Dark Places

snuggly one second and then the next, he’d be looking at you like he had no idea who you were.”
    It was true, Ben at age two was an astonishing thing. He’d demand love outright, grab at a breast or an arm, but as soon as he had enough affection, and that came quickly, he’d go completely limp, play dead until you let him go. She’d taken him to the doctor, and Ben had sat rigid and tight-lipped, a stoic turtle-necked boy with a disturbing ability to withhold. Even the doctor seemed spooked, proffering a cheap lollipop and telling her to come back in six months if he was the same. He was always the same.
    “Well, moody’s not a crime,” Patty said. “Runner was moody.”
    “Runner is an asshole, not the same. Ben’s always had that remove to him.”
    “Well, he is fifteen,” Patty started, and trailed off. Her eyes caught a jar of old nails on the shelf, a jar she doubted had been moved since their dad’s time. It was labeled
Nails
in his long, upright handwriting on a scrap of masking tape.
    The garage had an oily concrete floor that was even colder than the air. In one corner, an old gallon jug of water had turned to ice, busted its plastic seams. Their breath hung thick with Diane’s cigarette smoke. Still, she was oddly contented here, among all these old tools she could picture in their dad’s hands: rakes with bent tines, axes of every length, shelves packed with jars filled with screws and nails and washers. Even an old metal ice chest, its base speckled with rust, where their dad used to keep his beer cold while he listened to ball games on the radio.
    It unnerved her that Diane was saying so little, since Diane liked to offer opinions, even when she didn’t really have any. It unnerved her more that Diane was staying so motionless, hadn’t found a project, something to straighten or rearrange, because Diane was a doer, she never just sat and talked.
    “Patty. I got to tell you something I heard. And my first instinct was to not say anything, because of course it’s not true. But you’re a mom, you should know, and … hell, I don’t know, you should just know.”
    “OK.”
    “Has Ben ever played with the girls in a way that someone might get confused about?”
    Patty just stared.
    “In a way that people might get the wrong idea about … sexually?”
    Patty almost choked. “Ben
hates
the girls!” She was surprised at the relief she felt. “He has as little to do with them as possible.”
    Diane lit another cigarette, gave a taut nod of her head. “Well, OK, good. But there’s something more. A friend of mine told me a rumor that there’s been a complaint about Ben over at the school, that a few little girls, Michelle’s age or so, had talked about kissing him and maybe him touching them or something. Maybe worse. The stuff I heard was worse.”
    “Ben? You realize that’s completely crazy.” Patty stood up, couldn’t figure out what to do with her arms or legs. She turned to the right and then the left too quickly, like a distracted dog, and sat back down. A strap in her chair broke.
    “I do know it’s crazy. Or some misunderstanding.”
    That was the worst word Diane could have said. As soon as she said it, Patty knew she’d been dreading just exactly that. That wedge of possibility—
misunderstanding
—that could turn this into something. A pat on the head might be a caress of the back might be a kiss on the lips might be the roof caving in.
    “Misunderstanding? Ben wouldn’t misunderstand a kiss. Or touching. Not with a little girl. He’s not a pervert. He’s an odd kid, but he’s not sick. He’s not crazy.” Patty had spent her life swearingBen
wasn’t
odd, was just an average kid. But now she’d settle for odd. The realization came suddenly, a wild jolt, like having your hair blown in your face while driving.
    “Will you tell them he wouldn’t do that?” Patty asked, and the tears came all at once, suddenly her cheeks were soaked.
    “I can tell everyone in Kinnakee, everyone in the state of Kansas that he wouldn’t do that, and it might not be the end of it. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just heard yesterday afternoon, but it seems to be getting … bigger. I almost came out here. Then I spent the rest of the night convincing myself that it wasn’t anything. Then I woke up this morning and realized it was.”
    Patty knew that feeling, a dream hangover, like when she jumped up from a panicky sleep at 2 in the morning and tried to talk herself