Precious and Fragile Things Read online

  She turned to face him. “Todd. That’s your name, right? Todd, you have to take me back. Or take me someplace. Let me go.”

  He wasn’t looking at her. He shook his shaggy head and got up from the table to stalk to the living room with a handful of paper napkins he used to build up the fire in the sooty woodstove. He went to the table and picked up a bulging folder, then took it to the woodstove where he crouched in front of its warmth, sifting through the papers. Every so often he threw one of them into the blaze.

  “Please,” Gilly said from the kitchen.

  Todd ignored her, bent to his task with a single-minded self-absorption. He muttered as he worked, but she couldn’t make out the words. Gilly moved to the living room, wanting to draw closer to the fire’s warmth but feeling as though it was up to her to keep a proper distance between them. There had to be something for her to say or do to make him listen.

  If she ran away now, would he chase her? Gilly’s head felt fuzzy, her thoughts mangled, but everything in the cabin seemed too sharp, too clear. Looking at things straight on hurt her eyes. She couldn’t blame exhaustion since she’d had the longest night’s sleep she’d had since before being pregnant with Arwen.

  She’d felt this way before, when the pain of childbirth had made time stretch on into an unfathomable and interminable length. When the drugs she’d been taking for a sinus infection had made her feel as though she were constantly floating. Now it was the same, every minute lasting an hour, her head a balloon tethered to her shoulders by a gossamer thread that could snap at any minute.

  You did this to yourself, Gillian. You know you did. Now you pay the price.

  It was her mother’s voice again, stern and strong. Gilly thought of the dream she’d had while driving. Roses and thorns and blood and love.

  The fire warmed the room and she shrugged out of her coat. She hung it on the back of a chair. “Todd.”

  Todd shuffled his pile of papers together and held them out to her. “Read this.”

  Her first instinct was to say no, but wouldn’t it be better to do what he wanted than to antagonize him? Gilly sat on the plaid couch and took the offered papers. The first was a bank statement. The name at the top of the account was Todd Blauch. The previous balance was for a little more than five thousand dollars. One withdrawal had been made a couple weeks ago for the entire amount. That explained the envelope at the minimart.

  She explained what that meant. He gave her that look again, the one that said he knew she mocked him, he just wasn’t sure how cruelly. “I know that.”

  “You told me to read them.”

  “I know that one,” he said. “I need help with the ones under that one.”

  She took a look. The legal-size sheets would have been incomprehensible to her even without the crumpling and staining. It was some sort of legal document. A will. All she could really make out were the names Bill Lutz and Todd Blauch. There was a bunch of mumbo jumbo about property lines and taxes. Deeds.

  “Is it the will saying you’ve inherited the cabin?”

  Todd sighed. “Yeah. But there’s too many words on that paper. Lots of little words always mean there’s something they can catch you on.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s all it says,” Gilly told him. “But I’m not a lawyer.”

  “That would’ve been my luck,” Todd muttered. “To get stuck with a lawyer.”

  “You’re not stuck with me.”

  Todd stuffed the papers back in his folder. “Shit, Gilly.”

  “You took my boots.” It wasn’t a question.

  He stared at her sideways, head cocked and his thick dark hair hanging over one eye. “Yeah.”

  “So I couldn’t run away.”

  He shrugged but didn’t answer.

  Gilly screwed up her courage with a deep breath. She lifted her chin, determined her voice would not tremble. “Do you want sex?”

  He looked as stunned as if she’d slapped him across the face. Her words propelled him from the couch. Todd turned from her, facing the woodstove, his shoulders hunched.

  “Jesus. No!”

  “If that’s what you want,” she continued, her voice a calm floating cloud that did not seem to come from the rest of her, “then I will let you do whatever you want…if you let me go….”

  He whirled around, and to her surprise, his tawny cheeks had bloomed the color of aged brick. “I don’t want to fuck you!”

  Gilly shook her head, immensely relieved but inexplicably offended. “What do you want me for, then?”

  “I didn’t want you at all, I just wanted the fucking truck. Jesus fucking Christ. Shit!” He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand with each invective. “What the hell?”

  She pressed her hands tightly together to prevent them from trembling, but nothing could stop the quaver in her voice. “I just thought…”

  He tossed up his hands at her, forcing her to silence. He lit a cigarette, staring at her while the smoke leaked from his nose in twin streams like the breath of a dragon. The steady glare was disconcerting, but she forced herself to meet it.

  “You think I stole you?” Todd said slowly. “I mean, you look at me and you think I’m a guy who takes women?”

  “You did take me!”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, “I didn’t mean to.”

  I didn’t mean to.

  It was one of the things Seth said when he wanted to sound like he was apologizing but really wasn’t. Gilly hated that phrase so much it automatically curled her lip and made her want to spit. The noise forced from her throat sounded suspiciously like a growl.

  “How could you not mean to? I was in the truck. You got in with a…with a knife!” Her words caught, her voice hoarse. “How was that an accident? What happened? Did some big wind come up and just blow you into my car?”

  “I didn’t say it was an accident. I just said I didn’t take you on purpose!”

  “There’s no difference!” Gilly cried.

  Todd stared at her long and hard. “There is a fucking difference.”

  Shouting would solve nothing and might, in fact, make things worse. Gilly made herself sound calm and poised. “I want you to let me go, Todd.”

  “Can’t.”

  His simple answer infuriated her. “What do you plan to do with me, then?”

  He shrugged, sucking on the cigarette until his cheeks hollowed. “Hell if I know.”

  “Someone will find me.”

  He stared at her, long and hard, through narrowed eyes. Todd didn’t look away. Gilly did.

  “I don’t think anyone will find you,” he said. “Not for a while, anyway, and by then…”

  “By then, what?” She stood to face him, but he only shrugged. She softened her tone. Cajoled, tempting that boot-kicked dog closer with a piece of steak. “Look. Just give me my boots. I’ll hike down to the main road and…hitch a ride. Or something. Find a gas station.”

  He snorted laughter. “No, you won’t. You’d never make it. Christ, it’s…” He stopped himself, wary again, as if telling her the distance would give her any sort of clue where they were. “It’s too far.”

  “I’d make it,” Gilly said in a low voice.

  “No,” Todd said. “You wouldn’t.”

  Images of a mass grave, multiple rotting bodies, filled her brain. Gilly swallowed hard. Fear tasted a little like metal, but she had to ask the question. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Todd started. “No! Jesus Christ, no.”

  There was no counting to ten this time, nothing to hold her back from rising hysteria. “Because if you are, you should do it now. Right away! Just do it and get it over with!”

  Todd flinched at first in the face of her shouting, then frowned. “I didn’t bring you here to kill you. The fuck you think I am, a psycho?”

  Gilly quieted, chest heaving with breath that hurt her lungs. Her throat had gone dry, her mouth parched and arid. Todd stared, then shook his head and laughed.

  “You do. You really do