Dark Places

she looked like Wonder Woman in her invisible plane, sitting in the outlines of a bedroom. When she tapped her cigarette, the ashes fluttered down into the dining room.
    All the pre-houses unnerved Patty. They were recognizable but totally foreign, an everyday word you suddenly couldn’t remember to save your life.
    “Pretty, huh?” Diane said, wagging a finger at the neighborhood.
    Two more turns and they were there, a block of tidy houses, real houses, a cluster of cars in front of one.
    “Looks like a party,” Diane sniffed. She rolled down the window and spat outside.
    The car was silent for a few seconds, except for Diane’s throat-noises.
    “Solidarity,” Diane said. “Don’t worry, worst they can do is yell.”
    “Maybe you should stay here with Libby,” Patty said. “I don’t want yelling in front of her.”
    “Nah,” Diane said. “No one stays in the car. We can do this. Yeah, Libby? You’re a tough little girl, right?” Diane turned her bulk to Libby in the backseat, her parka rustling, and then back to Patty. “It’ll be good for them to see her, know he’s got a little sister around who loves him.” Patty had a shot of confidence that she’d thought the same thing.
    Diane was out of the car then, on the other side, rousting Libby, and opening the door wide for her to get out. The three of them walked up the sidewalk, Patty immediately feeling ill. Her ulcers had been quiet for a bit, but now her belly burned. She had to unclench her jaw and work it loose. They stood on the doorstep, Patty and Diane in front, with Libby just behind her mother, glancing out backward. Patty imagined a stranger driving past, thinking they were friends joining the festivities. The door still had a Christmas wreath on it. Patty thought,
They had a nice happy Christmas and now they are frightened and angry and I bet they keep thinking, but we just had such a nice happy Christmas
. The house was like something from a catalog, and there were two BMWs in the driveway and these were not people who were used to bad things happening.
    “I don’t want to do this, I don’t think we should do this,” she blurted.
    Diane rang the doorbell and gave her a look straight from their dad, the calm, unmoved look he gave whiners. Then she said exactly what Dad always said when he gave the look: “Nothing to it but to do it.”
    Mrs. Cates answered the door, blond and prairie-faced. Her eyes were red from crying and she was still holding a tissue.
    “Hello, may I help you?”
    “I. Are you … Krissi Cates’s mother?” Patty started, and began crying.
    “I am,” the woman said, fingers on her own pearls, her eyes shifting back and forth to Patty and Diane, and then down to Libby, “Oh, was your little girl … did he hurt your little girl too?”
    “No,” Patty said. “I’m Ben’s mother. I’m
Ben Day’s
mother.” She wiped the tears with the back of her hand, then with the sleeve of her sweater.
    “Oh God, Oh God, Oh,
Louuuu
come here. Hurry.” Mrs. Cates’s voice grew loud and quivery, the sound of an airplane going down. Several faces Patty didn’t recognize peered around the corner of the living room. A man walked past from the kitchen holding a tray of sodas. One girl lingered in the hallway, a pretty blond girl wearing flowered jeans.
    “Who’s that?” the girl chirped.
    “Go get your father.” Mrs. Cates moved to fill up the doorway, almost physically pushing them from the doorstep. “Louuuu …” she called back into the house. A man appeared behind her, slab-like, 6’5” at least, solid, with a way of keeping his chin up that reminded Patty of people who got what they wanted.
    “This is her, this is Ben Day’s mother,” the woman said with such disgust Patty could feel her womb flinch.
    “You’d better come inside,” the man said, and when Patty and Diane glanced at each other, he snapped, “Come, come,” like they were bad pets.
    They stepped into the home, into a sunken den, and peered out on a scene that looked like a children’s birthday party. Four girls were in various states of play. They wore foil stars on their faces and hands, the kind of stickers teachers use to mark good grades. Several were sitting with their parents, eating cake, the girls looking greedy, the moms and dads looking panicked behind brave faces. Krissi Cates had plopped herself in the middle of the floor and was playing dolls with a large, dark-haired young man who sat cross-legged in front of