ust so you know: if this ever happens to you, you will not be ready. You will walk down a street and wonder how people can behave as if the whole world has not been tipped on its axis. You will comb your mind for signs and signals, certain that one moment-aha!-will trip you like a twisted root. You will bang your fist so hard against the stall door in the public bathroom that your wrist will bruise; you'll start to cry when the man at the tollbooth tells you to have a nice day. You will ask yourself How come; you will ask yourself What if.

Caleb and I drive home with an elephant sitting between us. At least this is how it seems: this huge bulk driving us to our separate sides, impossible to ignore, and yet we both pretend we cannot see it. In the backseat, Nathaniel sleeps, holding a half-eaten lollipop given to him by Dr. Robichaud. I am having trouble breathing. It is that elephant, again, sitting so close to me with one elbow crushing my chest. “He has to tell us who,” I say finally, the words breaking free like a river. “He has to.”

“He can't.”

That is the issue, in a nutshell. Nathaniel is not able to speak, even if he wants to. He doesn't know how to read or write yet. Until he can communicate, there is no one to blame. Until he can communicate, this is not a case; this is just a heartache.

“Maybe the psychiatrist is wrong,” Caleb says.

I turn in my seat. “You don't believe Nathaniel?”

“What I believe is that he hasn't said anything yet.” He glances in the rearview mirror. "I don't want to keep talking about this, in front of him."

“Do you think that'll make it go away?”

Caleb doesn't respond, and there is my answer. “The next exit's ours,” I say stiffly, because Caleb is still driving in the left lane.

“I know where I'm going, Nina.” He brings the car to the right, signals at the exit sign. But a minute later, he misses the turnoff.

“You just-” The accusation dies as I see his face, striped by grief. I don't think he even knows he's crying. “Oh, Caleb.” I reach out to touch him, but that goddamned elephant is in the way. Caleb throws the car into park and gets out, walking along the road's shoulder, drawing huge breaths that make his chest swell.

A moment later, he returns. “I'll turn around and go back,” he announces-to me? To Nathaniel? To himself?

I nod. And think, If only it were that easy.

Nathaniel bites down hard on his back teeth so that the hum of the road goes right through him. He isn't asleep, but he is pretending to be, which is almost as good. His parents are talking, the words so soft at the corners that he can't quite hear. Maybe he will never sleep again. Maybe he will just be like a dolphin, and stay half-asleep.

Miss Lydia taught them about dolphins last year, after they'd turned the classroom into an ocean of blue crepe paper and glitter-glue starfish. So Nathaniel knows these things: that dolphins shut an eye and half their brain, sleeping on one side, while the other side watches out for danger. He knows that mommy dolphins swim for their resting babies, pulling them along in an underwater current, as if they are attached by invisible threads. He knows that the plastic rings which rope six-packs of Coke can hurt dolphins, make them wash up weak onshore. And that even though they breathe air, they'll die there.

Nathaniel also knows that if he could, he would roll down the window and jump out, so far that he'd cross the highway barrier and the tall fence to plum met along the rocky cliff, landing in the ocean below. He'd have sleek silver skin and a smile curved permanently on his mouth. He'd have a special body part-like a heart, but different-filled with oil and called a melon, just like the thing you eat in the summertime. Except this would be in the front of his head and would help him find his way even in the blackest ocean, on the blackest night.

Nathaniel imagines swimming off the coast of Maine toward the other end of the world, where it already feels like summer. He squinches his eyes as tight as he can, concentrates on making a joyful noise, of navigating by those notes, of hearing them bounce back to him.

Although Martin Toscher, MD, is considered an authority in his field, he would gladly trade his laurels to completely eliminate his area of expertise. Examining one child for evidence of sexual abuse is more than enough; the fact that he's logged hundreds of cases in Maine is phenomenally disturbing. The subject of the examination lies on the OR table, anesthetized. It would be his suggestion, given the traumatic nature of the exam, but before he had even proposed it to the parents, the mother asked if it could be done that way. Now, Martin walks through the procedure, speaking aloud as he works so that his findings can be recorded. “The glans penis appears normal, Tanner 0 .“ He repositions the child. ”Looking at the anal verge . . . there are mult iple obvious healing abrasions, about one to one and a half centimeters up, that are approximately one centimeter in diameter, on average.“ He takes an anal speculum from the table nearby. Chances are if there are additional mucosal tears higher up in the bowel wall, they'd know-the child would be physically ill by now. But he lubricates the instrument and gently inserts it, attaches the light source, and cleans out the rectum with a long cotton swab. Well, thank God for that, Martin thinks. ”The bowel is clean to eight centimeters.”

He strips off his gloves and mask, washes up, and leaves the nurses to fuss over the child in recovery. It's a light anesthesia, it will wear off quickly. The moment he walks out of the operating room, he is approached by the parents.

“How is he?” asks the father.

“Nathaniel's doing well,” Martin replies, the words everyone wants to hear. “ He may be a little drowsy this afternoon, but that's perfectly normal.” The mother pushes past all these platitudes. “Were there any findings?”

“There did seem to be evidence consistent with an assault,” the doctor says gently. “Some rectal abrasions that are healing. It's hard to say when they we re incurred, but they're certainly not fresh. Maybe a week or so's gone by.”

“Is the evidence consistent with penetration?” Nina Frost demands. Martin nods. “It's not from falling down on a bicycle, for example.”

“Can we see him?” This from the boy's father.

“Soon. The nurses will page you when he's awake in recovery.” He starts to leave, but Mrs. Frost stops him with a hand on his arm. “Can you tell if it was penile penetration? Digital? Or some foreign object?” Parents ask whether their children still feel the pain from the assault. If the scar is something that will affect them later on. If they will remember, in the long term, what happened to them. But these questions, well, they make him feel as if he is being cross-examined.

“There's no way to know that level of detail,” the doctor says. “All we can say at this point is, yes, something happened.”

She turns away and stumbles against the wall. Wilts. Within seconds she is a small, keening ball on the floor, her husband's arms wrapped around her for support. As Martin heads back to the operating suite, he realizes it's the first time that day he has seen her act like a mother.

It's foolish, I know, but I've lived my life believing in superstitions. Not throwing spilled salt over my shoulder or wishing on eyelashes or wearing lucky shoes to trials-instead, I've considered my own good luck directly correlated to the misfortunes of others. Starting out as a lawyer, I begged for the sexual assaults and molestations, the horrors no one wants to face. I told myself that if I faced the problems of strangers on a daily basis, it would magically keep me from having to face my own.

Visiting violence repeatedly, you become inured to atrocity. You can look at blood without blinking, you can say the word rape and not wince. It turns out, though, that this shield is a plastic one. That all defenses break down when the nightmare happens in your own bed.

On the floor of his bedroom, Nathaniel is playing quietly, still groggy from the anesthesia. He guides Matchbox cars around a track. They zoom to a certain spot, a booster, and suddenly shoot with great speed up a ramp through the jaws of a python. If the car is just the tiniest bit too slow, the snake snaps its mouth shut. Nathaniel's car passes through with flying colors every time.

My ears are filled with all the things Nathaniel is not saying: What's for dinner; can I play on the computer; did you see how fast that car went? His hands close around the Matchbox like the claw of a giant; in this make-believe world he is the one calling the shots.

The python's jaws ratchet shut, so loud in this silence that it makes me jump. And then I feel it, the softest jelly-roll along my leg, the bumping up my spine. Nathaniel is holding the Matchbox car, running it up the avenue of my arm. He parks in the hollow of my collarbone, then touches one finger to the tears on my cheek.

Nathaniel puts the car onto the track and climbs into my lap. His breath is hot and wet on my collar as he burrows close. This makes me feel sick-that he should choose me to keep him safe, when I have already failed miserably. We stay like this for a long time, until evening comes and stars fall onto his carpet, until Caleb's voice climbs the stairs, searching for us. Over the penance of Nathaniel's head I watch the car on its track, spinning in circle s, driven by its own momentum.

Shortly after seven o'clock, I lose Nathaniel. He isn't in any of his favorite haunts: his bedroom, the playroom, on the jungle gym outside. I had thought Caleb was with him; Caleb thought he was with me. “Nathaniel!” I yell, panicked, but he can't answer me-he couldn't answer me even if he felt like giving away his hiding place. A thousand scenes of horror sprint through my mind: Nathaniel being kidnapped from the backyard, unable to scream for help; Nathaniel falling down our well and sobbing in silence; Nathaniel lying hurt and unconscious on the ground. “Nathaniel!” I cry again, louder this time.

“You take the upstairs,” Caleb says, and I hear the worry in his voice, too. Before I can answer he heads for the laundry room; there is a sound of the dryer door opening and then closing again.

Nathaniel is not hiding under our bed, or in his closet. He isn't curled underneath cobwebs in the stairwell that leads to the attic. He isn't in his toy chest or behind the big wing chair in the sewing room. He isn't beneath the computer table or behind the bathroom door.

You'd think I've run a mile, I'm panting that hard. I lean against the wall outside the bathroom and listen to Caleb slam cabinets and drawers in the kitchen. Think like Nathaniel, I tell myself. Where would I be if I were five?

I would be climbing rainbows. I would be lifting rocks to find crickets sleeping underneath; I would be sorting the gravel in the driveway by weight and color. But these are all the things Nathaniel used to do, things that fill the mind of a child before he has to grow up. Overnight.

There is a thin drip coming from the bathroom. The sink; Nathaniel routinely leaves it on when he brushes his teeth. I suddenly want to see that trickle of water, because it will be the most normal thing I've witnessed all day. But inside, the sink is dry as a bone. I turn to the source of the noise, pull back the brightly patterned shower curtain.

And scream.

The only thing he can hear underwater is his heart. Is it like this for dolphins, too? Nathaniel wonders, or can they hear sounds the rest of us can't-coral blooming, fish breathing, sharks thinking. His eyes are wide open, and through the wet the ceiling is runny. Bubbles tickle his nostrils, and the fish drawn onto the shower curtain make it real.

But suddenly his mother is there, here in the ocean where she shouldn't be, and her face is as wide as the sky coming closer. Nathaniel forgets to hold his breath as she yanks him out of the water by his shirt. He coughs, he sneezes sea. He hears her crying, and that reminds him that he has to come back to this world, after all.

Oh, my God, he isn't breathing-he isn't breathing-and then Nathaniel takes a great gulp of air. He is twice his weight in his soaked clothes, but I wrestle him out of the tub so that he lies dripping on the bathmat. Caleb's feet pound up the stairs. “Did you find him?”

“Nathaniel,” I say as close to his face as I can, “what were you doing?” His golden hair is matted to his scalp, his eyes are huge. His lips twist, reaching for a word that doesn't come.

Can five-year-olds be suicidal? What other reason can there be for finding my son, fully dressed, submerged in a tub full of water?

Caleb crowds into the bathroom. He takes one look at Nathaniel, dripping, and the draining tub. “What the hell?”

“Let's get you out of these clothes,” I say, as if I find Nathaniel in this situation on a daily basis. My hands go to the buttons of his flannel shift, but he twists away from me, curls into a ball.

Caleb looks at me. “Buddy,” he tries, “you're gonna get sick if you stay like this.”

When Caleb gathers him onto his lap, Nathaniel goes completely boneless. He's wide-awake, he's looking right at me, yet I would swear that he isn't here at all.

Caleb's hands begin to unbutton Nathaniel's shirt. But instead, I grab a towel and wrap it around him. I hold it close at Nathaniel's neck and lean forward, so that my words fall onto his upturned face. “Who did this to you?” I demand. “Tell me, honey. Tell me so that I can make it better.”

“Nina.”

“Tell me. If you don't tell me, I can't do anything about it.” My voice hitches at the middle like a rusting train. My face is as wet as Nathaniel's. He's trying; oh, he's trying. His cheeks are red with the effort. He opens his mouth, pours forth a strangled knot of air.

I nod at him, encouraging. “You can do this, Nathaniel. Come on.” The muscles in his throat tighten. He sounds like he is drowning again.

“Did someone touch you, Nathaniel?”

“Jesus!” Caleb wrenches Nathaniel away from me. "Leave him alone, Nina!"

“But he was going to say something.” I get to my feet, jockeying to face Nathaniel again. “Weren't you, baby?”

Caleb hefts Nathaniel higher in his arms. He walks out of the bathroom without saying another word, cradling our son close to his chest. He leaves me standing in a puddle, to clean up the mess that's been left behind. Ironically, in Maine's Bureau of Children, Youth and Family Services, an investigation into child abuse is not an investigation at all. By the time a caseworker can officially open a case, he or she will already have psychiatric or physical evidence of abuse in the child, as well as the name of a suspected perpetrator. There will be no guesswork involved-all the research will have been completed by that point. It is the role of the BCYF caseworker to simply go along for the ride, so that if by some miracle it reaches the trial stage, everything has been done the way the government likes.

Monica LaFlamme has worked in the Child Abuse Action Network of the BCYF for three years now, and she is tired of coming in during the second act. She looks out the window of her office, a squat gray cube like every other government office in the complex, to a deserted playground. It is a metal swing set resting on a concrete slab. Leave it to the BCYF to have the one play structure left in the region that doesn't meet updated safety standards. She yawns, pinches her finger and thumb to the bridge of her nose. Monica is exhausted. Not just from staying up for Letterman last night, but in general, as if the gray walls and commercial carpet in her office have somehow see ped into her through osmosis. She is tired of filling out reports on cases that go nowhere. She is tired of seeing forty-year-old eyes in the faces of ten-year-old children. What she needs is a vacation to the Caribbean, where there is so much color exploding-blue surf, white sand, scarlet flowers-that it renders her blind to her daily work.

When the phone rings, Monica jumps in her chair. “This is Monica LaFlamme,” she says, crisply opening the manila folder on her desk, as if the person on the other end of the line has seen her daydreaming.

“Yes, hello. This is Dr. Christine Robichaud. I'm a psychiatrist up at Maine Medical Center.” A hesitation, and that is all Monica needed to know what is coming next. “I need to report a possible case of sexual abuse against a five-year-old male.”

She takes notes as Dr. Robichaud describes behaviors she's seen over and over. She scrawls the name of the patient, the names of his parents. Something nicks the corner of her mind, but she pushes it aside to concentrate on what the psychiatrist is saying.

“Are there any police reports you can fax me?” Monica asks. “The police haven't been involved. The boy hasn't identified the abuser yet.” At that, Monica puts down her pen. “Doctor, you know I can't open an investigation until there's someone to investigate.”

“It's only a matter of time. Nathaniel is experiencing a somatoform disorder, which basically renders him mute without any physical cause. It's my belief that within a few weeks or so, he'll be able to tell us who did this to him.”

“What are the parents saying?”

The psychiatrist pauses. “This is all new behavior.” Monica taps her pen on her desk. In her experience, when the parents claim to be completely surprised by the speech or actions of a child who has been abused, it often ends up that one parent or both is the abuser. Dr. Robichaud is well aware of this, too. “I thought that you might want to get in at the ground level, Ms. LaFlamme. I referred the Frosts to a pediatrician trained in child sexual abuse cases, for a detailed medical examination of their son. He should be faxing you a report.”

Monica takes down the information; hangs up the phone. Then she looks over what she's written, in preparation for beginning yet another case that will most likely fizzle before a conviction is secured.

Frost, she thinks, rewriting the name. Surely it must be someone else. We lay in the dark, not touching, a foot of space between us.

“Miss Lydia?” I whisper, and feel Caleb shake his head. “Who, then? Who's alone with him, other than the two of us?”

Caleb is so quiet I think he's fallen asleep. “Patrick watched him for a wh ole weekend when we went to your cousin's wedding last month.” I come up on an elbow. “You've got to be kidding. Patrick's a police officer. And I've known him since he was six.”

“He doesn't have a girlfriend-”

“He's only been divorced for six months!”

“All I'm saying,” Caleb rolls over, “is you may not know him as well as you think.”

I shake my head. “Patrick loves Nathaniel.”

Caleb just looks at me. His response is clear, although he never speaks it a loud: Maybe too much.

The next morning Caleb leaves while the moon is still hanging crooked on its peg in the sky. We have discussed this plan, trading our time like chips in a poker game: Caleb will finish his wall, then be home by midday. The implication is that I can go to the office when he returns, but I won't. My work, it will have to wait. This all happened to Nathaniel when I wasn't present to bear witness; I cannot risk letting him out of my sight again.

It's a noble cause to champion-protecting my child. But this morning I am having trouble understanding lionesses that guard their cubs, and relating more to the hamster that devours her offspring. For one thing, my son hasn't seemed to notice that I want to be his hero. For another, I'm not so sure I want to be one, either. Not if it means sticking up for a boy who fights me at every turn.

God, he has every right to hate me for being so selfish now.

Yet patience has never been my strong point. I solve problems; I seek reprisal. And even though I know it is not a matter of will for Nathaniel, I am angry that his silence is protecting the person who should be held accountable. Today Nathaniel is falling apart at the seams. He insists on wearing his Superman pajamas, although it is nearly noon. Worse, he had an accident in his bed last night, so he stinks of urine. It took Caleb over an hour to get him out of his wet clothes yesterday; it took me two hours to realize I don't have the emotional or physical strength to fight him this morning. Instead, I've moved on to another battle.

Nathaniel sits like a stone gargoyle on his stool, his lips pressed together, resisting my attempts to get some food into him. He has not eaten since breakfast the previous day. I have held up everything from maraschino cherries to a gingerroot, the whole contents of the refrigerator from A to Z and back again. “Nathaniel.” I let a lemon roll off the counter. “Do you want spaghetti? Chicken fingers? I'll make you whatever you want. Just pick.” But he only shakes his head.

If he does not eat, it isn't the end of the world. No, that was yesterday. But there is a part of me that believes if I can do this-fill my son-it will keep him from hurting inside. There's a part of me that remembers the first job of a mother is to feed her child; and if I can succeed at this one small thing, maybe it will mean I have not completely failed him.

“Tuna? Ice cream? Pizza?”

He begins to turn slowly on the stool. At first it is a mistake-a slip of his foot that sets him spinning. Then he does it deliberately. He hears me ask a question and he very purposefully ignores me.

“Nathaniel.”

Twirl.

Something snaps. I am angry at myself, at the world, but because it is easier, I lash out at him. “Nathaniel! I am speaking to you!” He meets my gaze. Then lazily pivots away from me.

“You will listen to me, now!”

Into this charming domestic scene walks Patrick. I hear his voice before he finds us in the kitchen. “Armageddon must be coming,” he calls out, “because I can't think of any other reason that would keep you away from work two days straight, when-” As he turns the corner, he sees my face and slows down, moving with the same care he'd use to enter a crime scene. “Nina,” he asks evenly, “are you all right?”

Everything Caleb said about Patrick last night hits me, and I burst into tears. Not Patrick, too; I couldn't stand for more than one pillar of my world to crumble. I just cannot believe that Patrick might have done this to my son. Here's proof: Nathaniel hasn't run screaming from him.

Patrick's arms come around me and I swear, if not for that, I would sink onto the floor. I hear my voice; it's uncontrollable, a verbal twitch. “I'm fine. I 'm a hundred percent,“ I say, but my conviction shakes like an aspen leaf. How do you find the words to explain that the life you woke up in yesterday is not the one you woke up in today? How do you describe atrocities that aren't supposed to exist? As a prosecutor, I have buffeted myself with legalese-penetration, molestation, victimization-yet not a single one of these terms is as raw and as true as the sentence Someone raped my son. Patrick's eyes go from Nathaniel to me and back again. Is he thinking that I've had a breakdown? That stress has snapped me in half? ”Hey, Weed,“ he says, his old nickname for Nathaniel, who grew by leaps and bounds as an infant. ”You wanna come upstairs with me and get dressed, while your mom, um, wipes down the counter?”

“No,” I say, at the same moment that Nathaniel bolts from the room.

“Nina,” Patrick tries again. “Did something happen at Nathaniel's school?”

“Did something happen at Nathaniel's school,” Nina repeats, the words rolling like marbles on her tongue. “Did something happen. Well, that's the $64, 000 question, now, isn't it?”

He stares at her. If he looks hard enough, he will rind the truth; he always has been able to. At age eleven, he knew that Nina had kissed her first boy, although she had been too embarrassed to tell Patrick; he knew that she'd been accepted to an out-of-state college long before she'd gotten the nerve worked up to confess that she was leaving Biddeford.

“Someone hurt him, Patrick,” Nina whispers, breaking before his eyes. “Someone, and I ... I don't know who.”

A shiver rumbles through his chest. “Nathaniel?”

Patrick has told parents that their teens have died in a drunken car crash. He has supported widows at the graveside of their suicidal husbands. He has listened to the stories of women who've lived through rape. The only way to get through it is to step back, to pretend you are not part of this civilization, whose members cause such grief to each other. But this . . . oh, with this . . . there is no distance.

Patrick feels his heart grow too large in his chest. He sits with Nina on the floor of her kitchen as she tells him the details of a story he never wanted to hear. I could walk back through that door, he thinks, and start over. I could turn back time.

“He can't speak,” Nina says. “And I don't know how to make him.” Patrick pulls her back at arm's length. “You do know how. You make people talk to you all the time.”

When she raises her face, he sees what he's given her. You cannot be doomed, after all, as long as you can still see the faint outline of hope on the opposite shore.

The day after his son goes mute for reasons that Caleb does not want to believe, he walks outside the front door and realizes his home is falling apart. Not in the literal sense, of course-he's too careful for that. But if you look closely, you notice that the things which should have been taken care of ages ago-the stone path in front of the house, the crest at the top of the chimney, the brick kneewall meant to circle the perimeter of their land-all of these projects had been abandoned for another commissioned by a paying customer. He puts his coffee mug down on the edge of the porch and walks down the steps, trying to look objectively at each site.

The front path, well, it would take an expert to realize how uneven the stones are; that's not a priority. The chimney is a pure embarrassment; it's chipped along the whole left side. But getting to the roof this late in the afternoon doesn't make any sense, plus, it helps to have an assistant whe n you're working that high up. Which means that Caleb turns first to the knee wall, a foot-wide hollow brick embellishment at the perimeter of the road. The bricks are stacked at the spot where he'd left off nearly a year ago. He got them from commercial contractors who knew he'd been looking for used bricks, and they come from all over New England-demolished factories and wrecked hospital wards, crumbling colonial homes and abandoned schoolhouses. Caleb likes their marks and scars. He fancies that maybe in the porous red clay there might be some old ghosts or angels; he'd be all right with either walking the edge of his land.

Thank goodness, he's already dug below the frost line. Crushed stone rests six inches deep. Caleb hauls a bag of Redi-Mix into his arms and pours it into the wheelbarrow he uses for mixing. Chop and drag, set a rhythm as the water blends with the sand and concrete. He can feel it taking over as soon as he lays the first course of bricks, wiggles them into the cement until they seat-when he puts his whole body into his work like this, his mind goes wide and white.

It is his art, and it is his addiction. He moves along the edge of the footing, placing with grace. This wall will not be solid; there will be two smooth facings, crowned with a decorative concrete cap. You'll never know that on the inside, the mortar is rough and ugly, smeared. Caleb doesn't have to be careful on the spots that no one sees.

He reaches for a brick and his fingers brush over something smaller, smoother. A plastic soldier-the green army man variety. The last time he'd been working on this, Nathaniel had come with him. While Caleb dug the trench and filled it with stone, his son had hidden a battalion in the fort made of tumbled bricks.

Nathaniel was three. “I'm gonna take you down,” he had said, pointing the soldier at Mason, the golden retriever.

“Where did you hear that?” Caleb asked, laughing.

“I hearded it,” Nathaniel said sagely, “way back when I was a baby.” That long ago, Caleb had thought.

Now, he holds the plastic soldier in his hand. A flashlight trips along the driveway, and for the first time Caleb realizes that it is past sunset; that somehow, in his work, he's missed the end of the day. “What are you doing ?” Nina asks.

“What does it look like I'm doing?”

“Now?”

He turns, hiding the toy soldier in his fist. “Why not?”

“But it's . . . it's . . .” She shakes her head. “I'm putting Nathaniel to bed.”

“Do you need my help?”

He realizes after the words escape that she will take it the wrong way. Do you want help, he should have said. Predictably, Nina bristles. “I think after five years I can probably figure it out all by myself,” she says, and heads back toward the house, her flashlight leaping like a cricket.

Caleb hesitates, unsure whether he should follow her. In the end, he chooses not to. Instead he squints beneath the pinpricks of stars and puts the gree n soldier into the hollow made by the two sides of the wall. He sets bricks on either side, following the course. When this wall is finished, no one wil l know that this army man sleeps inside. No one but Caleb, that is, who will look at it a thousand times a day and know that at least one flawless memory of his son was saved.

Nathaniel lies in bed thinking about the time he took a baby chick home from school. Well, it wasn't a chick exactly ... it was an egg that Miss Lydia had put in the trash, as if they were all too dumb to count that there were now three eggs instead of four in the incubator. The other eggs, though, had turned into little yellow cotton balls that cheeped. So that day before his father picked him up, Nathaniel went into Miss Lydia's office and slipped the egg out of the garbage can, into the sleeve of his shirt.

He'd slept with it under his pillow, sure if it had a little more time it would turn into a chick like the others had. But all it had come to were nightmares-of his father making an omelet in the morning, cracking the shell, and a live baby chick falling into the sizzling pan. His father had found the egg beside his bed three days later; it had tumbled to the floor. He hadn't cleaned the mess up in time: Nathaniel could still remember the silvered dead eye, the knotted gray body, the thing that might have been a wing. Nathaniel used to think the Creature he'd seen that morning-it wasn't a chick, that was for sure-was the scariest something that could ever exist. Even now, from time to time when he blinks, it is there on the backs of his eyelids. He has stopped eating eggs, because he is afraid of what might be inside . An item that looks perfectly normal on the surface might only be disguised. Nathaniel stares up at his ceiling. There are even scarier things; he knows that now.

The door to his bedroom opens wider, and someone steps in. Nathaniel is still thinking of the Creature, and the Other, and he can't see around the bright hall light. He feels something sink onto the bed, curl around him, as if Nathaniel is the dead thing now and needs to grow a shell to hide inside.

“It's okay,” his father's voice says at his ear. “It's only me.” His arms come around tight, keep him from trembling. Nathaniel closes his eyes, and for the f irst time since he's gone to bed that night, he doesn't see the chick at all. The moment before we step into Dr. Robichaud's office the next day, I have a sudden surge of hope. What if she looks at Nathaniel and decides she has misinterpreted his behavior? What if she apologizes, stamps our son's record with red letters, MISTAKEN? But when we walk inside, there's a new person joining us, and it is all I need to blow my fairy-tale ending sky high. In a place as small as York County, I couldn't prosecute child molestation cases and not know Monica LaFlamme. I don't have anything against her, specifically, just her agency. In our office we change the acronym of BCYF to suit us: TGDSW-Those God Damn Social Workers; or RTSM-Red Tape Society of Maine. The last case I'd worked with Monica had involved a boy diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder-a condition, ultimately, that prevented us from prosecuting his abuser.

She gets up, her hands extended, as if she is my best friend. “Nina ... I am so, so sorry to hear about this.”

My eyes are flint; my heart is hard as a diamond. I do not fall for this touchy-feely bullshit in my profession; I'm sure as hell not going to fall for it in my personal life. “What can you do for me, Monica?” I ask bluntly. The psychiatrist, I can tell, is shocked. Probably she's never heard anyone talk back to the BCYF before. Probably she thinks she ought to put me on Prozac.

“Oh, Nina. I wish I could do more.”

“You always do,” I say, and that's the point when Caleb interrupts.

“I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced,” he mumbles, squeezing my arm in warning. He shakes hands with Monica and says hello to Dr. Robichaud, ushering Nathaniel inside to play.

“Ms. LaFlamme is the caseworker assigned to Nathaniel,” the psychiatrist explains. “I thought it might be helpful for you to meet her; have her answer some of your questions.”

“Here's one,” I start. “How do I go about getting BCYF uninvolved?” Dr. Robichaud looks nervously at Caleb, then at me. “Legally-”

“Thank you, but legally, I pretty much know the routine. See, that was a trick question. The answer is that the BCYF is already uninvolved. They never get involved.” I'm babbling, I can't help it. Seeing Monica here is too strange, like work and home have tunneled through the same wormhole in time.

“I give you a name and tell you what he did . . . and then you can go do your job?”

“Well,” Monica says, her voice as smooth as caramel. I have always hated caramel. “It's true, Nina, that a victim has to give an ID before we-” A victim. She has reduced Nathaniel to any of a hundred cases I have prosecuted over the years. To any of a hundred lousy outcomes. That is why, I realize, seeing Monica LaFlamme in Dr. Robichaud's office has turned me inside out. It means Nathaniel has already been given a number and a file in a system that I know is bound to fail him.

“This is my son,'' I say through clenched teeth. ”I don't care what procedure calls for. I don't care if you don't have an ID; if you don't get one for months or years. Take the whole population of Maine, then, and rule them out one by one. But start, Monica. Jesus Christ. Start."

By the time I finish speaking, the others are staring at me as if I've grown another head. I glance at Nathaniel-playing with blocks, although none of these good people convened on his behalf are watching, for God's sake-and walk out the door.

Dr. Robichaud catches up to me in the parking lot. Her heels click on the pavement, and I smell a cigarette being lit. “Want one?”

“Don't smoke. But thanks.”

We are leaning against a car that isn't mine. A black Camaro festooned with fuzzy dice. The door is unlocked. If I get in and drive away, can I steal that person's life, too?

“You sound a little . . . frazzled,” Dr. Robichaud says. I have to laugh at that. “Is Understatement 101a course in med school?”

“Of course. It's the prereq for Lying Through One's Teeth.” Dr. Robichaud takes a final drag and crushes out her cigarette beneath her pump. "I know it's the last thing you want to hear, but in Nathaniel's case, time isn't your enemy."

She doesn't know that. She hadn't even met Nathaniel a week ago. She doesn't look at him every morning and remember, in sharp counterpoint, the little boy who used to ask so many questions-why birds on electrical wires don't get electrocuted, why fire is blue in the center, who invented dental floss -that I once, stupidly, wished for peace and quiet.

“He'll come back to you, Nina,” Dr. Robichaud says quietly. I squint into the sun. “At what price?”

She doesn't have an answer for that. “Nathaniel's mind is protecting him now . He isn't in pain. He isn't thinking about what happened nearly as much as you are.“ Hesitating, she extends an olive branch. ”I could refer you to an adult psychiatrist, who might be able to prescribe something.”

“I don't want any drugs.”

“Maybe you'd like someone to talk to, then.”

“Yes,” I say, turning to face her. “My son.” I look at the book once more to check. Then I pat my lap with one hand, and snap my fingers. “Dog,” I say, and as if I've cued it, our retriever comes running.

Nathaniel's lips curve as I shove the dog away. “No, Mason. Not now.” He turns in a circle beneath the wrought-iron table, settles on my feet. A cool October wind sends leaves parachuting our way-crimson and ocher and gold . They catch in Nathaniel's hair, bookmark themselves in the pages of the sign language manual.

Slowly, Nathaniel's hands creep out from beneath his thighs. He points to himself, then extends his arms, palms upright. Curling his fingers in, he draws his hands close. I want. He pats his lap, tries to snap his fingers .

“You want the dog?” I say. “You want Mason?” Nathaniel's face goes several shades sunnier. He nods, his mouth gaping wide in a grin. This is his first whole sentence in nearly a week. At the sound of his name, the dog lifts his shaggy head and pokes his nose into Nathaniel's belly. “Well, you asked for it!” I laugh. By the time Nathaniel has managed to push Mason away, his cheeks are flushed with pride. We have not learned much-the signs for want, and more, and drink, and dog. But we have made a start.

I reach for Nathaniel's tiny hand, one I have fashioned into all the letters of the American Sign Language alphabet this afternoon . . . although soft, small fingers don't stay tangled that well in knots. Folding down his middle and fourth fingers so that all the others are still extended, I help him make the combined I, L, Y that signifies I love you.

Suddenly Mason leaps up, nearly crashing over the table, and bounds to the gate to greet Caleb. “What's going on?” he asks, one glance taking in the thick manual, the rigid set of Nathaniel's hand.

“We,” I say, pointedly moving my index finger from shoulder to shoulder, “are working.” I make two fists-S handshapes-and tap one on the other, to simulate hard labor.

“We,” Caleb announces, grabbing the book from the table to tuck it under his arm, “are not deaf.”

Caleb is not in favor of Nathaniel learning American Sign Language. He thinks if we give Nathaniel such a tool, he might never have the incentive to speak again. I think that Caleb hasn't spent enough time trying to divine what his son wants to eat for breakfast. “Watch this,” I urge, and nod at Nathaniel, trying to get him to do his sentence again. “He's so smart, Caleb.”

“I know he is. It's not him I'm worried about.” He grabs my elbow. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?”

We move inside and close the slider, so that Nathaniel cannot hear. “How many words do you think you have to teach him before you can start using this language to ask him who did it?” Caleb says.

Bright spots of color rise to my cheeks. Have I been that transparent? "All I want, all Dr. Robichaud wants, is to give Nathaniel a chance to 57 communicate. Because being like this is frustrating him. Today I taught him to say 'I want the dog.' Maybe you'd like to explain to me how that's going to lead to a conviction. Maybe you'd like to-explain to your son why you're so dead set on taking away the only method he has to express himself.“ Caleb spreads his splayed hands like an umpire. It is the sign for don't, although I am sure he does not know this. ”I can't fight with you, Nina. You're too good at it." He opens the door and kneels down in front of Nathaniel.

“You know, it's an awfully nice day to be sitting here, studying. You could play on the swings, if you want-”

Play: two Y handshapes, caught at the pinkies to shake. “-or build a road in your sandbox ...”

Build: U handshapes, stacking one on top of the other over and over.

“. . . and you don't have to say anything, Nathaniel, if you're not ready. Not even with words that you make with your hands.” Caleb smiles at Nathaniel. “Okay?” When Nathaniel nods, Caleb picks him up, swinging him high over his head to sit on his shoulders. “What do you say we go pick the crab apples in the woods?” he asks. “I'll be your ladder.” Just before he breaks the edge of our property, Nathaniel twists on his father's shoulders. It's hard to see from this distance, but it seems that he's holding up a hand. To wave? I start to wave back, and then realize that his fingers are making that I, L, Y combination, then reconfiguring into what looks like a peace sign.

It may not be technically right, but I can understand Nathaniel, loud and clear.

I love you, too.

Myrna Oliphant, the secretary shared by all five assistant district attorneys in Alfred, is a woman nearly as wide as she is high. Her sensible shoes squeak when she walks, she smells of Brylcreem, and she can allegedly type an astounding hundred words a minute, although no one has ever actually seen her do it. Peter and I always joke that we see more of Myrna's back than her front, since she seems to have a sixth sense about disappearing the moment any of us need her.

So when I walk into my office eight days after Nathaniel stops speaking, and she comes right up to me, I know everything's wrong. “Nina,” she says, asking. “Nina.” She puts her hand to her throat-there are real tears in her eyes. “If there's anything ...”

“Thank you,” I say, humbled. It does not surprise me that she knows what has happened; I told Peter and I'm sure he filled everyone else in on the relevant details. The only sick days I've ever used have been when Nathaniel had strep or chicken pox; in a way my absence from work now has been no different, except that this illness is more insidious. “But you know, right now, I j ust need to get things taken care of here, so that I can go back home.”

“Yes, yes.” Myrna clears her throat, going professional. “Your messages, of course, Peter's been taking care of. And Wallace is expecting you.” She heads back to her desk, but hesitates a moment, remembering. “I put a note up at the church,” she says, and that's when I remember she, too, is a member of the congregation at St. Anne's. There is a small roped square on the News and Notes bulletin board, where people can request that a Hail Mary or Our Father be said for family members or friends in need. Myrna smiles at me . “Maybe God's listening to those prayers even now.”

“Maybe.” I do not say what I'm thinking: And where was God when it My office is just the way I left it. I sit gingerly in my swivel chair, push the papers around on my desk, scan my phone messages. It is good to come back to a place that looks, and is, exactly the way I've remembered it in my mind.

A knock. Peter comes in, then shuts the door behind him. “I don't know what to say,” he admits.

“Then don't say anything. Just come in and sit down.” Peter sprawls in the chair on the other side of my desk. "Are you sure, Nina?

I mean, is it possible that the psychiatrist is jumping to conclusions?"

“I saw the same behaviors she did. And I jumped to the same conclusions.” I look up at him. “A specialist found physical proof of penetration, Peter.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Peter clasps his hands between his knees, at a loss. “What can I do for you, Nina?”

“You've been doing it. Thanks.” I smile at him. “Whose brain matter was it, in the car?”

Peter's eyes are soft on my face. “Who the hell cares? You shouldn't be thinking about that. You shouldn't even be here.”

I am torn between confiding in him, and ruining his good impression of me. “But Peter,“ I admit quietly, ”it's easier.”

There is a long moment of silence. And then: “Best year,” Peter dares. I grab the lifeline. That's simple-I was promoted, and had Nathaniel, within months of each other. “1996. Best victim?”

“Polly Purebred, from the Underdog cartoon.” Peter glances up as our boss, Wally Moffett, comes into my office. “Hey, chief,” he says to Wally, and then to me, “Best friend?” Peter gets up, heads for the door. “The answer is me. Whatever, whenever. Remember that.”

“Good man,” Wally says, as Peter leaves. Wally is the standard-issue district attorney: lean as a shark, with a full head of hair and a mouthful of capped movie-star teeth that could win him reelection all by themselves. He's al so an excellent lawyer; he can cut to the heart before you realize the first incision has even been made. “Needless to say, this job is here when you're ready,” Wally begins, “but I'll personally bar the door if you plan on coming back anytime soon.”

“Thanks, Wally.”

“I'm sorry as hell, Nina.”

“Yeah.” I glance down at my blotter. There's a calendar underneath it. No pictures of Nathaniel are on my desk-a long habit I kept from District.Court, when the scum of the earth would come in to plead their cases in my office. I didn't want them to know I had a family. I didn't want that to come back and haunt me.

“Can I ... can I try the case?”

The question is so small, it takes a moment to realize I've asked it. The pity in Wally's eyes makes me drop my own gaze to my lap. “You know you can't, Nina. Not that I'd rather have anyone else lock this sick fuck up. But no one in our office can do it. It's a conflict of interest.”

I nod, but I still can't speak. I wanted that, I wanted it so badly.

“I've already called the district attorney's office in Portland. There's a guy up there who's good.” Wally smiles crookedly. “Almost as good as you are, even. I told them what was going on, and that we might need to borrow Tom LaCroix.”

There are tears in my eyes when I thank Wallace. For him to have gone out on a limb like this-before we even have a perp to prosecute-is extraordinary.

“We take care of our own,” Wally assures me. “Whoever did this is going to pay.”

It is a line I've used myself, to appease frantic parents. But I know, even as I say it, that there will be an equal cost extracted from their child. Still, because it is my job, and because I usually have no case without a testifying witness, I tell the parents I'd do anything to get that monster into jail. I tell the parents that in their shoes I'd do whatever it takes, including putting their children on the stand.

But now I'm the parent, and it is my child, and that changes everything. One Saturday I took Nathaniel to my office, so that I could finish up some work. It was a ghost town-the Xerox machines sleeping like beasts, the computers blinking blind, the telephones quiet. Nathaniel occupied himself with the paper shredder while I reviewed files. “How come you named me Nathaniel?” he asked, out of the blue.

I checked off the name of a witness on a pad. “It means 'Gift from God.'” The jaws of the paper shredder ground together. Nathaniel turned to me. “ Did I come wrapped and everything?”

“You weren't quite that kind of a gift.” As I watched, he turned off the shredder and began to play with the collection of toys I kept in the corner for children who had the misfortune of being brought to my office. “What name would you rather have?”

When I was pregnant, Caleb would end each day by saying good night to his baby with a different name: Vladimir, Grizelda, Cuth-bert. Keep this up, I had told him, and this baby's going to arrive with an identity crisis. Nathaniel shrugged. “Maybe I could be Batman.”

“Batman Frost,” I repeated, completely serious. “It's got a nice ring to it.”

“There are four Dylans in my school-Dylan S. and Dylan M. and Dylan D. an d Dylan T-but there isn't another Batman.”

“Which is an important consideration.” All of a sudden I felt Nathaniel crawling under the hollow of my desk, a warm weight on my feet . “What are you doing?”

“Batman needs a cave, Mom, duh.”

“Ah. Right.” I folded my legs underneath me to give Nathaniel more room, and scrutinized a police report. Nathaniel's hand stretched up to grab a stapler, an impromptu walkie-talkie.

The case was a rape, and the victim had been found comatose in the bathtub. Unfortunately, the perp had been smart enough to run the water, thereby obliterating nearly any forensic evidence we might have gotten. I turned the page in the file and stared at gruesome police photos of the crime scene, the sunken eggplant face of the woman who had been assaulted.

“Mom?”

Immediately I whipped the photo facedown. This was precisely why I did not mix my work life and my home life. “Hmm?”

“Do you always catch the bad guys?”

I thought of the victim's mother, who could not stop crying long enough to give a statement to the police. “Not always,” I answered.

“Most of the time?”

“Well,” I said. “At least half.”

Nathaniel considered this for a moment. “I guess that's good enough to be a superhero,” he said, and that was when I realized this had been an interview for the position of Robin. But I didn't have time to be a cartoon sidekick.

“Nathaniel,” I sighed. “You know why I came in here.” Specifically, to get ready for Monday's opening arguments. To go over my strategy and my witness list.

I looked at Nathaniel's waiting face. Then again, maybe justice was best served from a Batcave. An oxymoron chased through my mind: I am going to get nothing done today. I am doing everything I want to. “Holy Guacamole, Batman,” I said, kicking off my shoes and crawling underneath my desk. Had I ever known that the interior wall was made of cheap pine, and not mahogany? “Robin reporting for duty, but only if I get to drive the Batmobile.”

“You can't be Robin for real.”

“I thought that was the point.”

Nathaniel stared at me with great pity, as if someone like me really ought to have learned the rules of the game this far along in life. Our shoulders bumped in the confines of my desk. “We can work together and everything, but your name has to be Mom.”

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes. “Because,” Nathaniel told me. “It's who you are.”

“Nathaniel!” I call out, blushing a little. It's not a sin, is it, to have no control over one's child? “I'm sorry, Father,” I say, holding the door wide to let him inside. “He's been . . . shy lately with visitors. Yesterday, when the UPS man came, it took me an hour to find where he was hiding.“ Father Szyszynski smiles at me. ”I told myself I should have called first, instead of dropping in unannounced.”

“Oh, no. No. It's wonderful that you came.” This is a lie. I have no idea what to do with a priest in my house. Do I serve cookies? Beer? Do I apologize for all the Sundays I don't make it to Mass? Do I confess to lying in the first place?

“Well, it's part of the job,” Father Szyszynski says, tapping his collar. “The only thing I have to do on Friday afternoons is eavesdrop on the ladies' auxiliary meeting.”

“Is that considered a perk?”

“More like a cross to bear,” the priest says, and smiles. He sits down on the couch in the living room. Father Szyszynski is wearing high-tech running sneakers. He does local half-marathons; his times are posted on the News and Notes boards, next to the index cards that request prayers for the needy. There is even a photo of him there, lean and fit, without his collar, crossing a finish line-in it, he looks nothing like a priest; just a man. He's in his fifties, but he appears to be ten years younger. Once, I heard him say that he'd tried to make a pact with Satan for eternal youth, but he couldn't find the devil's extension in the diocese phone book.

I wonder which nosy gossip in the church rumor mill told the priest about us . “The Sunday school class misses Nathaniel,” he tells me. He's being politically correct. If he wanted to be more accurate, he'd say that the Sunday school class misses Nathaniel more than half the Sundays of the year, since we don't make it regularly to Mass. Still, I know that Nathaniel likes coloring pictures in the basement during the service. And he especially likes afterward, when Father Szyszynski reads to the kids from a great, old illustrated children's Bible while the rest of the congregation is upstairs having coffee. He gets right down onto the floor in their circle, and according to Nathaniel, acts out floods and plagues and prophecies.

“I know what you're thinking,” Father Szyszynski says.

“Do you.”

He nods. “That in the year 2001 it's archaic to assume the Church is such a large part of your life it could offer you comfort at a time like this. But it can, Nina. God wants you to turn to Him.”

I stare right at the priest. “These days I'm not too high on God,” I say bluntly .

“I know. It doesn't make much sense, sometimes, God's will.” Father Szysz ynski shrugs. “There have been times I've doubted Him myself.”

“You've obviously gotten over it.” I wipe the corner of my eyes; why am I cr ying? “I'm not even really a Catholic.”

“Sure you are. You keep coming back, don't you?”

But that's guilt, not faith.

“Things happen for a reason, Nina.”

“Oh, yeah? Then do me a favor and ask God what reason there could possibly be for letting a child get hurt like this. ”

“You ask Him,” the priest says. “And when you're talking, you might want to remember you have something in common-He watched His son suffer, too .”

He hands me a picture book-David and Goliath, watered down for a five-year-old. “If Nathaniel ever comes out,” he pitches his voice extra loud, “you tell him that Father Glen left a present.” That's what they call him, all the kids at St. Anne's, since they can't pronounce his last name. Heck, the priest has said, after a few tall ones, I can't pronounce it myself. “Nathaniel particularly enjoyed this story when I read it last year. He wanted to know if we could all make slingshots.” Father Szyszynski stands up, leads the way to the door. “If you want to talk, Nina, you know where to find me. You take care.”

He starts down the path, the stone steps that Caleb placed with his own hands. As I watch him go I clutch the book to my chest. I think of the weak defeating giants.

Nathaniel is playing with a boat, sinking it, then watching it bob to the surface again. I suppose I should be grateful that he's in this tub at all. But he has been better, today. He has been talking with his hands. And he agreed to this bath, on the condition that he take off his own clothes. Of course I let him, struggling not to run to his aid when he couldn't work a button through a hole. I try to remember what Dr. Robichaud told us about power: Nathaniel was made helpless; he needs to feel like he's gaining control of himself again.

I sit on the lip of the tub, watching his back rise and fall with his breathing. The soap shimmers like a fish near the drain. “Need help?” I ask, lifting one hand up with the other, a sign. Nathaniel shakes his head vigorously. He picks up the bar of Ivory and runs it over his shoulder, his chest, his belly. He hesitates, then plunges it between his legs.

A thin white film covers him, making him otherworldly, an angel. Nathaniel lifts his face to mine, hands me the soap to put back. For a moment, our fingers touch-in our new language, these are our lips . . . does that make this a kiss?

I let the soap drop with a splash, then circle my pursed mouth with a finger. I move my index fingers back and forth, touching and retreating. I point to Nathaniel.

Who hurt you?

But my son doesn't know these signs. Instead, he flings his hands out to the sides, proud to show off his new word. Done. He rises like a sea nymph, wat er sluicing down the sides of his beautiful body. As I towel off each limb and pull pajamas over Nathaniel, I silently ask myself if I am the only person who has touched him at this place, at that one, until every inch of him is covered again.

In the middle of the night Caleb hears a hitch in his wife's breathing.

“Nina?” he whispers, but she doesn't answer. He rolls onto his side, curls her closer. She's awake, he can feel it coming from her pores. “Are you all right?” he asks.

She turns to him, her eyes flat in the dark. “Art you?” He pulls her into his arms and buries his face in the side of her neck. Breathing her calms Caleb; she is his own oxygen. His lips trace her skin, hold over her collarbone. He tilts his head so that he can hear her heart. He is looking for a place to lose himself.

So his hand moves from the valley of her waist to the rise of a hip, slips beneath the thin strip of her panty. Nina draws in her breath. She is feeling it too, then. She needs to get away from here, from this.

Caleb slides lower and rocks his palm against her. Nina grabs tighter at his hair, almost to the point of pain. “Caleb.”

He is hard now, heavy and pressed into the mattress. “I know,” he murmurs, and he goes to slide a finger inside.

She is dry as a bone.

Nina yanks at his hair, and this time he rolls off her, which is what she's wanted all along. “What is the matter with you!” she cries. “I don't want to do this. I can't, now.” She throws back the covers and pads out of the bedroom into the dark.

Caleb looks down, sees the small drop of semen he's left on the sheets. He gets out of bed and covers it up, so that he will not have to look at it. Then he follows Nina, searching her out by sheer instinct. For long moments, he stands in the doorway of his son's bedroom, watching her watch Nathaniel. Caleb does not accompany us to the psychiatrist's office for our next appointment. He says he has a meeting he cannot reschedule, but I think this is only an excuse. After last night, we have been dancing around each other. Plus, Dr. Robichaud is working on signing now, until Nathaniel gets his voice back, and Caleb disagrees with that tactic. He thinks that when Nathaniel is ready to tell us who hurt him, he will, and until then, we are only pushing. I wish I had his patience, but I cannot sit here and watch Nathaniel struggle . I can't stop thinking that for every single moment Nathaniel is silent, there is someone else in this world who should have been rendered speechless, stopped in his tracks.

Today, we have worked our way through practical signs for food-cereal, milk, pizza, ice cream, breakfast. The terms in the ASL book are grouped like that-in units that go together. There is a picture of the word, the written letters, and then a sketch of a person making the sign. Nathaniel gets to pick what we study. He has jumped from the seasons, to things to eat, and is now flipping the pages again.

“Where he'll stop nobody knows . . .” Dr. Robichaud jokes. The book falls open to a page with a family on it. “Oh, that's a good one,” I say, trying the sign at the top-the F handshapes making a circle away from oneself.

Nathaniel points to the child. “Like this, Nathaniel,” Dr. Robichaud says. “Boy.” She mimics touching the bill of a baseball cap. Like many of the signs I 've learned, this one is a perfect match to the real thing.

“Mother,” the psychiatrist continues, helping Nathaniel hold out his hand, touch the thumb to the side of his chin, and wiggle the fingers.

“Father.” The same sign, but the thumb touches the side of the forehead. “You do it,” Dr. Robichaud says.

Doit.

All those thin black lines on the page have tangled together, a fat snake that's coming toward him, grabbing him by the neck. Nathaniel can't breathe. He can't see. He hears Dr. Robichaud's voice all around him, father father father.

Nathaniel lifts his hand, puts a thumb to his forehead. He wiggles the fingers of his hand. This sign looks like he's making fun of someone. Except it isn't funny at all.

“Look at that,” the psychiatrist says, “he's better than we are, already.” She moves on to the next sign, baby. “That's good, Nathaniel,” Dr. Robichaud says after a moment. “Try this one.”

But Nathaniel doesn't. His hand is jammed tight to the side of his head, his thumb digging into his temple. “Honey, you're going to hurt yourself,” I tell him. I reach for his hand and he jumps back. He will not stop signing this w ord.

Dr. Robichaud gently closes the ASL book. “Nathaniel, do you have something you want to say?”

He nods, his hand still fanning out from the side of his head. All the air leaves my body. “He wants Caleb-”

Dr. Robichaud interrupts. “Don't speak for him, Nina.”

“You can't think that he-”

“Nathaniel, has your daddy ever taken you somewhere, just the two of you?” the psychiatrist asks.

Nathaniel seems confused by the question. He nods slowly.

“Has he ever helped you get dressed?” Another nod. “Has he ever hugged you, in your bed?”

I am frozen in my seat. My lips feel stiff when I speak. “It's not what you're thinking. He just wants to know why Caleb isn't here. He misses his father. H e wouldn't have needed a sign if it was ... if it was ...” I can't even say it . “He could have pointed, a thousand times over,” I whisper.

“He might have been afraid of the consequences of such a direct identification,” Dr. Robichaud explains. “A label like this gives him an extra layer of psychological protection. Nathaniel,” she continues gently. “Do you know who hurt you?”

He points to the ASL book. And signs father again.

Be careful what you wish for. After all these days, Nathaniel has given a name, and it is the one I would never have expected to hear. It is the one that renders me as immobile as a stone, the very material Caleb prefers to work with.

I listen to Dr. Robichaud make the call to BCYF; I hear her tell Monica there is a suspect, but I am a hundred miles away. I'm watching with the objectivity of someone who knows what will happen next. A detective will be put on the case; Caleb will be called in for questioning. Wally Moffett will contact the Portland DAs office. Caleb will either confess and be convicted on the strength of that statement; or else Nathaniel will have to accuse him in open court.

This nightmare is only just beginning.

He could not have done it. I know this as well as I know anything about Caleb after so many years. I can still see him walking the halls at midnight, holding an infant Nathaniel by his feet, the only position in which our colicky baby would stop screaming. I can see him sitting next to me at Nathaniel's graduation from the two-day class in preschool, how he'd cried without shame. He is a good, strong, solid man; the kind of man you would trust with your life, or your child's.

But if I believe that Caleb is innocent, it means I don't believe Nathaniel. Small memories prick at my mind. Caleb, suggesting that Patrick might be the one to blame. Why bring up his name, if not to take the heat off himself? Or Caleb telling Nathaniel he didn't have to learn sign language if he didn't want to. Anything, to keep the child from confessing the truth.

I have met convicted child molesters before. They don't wear badges or brands or tattoos announcing their vice. It's hidden under a soft, grandfatherly smile; it's tucked in the pocket of a button-down shirt. They look like the rest of us, and that's what makes it so frightening-to know that these beasts move among us, and we are none the wiser.

They have girlfriends and wives who have loved them, unaware. I used to wonder how mothers wouldn't have some inkling that this was going on in their homes. There had to have been a moment where they made a conscious decision to turn away before they saw something they didn't want to. No wife, I used to think, could sleep next to a man and not know what was playing through the loop of his mind.

“Nina.” Monica LaFlamme touches my shoulder. When did she even arrive? I feel like I'm coming awake from a coma; I shake myself into consciousness and look for Nathaniel right away. He's playing in the psychiatrist's office, still, with a Brio train set.

When the social worker looks at me, I know that this is what she's suspected all along. And I cannot blame her. In her shoes, I would have thought the same thing. In fact, in the past, I have.

My voice is old, stripped. “Have the police been called?” Monica nods. “If there's anything I can do for you . . .” There is somewhere I need to go, and I cannot have Nathaniel with me. It hur ts to have to ask, but I have lost my barometer for trust. “Yes,” I ask. “Wi ll you watch my son?”

I find him at the third job site, making a stone wall. Caleb's face lights up as he recognizes my car. He watches me get out, and then he waits, expecting Nathaniel. It's enough to propel me forward, so that by the time I reach him I am nearly at a dead run, and I slap him as hard as I can across the face.

“Nina!” Caleb catches my wrists and holds me away from him. “What the hell!”

“You bastard. How could you, Caleb? How could you?” He pushes me away, rubbing his fingers against his cheek. My hand rises on it, a bright print. Good. “I don't know what you're talking about,” Caleb says. “Slow down.”

“Slow down?” I spit out. “I'll make it really simple: Nathaniel told us. He told us what you did to him.”

“I didn't do anything to him.”

For a long moment, I don't say a word, just stare. “Nathaniel said I. . . I . . .” Caleb falters. “That's ridiculous.”

It is what they all say, the guilty ones, and it makes me unravel. “Don't you dare tell me that you love him.”

“Of course I do!” Caleb shakes his head, as if to clear it. “I don't know what he said. I don't know why he said it. But Nina, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.” When I don't respond, every year we've spent together unspools, until we are both standing knee deep in a litter of memories that don't matter. Caleb's eyes are wide and wet. “Nina, please. Think about what you're saying.” I look down at my hands, one fist gripping the other tightly. It is the sign for in. In trouble. In love. In case. “What I think is that kids don't make this up. That Nathaniel didn't make this up.” I raise my gaze to his. “Don't come home tonight,” I say, and I walk back to my car with great precision, as if my heart has not gone to pieces inside me.

Caleb watches the taillights of Nina's car disappear down the road. The dust that's kicked up in her wake settles, and the scene still looks like it did a minute ago. But Caleb knows things are completely different now; that there is no going back.

He will do anything for his son. Always has, always will.

Caleb looks down at the wall he's been crafting. Three feet, and it took him the better part of the day. While his son was in a psychiatrist's office, turning the world inside out, Caleb has been lifting stone, fitting it side by side. Once when he'd been dating Nina he'd shown her how to set together rocks with proportions that did not seem to meet. All you need is one edge in common, he'd told her.

Case in point, this jagged piece of quartz, kitty-corner to a fat, low block of sandstone. Now, he lifts the piece of sandstone and hurls it into the road, where it breaks into pieces. He raises the quartz and sends it spinning into the woods behind him. He demolishes the wall, all this work, piece by careful piece. Then he sinks into the pile of rubble and presses his dusty hands to his eyes, crying for what cannot be put back together. I have one more place to go. In the clerk's office of the East District Court, I move like an automaton. Tears keep coming, no matter how I try to will them away. This is not a professional demeanor, but I couldn't care less. This is not a professional matter, it's a personal one.

“Where do you keep the protective order forms for juveniles?” I ask the clerk, a woman who is new to the court, and whose name I have forgotten. She looks at me as if she's afraid to answer. Then she points to a bin. She fills it out for me, as I feed her the answers in a voice that I can't place. Judge Bartlett receives me in chambers. “Nina.” He knows me, they all do.

“What can I do for you?”

I hold the form out for him and lift my chin. Breathe, speak, focus. “I am filing this on behalf of my son, Your Honor. I'd prefer not to do it in open court.”

The judge's eyes hold mine for a long second, then he takes the paper from my hands. “Tell me,” he says gently.

“There is physical evidence of sexual abuse.” I am careful not to say Nathaniel's name. That, I cannot bear yet. “And today, he identified the abuser as his father.” His father, not my husband.

“And you?” Judge Bartlett asks. “Are you all right?” I shake my head, my lips pressed tight together. I grasp my hands so tightly that I lose feeling in the fingers. But I don't say a word.

“If there's anything I can do,” the judge murmurs. But there is nothing he can do, or anyone else, no matter how many times the offer is extended. Everything has already been done. And that is the problem.

The judge scrawls the craggy landscape of his signature across the bottom of the form. “You know this is only temporary. We'll have to have a hearing in twenty days.”

“That's twenty days I have to figure this out.”

He nods. “I'm sorry, Nina.”

71 So am I. For not seeing what was under my nose. For not knowing how to protect a child in the world, but only in the legal system. For every choice I've made that has brought me to this moment. And, yes, for the restraining order that burns a hole in my pocket the entire drive back to my son. 72 These are the rules at home:

Make your bed in the morning. Brush your teeth twice a day. Don't pull the dog's ears. Finish your vegetables, even if they're not as good as the spaghetti.

These are the rules at school:

Don't climb up the outside of the slide. Don't walk in front of the swings while a friend is swinging. Raise your hand in Circle if you have something to say. Everybody gets to play a game, if they want to. Put on a smock if you're going to paint.

I know other rules, too: Buckle your seat belt. Never speak to a stranger. Don't tell, or you'll burn in Hell.