“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?”