Dark Places

was judging me, me and my packet of notes I was going to sell. Nothing I’d decided to part with was particularly interesting: I had five birthday cards my mom had given Michelle and Debby over the years, cheerful quick notes scrawled at the bottom, and I had a birthday card she’d written to Ben I thought might bring decent money. I felt guilty about all of it, not good at all, but I feared having no money, really feared being broke, and that came before being nice. The note to Ben, on the inside of a card for his twelfth birthday, read:
You are growing up before my eyes, before I know it you’ll be driving!
When I read it, I had to turn it facedown and back away, because my mom would be dead before Ben would ever learn how to drive. And Ben would be in prison, would never learn how to drive anyway.
    Anyway.
    We drove across the Missouri River, the water not even bothering to glisten in the afternoon sun. What I didn’t want was to watch these people read the notes, there was something too intimate aboutthat. Maybe I could leave while they looked at them, assessed them like old candlesticks at a yard sale.
    Lyle guided me to Magda’s, through middle-middle-class neighborhoods where every few houses waved a St. Patrick’s Day flag—all bright clovers and leprechauns just a few days stale. I could feel Lyle fiddling beside me, twitchy as usual, and then he turned toward me, his knees almost punching my stickshift out of gear.
    “So,” he said.
    “So.”
    “This meeting, as is often the case with Magda, has turned into something a little different than planned.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “Well, you know she’s in that group—the Free Day Society. To get Ben out of prison. And so she’s invited a few of those … women.”
    “Oh. No.” I said. I pulled the car over to the curb.
    “Listen, listen, you said you wanted to look into Runner. Well, this is it. They will pay us—you—to find him, ask him some questions, father to daughter.”
    “Daughter to father?”
    “Right. See, I’m running out of money. So this is where the next funding will come from.”
    “So I have to sit here and let them be rude to me? Like last time?”
    “No, no, they can fill you in on the investigation into Runner. Bring you up to speed. I mean, you think Ben is innocent now, right?”
    I had a flash of Ben watching TV, my mom rustling his hair with one hand as she walked past with a load of laundry on her hip, and him smiling but not turning around. Waiting til she left the room before he combed his hair back into place.
    “I haven’t gotten that far.”
    My keys dangled from the ignition, turning in time to a Billy Joel song on the radio. I switched stations.
    “Fine, let’s go,” I said.
    I drove another few blocks. Magda’s neighborhood was as cheapas mine, but nicer. Every house had been built shabby, but the owners still found enough pride to slap on a coat of paint now and then, hang a flag, plant some flowers. The houses reminded me of hopeful homely girls on a Friday night, hopping bars in spangly tops, packs of them where you assumed at least one might be pretty, but none were, and never would be. And here was Magda’s house, the ugliest girl with the most accessories, frantically piled on. The front yard was spiked with lawn ornaments: gnomes bouncing on wire legs, flamingos on springs, and ducks with plastic wings that circled when the wind blew. A forgotten cardboard Christmas reindeer sat soggy in the front garden, which was mostly mud, baby-fuzz patches of grass poking through intermittently. I turned off the car, and we both stared into the yard, with its jittering denizens.
    Lyle turned to me, fingers outstretched like a coach giving advice on a difficult play: “So, don’t worry. I guess the only thing to remember is to be careful how you talk about Ben. These people can get pretty riled when it comes to him.”
    “What’s pretty riled?”
    “Like, do you go to church at all?”
    “When I was a kid.”
    “So it would be kind of like someone coming into your church and saying they hate God.”
    IT DID FEEL like a church. Or maybe a wake. Lots of coffee, dozens of people murmuring in dark wool clothes, regretful smiles. The air was blue with cigarette smoke, and I thought how rarely I saw that anymore, after growing up in Diane’s foggy trailer. I took a deep breath of it.
    We’d knocked several times on the open door, and when no one heard, we just walked in. Lyle and I stood there,