Lisa Unger - Fragile

Also by
LISA UNGER

Die for You

Black Out

Sliver of Truth

Beautiful Lies

For my parents,
Joe and Virginia Miscione

We never understand what it means to be a parent until we are parents ourselves.

I love you, Mom and Dad.
Thanks for everything then and now.

W hen Jones Cooper was younger, he didnt believe in mistakes. He thought that every road led you somewhere and wherever you wound up, thats where you belonged. Regrets were for the shortsighted, for the small-minded. He didnt believe that anymore. That was a young mans arrogant way of looking at the world. And youth, among other things, had abandoned him long ago.

Jones felt the full weight of all his regrets as he pulled his Ford Explorer off the small side road and engaged the four-wheel drive to haul himself through the muck. Over the last week, the late autumn weather had been wildhot one day, cold with flurries the next, then warm again. Now a thunderstorm loomed, as if heaven itself had decided to launch a protest against the erratic conditions. By morning, his tracks would be lost.

What had amazed him, what amazed him still, even after all these years, was how quickly hed stepped out of himself. Hed slipped off every convention and moral that had defined him, a great cowl that fell to the floor with the unfastening of a single closure. The person beneath it was someone he barely recognized. Hed tried to tell himself over the years that the circumstances had changed him, that theyd forced him into aberrant behavior. But in his deepest heart, he knew. He knew what he was. He was weak. He was base. He always had been.

As he brought the vehicle to a stop, a white flash of lightning temporarily illuminated the area around him. He killed the engine and sat, drawing in a breath. In his pocket, his cell phone started vibrating. He didnt have to look at it to know it was his wife; after so many good years with a woman, you knew when she was calling, even what she would probably say. He didnt answer, but it set a clock ticking. He had about half an hour to call her back before she started trying other numbers. It wasnt his habit to be out of communication. Not at this hour, early evening, when her last session had ended and, if there was nothing big going on, hed be wrapping up the day.

It was the thought of that, the lost normalcy, that set Jones to sobbing. He was surprised at the force of it, like a hacking cough that came from deep in his chest, buckled him over so that his head was resting on the wheel. His wailing filled the car; he almost couldnt believe the soundanimalistic in its agonywas coming from his body. But he couldnt stop it. He had no choice but to surrender. Then it passed, as quickly as it had come on him, and he was left quaking in its wake. As he wiped his eyes, a heavy rain started to fall. Another lightning flash, and he felt the rumble of thunder beneath his feet.

He reached under the passenger seat, where he kept his heavy yellow slicker. He donned it while still in the car, pulling the hood tight around his face. Then he stepped outside, walked around to the hatch, and pulled it open, taking cover beneath it as he peered inside. The bundle in back was impossibly small. It was difficult to imagine that its contents represented everything dark and ugly within him, every wrong road, every cowardly choice. He didnt want to touch it.

In his pocket, the phone started vibrating again. It broke his reverie, and he reached inside the vehicle to gather the thick gray plastic bag in both his arms. It no longer seemed small or insubstantial. It contained the weight of the whole world. He felt the horror of it all welling up within him, but he quashed it. He didnt have time for more tears, or the luxury of breaking down again.

With the bag in his arms, Jones moved through the rain and ducked lithely beneath the crime scene tape to stand on the edge of a gaping hole. A Hollows kid, named Matty Bauer, had fallen into the abandoned mine shaft, which opened beneath his feet while he was playing with friends. In the fall, hed broken his leg. It had taken police and rescue workers the better part of the day to get Matty out as the hole kept breaking down around them, showering the boy below with dirt.

Finally, theyd managed to get a tow truck out there. Jones had been the first to volunteer and was lowered on a rescue stretcher to immobilize the victim so he could be lifted out. Even though Jones was just back on duty, recovering from an injury himself, he had wanted to go.

When hed gotten to the bottom of the hole, Matty Bauer was quiet and glassy-eyed, shock setting in, his leg twisted horribly. Even as hed lifted Matty onto the stretcher, whispering assurancesHang in there, kid, weve got you coveredthe kid hadnt made a sound. Then hed watched as the stretcher lifted and lifted, spinning slowly like the hands of a clock against the circle of light above. Hed waited in that dark, deep hole for nearly twenty minutes, which seemed like hours, before theyd lowered the harness to lift him out. Hed done a lot of thinking down in that hole.

Take your time up there, guys.

Sorry, sir. Moving as fast as we can.

Which is apparently not very fucking fast.

But after the initial claustrophobic unease had passed, hed felt oddly peaceful in the dark, some light washing in from above, voices echoing and bouncing down. He wasnt worried about the walls collapsing and being buried alive. He might have even welcomed the heros death as opposed to the ignoble life he was living.

The shaft was scheduled for filling tomorrow at first light, the bulldozer and a great pile of earth already waiting. Hed left the station house saying to his assistant that hed come here to check that everything was ready. Hed told her that hed be here to supervise first thing in the morning. And thats what he was doing.

Cant have any more kids falling in that well. Were lucky Matty just broke his leg.

Jones Cooper was a good cop. The Hollows was lucky to have him. Everyone said so.

Without false ceremony or empty words, he let the bundle drop from his arms and listened a second later to the soft thud of it landing in wet earth. Then he went back to the SUV and retrieved the shovel he always kept there. He spent a backbreaking twenty minutes shoveling dirt into the hole, just enough to cover even what he knew could not be seen from the rim of the opening. As he worked, the rain fell harder and great skeins of lightning slashed the sky.

ONE
MONTH EARLIER

T he sound of the screen door slamming never failed to cause a happy lift in her heart that was immediately followed by a sinking, the opening of a small empty place. Maggie could almost hear her son the way he had been oncealways running, always dirty from soccer, or riding his bike and getting into God knows what around the neighborhood. Hed be hungry or thirsty, would head directly to the refrigerator. Mom, I want a snack. He was loving then, ready to hug her or kiss her; not yet like his friends, who were even then slinking away from their mothers embraces, bearing their kisses as if they were vaccinations. Hed laughed easily. He was a clown, wanting her to laugh, too. Those days werent so long ago, when her son was still Ricky, not Rick. But that little boy was as far gone as if hed gotten in a spaceship and flown to the moon.