The Guardians

'My goodness. You know al the names.'

'Ben passed along a little local history to me.'

Betty rubs her hands together, as though lathering soap. 'He went to the library sometimes. 'Research' is al he'd say when I asked what he was reading up on. I shouldn't be surprised it was that awful story.'

'I guess that's why everyone cals the house across the street haunted.'

'They do?' she asks, and though at first I take her disbelief as a joke, a lie so unbelievable it was never meant to be swalowed, her face tels me nothing either way.

'I grew up here,' I go on eventualy. 'We al did. But I never heard anything about it.'

'Why would you have? Those were things that happened half a lifetime before you were born.'

'Stil, you'd think someone would mention it. I mean, she was raped. She was murdered.'

'That could only have come from your parents. And you were our children. It's our job to prevent you from hearing things like that for as long we're able.'

'Until it just goes away.'

'If you're lucky,' she says, and shrugs. 'Smal towns are good at forgetting. They have to be.'

I consider walking over to Sarah's place and asking if I can stay. Not just for the night or two she has already offered, but for as long as she'l let me. I'l do the cooking and cleaning. And as much of the nighttime fooling around as she and the Big P alow.

But having Sarah say no to such a proposal might push me over the edge into ful-blown Benhood, and this worries me more than the idea of Roy DeLisle taking my hand as I walk.

'Trev! Over here!'

It's Randy, waving at me from the Queen's dining-room table he shares with Carl. Because they are who I've walked to, not Sarah. By the time I sink into the chair next to Carl, the waitress arrives to take their order.

'You hungry?' Carl asks me.

'I'l have what you're having.'

'Steak and eggs?'

'Perfect.'

'Hey, man, it's your credit card.'

After my coffee cup is filed, I tel them about my discovery in Ben's room. The whole Roy DeLisle file. And how old Paul Schantz was the man looking after him when the bad things happened. I don't include any of my own thoughts about the commonalities between Elizabeth Worth and Heather Langham, Roy and the coach, how they al have been rooted to the Thurman house. They are thoughts I can read passing over their faces as I speak.

'He's got a name,' Randy says when our food arrives. 'Roy. I wish I didn't know that.'

'It's like a lousy song that gets stuck in your head,' I say.

'Worse,' Carl says. 'There's no music in it.'

You've nailed it, Carl, the silence that folows seems to say . Whatever he is, the hoy is the opposite of music.

'There was this too,' I say, puling out my walet and letting Heather's locket spil onto the table.

Carl and Randy stare at it. Less shocked than stiled by the anticipation of some further action to folow, as if the chain might rise up and snake around one of our throats, squeezing out our next breath.

'That's Heather's,' Randy says.

'Ben had it.'

'How'd he get it?' Carl asks.

'No idea.'

'Wait. Just wait a second,' Carl says. 'When we piled the dirt on her she was wearing that thing.'

'I know it.'

'So somebody had to have gone down there to get it before the cops found her. Gone down there to dig her up.'

'I don't see any other way.'

'Who would fucking do that?'

'I can answer that,' Randy says. 'One of us. We were the only ones who knew where she was.'

'And the coach,' I say.

'But he was tied up,' Randy says. 'And he didn't know where we put her.'

'Unless One of us told him,' I say. 'Unless he talked one of us into letting him go long enough to do it.'

'You mean unless the boy talked one of us into it,' Randy says.

Carl lurches back in his chair and straightens his back, the gesture of a man fighting a sudden attack of