Had to cancel, do it again.

Slow down. Do it right. One number at a time, Gilly. It’ll be okay.

She deposited the check, withdrew some cash, shoved her receipt and her card into her wallet and got back in the car. The kids had been silent when she opened the door, but within thirty seconds the whining began again. The steady kicking. The constant muttering of “Mama?” Gilly swallowed anger and tried desperately to scribble the amount of her withdrawal from the ATM in her checkbook, because if she didn’t do it now, this minute, she would forget and there’d be another overdraft for Seth to complain about, but her hands shook and the numbers were illegible. She took a deep breath. Then one more. Willing herself to stay calm. It wasn’t worth losing her temper over any of this. Not worth screaming about.

Five minutes. Please just shut up for five minutes, or I swear I’ll…

Not go crazy. Not that. She wouldn’t even think about it.

Gilly put the truck in Drive and pulled slowly out of the parking spot. The strip mall bustled with activity, with Foodland getting its share of evening foragers and the office supply store just as busy. Gilly eased past some foron in a minivan who’d parked askew, brake lights on, and mentally threatened them with violence if they dared back out in front of her.

This part of the strip mall had been under construction forever—the promise of a popular chain restaurant and a couple upscale additions had made everyone in Lebanon salivate at the thought of getting some culture, but in the end poor planning and the economy’s downturn had stalled the project. They’d only gotten as far as building a new access road, slashing like a razor on a wrist through what had previously been a tidy little field. Gilly stopped at the stop sign and looked automatically past the empty storefront to her left, though all that lay at the end of the road in that direction were dirt and Dumpsters.

The passenger door opened, and Gilly looked to her right. She blinked at the young man sliding across the bench seat toward her. He slammed the door and grunted as he kicked his duffel bag to the floor. For one infinite moment, she felt no terror, only confusion. “Where did you—?”

Then she saw the knife.

Huge, serrated, gripped in his fist. She didn’t even look at his face. And she wasn’t confused any longer.

Cold, implacable fury filled her and clenched her hands into numbness. All she’d wanted to do was go home, put the kids to bed and take a hot bath. Read a book. Be alone for a few precious minutes in peace and quiet before her husband came home and wanted to talk to her. And now…this.

The tip of his knife came within an eyelash of her cheek; his other hand gripped her ponytail and held it tight. “Go!”

There was no time for thought. Gilly went. She pounded her foot so hard on the accelerator the tires spun on ice-slick ground before catching. The Chevy Suburban bucked forward, heading for the traffic light and the road out of town.

He has a knife. The press of steel on flesh, parting it. Blood spurts. There is no smell like it, the smell of blood. That’s what a knife can do. It can hurt and worse than that.

It can kill.

Gilly’s hands moved on the steering wheel automatically. With little conscious thought, she flicked her turn signal and nosed into the line of traffic. Night had fallen. Nobody could see what was happening to her. Nobody would help her. She was on her own, but she wasn’t alone.

“I’ll do what you want. Just don’t hurt my kids.”

No smile this time, but it was the same voice she’d used just minutes ago with her children. It was her mother’s voice, she thought. She’d never noticed. The realization sent a jolting twist of nausea through her.

“Mommy?” Arwen sounded tremulous, confused. “Who’s that man?”

“It’s okay, kids.” This was not her mother’s voice, thank God. It was the one Gilly used for things like shots and stitches. Things that would hurt no matter what she said or did. This voice broke like glass in her throat, hurting.

Gandy said with a two-year-old’s wisdom, “Man, bad.”

The man’s gaze shot to the backseat as if he only now noticed the kids there. “Shit.” He moved closer. He gripped the back of her seat this time, not her hair, but the knife stayed too close to her neck. “Turn left.”

She did. The lights of the oncoming cars flashed in her eyes, and Gilly squinted. Slam on the brakes? Twist the wheel, hit another car? A checklist of choices ticked themselves off in her brain and she took none, her fury dissolved by the numbness of indecision and fear. She followed his barked orders to head out of town, away from the lights and the other cars. Away from safety. Away from help.

“Where do you want me to go?” The big SUV bounced with every rut in the road, and the knife wavered that much closer to her flesh. She’d bleed a lot if it cut her. She didn’t want her children to see her bleed. She’d do anything to keep them from seeing that.

The man looked over his shoulder again. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

The Suburban headed into farm country, past silos and barns, dark and silent. Gilly risked a look at him. She took a deep breath, spoke fast so he’d listen. “I have sixty dollars in my purse. You can have it. Just let—”

“Shut up and drive!”

No other traffic passed them, not even a car coming the opposite direction. Salt and grit spattered against the windshield, smearing it. She turned on the windshield wipers. She didn’t oblige him by driving fast.

If he didn’t want money, what did he want? Her mind raced. The truck? The vehicle wasn’t the kicky, sexy sort of car she’d always assumed people wanted to steal. It was far from new but well-maintained, and had cost an arm and a leg, but she wasn’t attached to it.

“Look, if you want the truck, you can have it.”

“Shut up!” The knife again dipped close to her shoulder, close enough to brush the fleece of her jacket. The blade glittered in the green dashboard light.

He didn’t want the truck. He didn’t want the money. Did he want…her?

Both children wailed from the backseat, a sound that at any other time would have set her teeth on edge. Now it broke her heart. The road stretched out pitch-black and deserted before them. No streetlamps out here in Pennsylvania farm country. Nothing but the faint light of electric candles in the window of a farmhouse set off far down a long country lane.

“What do you want?” Her fingers had gone past numb to aching from holding on so tightly to the steering wheel.

He didn’t answer her.

“Just let my kids go.” She kept her voice low, not wanting Arwen and Gandy to hear her. “I’ll pull over to the side and you can let them out. Then I’ll do whatever you want.”

Only fifteen minutes had passed. She’d have been home by now, if not for this. The man beside her let out a low, muttered string of curses. The knife hovered so close to her face she didn’t dare even turn her head again to look at him. Ahead of them, nothing but dark, unwinding road.

“Just let my kids go,” Gilly repeated, and he still didn’t answer. Her temper snapped and broke. Shattered. “Damn it, you son of a bitch, let my kids go!”

“I told you to shut up.” He grabbed the back of her neck, held the point of the knife against it.

She felt the thin, burning prick of it and shuddered, waiting for him to slice into her. He only poked. No worse than a needle prick, but all it would take was a simple shift of his fingers and she’d be dead. She’d wreck the car, and they’d all be dead.

Just ahead, lights coming from a large stone farmhouse settled on the very edge of the road illuminated the pavement. A high stone wall separated the driveway from the yard. Though the snow this winter had so far been sporadic, two dirty white piles had been shoveled up against the wall.

Yanking the wheel to the right, Gilly swerved into the driveway. Gravel spanged the sides of the car and one large rock hit the windshield hard enough to nick the glass. She slammed on the brakes using both feet and sent the truck sliding toward the thick stone wall and concrete stairs leading to the sidewalk.

Into the slide or away from it? She couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter. The truck was sliding, skidding, and then the grumble of antilock brakes shuddered through it. The truck stopped just short of hitting the wall. Gilly’s seat belt locked against her chest and neck, a line of fire against her skin. The carjacker flew forward in his seat. His head slammed into the windshield and starred the glass before he flew against the side window and back against his seat.

Gilly didn’t waste time to see if the impact had knocked him out. She stabbed the button that automatically rolled her window completely down, and with a movement so fast and fierce it hurt her fingertips, unbuckled her seat belt and whirled over the center console to reach into the backseat. Arwen was crying and Gandy babbling, but Gilly didn’t have time for speech. She reached first to the buckles on both booster seats and flung the freed seat belts with such force the metal hook on one of them smacked the window.

The inside lights had been on when they pulled into the driveway, but now the porch lights came on, too. It would be only moments before whoever lived in the house came to the door to see who was in their driveway. Gilly had driven past this house and barn a thousand times, but she’d never met its occupants. Now she was going to trust them with her children.

“No tears, baby.” She pulled Gandy back with her over the center console.

The carjacker groaned. A purpling mark had appeared on his forehead, a starburst with beading blood at the center. More blood dripped from his nose to paint his mouth and chin. His eyes fluttered.

“I love you,” she whispered in Gandy’s sweet little boy ear as she lifted him out the driver’s side window. She heard his cry as he fell to the frozen ground below, but hardened her heart against it. No time, no time for kissing boo-boos. Arwen balked and protested, but Gilly grabbed her daughter by the front of her pink ballerina sweatshirt and yanked her forward.

“I love you, honey.” She heard the man starting to swear. She’d run out of time. “You take Gandy and you run, do you hear me? Run as fast as you can inside the house!”

Gilly shoved her purse strap over Arwen’s shoulder, grateful the bag had been on the floor in the backseat. Wallet. Phone. They’d be able to call Seth. The police. Incoherent thoughts whirled.

Then she shoved her firstborn out the window, noticing the girl wore no shoes. Irritation, irrational and useless, flooded her, because she’d told Arwen to keep her sneakers on, and now her feet would get wet and cold as she ran through the snow.

Gilly had her hand on the door handle when he grabbed her again.

“Bitch!” The man cried from behind her, and she waited for the hot slice of metal against the back of her neck. Time had gone, run away, disappeared. “You’d better drive this motherfucker and drive it fast or I’m gonna put this knife in your fucking guts!”

He reached over, yanked the gearshift into Reverse and slammed down on her knee. The engine revved. The truck jerked backward. Gravel sprayed. Gilly twisted in her seat, reached for the wheel, struggled for control, fought to keep the truck from hitting the kids. The headlights cast her children in flashes of white as they clutched each other in the snow. The back door opened and a Mennonite woman wearing a flowered dress and a prayer cap planted on her pinned-up hair appeared. Her mouth made a large round O of surprise when she saw the truck spinning its wheels and hopping backward onto the road like a rabbit on acid. When she saw the weeping, screaming children, she clutched her hands together and ran to them, her own feet bare. Gilly would never forget the sight of her children in the rearview mirror as she sped away. She couldn’t see their faces, only their silhouettes, backlit from the porch light. Two small figures holding hands in the dirty, drifted snow.

“Drive!” commanded the man who’d taken over Gilly’s life, and she drove.

It took her at least a mile to realize he hadn’t stabbed her. His slamming hand had bruised her knee, which throbbed, and he still had her tight by the back of the neck, but she wasn’t cut. The truck slid on a patch of black ice and she didn’t fight it. Maybe they’d skid and wreck, end up in a ditch. She couldn’t think beyond what had happened, what was still happening now.

Her babies, left behind.

“Not the way it was supposed to go down. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

He repeated the word over and over, like some sort of litany, not a curse. Gilly followed the curves in the road by instinct more than attention. She shuddered at the frigid night air from the open window and kept both hands on the wheel, afraid to let go long enough to close it.

“Damn, my fucking head hurts.”

Blood covered his shirt. He let go of her to reach toward the floor and grab a squashed roll of paper towels. He used a few to dab at the blood. Then he pointed the knife back at her. It shook this time.

“What do you want from me?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It sounded faraway. She felt far away, not here. Someplace else. Was this really happening?

He snorted into the wad of paper towels. “Just drive. And roll up the fucking window.”

She did as he ordered, then slapped her hand back to the wheel. They’d only gone a few more miles, a few more minutes. Ahead, a traffic light glowed green. She sped through it. Another mile or so, and she’d hit another light. If it was red, what would she do? Stop and throw herself out of the car as she’d thrown her children?

She risked a glance at her abductor. He wasn’t even looking at her. She could do it. But when she got to the light, it didn’t oblige by turning red, or even yellow. Green illuminated the contours of his face as he turned to her.

“Turn right.”

Now they were on a state road, still deserted and rural despite its fancy number. Gilly concentrated on breathing. In. Out. She refused to faint.

The man’s voice was muffled. “I think you broke my fucking nose. Christ, what the hell were you doing?”

Gilly found her voice. Small, this time. Hoarse, but all hers with nothing of anyone else in it at all. “You wouldn’t let me stop to get my kids out.”

“I could’ve cut you. I still could.” He sounded puzzled.

Gilly kept her face toward the road. Her hands on the wheel. These were things that anchored her, the wheel, the road. These were solid things. Real. Not the rest of this, the man on the seat beside her, the children left behind.

“But you didn’t. And I got my kids out.”

He made another muffled snort. The wad of bloody paper towels fell out of his nose, and he made no move to retrieve it. He’d dropped the knife to his knee. Not close to her, but ready. Gilly had no doubt if she made any sudden moves he’d have it up at her face again.

“Well, shit,” he said, and lapsed into silence.

Silence. Nothing but the hum of the road under the wheels, the occasional rush of a passing car. Gilly thought of nothing. Could think of nothing but driving.

Her mind had been blank for at least twenty minutes before she noticed, long enough to pass through the last small town and onto the night-darkened highway beyond. When was the last time she’d thought of nothing? Her mind was never silent, never quiet. She didn’t have time to waste on daydreams. There were always too many things to do, to take care of. Her thoughts were always like a hamster on a wheel, running and running without ever getting anywhere.

Tomorrow the dog had a vet appointment. Arwen had kindergarten. Gandy needed new shoes. The floor in the kitchen badly needed a mopping, which she meant to do after paying the last round of bills for the month…and if she had time she wanted to finish reorganizing her closet. And through it all, the knowledge that no matter how many tasks she began, she’d complete none of them without being interrupted. Being demanded of. Being expected to take care of someone else’s needs.

Tonight a man had held her at knifepoint and threatened to take away that tomorrow with its lists and chores and demands. If nothing else, no matter what else happened, how things turned out, Gilly would not have to heave her weary body out of bed and force herself to get through one more day. If she was really unfortunate, and a glance at the twitching young man beside her told her she might be, she might never have to get out of bed again.

The thought didn’t scare her as much as it should have.

He shifted. “I need to get to Route 80.”

“I’m not sure…”

“I’ll tell you.”

In a brief flash of light from the streetlamp, she saw his forehead had furrowed with concentration. Gilly looked to the road ahead, at the lights of oncoming cars and the lit exit signs. The man ordered her to take the exit for the interstate, and she did. Then he slumped in his seat, head against the window, and the sound of his tortured breathing filled her ears like the sound of the ocean, constant and steady.

In the silence, uninterrupted by cries and demands, Gilly let her mind fall blank again as she drove on. Her rage and terror had passed, replaced by something quiet and sly.

Relief.

2

Thud, thud. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. The truck’s wheels passed over asphalt cracks with a sound like a beating heart. For an hour or so her abductor had told her which roads to take, what highways to follow. Some were small, obscure back-country lanes, some major four-lane roads, all of them dark and fairly clear of traffic. She didn’t know if he meant to dodge pursuit, was lost, or had a plan. He’d listened to the radio for a while, switching stations, pausing at a commercial for the built-in navigation service that came with all the newer model cars.

He’d run his fingertips over the dash. “You got that?”

“No. It was only an option when we bought the truck, and we didn’t take the option.”

On the radio, the soft-voiced operator assured the sniveling woman that she was going to be just fine. The commercial narrator reminded everyone what a lifesaver the service was. The man had seemed pleased and switched the station, finally settling on the weather. They were predicting snow. His eyes had closed several miles back. His breathing had slowed, joined with the heartbeat of their passage, to soothe and lull her further into blankness.

Into quiet.

When Gilly was growing up, her best friend’s house had been full of constant noise. Danica had four brothers and a sister, plus a dog, a cat, a bird and several tanks full of fish. Her parents yelled a lot, mostly to be heard over the rest of the roar. Gilly loved spending time at Danica’s house, but she’d often come home from a visit with her head whirling, slipping into her solitary bedroom and putting her head under the pillow to muffle even the silence that almost always greeted her.

It wasn’t until she’d had kids of her own that Gilly realized noise was normal. Most families lived with it. Shouts, laughter, calling to each other from room to room. The burble of the radio, television. These were the sounds of normal families. She’d come to appreciate the noise of normality, but could never quite relish it the way she now savored the silence in the car. It had been a long, long time since she’d been in silence like this, been granted the choice to stay silent, herself.

Gilly drank the quiet like it was wine, and felt nearly as drunk from it. No whining, no complaining. Nobody asking to stop to pee or to change the radio station. Nobody ignoring directions. Nobody grumbling she was going too slow or too fast. Nothing but an occasional sigh from the man in the driver’s seat beside her, or the clink of metal to remind her he still had the knife ready at his side.

The man beside her came awake with a snort and flailing arms. The knife hissed through the air scant inches from her hand and arm, then knocked against the center console, rattling it. Gilly swerved across the center line and back, heart pounding. The man sat up and scrubbed at his face with the hand not wielding the weapon.

“Fuck!”

Gilly shifted in her seat and repositioned her hands on the wheel. She didn’t say anything. Her abductor muttered and tapped the hilt of the blade in his hands, then apparently decided to pretend he hadn’t been sleeping at all. Maybe he thought she hadn’t noticed.

“Where are we?” he blurted as if he didn’t realize she ought to be the one with the questions.

Gilly told him by tilting her head toward the road sign they’d just passed. They’d been on the road for two hours. Her thoughts drifted briefly to Arwen and Gandy. Had Seth picked them up yet? Were they home, safe in bed? It was past their bedtime, and Arwen was impossible in the mornings if she didn’t have enough sleep….

“I asked you a question!”

The rap of the knife’s blade against her shoulder made the car jerk beneath her startled hands. Gilly yelped, though he’d only tapped her with the flat of it. She steadied the massive truck, visions of rolling the huge vehicle punching any other thoughts from her head.

“Pay attention!”

“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound it. She tried again. “Sorry.”

She told him out loud, though by now they’d passed another sign. She watched him scowl at the white letters on the green background, and wondered if he couldn’t read. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and held it up, turning on the map light to look at it.

“We need Route 80.” He shook the paper at her. “You didn’t go the wrong way, did you?”

The unfairness of the accusation stung her into response. “You’re the one telling me which way to go!”

She regretted her outburst when he bared his teeth, blood grimed in the cracks, and lifted the knife.

“I have a knife.” His voice was hoarse.

“I know you do.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m some kind of fucking idiot.”

If he was going to cut her, he wouldn’t do it while she was driving. He’d make her pull over first. Wouldn’t he?

“Sorry.”

“Okay.” He seemed to think they’d reached some sort of mutual agreement. Gilly didn’t know what it might be, but she wasn’t going to argue.

“We haven’t passed Route 80 yet.”

He held up the soiled scrap of paper again. “That’s where we need to go.”

“We haven’t even made it to State College,” Gilly said, not pointing out they’d have been long past there if he hadn’t made her take such a crazy, circuitous route.

Gilly waited to hear what he’d say next. He didn’t speak. The tires thudded. She felt him staring.

“We’re going to need gas,” she said at last, since even though she loved the quiet, craved it, it frightened her. “Depending on how far we’re going.”

He leaned close to her to look at the gas gauge. She expected a whiff of sweat, of dirt. An angry or scary odor, something bad.

He smelled like soap and cold air. For the first time she noticed he didn’t even wear a winter coat, only jeans and a worn hooded sweatshirt with a zipper. In the green dashboard illumination she couldn’t tell the color, but everything on him was dark. Hair, eyes, the growing scruff of a beard she could just make out. A quick glance at his feet revealed huge and battered hiking boots.

“Fuck.” He leaned back into his seat. The knife seemed forgotten at his side, but she wasn’t sure she could trust that impression. One sudden move and she could find herself with four inches of steel inside her.

Later, when it was all over and she could be totally honest with herself, Gilly would think it was that clean scent of soap and fresh air that let him keep her. That and the silence. People assumed it was the knife, and she never disabused them of that notion, but Gilly knew the truth. He smelled good, and he didn’t talk much. It was wrong…but right then, it was enough.

They drove a few more miles in the silence before he sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “How much longer before we have to stop?”

She looked at the gauge. “We have less than a quarter of a tank.”

Her captor made a muffled sound of disgust. “Next gas station, stop.”

They weren’t on a particularly populous stretch of road, but it wouldn’t be long before they found a station. He leaned forward again to punch the button on the radio and found only static. He punched the button to play the CD. The familiar words of a lullaby, albeit one unconventional and untraditional, blared from the speakers.

“What the hell is this?” He turned down the volume.

Her smile felt out of place but she couldn’t stop it. “Bat Boy: The Musical.”

He listened for a moment longer to the words, a mother’s gentle promise to nurture the unloved and unwelcome bat-child found in a cave and brought to her home. The song was one Gilly liked to sing along with, but she didn’t now. When it was over and the next song from the campy rock musical had taken over, he stabbed the button on the stereo to turn it off.

“That’s weird,” he said bluntly. “You listen to that with your kids in the car?”

She thought of Arwen, who hadn’t seen the show but loved to sing along with the songs too. “Yes.”

He shook his head. “Damn. What’s it about?”

His voice had a smoker’s rasp. He talked slowly, as if choosing each word was a mental strain, but he didn’t slur his words or use bad grammar. His voice matched the rest of him, unkempt and battered.

“It’s about Bat Boy.” Gilly’s eyes scanned the road signs, looking for one that showed an exit or gas station ahead. “It’s…it’s just fun.”

“Who the hell is Bat Boy?”

She hesitated, knowing already how the answer would sound. “He’s half human, half bat. They found him in a cave down in Virginia.”

“You’re shitting me.” Even his curses were clipped and precise, as though he was speaking written dialogue instead of his own thoughts.

“It’s a story,” she said. “From the Weekly World News. I don’t think it’s real.”

He laughed. “No shit.”

“There’s a gas station ahead. Do you want me to pull over?”

She tensed, waiting for his answer. He shrugged, leaned forward to check the gas gauge again. “Yeah.”

She signaled and slowed to exit. Her heartbeat accelerated and her palms grew moist. Anxiety gripped her, and a sense of loss she refused to acknowledge because she didn’t want to think what it meant.

Apparently he remembered the knife, for now he pulled it up and waved it at her again. “Don’t forget I have this.”

As if she could. “No.”

Ahead of them was the parking lot, busy even at this time of night. Bright lights made Gilly squint. She pulled the truck up to the pumps and turned off the engine. She waited for instructions, though normally being told what to do chafed at her. Now she felt as though she could do nothing else but wait to be told what to do. How to do it.

He leaned close enough to kiss her. His breath smelled like Big Red gum. “Give me the keys.”

Gilly pulled them from the ignition and passed them into his palm. His fingers closed over hers, squeezing. She winced.

“If you so much as flick the headlights, I will gut you like a deer. You got that?”

She nodded.

“I’ll pump.” He waited, looking at her. She saw a flicker of apprehension flash across his face, so fast she wasn’t sure she saw it at all. He held up the knife, but low so anyone looking at them wouldn’t see it through the windows. “Don’t get out of the car. Don’t do anything. Remember what I said.”

She expected him to ask for money. “I don’t have my purse.”

He made that sound of disgust again, and now he sounded contemptuous, too. “I don’t need your money.”

He folded the knife and put it into a leather sheath on his belt, slipped the keys into his pocket, then opened his door and went around to the pump, using the keyless remote to lock the door. He fumbled with the buttons and the handle, finally getting the gas to start. Then he went inside.

Gilly sat and watched him. After a moment, stunned, she realized this was the second time he’d let his attention slide from her. She sat a moment longer, seeing him choose items from the cooler, the racks of snacks and the magazine section.

From this distance she had her first good look at him. He was tall, at least six-two or -three, if she judged correctly. She’d seen his hair was dark, but in the fluorescent lights of the minimart it proved to be a deep chestnut that fell in shaggy sheaves to just below his shoulders. He didn’t smile at the clerk and didn’t appear to be making small talk, either, as he put his substantial pile of goods on the counter. He motioned to the clerk for several cartons of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds. He was spending a lot of money.

He didn’t hurry. He didn’t look nervous or wary. She could see the knife in its leather sheath from here, peeking from beneath the hem of his dark gray sweatshirt, but this was rural Pennsylvania. Deer-hunting country. Nobody would look at it twice, unless it was to admire it.

Outside, the gas pump clicked off. Gilly shifted in her seat. Inside the market, her abductor pulled an envelope from his sweatshirt pocket and rifled through the contents. He offered a few bills to the clerk, who took the money and started bagging the purchases.

This was it. She could run. He wouldn’t chase her. If he did, he couldn’t catch her.

She could scream. People would hear. Someone would come. Someone would help her.

She breathed again, not screaming. The white-faced and thin-lipped woman in the rearview mirror could not be her. The smile she forced looked more like the baring of teeth, a feral grin more frightening than friendly.

Time had slowed and stopped, frozen. She’d felt this once when she’d hit a deer springing out from the woods near her house. One moment the road had been clear, the next her window filled with tawny fur, a body crushing into the front end of the truck and sliding across the windshield to break the glass. She’d seen every stone on the street, every hair on the deer’s body before it had all become a haze.

Today she’d felt that slow-syrup of time stopping twice. The first when the man slid across the seat and pointed a knife at her head. The second time was now.

She wasn’t going back. Not to the vet appointments, the ballet practice, the laundry and the bills. She wasn’t going back to the neediness, the whining, the constant, never-ending demands from spouse and spawn that left her feeling on some days her head might simply explode. She didn’t know where she was going, just that it wasn’t back.

When he opened the driver’s side door, he looked as startled as she must have been when he made his first appearance into her life. “I…I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

Gilly opened her mouth but said nothing.

His eyes cut back and forth as his mouth thinned. “Move over.”

She did, and he got in. He turned the key in the ignition and put the truck in Drive. Gilly didn’t speak; she had nothing to say to him. With her feet on the duffel bag he’d squashed onto the passenger side floor, her knees felt like they rubbed her earlobes. He pushed something across the center console at her: the latest edition of some black-and-white knockoff of the Weekly World News, not the real thing. The real thing had gone out of publication years before.

“You care if I smoke?”

She did mind; the stench of cigarettes would make her gag and choke. “No.”

He punched the lighter and held its glowing tip to the cigarette’s end. The smoke stung her eyes and throat, or maybe it was her tears. Gilly turned her face to the window.

He pulled out of the lot and back onto the highway, letting the darkness fall around them with the softness and comfort of a quilt.

3

“Roses don’t like to get their feet wet.” Gilly’s mother wears a broad-brimmed straw hat. She holds up her trowel, her hands unprotected by gloves, her fingernails dark with dirt. Her knuckles, too, grimed deep with black earth. “Look, Gillian. Pay attention.”

Gilly will never be good at growing roses. She loves the way they look and smell, but roses take too much time and attention. Roses have rules. Her mother has time to spend on pruning, fertilizing. Tending. Nurturing. But Gilly doesn’t. Gilly never has enough time.

She’s dreaming. She knows it by the way her mother smiles and strokes the velvety petals of the red rose in her hand. Her mother hasn’t smiled like that in a long time, and if she has maybe it was only ever in Gilly’s dreams. The roses all around them are real enough, or at least the memory of them is. They’d grown in wild abundance against the side of her parents’ house and along gravel paths laid out in the backyard. Red, yellow, blushing pink, tinged with peach. The only ones she sees now, though, are the red ones. Roses with names like After Midnight, Black Ice, even one called Cherry Cola. They’re all in bloom.

“Pay attention,” Gilly’s mother repeats and holds out the rose. “Roses are precious and fragile things. They take a lot of work, but it’s all worth it.”

The only flowers that grow at Gilly’s house are daffodils and dandelions, perennials the deer and squirrels leave alone. Her garden is empty. “I’ve tried, Mom. My roses die.”

Gilly’s mother closes her fist around the rose’s stem. Bright blood appears. This rose has thorns.

“Because you neglected them, Gillian. Your roses died because you don’t pay attention.”

“Mom. Your hand.”

Her mother’s smile doesn’t fade. Doesn’t wilt. She moves forward to press the rose into Gilly’s hand. Gilly doesn’t want to take it. Her mother is passing the responsibility to her, and she doesn’t want it. She tries to keep her fingers closed, refusing the flower. Her mother grips her wrist.

“Take it, Gillian.”

This is the woman Gilly remembers better. Wild eyes, mouth thin and grim. Hair lank and in her face, the hat gone now in the way dreams have of changing. Her mother’s fingers bite into Gilly’s skin, sharp as thorns and bringing blood.

“You love them,” Gilly’s mother says. “Don’t you love them?”

“I do love them!” Gilly cries.

“You have to take care of what you love,” her mother says. “Even if it makes you bleed.”

Gilly woke, startled and disoriented. She didn’t know how long she’d slept, how far they’d gone. Didn’t know where they were. She rolled her stiff neck on shoulders gone just as sore and stared out to dark roads and encroaching trees. Steep mountains hung with frozen miniwaterfalls rose on both sides. A train track ran parallel to the road, separated by a metal fence.

Had she seen these roads before? Gilly didn’t think so. Nothing looked familiar. The man took an unmarked exit. They rode for another hour on forested roads rough enough to make her glad for four-wheel drive, then turned down another narrow, rutted road. Ice gleamed in the ruts, and the light layer of snow that had been worn away on the main road still remained here. A rusted metal gate with a medieval-looking padlock blocked the way.

He pulled a jangling ring of keys from the pocket of his sweatshirt and held them out to her. “Unlock it.”

Gilly didn’t take the keys at first. It made no sense for her to defy him. In the faint light from the dashboard his narrowed eyes should have been menacing enough to have her leaping to obey his command even if the threat of the knife wasn’t. Yet she sat, staring at him dumbly, unable to move.

“Get out and unlock the gate,” he repeated, shaking the key ring at her. “I’m going to drive through. You close it behind me and lock it again.”

She didn’t move for another long moment, frozen in place the way she’d been so often tonight.

“You deaf?”

She shook her head.

“Just fucking stupid, then. I told you to move. Now move your ass,” he said in a low, menacing voice, “or I will move it for you.”

This morning she’d stood in her closet, picking out clothes without holes or too many stains, jeans with a button and zipper instead of soft lounge pants with an elastic waist. She’d dressed to go out in public, not like the stay-home mom she was. She’d wanted to look nice for once, not dumpy and covered in sticky fingerprints.

She should’ve worn warm boots, not the useless chunk-heeled ones that hurt her feet if she stood too long. No help for it now. She’d chosen fashion over function and now had to face the consequences. Gilly got out of the car. Immediately she slipped on some ice and almost went down, but managed to keep upright by flailing her arms. She wrenched her back, the pain enough to distract her from the tingling in her drive-numbed legs.

Frigid air burned her eyes, forcing her to slit them. Her nose went numb almost at once, her bare fingers too. The padlock had rusted shut, and the key wouldn’t turn. Her fingers fumbled, slipped, and blood oozed from a gash along her thumb. It looked like ketchup in the headlights. Gilly clasped her hands and tried to warm them, tried to bend her fingers back into place, but they crooked like talons.

At last the key turned with a squeal, and the hasp popped open. She slipped the lock off and pushed the gate forward. Ice clinked and jingled as it fell off the metal. The gate stuck halfway open, grinding, and she pushed hard, her feet slipping in the icy ruts. Her palms stung against the cold metal; she had a brief vision of the movie A Christmas Story and the boy who stuck his tongue to the pole, but fortunately her hands didn’t stick. She grunted as she shoved once more. More pain in her back, her hands, her freezing face, her cramped toes. The gate groaned open the rest of the way, and the truck pulled through.

It didn’t stop right away and for one panicked moment Gilly thought he was going to leave her behind. Then the red glare of the taillights came on, bathing everything in a horror-show haze. Once open, the gate wouldn’t close. Gilly pulled the sleeves of her jacket down over her palms to get a better grip and protect her hands, but that only made them slip worse. She tugged, hard, and fell on her ass.

The truck revved. Gilly got to her feet, slipping and sliding. He hadn’t stabbed her. He wasn’t going to drive away and leave her here to freeze, either. She ran anyway as best she could on frozen toes. Her fingers slipped again on the door handle. Gilly climbed back into the truck and slammed the door.

He drove for another thirty minutes along a road so twisted and potholed Gilly had to grip the door handle just to keep herself upright every time the truck bounced. Trees pressed in on them. Some branches even snaked out to scrape along the truck’s side. At one point, the battered driveway took a steep pitch upward. The tires spun on loose gravel. They were climbing.

At last, the man stopped the truck in front of a battered two-story house, bathing it in the twin beams of the bright headlights. House was too flattering a term. It was more like a shack. A sagging front porch with three rickety steps lined the front. Green rocking chairs, the sort with legs made from a single piece of bended metal, lined the porch. Gilly had seen chairs like that in 1950s pictures of her grandparents vacationing in the Catskills.

He turned off the ignition. Darkness clapped its hand over her eyes. Gilly blinked, momentarily blind.

“Get out,” the man said without preamble.

He opened the door and stepped into the glacial night air, then shoved the keys into the pocket of his ratty sweatshirt, slammed the door shut and headed toward the house without hesitation. He quickly blended into the dark.

Without the light of the headlamps to guide her, the distance from the truck to the front porch became instantly unnavigable. She already knew the ground here was frozen and hard. At best she’d fall on her ass again. At worst, she’d end up with a broken leg.

Gilly put her hand on the door. Tremors tickled her, and her fingers twitched on the handle. Her feet jittered on the duffel bag. Only her eyes felt wide and staring, motionless while the rest of her body went into some strange sort of Saint Vitus’ dance.

She was dreaming. Was she dreaming? Was this real? In the dark, the silent dark, Gilly had to press her twitching fingers to her eyelids to convince herself they were open. Like a blind woman she felt the contours of her face, trying to convince herself that it was her own and uncertain, in the end, if it was.

The slanting shack began to glow from the four windows along its front. The light was strange, yellow and dim, but it gave her the courage to open the door. The meager glow was just enough to allow Gilly to make her stumbling way to the front porch steps, and then through the door he’d left open.

She entered a small, square room with a sooty woodstove on a raised brick platform between the two windows along the back wall. Now she could see why the light coming from the windows seemed so odd. Propane, not electric, lights illuminated the room. She wrinkled her nose against the smell, which reminded her of summer camp.

Despite the stains and dirt on the carpet she could see it was indisputably green. Not emerald, not hunter, but mossy and dull. The color of mold. The furniture grouped around the woodstove was faded brown plaid with rough-hewn wooden arms and feet. The two long sofas facing each other across a battered coffee table looked in decent enough condition, but the two chairs beside them had seen better days. Time or rodents had put holes in the plaid fabric, and stuffing peeked out here and there. The scarred dining table had four matching chairs and a fifth and sixth that didn’t match the set or each other. Someone long ago had tried to make it pretty with an arrangement of silk flowers, now dusty and only sad. A larger camping lantern, newer than the wall sconces but unlit, also sat upon the table.

To her right Gilly saw the kitchen, separated from the living room by a countertop and row of hanging cabinets. Through the narrow gap between them she saw another table and chairs. Off the kitchen she thought there might be a mudroom or pantry. She glimpsed the man standing at the refrigerator, mumbling curses. Maybe at the emptiness, maybe at the stench of mildew and age that she could smell even from here.

Gilly closed the door behind her with a solid, remorseless thud.

“Smells like a damn rat died in the fridge.”

Gilly wasn’t positive he spoke to her or just at her. She swallowed her disgust at the thought and looked around the room again. Through the door immediately to her left she spied a linoleum floor and the glint of metal fixtures. A bathroom. The doorway farther back along the wall hinted at a set of steep, narrow stairs. That was it. Upstairs must be bedrooms.

“I need to take a piss,” he told her matter-of-factly. Carrying a large battery-powered lantern, he brushed past her and into the bathroom. Next came the sound of water gushing, then a toilet flushing. At least the facilities worked.

Her own bladder cramped, muscles that had never been the same since her pregnancies protesting. When he came out, she went in. He’d left her the lantern. She peed for what felt like hours. At the sink, washing her hands, a stranger peered out at her from the cloudy mirror. A woman with lank hair, dark to match the circles under her eyes, and skin the color of moonlight. She looked like her mother.

She’d run away just like her mother.

She tried for dismay and felt only resignation. Her eyes itched and burned, and not even splashing cold water helped. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, her stomach lurching. She didn’t puke. Eyes closed, Gilly gripped the sink for one dizzy moment thinking she would open them and find herself at home in front of her own mirror, all of this some insane fantasy she’d concocted out of frustration. Wishful thinking. Maybe crazy would be better than this.

When Gilly came out of the bathroom, she found the man sitting at the dining room table. He’d lit the lamp there and spread out a bunch of wrinkled papers. He held his head in his hands like the act of reading them all had given him a headache.

Gilly cleared her throat, then realized she hadn’t used her voice since they’d stopped for gas. Four, five hours ago? Less than that or longer, she had no idea. She waited for him to look up, but he didn’t.

He ran his fingers again and again through the dark lengths of his hair, until it crackled with static in the cold air. Gilly waited, shifting from foot to foot. Awkward, uncertain. Even if she did speak, what could she possibly say?

He looked up. Under the thin scruff of black beard, his face had fine, clean lines. Thick black lashes fringed his deep brown eyes, narrowed now beneath equally dark brows. He wasn’t ugly, and she couldn’t force herself to find him so. With a shock, Gilly realized he wasn’t much younger than she was, maybe three or four years.

“My uncle,” he said suddenly, looking up at her.

Gilly waited for more, and when it didn’t come she slipped into one of the battered chairs. She folded her hands on the cold wood. It felt rough beneath her fingers.

He touched the pile of papers, shoving a couple of them toward her. “This was my Uncle Bill’s place.”

Gilly made no move to take the papers. She found her voice, as rusty as the gate had been. “It’s…quaint.”

His brow furrowed. “You making fun of me?”

She expected anger. More knife waving. Perhaps even threats. Anger she could handle. Fight. She could be angry in response. Instead she felt hollow shame. He’d spoken in the resigned fashion of a man used to people mocking him, and she had been making fun.

“Was it a hunting cabin?”

“Yeah.” He looked around. “But he lived here, too. Fixed it up a little at a time. I used to come here with him, sometimes. Uncle Bill died a couple months ago.”

Condolences rose automatically to her lips and she pressed them closed. It would be ridiculous to express sorrow over a stranger’s death, especially to this man. Her fingers curled against the table. Surreal, all of this.

You’re not dreaming this, Gilly. You know that, right? This is real. It’s happening.

She knew it better than anything and yet still couldn’t manage to process it. She stared across the table. “He left you this cabin?”

“Yeah. It’s all mine now.” He nodded and gave her a grin shocking in its rough beauty, its normality. They might’ve been chatting over coffee. This was more terrifying than his anger had been.

She looked around the room, like maybe it might look better with another glance. It didn’t. “It’s cold in here.”

He shrugged, pulling the sleeves of his sweatshirt down over his fingertips and hugging his arms around himself. “Yeah. I could light a fire. That’ll help.”

“It’s late,” Gilly pointed out. She’d been about to say she needed to go to bed, but she didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. Fear flared again as she watched him run his tongue along the curve of his smile. He was bigger than she was and certainly stronger. She wouldn’t be able to stop him from forcing her.