Precious And Fragile Things. Megan Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ