Dark Places

glared at her. She had a glop of egg yolk in her hair.
Who ate eggs at midnight?
I thought.
Or had that been there since this morning
?
    “Magda here is very involved with the case, very involved in the effort to free your brother,” said the old guy, with a patronizing rise of his eyebrows.
    “He’s a wonderful man,” Magda said, pointing her chin at me. “He writes poetry and music and he’s just a force of hope. You should get to know him, Libby, you really should.”
    Magda was running her fingernails across a set of folders on the table before her, one for each Day family member. The thickest folder was covered with photos of my brother: Ben, red-headed and young, somberly holding a toy bomber; Ben, black-haired and scared in his mug shot after the arrest; Ben today, in prison, the red hair returned, studious looking, his mouth partly open, as if caught midsentence. Next to that was Debby’s folder, bearing a single photo of her dressed as a gypsy for Halloween: red cheeks, red lips, her brown haircovered by my mom’s red bandanna, a hip jutted to the side, pretend-sexy. To her right, you can see my freckled arm, reaching for her. It was a family photo, something I thought had never been released.
    “Where’d you get that?” I asked her.
    “Around.” She covered the folder with a thick hand.
    I looked down at the table, resisting the urge to lunge. The photograph of Debby’s dead body had slipped out of the old guy’s folder again. I could see the bloody leg, a sliced-up belly, an arm nearly off. I leaned across the table and grabbed the man’s wrist.
    “You put that shit away,” I murmured. He tucked the photo away again, then held the folder shield-like, and blinked at me.
    The group was all looking at me now, curious, a little concerned, like I was some pet bunny they just realized might be rabid.
    “Libby,” Lyle said in the soothing tones of a talk-show host. “No one doubts you were in the house. No one doubts you survived an incredibly horrific ordeal no child should ever endure. But did you really see with your own eyes what you say you saw? Or may you have been coached?”
    I was picturing Debby, sifting my hair with nimble, pudgy fingers, braiding it in the fishbone style she insisted was more difficult than French braids, huffing warm baloney breath on the back of my neck. Tying a green ribbon on the end, turning me into a present. Helping me balance on the edge of the bathtub so I could hold a handmirror and see the back of my furrowed head in the looking glass over the sink. Debby, who so desperately wanted everything to be pretty.
    “There’s no proof that anyone but Ben killed my family,” I said, pulling back to the land of the living, where I live by myself. “He never even filed an appeal, for Christsakes. He’s never tried to get out.” I had no experience with convicts, but it seemed to me that they were always launching appeals, that it was a passion for them, even if they had no shot. When I pictured prison, I pictured orange jumpsuits and yellow legal pads. Ben had proved himself guilty by sheer inertia—my testimony was beside the point.
    “He had reason enough for eight appeals,” Magda pronounced, grandly. I realized she was one of those women who would show up on my doorstep to scream at me. I was glad I’d never given Lyle myaddress. “Not fighting doesn’t mean he’s guilty, Libby, it means he’s lost hope.”
    “Well, then good.”
    Lyle widened his eyes.
    “Oh, God. You really think Ben did it.” Then he laughed. Once, accidentally, quickly swallowed but entirely genuine. “Excuse me,” he murmured.
    No one laughs at me. Everything I say or do is taken very, very seriously. No one mocks a victim. I am not a figure of mirth. “Well, you all enjoy your conspiracy theories,” I said, and bumped up from the chair.
    “Oh don’t be like that,” said the cop-guy. “Stay. Convince us.”
    “He never … filed … an appeal,” I said, like a preschool teacher. “That’s good enough for me.”
    “Then you’re an idiot.”
    I flipped him off, a hard gesture like I was digging into cold earth. Then I turned away, someone behind me saying, “She’s still a little liar.”
    I darted back into the crowd, pushing my way under armpits and past groins until I arrived back into the cool of the stairwell, the noise behind me. My only victory of the night was the wad of money in my pocket and the knowledge that these people were as pathetic as I