Precious and Fragile Things Read Online Free PDF Page A

fur, a body crushing into the front end of the truck and sliding across the windshield to break the glass. She’d seen every stone on the street, every hair on the deer’s body before it had all become a haze.
    Today 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.
    â€œYou 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
    â€œR oses 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 likeAfter Midnight, Black Ice, even one called Cherry Cola. They’re all in bloom.
    â€œPay 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.
    â€œBecause you neglected them, Gillian. Your roses died because you don’t pay attention.”
    â€œMom. 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