Precious and Fragile Things Read online

  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