I absolutely tried not to react, but my eyebrows hit my hairline anyway.

“No one is all bad, Annie,” she said, her eyes blazing, her lips pinched. She looked sour and mean and old. Older than she should. A million years older.

“Some people are bad enough,” I said. I thought of how I’d used Dylan, lied to him and pulled him into my misery. That was something bad enough that the good—the pleasure and the kindness—was invalidated. “Bad enough that the good shit doesn’t matter. We both know that.”

I would never have had the courage to say those words to her before. To stand there, holding her eye contact until she flinched away.

“I’ll be here,” I said. “When it’s bad again.”

Her cheeks were bright red and the kids were watching us, the ends of their stick swords dragging in the dirt.

“Mom?” the boy asked, stepping forward like he would use that stick to stop me.

“Hey, baby?” Those familiar words in a man’s voice made me start. Made longing open up in my stomach like a giant pit. But it wasn’t Dylan. Dylan wasn’t going to be calling me “baby.” Not for a long time. If ever.

It was Phil, coming across the road to the playground. “You ready?” he asked. He smirked at me, his eyes taking in my pajamas and hoodie. The slippers Margaret had given me. He made me feel naked, despite all my clothes. That’s what guys like Phil specialized in, making a woman feel vulnerable.

I straightened my spine and stared right back at him.

“Yeah,” Tiffany said with a bright smile. “Let’s go, kids. Daddy’s taking us out for dinner.”

The kids dropped their sticks and ran back to the trailer. Tiffany tossed her own sticks in the big pile she’d made on the far side of the slide.

“I’ll see you later,” I said, watching this strange scene of family happiness. The rot underneath it. Yes, it was safety and dinners now, but Tiffany knew it was going to turn again and this man would raise a hand to her. Or to her kids.

Inevitable.

Dylan was right. Some things were just waiting for us out there in the dark.

I turned away, heading toward my own trailer.

“Annie,” she said, stopping me. Panic laced her voice. Her eyes skittered over my shoulder to the rhododendron. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Tiffany!” Phil yelled and Tiffany ducked her head and headed back to her own trailer. The blue muscle car waiting beside it.

Past 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, perhaps, doubted my belief. My faith.

But I didn’t. I believed Ben was telling the truth.

Did that also mean I had to believe Ben about Dylan?

I was torn in half. My head pounded. My heart ached.

“Dylan said he didn’t think you knew the girl was there,” I said, wondering if the words would bring him any peace. Or me.

What would bring me peace?

“You look so tired you’re about to collapse,” he said. “Go lie down.”

“But—”

“Go. We can talk later.”

Right. Okay. It was too much. The last few days were too full and I was officially overwhelmed. I turned slowly, the bag of food banging into my leg. “Oh,” I said. “I brought you some stuff. Would you like—”

I pulled out half a cantaloupe covered in Saran Wrap. A small piece of Dylan’s world in this unlikely place. I offered it to Ben.

“No, girly. You take that stuff. I got all I need.” Those were nearly the exact words Smith would have said, and I nodded, my throat swollen. Why, I wondered, thinking of Smith and Dylan and Ben, were the men in my life so good at self-denial? So good at holding at arm’s length the things they wanted?