Precious and Fragile Things (8 page)

Somehow they made it back to the clearing and the cabin, still ablaze with light that hurt her eyes after so many long minutes in darkness. Gilly was beyond fighting him by then. She barely made it up the front steps and into the living room. She definitely didn't make it up the steep, narrow stairs to the second floor. Todd, cursing and muttering, did that by yanking and pushing her.

With rough hands he forced her toward the bed she'd slept in. When he tried to take off her shirt, Gilly found the strength to fight him again. Todd shouted out another slew of curses.

“Stop fighting me!”

But she would not. If this was a nightmare, she was going to keep swinging and scratching, even though every movement made her cry in pain. Todd, finally, ripped her shirt completely down the front, pushed her onto the bed and yanked at her pants, too.

Gilly kicked out as hard as she could. Maybe Todd dodged it, maybe she missed. She couldn't tell. All she knew was he grabbed her by the upper arms, fingers digging deep into her flesh, to yank her to her feet.

“I'm trying to help you!” Todd shouted into her face, breath hot and spittle wet on her cheeks. Then, “Oh, shit. Don't you pass out on me, Gilly.”

But Gilly did.

G
illy woke up blind. She lurched upright, clawing at her face. “My eyes!”

Her eyes were merely gummed shut, not blind. Her head ached in the dull, persistent manner that meant no amount of aspirin would stop it. The cold air stung a long gash on her cheek. She put trembling fingers to it and felt that the wound's curve from the left side of her jaw all the way to the corner of her eye. The crash had taken its share of skin and blood from her face, which felt puffy and tender. Her chest ached from impact with the steering wheel, but, though she sensed bruises, nothing appeared to be broken.

She wore a thick flannel nightgown that had rucked up about her thighs. She hated nightgowns for just that reason. She touched the soft fabric with her jagged, broken fingernails and shivered with distaste.

Gilly tested her limbs one at a time, cataloging aches and pains that ranged from mild to agonizing. Her neck hurt the
worst. The pain when she looked to the left was excruciating enough to twist her stomach. The gash on her thigh proved to be shallow but ugly, sore to the touch and still oozing blood and clear fluid.

Still, she was alive. There was that.

A shuffle of feet from the stairs told her he was coming. She spoke before she saw him. “What time is it?”

“Does it matter?”

He'd paused at the top of the stairs but she could see him through the partition. Gilly rubbed at her temples but the throbbing didn't ease. “No. I guess it doesn't.”

Todd took a few steps closer. “How are you?”

“Bad.”

“You're a mess,” he said flatly. “You know that?”

Gilly shrugged slightly. It was the greatest motion she could make without ripping herself open. It wasn't slight enough; she ached and more pain flared.

“The fuck were you thinking?”

She looked at him. “I want to go home.”

“Yeah, well, I want a million dollars.”

Gilly blinked at this attempt at…humor? Sarcasm? He'd said it with a straight face, so she couldn't be sure. “My head hurts. My neck, too. I think I strained something. And this cut on my leg needs stitches.”

“No shit. You're lucky you didn't get hurt worse. That was some crash.” Todd let out a low whistle. “Nice shiner.”

Gilly got out of bed and went to the dirt-encrusted attic window. Her entire left side felt rubbed raw. She winced at every step but could walk.

Everything outside was white. Snow piled against the cabin in drifts that looked nearly waist high. One giant drift reached almost to the windowsill.

No. Oh, no.

“All of this in one night?” she cried, incredulous. She put her hands to the cold glass.

Todd moved to her side. She shrank from him, but he didn't seem to notice. He leaned forward to peer out the window.

“It snowed all night and all morning, too. It stopped about an hour ago. Sky's still gray. I don't think it's finished yet.”

“The truck?”

He shrugged. “Totaled. Halfway down the mountain, unless that tree broke. Then that bitch is all the way at the bottom, and you can forget about ever getting it back.”

She knew that already but let out a gusting sigh that became a small moan. “Oh, no.”

“Hope you have good insurance.”

Another joke Gilly didn't find amusing. She pressed her face to the glass, eyes closed, and let out another small, despairing sigh. “Does that even matter now?”

Todd laughed and moved away from her. “Probably not. You shouldn't have tried to run away. That was stupid.”

Gilly looked at him. She searched his face for sign of a threat, but what would she do even if she saw it? Run? Fight? She'd failed miserably at both.

“You gave me no choice. I have to get home to my kids. My husband's probably worried sick.”

Todd shrugged. “Neither one of us will be going anywhere until this snow melts. Not without the truck. We're pretty much fucked.”

Gilly went back to the bed and sat. “I want to go home.”

His face went hard, the soft, dark eyes bitter. He threw her own words back at her. “Maybe you should've thought about that before.”

Don't lose it…

But it was already lost.

“Fuck you! You think I don't know that? Fuck you, Todd!” Gilly shrieked, lurching to her feet with fists flailing.

If she'd aimed for his face she probably wouldn't have hit him, but one of her wild swings caught him just under the eye. Todd stumbled back, muttering curses. The wound she'd inflicted on him earlier broke open, oozing blood. Gilly stood her ground, fists clenched and teeth chattering, ready to batter him again.

He reached out, quick as a cat, and grabbed her shoulders. He shook her like one does a naughty child, or a pet, each shake emphasizing a word. “That's twice. Don't do it again.”

“Or what?” she cried. “What could you possibly do that's worse than what you've already done?”

Todd stared at her with a flat black gaze for too long before answering, “I could do worse.”

He let her go so suddenly she stumbled back, her aggression puffed out like a breath-blown match. They were at a standoff. Gilly rubbed the sore spots his fingers had left, just a few more to add to the plethora already aching all over her.

Without another word, Todd went down the stairs. She went to the window again and stared out at the vast expanse of blankness. Even the trees had been covered in heavy quilts of white, blurring their lines and making them nothing more than vague humps. She wasn't going anywhere until that melted. Perhaps as early as March or as late as April, but April was three months away.

Her throat was dry. She needed a drink. Gilly looked around the walls of the prison she'd inflicted upon herself. A wave of dizziness washed over her and she sat on the bed, then put her head on the pillow, hoping it would pass. She'd caught
every flu bug Arwen brought home from kindergarten, from the nastiest stomach virus to the most persistent of colds. No amount of hand washing had seemed to help, and she was wary of overusing hand sanitizer, fearing the creation of a superbug more than risking the chance of catching yet another case of the sniffles. She'd been on antibiotics, on and off, for the past few weeks, to get rid of a bad sinus infection. Now she felt even worse, aching from head to toe and shivering with chills. She got up just long enough to slide back beneath the covers again and closed her eyes against the pain stabbing her behind the lids.

If there was any relief for her, it had the same source as her anxiety. She felt sick; she could lie down without fear of little hands plucking at her, little voices calling her name. The last time she'd taken herself to bed, unable to stand up without the world spinning, Gandy had decided to remove all the DVDs from their cases and, for some reason known only to his toddler brain, stick them in and out of the jumbo-size tub of margarine she used for making grilled cheese. That had been the day she called Seth, desperate for him to come home early from work, and he had.

There'd be no Seth to rescue her this time.

Desperation gnawed at her, a frenzied yearning to burst into action. She forced herself still, resting. Nothing to be gained by wild action; she'd learned that lesson the hard way. She thought of the snow outside, and she thought of Todd.

She supposed the real question was what did she think he would do to keep her, if he couldn't or wouldn't let her go? Did she think he would kill her if he had to? She remembered the desperation in his cry “I won't go back to jail!” And she thought that yes, he might. He might be slow of thought, and he might be kind at heart, but something had happened
to him that made him what he was today. Gilly didn't think Todd had brought her here to kill her, but she did believe he would if he felt he had to.

But hadn't she determined that she'd do the same? If the chance arose, if she was left with nothing else. The thought of it now sent a shudder cascading up and down her spine, like cold fingers stroking the nape of her neck. She'd tried to change his mind, and she'd tried to escape. Both had failed. But what would happen if she killed him? The third option that had seemed so matter-of-fact and to-the-point didn't feel that way now.

Even if she managed to bring herself to kill him, she was still trapped in this cabin without a phone, without a map, without proper clothes. No vehicle, that was her own stupid fault. Even if he died, there was nothing for her to do until the snow melted. She snuggled deeper into the cave of warmth her body heat created beneath the blankets. It turned out she had a fourth option.

Waiting.

T
hree days gone. She'd never been away from her babies for that long. Not to visit a friend, not to go on a girls' weekend away, not even to a scrapbooking seminar.

In her college days and just after, before meeting Seth, Gilly had been a traveler. She'd stayed in youth hostels or taken summer jobs at tourist destinations in different states. She'd jaunted on spur-of-the-moment trips based on whatever cheap airfare she'd found. Once she'd bought a companion ticket on an ocean liner from an elderly woman whose friend had been unable to make it at the last minute. The woman's name was Esther and though Gilly had been nervous about sharing a cabin with a stranger, the two of them had hit it off superbly. They'd kept in touch for years, until Esther passed away. Gilly hadn't traveled like that in a long, long time and probably never would again.

Seth traveled sometimes for work. He came home with the news of a conference or business trip, how many days he'd
be gone, what time his flights left and returned. He made his plans and took the trips without a second thought about who'd pick up Arwen from kindergarten or take Gandy to preschool. Who'd feed and walk the dog, sign for deliveries. Pay the bills or take care of the loads of laundry. Seth decided he was going, and he went.

A trip for Gilly would take weeks of planning and countless favors called in from friends to juggle her children's schedules and her time commitments. The effort it took for her to step out the door for a trip to the grocery store by herself would be magnified to such extent even a few days spent in a spa getting hot-stone massages and foot rubs from handsome, oiled men in loincloths wouldn't be worth the hassle.

This was not even close to a hot-stone massage. Paused at the bottom of the stairs, Gilly looked across the room at Todd sitting at the table, still sorting through his folder of papers. He had a cigarette in one hand and sucked in long, deep draws of smoke he held for an impossibly long time before letting it seep from his nostrils. His hair fell forward as he bent over the papers, but she could still see the wounds she'd inflicted on his face. The cuts were evidence she'd done what she could to get away, but small consolation compared to her aches and bruises.

She'd stayed upstairs for what felt like an hour but might've been two. Might've been fifteen minutes. She didn't have a watch, the cabin had no clocks, and the daylight outside was set permanently to twilight. More snow drifted down in spurts, dandruff brushed from a giant's shoulders.

Todd looked up when her foot creaked on the bottom step. He closed the folder and stood. “Hi.”

Walking stiffly so as to jar her sore muscles as little as possible, Gilly limped into the living room. She kept a wary
distance, but Todd acted as though he'd never raised a hand to her. He came around the couch but stopped when she took a step back.

“I got your stuff,” he said.

“What stuff?” Gilly asked. She didn't think he was capable of being particularly subtle, but she
was
wary of some sort of trick she couldn't anticipate.

Todd hesitated, then gestured at the front door. “Your stuff. From the truck. I got what I could, anyway. It was fuckall tough. That little tree's not going to hold it much longer. But…I thought you might want stuff out of it before it hits the bottom of the mountain.”

Gilly's aching knees buckled. The doorway saved her from falling as she gripped it with her sore hand. He'd brought her things.

She moved on stumbling feet, three, four, five steps, to crouch by the pile of miscellaneous junk Todd had brought back from the wreck. Most of it
was
junk. A scattering of plastic toys. A stray sock that had been missing for months and was now too small for either of the kids. A sippy cup, thick with the remnants of some red juice. Gandy's blankie, many times repaired and badly in need of a wash. He'd be missing it by now. Crying for it, unable to sleep.

Gilly grabbed it. Held it to her face. Breathed in the scent of her son. She made a wordless noise of grief into the fabric.

You're never going to see him again. Or Arwen, or Seth. This is what you did, Gilly. This is what you deserve.

“Gilly?”

Todd's hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she shook it off. Clutching the blankie to her chest, she glared up at him. “Don't. Just don't!”

Todd held up both hands, face grim. “Fine. Jesus. What a bitch.”

He slouched away, boots heavy and clomping on the bare boards of the floor. Gilly crouched over her meager pile of belongings. The detritus of motherhood. Tiny, mismatched pieces of her heart.

She found her iPod, safe in the soft eyeglass case she used to transport it, the earbuds still wrapped around it. He'd also brought the black CD case bulging with discs she only listened to while driving. Bat Boy, scratched probably beyond repair.

Behind her, Gilly heard Todd pacing, but she didn't look. She held the CD close to her. She'd bought this disc with Seth at one of the last few shows this cast had performed at an off-Broadway theater, four days after the Twin Towers had fallen.

“We took the ferry,” she said.

Todd's boots stopped thumping.

Gilly bent her head over the disc. Her fingers left misty marks on the silver back. “We parked in the lot and took the ferry across. It was full of people going to volunteer to help. There was a federal marshal on board. I could see his gun. I looked out across the water and saw the smoke.”

Gilly closed her eyes, her memories clutched in bruised and aching hands.

“There were posters everywhere. Pictures of people who were still missing, with numbers to call. When we got to the other side, there were parking lots blocked off by wire fencing, filled with pallets of water. I saw a bundle of axes, maybe twenty of them, leaning against the fence.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Todd asked, but softly.
Gentle. It was the way someone might speak to someone standing on a ledge or a bridge.

Gilly opened her eyes. She gathered up what he'd brought to her, careful not to lose anything. “It was the worst thing I'd ever seen.”

“You messing with me again?”

She stood and looked at him. “No. I'm not. I'm trying to tell you that I've seen bad things.”

“Yeah?” Todd frowned. “Well, so have I.”

“I thought at the time that was the worst experience I'd ever have. Seeing what had been left behind. The grief of people who'd lost someone they loved. The bravery of the ones who'd traveled from all over to help dig out the dead. I thought it was the very worst thing, and it was bad…” She looked up at him. “But I think this is worse.”

Todd took a step back, mouth thinning. “Why don't you shut up now, Gilly.”

“Yes,” she said faintly and held her things close to her. “Yes. I think I will.”

Todd scuffed a boot on the floor. It left a black mark on the boards she'd so painstakingly swept earlier. “I'm making dinner. Come have some.”

Gilly shook her head. “No.”

“You should eat something.”

Her stomach, empty, was nonetheless too shriveled for hunger. The thought of food made her feel sick. “Why?”

Todd's mouth opened and closed. He scowled, then tossed up his hands and turned on his heel to stalk to the kitchen. Gilly watched him go, then stood, juggling her belongings, and went upstairs.

She put everything he'd salvaged in the top drawer of the dresser she was nauseated to realize she thought of as “hers.”
Then she climbed into bed and burrowed under the blankets with the iPod.

Though it didn't look broken, the iPod wouldn't turn on. It gave a low, chugging
whir
when Gilly pressed the button. She slapped it into her palm as if she was tamping a pack of cigarettes, once, then harder. The screen lit, then shut off. She tamped it again. This time, the Apple logo showed up as the unit rebooted or did whatever it was doing.

She slipped the earbuds in and thumbed the controls. It was an old model, inherited from Seth after he'd upgraded, but that had never mattered. It had enough space on it to store some music and photos. She scrolled to the picture slideshow she'd loaded to show Seth's parents the last time they'd visited. In moments the bright and bouncy music, some instrumental piece that came with the photo software, came on. So did the photos.

Arwen in pink tights and a ballerina sweatshirt, curly dark hair pulled into pigtails, showing off a hole where her front tooth had been. Gandy dressed like Scooby Doo, holding an empty pumpkin pail, chocolate smeared on his face. Photo after photo of her children, each one precious and remote, unforgettable and unreachable.

And finally, Gilly wept.