the rhododendron my trailer sat closed up and dark. Beyond that Ben was in his garden, cleaning up from the storm.
I took my bag of treats over toward him. “Hey,” I said when I got close.
His head shot up. He had his color back and looked infinitely better than the last time I’d seen him—old and frail and gray, pushed aside by…Max. His son. Big pieces of the Ben puzzle slowly fell into place. One of those people he regretted hurting was Dylan.
“You all right?” I asked, looking him over for signs of harm. For signs that Max had hurt him.
“Fine. Just fine.”
“Last night—”
“An argument. That’s all. Where you been?” he asked, retying the strings for his runner beans despite the fact that they were ruined. He’d clearly tried to replant some things that had been uprooted in the storm. But the beans looked smashed beyond repair.
“With Dylan,” I told him, point-blank.
The string fell from his fingers, which were suddenly shaking.
“Did you know he lived nearby?” I asked, and he nodded, his throat working as if he were swallowing something big. Something hard.
“Did you know he owned the trailer park?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “I know. It’s not a secret. Half the people living here know Dylan Daniels owns the park. Phil, the asshole, just got fired from his shop a month ago.”
I nearly reeled under the information. Phil was the guy Dylan fired?
“Did you know I was watching you? That’d he’d asked me to keep an eye on you?”
“I figured,” he said. “He’s had a spy on me for a while. None of them like you, though.”
“What does that mean?”
He smiled at me. “None of them made me pasta sauce.”
“He told me to stay away from you.”
“Well, you didn’t listen to that, did you?”
“He said you were dangerous.”
Ben sucked on his cheek. “Makes sense he would say that—it’s all he’s ever known from me. You two a thing now?”
I shook my head.
“That’s for the best, I imagine.”
“Why?”
He looked at me for a long time and then shook his head.
“Because he’s my son,” he said. “And some apples don’t fall far from the tree.”
“Dylan’s not dangerous.”
“If you honestly think that, then you don’t know the whole story.”
“I know Dylan.”
He looked at me for a long time like he was trying to talk himself out of something. Or into something. “You can’t go walking around thinking he’s something he’s not. You can’t keep thinking he’s…tame.”
“If you’re going to tell me something, Ben, just do it. I’ve kind of had a long few days.”
Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He was arrested when he was a kid. Sixteen. He and his brother got into trouble for stealing cars. Illegal racing. Dylan went to jail. Juvie. It was supposed to be a short sentence; he…he was a good kid. Never in trouble. But in jail he changed. He was fighting. A lot of it. More and more violent. Until he stabbed a kid—”
“You’re lying.” I held up my hand as if I could get him to shut up. As if I could shove those words back down his throat.
“I’m not. I’m not lying. And he didn’t tell you, did he?”
“Shut up, Ben! Shut up, you’re just…this is a game you’re playing. Some awful way to punish Dylan. To get me not to care. Something—”
“I don’t give a shit if you care for him. I’m telling you not to trust him. Not to trust…yourself with him.”
I wanted to yell and scream that Ben was lying. That I knew Dylan, I knew what mattered, knew the soul-deep goodness of him. Dylan and Ben might both be closed up, locked down, hiding a kindness they didn’t entirely trust within themselves.
“He’s not like you. He wouldn’t do what you have done.”
Ben was watching me, with those eyes that I recognized in Dylan’s face. Deep-set, heavy-lidded. Eyes that saw everything.
“Ask me,” he said. “I know you’ve wanted to for a while.”
“Did you know about the little girl? In the house?”
He slowly shook his head. “I didn’t.” A long, ragged breath sawed out of his chest. “I wish I had more than anything else in my life—I wish I had known that girl was there.”
I understood that I had a will to believe the things that made my life easier. That fit the way I needed to live in my world, and yes, it was easier to believe that Ben—a man I liked, Dylan’s father—did not kill an innocent girl in cold blood. And I should have,