ife, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage cans still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers interrupt dinner.

Nathaniel comes into the bathroom just as I put the cap back on the tube of Preparation H. I read once that rubbing it into the skin around the eyes makes the swelling go down, the red fade. I turn to him with a smile so bright he backs away. “Hey, sweetie. Did you brush your teeth?” He nods, and I take his hand. “Let's read a book, then.”

Nathaniel scrambles onto his bed like any other five-year-old-it is a jungle, and he is a monkey. Dr. Robichaud has said that the children bounce back fast, faster even than their parents do. I hold onto this excuse as I open the book-one about a pirate blind in one eye who cannot see that the parrot on his shoulder is actually a poodle. I make it through the first three pages, and then Nathaniel stops me, his hand splayed across the bright painted pictures. His index finger waggles, and then he holds that hand up to his forehead again, making a sign I wish I could never see again.

Where's Daddy?

I take the book and set it on the nightstand. “Nathaniel, he's not coming ho me tonight.” He's not coming home any night, I think.

He frowns at me. He doesn't know how to ask why yet, but that is what's caught in his head. Is he thinking that he's responsible for Caleb's ex ile? Has he been told there will be some kind of retribution, for confessing?

Holding his hands between mine-to keep him from interrupting-I try to make this as easy as I can. “Right now, Daddy can't be here.” Nathaniel tugs his arms free, curls his fingers up and in. I want. God, I want, too. Nathaniel, angry, turns away from me. “What Daddy did,” I say brokenly, “was wrong.”

At that, Nathaniel bolts upright. He shakes his head vehemently. This, I've seen before. If a parent is the one sexually abusing a child, the child is often told that it's a measure of love. But Nathaniel keeps shaking his head, so hard that his hair flies from side to side. “Stop. Nathaniel, please stop.” When he does, he looks at me with the strangest expression, as if he does not understand me at all.

It is why I say the words out loud. I need to hear the truth. I need confirmation from my son. “Did Daddy hurt you?” I whisper, the leading question Dr. Robichaud would not ask, would not let me ask.

Nathaniel bursts into tears and hides under his covers. He will not come out, not even when I say I'm sorry.

Everything in the motel room is the color of wet moss-the frayed rug, the bowl of the sink, the bilious bedspread. Caleb turns on the heat and the radio. He takes off his shoes and sets them neatly beside the door.

This is not a home; this is barely a residence. Caleb wonders about the other people staying at these efficiency cabins here in Saco. Are they all in limbo like him?

He cannot imagine sleeping here one night. And yet he knows he will live here a lifetime, if that is what it takes to help his son. He would give anything, for Nathaniel. Even, apparently, himself.

Caleb sits on the edge of the bed. He picks up the phone, then realizes he has no one to call. But he holds the receiver to his ear for a few moments, unt il the operator gets on and reminds him that no matter what, on the other end, someone is listening.

There is nothing for it: Patrick can't start his day without a chocolate croissant. The other cops rib him about it constantly-Too upscale for hnuts, are you, Ducharme? He brushes it off, willing to suffer some teasing as long as the police secretary who orders the daily tray of baked goods includes his personal favorite. But that morning, when he walks into the cafeteria to grab his snack and fill his coffee cup, Patrick's croissant is missing.

“Aw, come on,” he says to the beat cop standing next to him. “Are you guys being assholes? Did you hide it in the ladies' room again?”

“We didn't touch it, Lieutenant, swear.”

Sighing, Patrick walks out of the cafeteria to the desk where Mona is checking her e-mail. “Where's my croissant?”

She shrugs. “I placed the same order as always. Don't ask me.” Patrick begins to walk through the police station, scanning the desks of the other detectives and the room where the street officers relax during their breaks. He passes the chief in the hall. “Patrick, you got a second?”

“Not right now.”

“I have a case for you.”

“Can you leave it on my desk?”

The chief smirks. “Wish you were half as single-minded about your police work as you are about your damn doughnuts.”

“Croissants,” Patrick calls to his retreating back. “There's a difference.” In the booking room, seated next to the bored desk sergeant, he finds the perp: a kid who looks like he was playing cop in his dad's uniform. Brown hair, bright eyes, chocolate on his chin. “Who the hell are you?” Patrick demands.

“Officer Orleans.”

The desk sergeant folds his hands over his ample stomach. “And the detective who's about to rip your head off, here, is Lieutenant Ducharme.”

“Why's he eating my breakfast, Frank?”

The older cop shrugs. “Because he's only been here a day-”

“Six hours!” the kid proudly corrects.

Frank rolls his eyes. “He don't know better.”

“You do.”

“Yeah, but if I told him so I wouldn't have gotten to see all this excitement.” The rookie holds out the remaining bite of the croissant, his peace offering.

“I, uh, I'm sorry, Lieutenant.”

Patrick shakes his head. He considers going to the fridge and raiding the lunch the kid's mom has probably packed him. “Don't let it happen again.” Hell of a way to start a day; he counts on the combination of caffeine in the chocolate and his coffee to get him jump-started. By ten o'clock, no doubt, he'll have a monster headache. Patrick stalks back to his desk and plays his voice mail-three messages; the only one he really cares about is Nina's. “Call me,” it says-that's all, no name, nothing. He picks up the phone, then notices the file that the chief has left on his desk.

Patrick opens the manila folder, reads the report from BCYF. The telephone receiver falls to the desk, where it lies buzzing long after he has run out of his office.

“All right,” Patrick says evenly. “I'm going to get right on this. I'll go and talk to Caleb the minute I leave here.”

It's about all I can take, the incredible level calm of his voice. I drive my hands through my hair. “For God's sake, Patrick. Will you just stop being such a ... such a cop?”

“You want me to tell you that I feel like beating him unconscious for doing this to Nathaniel? That then I'd beat him up all over again for what he's done to you?”

The fury in his voice takes me by surprise. I tilt my head, playing his anger over in my mind. “Yes,” I answer softly. “I do want you to tell me that.” He rests his hand on the back of my head. It feels like a prayer. “I don't know what to do.”

Patrick's fingers cup my skull, separate the strands of my hair. I give myself up to this; imagine that he's unraveling my thoughts. “That's why you've got me,” he says.

Nathaniel balks when I tell him where we're going. But if I stay inside for another minute, I am going to lose my mind.

Light falls through the stained-glass ceiling panels of St. Anne's, washing Nathaniel and me in a rainbow. At this hour, on a weekday, the church is as qu iet as a secret. I walk with great care, trying not to make any more of a sound than is absolutely necessary. Nathaniel drags his feet, s cuffing his sneakers along the mosaic floor.

“Stop that,” I whisper, and immediately wish I hadn't. My words reverberate against the stone arches and the polished pews and come running back to me. Trays of white votives glow; how many of these have been lit for my son?

“I'll only be a minute,” I tell Nathaniel, settling him in one of the pews with a handful of Matchbox cars. The polished wood makes a perfect racetrack to prove this, I send a hot rod speeding to the other end. Then I walk toward the confessionals before I change my mind.

The booth is tight and overheated. A grate slides open against my shoulder; although I cannot see him, I can smell the starch Father Szyszynski uses on his clerical shirts.

There is a comfort to confession, if only because it follows rules that are never broken. And no matter how long it's been, you remember, as if there is a collective Catholic subconscious. You speak, the priest answers. You begin with the littlest sins, stacking them like a tower of alphabet blocks, and the priest gives you a prayer to knock them all down, so that you can start over.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four months since my last confession.”

If he's shocked, he does a good job of hiding it.

“I ... I don't know why I'm here.” Silence. “I found out something, recently, that is tearing me apart.”

“Go on.”

“My son . . . he's been hurt.”

“Yes, I know. I've been praying for him.”

“I think ... it seems . . . it's my husband who did this to him.” On the small folding chair, I am doubled over. Sharp pains move through me, and I welcome them-by now, I had thought myself incapable of feeling anything. There is such a long silence I wonder if the priest has heard me. Then: “And what is your sin?”

“My . . . what?”

“You can't confess for your husband.”

Anger bubbles up like tar, burning my throat. “I didn't intend to.”

“Then what did you want to confess today?”

I have come to simply speak the words aloud to someone whose job is to listen. But instead I say, “I didn't keep my son safe. I didn't see it at all.”

“Innocence isn't a sin.”

“How about ignorance?” I stare at the latticework between us. “How about being naive enough to think that I actually knew the man I fell in love with? How about wanting to make him suffer the way Nathaniel's suffering?” Father Szyszynski lets this statement stand. “Maybe he is.” My breath catches. “I love him,” I say thickly. “I love him just as much as I hate him.”

“You need to forgive yourself for not being aware of what was happening. For wanting to strike back.”

“I don't know if I can.”

“Well, then.” A pause. “Can you forgive him?” I look at the shadow that is the priest's face. “I am not that godly,” I say, and exit the confessional before he can stop me.

What's the point; I am already living my penance.

He doesn't want to be here.

The church, it sounds the way it does inside his head-a whooshing that's louder than all the words that aren't being spoken. Nathaniel looks at the little room his mother has gone into. He pushes a car down the pew. He can hear his heart.

He sets the rest of the Matchbox cars into their parking spots and inches his way out of the pew. With his hands burrowed under his shirt like a small animal, Nathaniel tiptoes down the main aisle of the church.

At the altar he kneels down on the steps to pray. He'd learned a prayer in Sunday school, one he was supposed to do at night that he usually forgot. But he remembers that you can pray for anything. It's like a birthday candle wish, except it goes straight to God.

He prays that the next time he tries to say something with his hands, everyone will understand. He prays that he will get his daddy back. Nathaniel notices a marble statue beside him-a woman, holding Baby Jesus on her lap. He forgets her name, but she's all over the place here-on paintings and wall hangings and more stone sculptures. In everyone, there's a mother with a child.

He wonders if once there was a daddy standing on that pedestal, in that painting, portrayed with the rest of the holy family. He wonders if everyone's father gets taken away.

Patrick knocks on the door of the cabin that the manager of Coz-E-Cottages has pointed out. When it swings open, Caleb stands on the other side, red-e yed and unshaven. “Look,” Patrick says right away, “this is incredibly awkward.”

Caleb looks at the police shield in Patrick's hand. “Something tells me it's a little more awkward for me than for you.”

This is the man who has lived with Nina for seven years. Slept beside her, made a baby with her. This is the man who has had the life Patrick wanted. He had thought that he'd come to terms with the way things had worked out. Nina was happy, Patrick wanted her to be happy, and if that meant that he himself was out of the picture, so be it. But that equation only worked when the man Nina chose was worthy. When the man Nina chose didn't make her cry.

Patrick has always believed Caleb to be a good father, and it stuns him a little, now, to realize how badly he wants Caleb to be the perp. If he is, it immediately discredits Caleb. If he is, there is proof that Nina picked the wrong guy.

Patrick feels his fingers curve into fists, but he tamps down on the urge to inflict pain. In the long run, that's not going to help either Nina or Nathaniel.

“Did you put her up to this?” Caleb says tightly.

“You did this all by yourself,” Patrick answers. “Are you willing to come down to the station?”

Caleb grabs a jacket from the bed. “Let's go right now,” he says. At the threshold of the door, he reaches out and touches Patrick's shoulder. Instinct makes Patrick tense; reason forces him to relax. He turns and looks coolly at Caleb. “I didn't do it,” Caleb says quietly. “Nina and Nathaniel, they're the other half of me. Who would be stupid enough to throw that away?”

Patrick does not let his eyes betray him. But he thinks, for the first time, that perhaps Caleb is telling the truth.

Another man might not have felt comfortable with the relationship between his own wife and Patrick Ducharme. Although Caleb had never doubted Nina's fidelity-or even her feelings for him-Patrick wore his tattered heart on his sleeve. Caleb had spent enough dinners watching Patrick's eyes follow his wife around the kitchen; he'd seen Patrick spin Nathaniel in the air and tuck the boy's giggles into his pockets when he thought no one was looking. But Caleb did not mind, really. After all, Nina and Nathaniel were his. If he felt anything for Patrick, it was pity, because he wasn't as lucky as Caleb. Early on, Caleb had been jealous of Nina's close friendship with Patrick. But she was a woman with a number of male friends. And it quickly became clear that Patrick was too much a part of Nina's past: Asking her to remove him from her life would have been a mistake, like separating Siamese twins who grew out from a shared heart.

He is thinking of Nina, now, as he sits at the scarred table in the investigation room of the police station with Patrick and Monica LaFlamme. He is remembering, specifically, the way Nina categorically denied any suggestion that Patrick might have been the one to hurt Nathaniel-yet just a few days later, had seemingly accused Caleb without a second thought.

Caleb shivers. Once, Patrick had said that they keep the interrogation rooms ten degrees cooler than the rest of the station, to make suspects physically uncomfortable. “Am I under arrest?” he asks.

“We're just talking.” Patrick doesn't meet Caleb's eye. “Old friends.” Old friends, oh yes. Like Hitler and Churchill.

Caleb doesn't want to be sitting here, defending himself. He wants to talk to his boy. He wants to know if Nina finished reading him the pirate book. He wants to know if Nathaniel wet his bed again.

“We might as well get started.” Patrick turns on a tape recorder. Caleb suddenly realizes his best source of information is sitting three feet away. “You saw Nathaniel,” he murmurs. “How is he?” Patrick glances up, surprised. He's used to being the one who asks the questions.

“Was he okay, when you were there? Did he look like he'd been crying?”

“He was ... he was all right, given the circumstances,” Patrick says. “Now-”

“Sometimes, if he's not eating, you can distract him by talking about something he likes. Soccer, or frogs, like that. And while you talk you just keep putting food on his fork. Tell Nina.”

“Let's talk about Nathaniel.”

“What do you think I'm doing? Has he said anything yet? Verbally, I mean. Not with his hands?”

“Why?” Patrick asks guardedly. “Are you worried he might have more to tell us?”

“Worried? I wouldn't care if the only word he could say was my name. I wouldn 't care if it meant I'd be locked up for life. I just want to hear it for myself.”

“His accusation?”

“No,” Caleb says. “His voice.”

I have run out of places to go. The bank, the post office, an ice cream for Nathaniel. A local park, the pet store. Since leaving the church, I have dragged us from building to building, running errands that don't need to be done, all so that I won't have to go back to my own home.

“Let's visit Patrick,” I announce, swinging into the parking lot of the Biddeford police station at the last minute. He'll hate me for this-checking up on his investigation-but above all, he'll understand. In the backseat of the car, Nathaniel slumps to the side, letting me know what he thinks of this idea.

“Five minutes,” I promise.

The American flag cracks sharply in the cold wind as Nathaniel and I walk up the path toward the front door. Justice for all. When we are about twenty feet away, the door opens. Patrick steps out first, shielding his eyes against the sun. Directly behind him are Monica LaFlamme and Caleb. Nathaniel sucks in his breath, then wrenches free of me. At the same moment, Caleb sees him and goes down on one knee. His arms catch Nathaniel tight, hold him close. Nathaniel looks up at me with a wide smile, and in that awful moment I realize he thinks I have planned this for him, a wonderful surprise.

Patrick and I stand a distance away, bookends, bracketing this story as it happens.

He comes to his senses first. “Nathaniel,” Patrick says quietly, firmly, and he goes to pull my son away. But Nathaniel is having none of that. He wraps his arms around Caleb's neck, he tries to burrow inside his coat. Over our son's head, Caleb's eyes meet mine. He stands up, taking Nathaniel with him.

I force myself to look away. To think of the hundreds of children I've met the ones who are bruised and filthy and starving and neglected-who scream as they are removed from their homes, and beg to stay with an abusive mother or father.

“Buddy,” Caleb says quietly, forcing Nathaniel to look at him. "You know I'd like nothing better than to spend some time with you right now. But ... I have something to do."

Nathaniel shakes his head, his face crumpling.

“I'm gonna see you just as soon as I can.” Caleb walks toward me, bouncing Nathaniel in his arms; peels him off his own body and settles him into my embrace. By now, Nathaniel is crying so hard that the silent sobs choke him. His rib cage shudders under my palm like a dragon coming to life. As Caleb heads toward his truck, Nathaniel lifts his gaze. His eyes are slitted and nearly black. He raises his fist and hits me on the shoulder. Then he does it again, and again, a tantrum waged against me.

“Nathaniel!” Patrick says sharply.

But it doesn't hurt. Not nearly as much as the rest.

“You have to expect some regression,” Dr. Robichaud says quietly, as we both watch Nathaniel lie listlessly on his stomach on the carpet of the playroom . “His family is coming apart; in his mind, he's responsible for it.”

“He ran to his father,” I say. “You should have seen it.” “Nina, you know be tter than most people that doesn't prove Caleb's innocent. Kids in that situation believe they've got a special bond with the parent. Nathaniel running to him-that's textbook behavior.”

Or maybe, I let myself think, Caleb did nothing wrong. But I push the doub t away, because I am on Nathaniel's side now. “So what do I do?”

“Absolutely nothing. You keep being the mother you always have been. The more Nathaniel understands that parts of his life are going to remain the same, the more quickly he'll overcome the changes.”

I bite my lip. It is in Nathaniel's best interests to admit to my own faults, but that's never easy to do. “That may not be the best idea. I work a sixty-ho ur week. I wasn't exactly the hands-on parent. Caleb was.” Too late, I realize these were not the right words to use. “I mean . . . well, you know what I mean.”

Nathaniel has rolled onto his side. Unlike the other times we've been in Dr. Robichaud's office, nothing has engaged his attention today. The crayons sit untouched, the blocks are neatly stacked in the corner, the puppet theater is a ghost town.

The psychiatrist takes off her glasses and wipes them on her sweater. “You know, as a woman of science, I've always believed that we have the power to shape our own lives. But there's a big part of me that also thinks things happen for a reason, Nina.” Dr. Robichaud glances toward Nathaniel, who has gotten to his feet now, and is finally moving toward the table. "Maybe he's not the only one who's starting over."

Nathaniel wants to disappear. It can't be that hard; it happens every day to all sorts of things. The rain puddle outside the school is gone by the time the sun is in the middle of the sky. His blue toothbrush vanishes and is replaced by a red one. The cat next door goes out one night and never comes back. When he thinks about all this, it makes him cry. So he tries to dream of good things-X-Men and Christmas and maraschino cherries-but he can't even make pictures of them in his head. He tries to imagine his birthday party, ne xt May, and all he can see is black.

He wishes he could close his eyes and fall asleep forever, just stay in that place where dreams feel so real. Suddenly he has a thought: Maybe this is the nightmare. Maybe he'll wake up and everything will be the way it is supposed to be.

From the corner of his eye Nathaniel sees that fat stupid book with all the hands in it. If it wasn't for that book, if he'd never learned how to talk with his fingers, if he'd stayed quiet, this wouldn't have happened. Drawn upright, he walks to the table where it rests.

It's a loose-leaf, the kind of binder with three big teeth. Nathaniel knows how to open one; they have them at home. When the jaw is wide he takes out t he first page, the one with a happy smiling man using his hand to say hello. The next page shows a dog, and a cat, and the signs for them. Nathaniel throws both on the floor.

He starts ripping out big chunks of paper, scattering them all around his feet like snow. He stomps on the pages with pictures of food. He tears in half the ones that show a family. He watches himself do this on the magic wall, a mirror on this side but glass out there. And then he looks down, and sees something.

This picture, it's the one he's been looking for all along.

He grabs the piece of paper so hard it wrinkles in his fist. He runs to the door that leads into Dr. Robichaud's office, where his mother is waiting. He does it just the way the black-and-white man on the page does. Pinching togeth er his thumb and his forefinger, Nathaniel drags them across his neck, as if he is cutting his own throat.

He wants to kill himself.

“No, Nathaniel,” I say, shaking my head. “No, baby, no.” Tears are running down his cheeks, and he holds fast to my shirt. When I reach for him he fights me, smooths a paper over my knee. He jabs his finger at one of the sketches.

“Slowly,” Dr. Robichaud instructs, and Nathaniel turns to her. He draws a line across his windpipe again. He taps together his forefingers. Then he points to himself.

I look down at the paper, at the one sign I do not recognize. Like the other groupings in the ASL book, this one has a heading, religious symbols. And the motion of Nathaniel's hands has not been suicidal. He has been tracing an imaginary clerical collar; this is the sign for Priest. Hurt. Ale.

Tumblers click in my mind: Nathaniel mesmerized by the word father-although he has always called Caleb daddy. The children's book Father Szyszyn ski brought, which disappeared before we even had a chance to read it at bedtime, and still has not turned up. The fight Nathaniel put up this morning when I told him we were going to church.

And I remember one more thing: a few weeks ago, one Sunday when we'd muste red the effort to go to Mass. That night, when Nathaniel was getting undressed, I noticed he was wearing underwear that wasn't his. Cheap little Spi derman briefs, instead of the $7.99 miniature boxers I bought at GapKids so that Nathaniel could match his dad. Where are yours? I had asked. And his answer: At church, I assumed he'd had an accident at Sunday school and had received this spare pair from his teacher, who rummaged through the Goodwill bin. I made a menta l note to thank Miss Fiore for taking care of it. But I had a wash to do and a child to bathe and a pair of motions to write, and I never did get a chance to speak to the teacher.

Now, I take my son's shaking hands, and I kiss the fingertips. Now, I have all the time in the world. “Nathaniel,” I say, “I'm listening.” An hour later, in my own home, Monica carries her mug to the sink. “Is it all right with you if I tell your husband?”

“Of course. I would have told him myself, but...” My voice trails off.

“That's my job,” she finishes, saving me from speaking the truth: Now that I have forgiven Caleb, I do not know if he will forgive me.

I busy myself with the dishes-rinsing our mugs, squeezing dry the tea bags and putting them into the trash. I have specifically tried to focus on Nathaniel since leaving Dr. Robichaud's office-not only because it is the right thing to do, but because I am a terrible coward at heart. What will Caleb say, do?

Monica's hand touches my forearm. “You were protecting Nathaniel.” I look directly at her. No wonder there is a need for social workers; the relationships between people knot so easily, there needs to be a person skilled at working free the threads. Sometimes, though, the only way to extricate a tangle is to cut it out and start fresh.

She reads my mind. “Nina. In your shoes, he would have reached the same conclusions.”

A knock on the door captures our attention. Patrick lets himself in, nods to Monica. “I'm just on my way out,” she explains. “If you want to reach me later, I'll be in my office.”

This is directed to both Patrick and me. Patrick will need her, presumably, to be kept abreast of the case. I will need her, presumably, for moral support. As soon as the door closes behind Monica, Patrick steps forward. “Nathaniel?”

“He's in his room. He's okay.” A sob hops the length of my throat. “Oh, my God, Patrick. I should have known. What did I do? What did I do?”

“You did what you had to,” he says simply.

I nod, trying to believe him. But Patrick knows it isn't working. “Hey.” He leads me to one of the stools in the kitchen, sits me down. “Remember when we were kids, and we used to play Clue?”

I wipe my nose with my sleeve. “No.”

“That's because I always trounced you. You'd pick Mr. Mustard every time, no matter what the evidence said.”

“I must have let you win.”

“Good. Because if you've done it before, Nina, it's not going to be that hard to do it again.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Give over. I know this game, Nina, and I'm good at it. If you let me do what I have to, without messing yourself up in the process, we can't lose.” Suddenly he takes a step away from me, stuffs his hands into his pockets. “And you've got other things to work on, now.”

“Other things?”

Patrick turns, meets my eye. “Caleb?”

It's like that old contest: Who will blink first? This time, I can't bear it ; I am the one to look away. “Then go lock him up, Patrick. It's Father Szyszynski. I know it, and you know it. How many priests have been convicted of doing just this-shit!” I wince, my own mistake hammering back. “I talked to Father Szyszynski about Nathaniel during confession.”

“You what? What were you thinking?”

“That he was my priest.” Then I glance up. "Wait. He thinks it's Caleb. That's what I thought, then. That's good, right? He doesn't know that he's the suspect."

“What's important is whether Nathaniel knows it.”

“Isn't that crystal clear?”

“Unfortunately, it's not. Apparently, there's more than one way to interpret the word father. And by the same logic, there's a whole country full of priests out there.” He looks at me soberly. “You're the prosecutor. You know this case can't afford another mistake.”

“God, Patrick, he's only five. He signed priest. Szyszynski is the only priest he even knows, the only priest who has any contact with him on a regular basis. Go ahead and ask Nathaniel if that's who he meant.”

“That's not going to stand up in court, Nina.”

Suddenly I realize that Patrick has not come only for Nathaniel; he has also come for me. To remind me that while I'm being a mother, I still have to think like a prosecutor now. We cannot name the accuser for Nathaniel; he has to do it himself. Otherwise, there is no chance of a conviction. My mouth is dry. “He isn't ready to talk yet.”

Patrick holds out his hand to me. “Then let's just see what he can tell us today.”

Nathaniel is on the top bunk, sorting his daddy's old collection of baseball cards into piles. He likes the feel of their frayed edges, and the way they smell gray. His dad says to be careful, that one day these could pay for college, but Nathaniel couldn't care less. Right now he likes touching them, staring a t all the funny faces, and thinking that his dad used to do the same thing. There's a knock, and his mom comes in with Patrick. Without hesitation, Patrick climbs up the ladder-all six-feet-two inches of him squashing into the small space between ceiling and mattress. It makes Nathaniel smile a littl e. “Hey, Weed.” Patrick thumps the bed with a fist. “This is comfy. Gotta get me one of these.” He sits up, pretends to crack his head on the ceiling.

“What do you think? Should I ask your mom to buy me a bed like this too?” Nathaniel shakes his head and hands Patrick a card. “Is this for me?” Patrick asks, then reads the name and smiles broadly. “Mike Schmidt, rookie. I'm s ure your dad will be thrilled you've been so generous.” He tucks it into his pocket and takes out a pad and pen at the same time. “Nathaniel, you think it would be all right if I asked you some questions?”

Well. He is tired of questions. He is tired, period. But Patrick climbed all the way up here. Nathaniel jerks his head, yes.

Patrick touches the boy's knee, slowly, so slowly that it doesn't even make Nathaniel jump, although these days everything does. “Will you tell me the truth, Weed?” he asks softly.

Slower this time, Nathaniel nods.

“Did your daddy hurt you?”

Nathaniel looks at Patrick, then at his mother, and emphatically shakes his head. He feels something open up in his chest, making it easier to breathe.

“Did somebody else hurt you?”

Yes.

“Do you know who it was?”

Yes.

Patrick's gaze is locked with Nathaniel's. He won't let him turn away, no matter how badly Nathaniel wants to. “Was it a boy or a girl?” Nathaniel is trying to remember-how is it said again? He looks at his mother, but Patrick shakes his head, and he knows that, now, it is all up to him. Tentatively, his hand comes up to his head. He touches his brow, as if there is a baseball cap there. “Boy,” he hears his mother translate.

“Was it a grown-up, or a kid?”

Nathaniel blinks at him. He cannot sign those words.

“Well, was he big like me, or little like you?”

Nathaniel's hand hovers between his own body, and Patrick's. Then falls, deliberately, in the middle.

That makes Patrick grin. “Okay, it was a medium guy, and it was someone you know?”

Yes.

“Can you tell me who?”

Nathaniel feels his whole face tighten, muscles bunching. He squeezes his eyes shut. Please please please, he thinks. Let me. “Patrick,” his mother says, and she takes a step forward, but Patrick holds out a hand and she stops.

“Nathaniel, if I brought you a bunch of pictures”-he points to the baseball cards-“like these ... do you think you could show me who this person was?” Nathaniel's hands flutter over the piles, bumblebees choosing a place to light. He looks from one card to the other. He cannot read, he cannot speak, but he knows that Rollie Fingers had a handlebar moustache, Al Hrabosky looked like a grizzly bear. Once something sticks in his head, it stays there; it's just a matter of getting it back out again.

Nathaniel looks up at Patrick; and he nods. This, this he can do. Monica has been in accommodations far worse than the efficiency suite where she finds Caleb Frost, but this is almost more jarring, and she thinks it is because she has seen the sort of home where he is supposed to be. The mi nute Caleb recognizes her face through the keyhole of the door, he throws it open. "What's the matter with Nathaniel?' he asks, true fear washing over his features.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. He's made another disclosure. A new ID.”

“I don't understand.”

“It means you're no longer a suspect, Mr. Frost,” Monica says quietly. Questions rise in him like a bonfire. “Who,” Caleb manages, the word tasting of ash.

“I think you should go home and speak to your wife about it,” she answers, then turns briskly and walks away, her purse tucked primly beneath her arm.

“Wait,” Caleb calls out. He takes a deep breath. “Is ... is Nina okay with that ?”

Monica smiles, lets the light reach her eyes. “Who do you think asked me to come?”

Peter agrees to meet me at the district court, where I'm going to have the restraining order vacated. The process takes all of ten minutes, a rubber stamp, with the judge asking only one question: How is Nathaniel?

By the time I come into the lobby, Peter is racing through the front door. He immediately comes toward me, concern drawing down the corners of his mouth. “I got here as soon as I could,” he says breathlessly. His eyes dart to Nathaniel, holding my hand.

He thinks I need him to twist the letter of the law for me, squeeze blood from the stone heart of a judge, do something to stack the scales of justice in my favor. Suddenly I am embarrassed by the reason I called him.

“What is it?” Peter demands. “Anything, Nina.” I slip my hands in my coat pockets. “I really just wanted to get a cup of coffee,” I admit. “I wanted to feel, for five minutes, like everything was back the way it used to be.”

Peter's gaze is a spotlight; it sees down to my soul. “I can do that too,” he says, and loops his arm through mine.

Although there are no seats left at the bar at Tequila Mockingbird by the time Patrick arrives, the bartender takes one look at him and hints strongly to a visiting businessman that he take his drink to a booth in the back. Patrick wraps his black mood around him like a parka, hops onto the vacant stool, and signals to Stuyvesant. The bartender comes over pouring his usual, Glenfiddich. But he hands Patrick the bottle, and keeps the glass of scotch behind the bar. “Just in case someone else here wants a shot,” Stuyv explains. Patrick looks at the bottle, at the bartender. He tosses his car keys on the counter, a fair trade, and takes a long swig of the liquor.

By now, Nina has been to the court and back. Maybe Caleb has made it home in time for dinner. Maybe they've gotten Nathaniel to bed early, and are even now lying in the dark next to each other.

Patrick picks up his bottle again. He has been in their bedroom before. Big king-size bed. If he was married to her, they'd sleep on a narrow cot, that's how close to her he would be.

He'd been married himself for three years, because he believed that if you wan ted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of fillers that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.

Patrick pitches forward as a blond woman hits him hard on the shoulder. “Y ou pervert!”

“What the hell?”

She narrows her eyes. They are green, and caked with too much mascara. “Did you just touch my ass?”

“No.”

Suddenly, she grins, insinuating herself between Patrick and the elderly man on his right. “Well, damn. How many times will I have to walk by before you do?”

Sliding her drink beside Patrick's bottle, she holds out her hand. Manicured. He hates manicured hands. “I'm Xenia. And you are?”

“Really not interested.” Patrick smiles tightly, turns back to the bar.

“My mom didn't raise a quitter,” Xenia says. “What do you do for a living?”

“I'm a funeral director.”

“No, really.”

Patrick sighs. “I'm on the vice squad.”

“No, really.”

He faces her again. “Really. I'm a police officer.” Her eyes widen. “Does that mean I'm busted?”

“Depends. Did you break any laws?”

Xenia's gaze travels the length of his body. “Not yet.” Dipping a finger in her drink-something pink and frothy-she touches her shirt, and then his. “Wanna go to my place and get out of these wet clothes?”

He blushes, then tries to pretend it didn't happen. “Don't think so.” She props her chin on her fist. “Guess you better just buy me a drink.” He starts to turn her down again, then hesitates. “All right. What are you having?”

“An Orgasm.”

“Of course,” Patrick says, hiding a smile. It would be so easy-to go home with this girl, waste a condom and a few hours' sleep, get the itch out of his blood. Chances are, he could fuck her without ever telling her his name. And in return, for just a few hours, he would feel like someone wanted him. He would be, for a night, someone's first choice.

Except this particular someone would not be his first choice. Xenia trails her nails along the nape of Patrick's neck. “I'm just going to carve our initials in the door of the ladies' room,” she murmurs, backing away.

“You don't know my initials.”

“I'll make them up.” She gives a little wave, then disappears into the crowd. Patrick calls over Stuyvesant and pays for Xenia's second drink. He leaves it sweating on a cocktail napkin for her. Then he walks out of Tequila Mockingbird stone sober, facing the fact that Nina has ruined him for anyone else. Nathaniel lies on the lower bunk while I read him a book before bedtime. Suddenly, he jackknifes upright and fairly flies across the room, to the doorway where Caleb stands. “You're home,” I say, the obvious, but he doesn't hear . He is lost in this moment.

Seeing them together, I want to kick myself again. How could I ever have believed that Caleb was at fault?

The room is suddenly too small to hold all three of us. I back out of it, closing the door behind me. Downstairs, I wash the silverware that sits on the drying rack, already clean. I pick Nathaniel's toys up from the floor. I sit down on the living room couch; then, restless, stand up and arrange the cushions.

“He's asleep.”

Caleb's voice cuts to the quick. I turn, my arms crossed over my chest. Does t hat look too defensive? I settle them at my sides, instead. “I'm . . . I'm gla d you're home.”

“Are you?”

His face gives nothing away. Coming out of the shadows, Caleb walks toward me. He stops two feet away, but there might as well be a universe between us.

I know every line of his face. The one that was carved the first year of our marriage, by laughing so often. The one that was born of worries the year he left the contracting company to go into business for himself. The one that de veloped from focusing hard on Nathaniel as he took his first steps, said his first word. My throat closes tight as a vise, and all the apologies sit bitter in my stomach. We had been naive enough to believe that we were invincible; that we could run blind through the hairpin turns of life at treacherous speeds and never crash. “Oh, Caleb,” I say finally, through the tears, “these th ings, they weren't supposed to happen to us.”

Then he is crying too, and we cling to each other, fitting our pain into each other's hollows and breaks. “He did this. He did this to our baby.” Caleb holds my face in his hands. “We're going to get through it. We're going to make Nathaniel get better.” But his sentences turn up at the ends, like s mall animals begging. “There are three of us in this, Nina,” he whispers. “An d we're all in it together.”

“Together,” I repeat, and press my open mouth against his neck. “Caleb, I'm so sorry.”

“Shh.”

“I am, no, I am-”

He cuts me off with a kiss. The action arrests me; it is not what I have been expecting. But then I grab him by the collar of his shirt and kiss him back. I kiss him from the bottom of my soul, I kiss him until he can taste the cop per edge of sorrow. Together.

We undress each other with brutality, ripping fabric and popping buttons that roll under the couch like secrets. This is the anger overflowing: anger that this has happened to our son, that we cannot turn back time. For the first time in days I can get rid of the rage; I pour it into Caleb, only to realize that he is doing the same to me. We scratch, we bite, but then Caleb lays me down with the softest touch. Our eyes lock when he moves inside me; neither one of us would dare to blink. My body remembers: This is what it is to be filled by love, instead of despair.

The last case I worked on with Monica LaFlamme had not been a success. She sent me a report, stating that a Mrs. Grady had called her. Apparently, while drying her seven-year-old off after a bath, Eli grabbed the Mickey Mo use towel and began to simulate sexual thrusting, then named his stepfather as the perp. The child was taken to Maine Medical Center, but there were no physical findings. Oh, and Eli suffered from something called oppositional defiance disorder.

We met at my office, in the room we use to assess children for competency exams. On the other side of a one-way mirror was a small table, tiny chairs, a few toys, and a rainbow painted on the wall. Monica and I watched Eli run a round like a hellion, literally climbing the curtains. “Well,” I said. “This should be fun.”

In the adjoining room, Mrs. Grady ordered her son to stop. “You need to calm down, Eli,” she said. But that just made him scream more, run more. I turned to Monica. “What's oppositional defiance disorder, anyway?” The social worker shrugged. “My guess?” she said, gesturing toward Eli. “That. He does the opposite of what you ask him to do.”

I gaped at her. “It's a real psychiatric diagnosis? I mean, it's not just the definition of being seven years old?”

“Go figure.”

“What about forensic evidence?” I unrolled a grocery bag, and pulled out a neatly folded towel. Mickey's face leered up at me. The big ears, the sideway s grin-it was creepy on its own merits, I thought.

“The mother washed it after the bath that night.”

“Of course she did.”

Monica sighed as I handed the towel to her. “Mrs. Grady's intent on going to trial.”

“It's not her decision.” But I smiled as Eli's mother took a spot beside me and the police officer who was investigating the case. I gave her my spiel, about seeing what information Ms. LaFlamme could get out of Eli, for the record.

We watched through the mirror as Monica asked Eli to sit down.

“No,” he said, and started running laps.

“I need you to come sit down in this chair. Can you do that, please?” Eli picked up the chair and threw it in the corner. With supreme patience, Mo nica retrieved it and set it down beside her own. “Eli, I need you to come sit in this chair for a little while, and then we'll go get Mommy.”

“I want my mommy now. I don't want to be here.” But then he sat down. Monica pointed to the rainbow. “Can you tell me what color this is, Eli?”

“Red.”

“That's very good! How about this color?” She touched her finger to the yellow stripe.

Eli rolled his eyes in her direction. “Red,” he said.

“Is that red, or is it a different color than the other stripe?”

“I want my mommy,” Eli shouted. “I don't want to talk to you. You are a big fat fart.”

“All right,” Monica said evenly. “Do you want to go get your mommy?”

“No, I don't want my mommy.”

After about five more minutes, Monica terminated the interview. She raised her brows at me through the glass and shrugged. Mrs. Grady leaned forward immediately. “What happens next? Do we set a date for court?”

At that, I took a deep breath. “I'm not sure what happened to your son,” I said diplomatically. “Probably, there was some abuse involved; his behavior seems to indicate that. And I think you would be wise to assess your husband's involvement with Eli. However, we can't prosecute this case criminally.”

“But. . . but you just said it. There was abuse. What more does there have to be?”

“You saw Eli now. There's no way he's going to be able to come into a cour troom and sit down on a chair and answer questions.”

“If you spend more time with him-”

“Mrs. Grady, it's not just me. He's going to have to answer questions posed by the defense attorney and the judge, and there's going to be a jury a few feet away staring at him, too. You understand better than anyone does what Eli's behavioral issues are, because you see them on a daily basis. But unfortunately, the legal system doesn't work for people who can't respond within its framework.”

The woman's face was white as a sheet. “Well . . . what do you do, then, with cases like this? How do you protect children like Eli?” I turned to the one-way mirror, where Eli was breaking crayons in half. “We can't,” I admitted.

I bolt upright in bed, my heart racing. A dream. It has only been a dream. My heart is pounding, sweat covers me like a veil, but my house is still. Caleb lies on his side, facing me, breathing deeply. There are silver tracks crossing his face; he has been crying in his sleep. I touch my finger to a tear, bring it to my mouth. “I know,” I whisper, and then lie awake for the rest of the night.

I doze off as the sun comes up, and wake to the first frost of the winter. It comes early in Maine, and it changes the landscape. Hoary and barbed, the world is a place that might shatter the moment you step into it. Caleb and Nathaniel are nowhere to be found; the house is so quiet it throbs around me as I dress and make my way downstairs. The cold sneaks in through the crack beneath the door and wraps itself around my ankles while I drink a cup of coffee and stare at the note on the table. we're in the barn.

When I find them, they are mixing mortar. Well, Caleb is. Nathaniel crouches on the floor of the workshop, using bits of brick to outline the dog sleeping on the cement slab floor. “Hey,” Caleb grins, glancing up. “We're building a brick wall today.”

“So I see. Has Nathaniel got a hat and gloves? It's too cold out for-”

“I've got them right here.” Caleb jerks his chin to the left; there are the blue fleece accessories.

“Well. I have to go out for a little while.”

“So go.” Caleb drags the hoe through the cement, mixing it. But I don't want to. I'm not needed here; I know that. For years, I've been the main breadwinner; the odd wheel out. Lately, though, I've gotten used to my own house. Lately, I haven't much wanted to leave.

“Maybe I-”

Whatever I'm about to say is interrupted as Caleb leans down and yells right into Nathaniel's face. “No!” Nathaniel quails, but not before Caleb grabs his arm and pulls him away.

“Caleb-”

“You don't touch the antifreeze,” Caleb yells at Nathaniel. “How many times do I have to tell you that? It's poison. It can hurt you badly.” He picks up the bottle of Prestone he's been mixing into the mortar to keep it from freezing in this temperature, and then covers the mess Nathaniel's made with a cloth. A stain, alien green, seeps through and spreads. The dog laps at the sweet spill, until Caleb shoves it away. “Get out of there, Mason.” In the corner, Nathaniel's on the verge of tears. “Come here,” I say, opening up my arms. He flies into them, and I kiss the top of his head. “Why don't you go get a toy from your room to play with while Daddy's working?“ Nathaniel runs off to the house with Mason at his heels, both of them smart enough to know a reprieve when it comes up and grabs them. Caleb shakes his head in disbelief. ”Just undermine me, Nina, you go right ahead.”

“I'm not undermining you. I'm . . . well, look at him, Caleb, you scared him to death. He wasn't doing it on purpose.”

“It doesn't matter. He was told and he didn't listen.”

“Don't you think he's been through enough lately?”

Caleb wipes his hands on a towel. “Yes, I do. So how's he going to take it when the dog he loves drops dead, because he broke the rules and did something he was expressly told not to do?” He caps the Prestone, sets it high on a shelf. “I want him to feel like a normal kid again. And if Nathaniel had done this three weeks ago, you can bet I would have punished him.” This logic I can't even follow. Biting down on my response, I turn and walk out. I am still angry with Caleb by the time I reach the police department and find Patrick asleep at his desk.

I slam the door of his office, and he nearly falls out of his chair. Then he winces, holds his hand to his head. “I'm just glad to see that you public servants are really earning all my tax dollars,” I say sourly. “Where's the digital lineup?”

“I'm working on it,” Patrick responds.

“Oh, yeah, I can see that you're really exerting yourself.” He stands up and frowns at me. “Who peed in your coffee?”

“I'm sorry. Just some domestic bliss spilling over. No doubt I'll find my ma nners by the time you find probable cause to lock up Szyszynski.” Patrick looks me right in the eye. “How's Caleb?”

“Fine.”

“Doesn't sound like things are fine . . .”

“Patrick. I'm here because I need to know that something's going on. Anything. Please. Show me.”

He nods and takes my arm. We move through corridors I have never navigated at the Biddeford Police Department, and finally wind up in a back room not much bigger than a closet. The lights are off, a green screen hums on a computer, and the boy who sits in front of the keyboard has acne and a fistful of Munchos. “Dude,” he says to Patrick.

I turn to Patrick, too. “You're kidding.”

“Nina, this is Emilio. Emilio helps us with digital imaging. He's a computer whiz.”

He leans over Emilio and hits a button on the keyboard. Ten photos appear on the screen, one of them Father Szyszynski's.

I lean forward, look close. There is nothing in the priest's eyes or his easy smile that would make me believe he is capable of such an abomination. Half of the people in the photos are dressed in the vestments of priests; the other half are wearing the standard issue jumpsuit of the local jail. Patrick shrugs. “The only picture I could find of Szyszynski was in his clerical collar. So I have to make the convicts look like priests, too. That way there won't be any cause for question later on, after Nathaniel makes his ID.” He says it like it is going to happen. For that, I adore him. As we watch, Emilio superimposes a collar over a picture of a ham-faced thug. “Got a minute?” Patrick asks me, and when I nod, he leads me out of the little makeshift office, through a side door, and into a courtyard.

There is a picnic table, a basketball hoop, and around this, a high chain link fence. “All right,” I say immediately. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong.”

“If nothing was wrong, you would have been able to talk to me in front of your teenage hacker.”

Patrick sits down on the bench of the picnic table. “It's about the lineup.”

“I knew it.”

“Will you just stop?” Patrick waits until I sit down, then looks right into me. Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer. “You need to understand something, Nina,” Patrick says. “Even if Nathaniel points right to Szyszynski's picture . . . it 's a weak disclosure. Surveying a lineup isn't something a five-year-old can really understand. It could be he picks the only familiar face; it could be he points to anyone, just to get us to leave him alone.”

“Don't you think I know that?”

"You understand what it takes to secure a conviction. We can't lead him into making an ID just because you want this case to move faster. All I'm saying is that Nathaniel might be able to talk a week from now.

Maybe even tomorrow. Eventually, he's going to be able to say the name of the perp, and that's going to be a much stronger accusation.“ Leaning forward, I bury my hands in my hair. ”And then what am I supposed to do? Let him testify?"

“That's the way it works.”

“Not when my child's the victim,” I snap.

Patrick touches my arm. “Nina, without Nathaniel's testimony against Szyszynski, you have no case.” He shakes his head, certain I haven't really thought this through.

But I have never been more sure of anything in my life. I will do what it takes to keep my son from being a witness. “You're right,” I tell Patrick. “And that's why I'm counting on you to get the priest to confess.” Before I realize it, I've driven to St. Anne's. I pull into the parking lot and get out of my car, avoiding the front walk to tiptoe, instead, around to the back of the building. The rectory is here, attached to the main body of the chur ch. My sneakers leave prints in the frost, the trail of an invisible man. If I climb onto the ridge of a drainage well, I can see into the window. This is Father Szyszynski's personal apartment, the living room. A cup of tea sits, the bag still draining, on a side table. A book-Tom Clancy-is cracked open on the couch. All around are gifts he's received from parishioners: a handmade afghan, a wooden Bible stand, a framed drawing by a child. All of these people believed him, too; I have not been the only sucker. What I am waiting for, exactly, I don't know. But as I stand there I remember the day before Nathaniel had stopped speaking, the last time we had all gone to Mass. There had been a reception for the two clergymen who'd come to visit, a banner hung from the serving table wishing them a safe journey home. I remember that the flavored coffee that morning was hazelnut. That there were no powdered sugar doughnuts left, though Nathaniel had wanted one. I remember talking to a couple I had not seen in several months, and noticing that the other children were following Father Szyszynski downstairs for his weekly storytime. “Go, Nathaniel,” I'd said. He had been hiding behind me, clinging to my legs. I fairly pushed him into joining the others. I pushed him into it.

I stand here on the drainage ditch for over an hour, until the priest comes in to his living room. He sits down on the couch and picks up his tea and he reads. He doesn't know I'm watching him. He doesn't realize that I can slide into his life, just as surreptitiously as he has slid into mine.

As Patrick has promised, there are ten photos-each the size of a baseball card, each with a different “priest” portrayed on the front. Caleb examines one. “The San Diego Pedophiles,” he murmurs. “All that's missing are the stats .”

Nathaniel and I come into the room, holding hands. “Well,” I say brightly.

“Look who's here.”

Patrick gets to his feet. “Hiya, Weed. Remember when I talked to you the other day?” Nathaniel nods. “Will you talk to me today, too?” He is already curious about the photos; I can feel it in the way he's tugging toward the couch. Patrick pats the cushion beside him, and Nathaniel immediately climbs up. Caleb and I sit on either side of them, in two overstuffed chairs. How formal we look, I think.

“I brought some pictures for you, just like I said I would.” Patrick takes t he rest from the manila envelope and arranges them on the coffee table, as if he is going to play solitaire. He looks at me, and then at Caleb-a silent warning that now this is his show. “You remember telling me that someone hurt you, Weed?”

Yes.

“And you said you knew who it was?”

Another nod, this one longer in coming.

“I want to show you some pictures, and if one of these people is the one who hurt you, I want you to point to it. But if the person who hurt you isn't in one of the pictures, you just shake your head no, so I know he's not there.” Patrick has phrased this perfectly-an open, legally valid invitation to make a disclosure; a question that does not lead Nathaniel to believe there's a right answer.

Even though there is.

We all watch Nathaniel's eyes, dark and boundless, moving from one face to another. He is sitting on his hands. His feet don't quite reach the floor.

“Do you understand what I need you to do, Nathaniel?” Patrick asks. Nathaniel nods. One hand creeps out from beneath a thigh. I want him to be able to do this, oh, I want it so badly it aches, so that this case will be set into motion. And just as badly, for the same reasons, I want Nathaniel to fail. His hand floats over each card in succession, a dragonfly hovering over a stream. It lights, but doesn't settle. His finger brushes Szyszynski's face, moves on. With my eyes, I try to will him back. “Patrick,” I blurt out. “Ask him if he recognizes anyone.”

Patrick smiles tightly. Through his teeth, he says, “Nina, you know I can't do that.” Then, to Nathaniel: “What do you think, Weed? Do you see the person who hurt you?”

Nathaniel's finger dips like a metronome, traces the edge of Szyszynski's car d. He hesitates there, then begins to move the other cards. We all wait, wondering what he is trying to tell us. But he slides one photo up, and another, until he has two columns. He connects them with a diagonal. All this deliberation, and it turns out he is only making the letter N.

“He touched the card. The right one,” I insist. “That IDs good enough.”

“It's not.” Patrick shakes his head.

“Nathaniel, try again.” I reach over and mess the pictures up. “Show me which one.”

Nathaniel, angry that I've ruined his work, shoves at the cards so that half of them fly off the table. He buries his face on his bent knees and refuses to look at me.

“That was useful,” Patrick mutters.

“I didn't see you doing anything to help!”

“Nathaniel.” Caleb reaches across me to touch our son's leg. “You did great. Don't listen to your mother.”

“That's lovely, Caleb.”

“I didn't mean it like that and you know it.”

My cheeks are burning. “Oh, really?”

Ill at ease, Patrick begins to stuff the pictures back into the envelope.

“I think we ought to talk about this somewhere else,” Caleb says pointedly. Nathaniel's hands come up to cover his ears. He burrows sideways, between the sofa pillows and Patrick's leg. “Now look what you've done to him,” I say.

The mad in the room is all the colors of fire, and it presses down on him, so that Nathaniel has to make himself small enough to fit in the cracks of the cushions. There is something hard in Patrick's pocket where he's pressed up tight to it. His pants smell like maple syrup and November. His mother, she's crying again, and his dad is yelling at her. Nathaniel can remember when just waking up in the morning used to make them happy. Now, it seems that no matter what he does, it's wrong.

He knows this is true: What happened happened because of him. And now that he's dirty and different, his own parents do not know what to do with him.

He wishes he could make them smile again. He wishes he had the answers. He knows they are there, but they're dammed up in his throat, behind the Thing He Is Not Supposed to Tell.

His mother throws up her hands and walks toward the fireplace, her back to everyone. She's pretending no one can see, but she's crying hard now. His fat her and Patrick are trying hard not to look at each other, their eyes bouncing like a Superball off everything in the tiny room.

When his voice returns, it reminds Nathaniel of the time his mother's car would not start last winter. She turned the key and the engine groaned, whining and whining before it kicked to life. Nathaniel feels that same thing now, in his belly. That kindling, that croak, the tiniest bubble rising up his windpipe. It chokes him; it makes his chest swell. The name that gets shoved out is feeble, thin as gruel, not nearly the thick and porous block that has absorbed all his words these past weeks. In fact, now that it sits on his tongue, bitter pill, it is hard to believe something this tiny has filled all the space inside him.

Nathaniel worries no one will hear him, since so many angry words are flying like kites in the room. So he comes up on his knees, presses himself along Patrick's side, cups his hand to the big man's ear. And he speaks, he speaks.

Patrick feels the warm weight of Nathaniel on his left side. And no wonder; Patrick himself is ducking from the comments Caleb and Nina are winging at each other; Nathaniel has to be faring just as poorly. He slides an arm around the child. “It's okay, Weed,” he murmurs.

But then he feels Nathaniel's fingers brush the hair at his nape. A sound slips into his ear. It's not much more than a puff of breath, but Patrick has been waiting. He squeezes Nathaniel once more, because of what he's done. Th en he turns to interrupt Caleb and Nina. “Who the hell,” Patrick asks, “is Father Glen?”

The logical time to search the church is during Mass, when Father Szyszynsk i-a.k.a. Father Glen, to the children like Nathaniel who cannot pronounce his last name-is otherwise occupied. Patrick cannot remember the last time he went on a hunt for evidence wearing a coat and tie, but he wants to blend in with the crowd. He smiles at strangers while they all file into the church before nine A.M.; and when they turn into the main nave of the church he walks in the opposite direction, down a staircase.

Patrick doesn't have a warrant, but then this is a public space, and he does not need one. Still, he moves quietly through the hallway, reluctant to draw attention to himself. He passes a classroom where small children sit wriggling like fish at even smaller tables and chairs. If he were a priest, where would he stash the Goodwill box?

Nina has told him about the Sunday when Nathaniel came home with a differen t pair of underwear on beneath his clothes. It might not mean anything. But then again, it might. And Patrick's job is to overturn all the stones so t hat when he goes to back Szyszynski into a corner, he has all the ammunitio n he needs to do it.

The Goodwill box is not next to the water fountain or the restrooms. It's not in Szyszynski's office, a richly paneled vestibule stacked with wall-to-wall religious texts. He tries a couple of locked doors in the hallway, rattling them to see if they'll give way.

“Can I help you?”

The Sunday school teacher, a woman who has the look of a mother about her, stands a few feet behind Patrick. “Oh, I'm sorry,” he says. “I didn't mean to interrupt your class.”

He tries to summon all his charm, but this is a woman who is probably used to white lies, to hands caught in the cookie jar. Patrick continues, thinking on his feet. “Actually, my two-year-old just soaked through his jeans during Father Szyszynski's sermon . . . and I hear there's a Goodwill box som ewhere around here?”

The teacher smiles in sympathy. “Water into wine gets them every time,” she says. She leads Patrick into the classroom, where fifteen tiny faces turn to assess him, and hands him a big blue Rubbermaid box. “I have no idea what's inside, but good luck.”

Minutes later Patrick is hidden in the boiler room, the first place he finds where he won't readily be disturbed. He is knee deep in old clothing. There are dresses that must be a good thirty years old, shoes with worn soles, toddler's snow pants. He counts seven pairs of underwear-three of which are pink, with little Barbie faces on them. Lining the remaining four up on the floor, he takes a cell phone from his pocket and dials Nina.

“What do they look like?” he says when she answers. “The underwear.”

“What's that humming? Where are you?”

“In the boiler room of St. Anne's,” Patrick whispers.

“Today? Now? You're kidding.”

Impatient, Patrick pokes at the briefs with one gloved finger. “Okay, I've got a pair with robots, one with trucks, and two that are plain white with blue trim. Does anything sound familiar?”

“No. These were boxers. They had baseball mitts on them.” How she remembers this, he can't imagine. Patrick couldn't even tell you what pair of shorts he has on today. “There's nothing here that matches, Nina.”

“It's got to be there.”

“If he kept them, which we don't know he did, they could very well be in his private quarters. Hidden.”

“Like a trophy,” Nina says, and the sadness in her voice makes Patrick ache.

“If they're there, we'll get them with a warrant,” he promises. He doesn't say what he is thinking: that the underwear alone will not really prove anything. There are a thousand ways to explain away that kind of evidence; he has most likely heard them all.

“Have you talked to-”

“Not yet.”

“You'll call me, won't you? After?”

“What do you think?” Patrick says, and hangs up. He bends down to fork all the spilled clothing back into the bin, and notices something bright in an alco ve behind the boiler. Working his big body into a pretzel, he stretches out a hand but cannot grab it. Patrick looks around the custodial closet, finds a fireplace poker, and slides it behind the bulk of the boiler to the small hollow. He snags a corner of it-paper, maybe?-and manages to drag it within his arm's reach.

Baseball mitts. One hundred percent cotton. Gap, size XXS.

He pulls a brown paper bag from his pocket. With his gloved fingers, he turns the underwear over in his hand. On the left rear, slightly off center, there is a stiff stain.

In the custodial closet, directly beneath the altar where Father Szyszynski is at that moment reading Scripture aloud, Patrick bows his head and prays that in a situation as unfortunate as this one, there might be a shred of pure luck.

Caleb feels Nathaniel's giggle like a tiny earthquake, shuddering up from the rib cage. He presses his ear down more firmly against his son's chest. Nathaniel is lying on the floor; Caleb is lying on him, his ear tipped close to the boy's mouth. “Say it again,” Caleb demands.

Nathaniel's voice is still thready, syllables hanging together by a string. His throat needs to learn how to hold a word again, cradle it muscle by muscle, heft it onto the tongue. Right now, this is all new to him. Right now, it is still a chore.

But Caleb can't help himself. He squeezes Nathaniel's hand as the sound flounders out, spiky and tentative. “Daddy.”

Caleb grins, so proud he could split in two. Beneath his ear, he hears the wonder in his son's lungs. “One more time,” Caleb begs, and he settles in to listen.

A memory: I am searching all over the house for my car keys, because I am already late to drop Nathaniel at school and go to work. Nathaniel is dressed in his coat and boots, waiting for me. “Think!” I say aloud, and then turn to Nathaniel. “Have you seen my keys?”

“They're under there,” he answers.

“Under where?”

A giggle erupts from deep inside him. “I made you say underwear.” When I laugh along with him, I forget what I've been looking for. Two hours later, Patrick enters St. Anne's again. This time, it is empty. Candles flicker, casting shadows; dust motes dance in the slices of light thrown by the stained-glass windows. Patrick immediately heads downstairs to Fat her Szyszynski's office. The door is wide open, the priest sits at his desk. For a moment, Patrick enjoys the feeling of voyeurism. Then he knocks, twice, firmly.

Glen Szyszynski glances up, smiling. “Can I help you?” Let's hope so, Patrick thinks, and he walks inside.

Patrick pushes a Miranda form across the investigation room table toward Father Szyszynski. “It's just a standard practice, Father. You're not in custody, and you're not under arrest . . . but you're willing to answer questions, and the law says I need to tell you you've got rights before I ask you a single thing.”

Without hesitation, the priest signs the list of rights Patrick has just read aloud.

“I'm happy to do anything that helps Nathaniel.”

Szyszynski had immediately volunteered to help with the investigation. He agreed to give a blood sample when Patrick said they needed to rule out an yone who'd been around Nathaniel. At the hospital, watching the phlebotomist, Patrick had wondered if the sickness in this man's veins was measurable, as much a part of the fluid as the hemoglobin, the plasma. Now, Patrick leans back in his chair and stares at the priest. He has faced a thousand criminals, all of whom proclaim their innocence or pretend to have no idea what he is talking about. Most of the time he is able to acknowledge their barbarity with the cool detachment of a law enforcement professional. But today, this slight man sitting across from him-well, it is all Patrick can do to not beat the priest bloody just for speaking Nathaniel's name.

“How long have you known the Frosts, Father?” Patrick asks.

“Oh, I've known them since I first came to the parish. I had been sick for a while, and was given a new congregation. The Frosts moved to Biddeford a month after I became a priest here.” He smiles. “I baptized Nathaniel.”

“Do they come to church regularly?”

Father Szyszynski's gaze slides to his lap. “Not as regularly as I'd like,” he admits. “But you didn't hear it from me.”

“Have you taught Nathaniel in Sunday school?”

“I don't teach it; a parent does. Janet Fiore. While the service is going on upstairs.” The priest shrugs. “I love children, though, and I like to connect with the little ones-”

I bet you do, Patrick thinks.

“-so after the service, when the congregation is enjoying fellowship and coffee, I take the children downstairs and read a story to them.” He grins sheepishly. “I'm afraid I'm a bit of a frustrated actor.”

No surprise there, either. “Where are the parents, while you're reading?”

“Enjoying a few moments to themselves upstairs, for the most part.”

“Does anyone else read to the children with you, or are you alone?”

“Just me. The Sunday school teachers usually finish cleaning the room, and then go up for coffee. The story time only lasts about fifteen minutes.”

“Do the children ever leave the room?”

“Only to go to the bathroom, right down the hall.”

Patrick considers this. He does not know how Szyszynski managed to get Nathaniel by himself, when all the other children were allegedly present, too . Maybe he gave them the book to look over for themselves, and followed Nathaniel into the bathroom. “Father,” Patrick says, “have you heard how Nathaniel was hurt?”

There is a hesitation, and then the priest nods. “Yes. Unfortunately, I have.” Patrick locks his eyes on Szyszynski's. “Did you know that there's physical evidence Nathaniel was anally penetrated?” He is looking for the slightest pinking of the man's cheeks; a telltale hitch of his breathing. He is looking for surprise, for backpedaling, for the beginnings of panic.

But Father Szyszynski just shakes his head. “God help him.”

“Did you know, Father, that Nathaniel has told us you were the one that hurt him?”

Finally, the shock that Patrick has expected. “I ... I ... of course I haven't hurt him. I would never do that.”

Patrick remains silent. He wants Szyszynski to think about all the priests around the globe who've been found guilty of this offense. He wants Szyszynski to realize that he's walked himself right onto the gallows of his own execution. “Huh,” Patrick says. “Funny, then. Because I talked to him just the other night, and he specifically told me that it was Father Glen. That's what the kids call you, isn't it, Father? Those kids you . . . love?” Szyszynski shakes his head repeatedly. “I didn't. I don't know what to say. The boy must be confused.”

“Well, Father, that's why you're here today. I need to know if you can think of any reason why Nathaniel might say you hurt him, if you didn't.”

“The child's been through so much-”

“Did you ever insert anything in his anus?”

“No!”

“Did you ever see anyone insert anything in his anus?” The priest draws in his breath. “Absolutely not.”

“Then why do you imagine Nathaniel would say what he did? Can you think of anything that might have made him think it happened, even though it didn't?” Patrick leans forward. “Maybe a time you were alone with him, something occurred between you two that might have put this idea into his head ?”

“I was never alone with him. There were fourteen other children around.” Patrick rocks his chair back on its rear legs. “Did you know that I found a pair of Nathaniel's underwear behind the boiler of the custodial closet? The laboratory says there's semen on it.”

Father Szyszynski's eyes widen. “Semen? Whose?”

“Was it yours, Father?” Patrick asks quietly.

“No.”

A flat denial. Patrick has expected nothing less than this. “Well, I hope for your sake you're right, Father, because we're going to be able to tell from DNA testing on your blood whether that's true.”

Szyszynski's face is pale and drawn; his hands are trembling. “I'd like to leave now.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I'm sorry, Father,” he says. “But I'm placing you under arrest.”

Thomas LaCroix has never met Nina Frost, although he's heard about her. He remembers when she got a conviction for a rape that occurred in a bathtub, although all the evidence had been washed away. He has been a district attorney too long to doubt his own abilities-last year, he even locked away a priest in Portland for this same crime-but he also knows that these sorts of cases are extremely difficult to win. However, he wants to put on a good act. It has nothing to do with Nina Frost or her son-he'd just like York County's prosecutors to know how they do things up in Portland. She answers the phone on the first ring. “It's about time,” she says, when he introduces himself. “I really need to discuss something with you.”

“Absolutely. We can talk tomorrow at the courthouse, before the arraignment,“ Thomas begins. ”I just wanted to call before-”

“Why did they pick you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What makes you the best attorney Wally could find to prosecute?” Thomas draws in his breath. “I've been in Portland for fifteen years. And I've tried a thousand cases like this.”

“So you're just phoning in a performance, now.”

“I didn't say that,” Thomas insists, but he is thinking: She must be a wonder on cross-examination. “I understand that you're nervous about tomorrow, Ni na. But the arraignment, well, you know exactly what it's going to entail. Let's just get through it, and then we can sit down and strategize about your son's case.”

“Yes.” Then, dryly: “Do you need directions?” Another dig-this is her territory, her life; he is an outsider on both counts . “Look, I can imagine what you're going through. I have three children of my own.”

“I used to think I could imagine it too. I thought that's what made me good at what I did. I was wrong on both counts.”

She falls silent, all the fire having burned out of her. “Nina,” Thomas vows, “I will do everything in my power to prosecute this case the way you would.”

“No,” she replies quietly. “Do it better.”

“I didn't get a confession,” Patrick admits, striding past Nina into her kitchen. He just wants his failure immediately set out there, like a carcass to be picked apart. There's nothing she can say to berate him he hasn't already said to himself.

“You . . .” Nina stares at him, then sinks onto a stool. “Oh, Patrick, no.” Anguish pushes on his shoulders, makes him sit down too. “I tried, Nina. Bu t he wouldn't cave in. Not even when I told him about the semen, and Nathaniel's disclosure.”

“So!” Caleb's voice interrupts firmly, brightly. “You finished with your ice cream, buddy?” He throws a warning like a knife between his wife and Patrick; tilts his head meaningfully toward Nathaniel. Patrick has not even noticed the boy sitting at the table, having a bedtime snack. He took one look at Nina, and forgot there might be anyone else in the room.

“Weed,” he says. “You're up late.”

“It's not bedtime yet.”

Patrick has forgotten about Nathaniel's voice. Still rough, it sounds better suited to a grizzled cowboy than a small child, but it is a symphony all the same. Nathaniel hops off his seat to run to Patrick, extends a skinny arm. “Wanna feel my muscle?”

Caleb laughs. “Nathaniel was watching the Ironman competition on ESPN.” Patrick squeezes the tiny biceps. “Gosh, you could deck me with an arm like that,” he says soberly, then turns toward Nina. “He's strong. Have you seen how strong this guy is?”

He is trying to convince her of a different sort of strength, and she knows it . Nina crosses her arms. “He could be Hercules, Patrick, and he'd still be my little boy.”

“Mom,” Nathaniel wails.

Over his head, Nina mouths, “Did you arrest him?”

Caleb puts his hands on Nathaniel's shoulders, steering him back toward his bowl of melting ice cream. “Look, you two need to talk-and clearly, here isn't the best place to do it. Why don't you just go out? You can fill me in after Nathaniel's gone to sleep.”

“But don't you want to-”

“Nina,” Caleb sighs, “you're going to understand what Patrick says, and I'm going to need to have it explained. You might as well be the translator.” He watches Nathaniel take the last bite of ice cream into his mouth. “Come on, buddy. Let's see if that guy from Romania popped a vein in his neck yet.” At the threshold of the kitchen door, Nathaniel lets go of his father's hand . He runs toward Nina, catching her at the knees, a near tackle. “Bye, Mom,” he says, smiling, his dimples deep. “Sweep tight.” It's an uncanny malapropism, Patrick thinks. If Nina could, she'd whisk away this whole mess for Nathaniel. He watches her kiss her son good night. As Nathaniel hurries back toward Caleb, she ducks her head and blinks, until the tears aren't quite as bright in her eyes. “So,” she says, “let's go.” In an effort to improve the revenues on slow Sunday nights, Tequila Mockin gbird has established the Jimmy Buffet Key Largo Karaoke Night, an all-you-can-eat burgerfest paired with singing. When Patrick and I walk into the bar, our senses are assaulted: A string of lights in the shape of palm trees adorn the bar; a crepe-paper parrot hangs from the ceiling; a girl with too much makeup and too little skirt is butchering “The Wind Beneath My Wings.“ Stuyvesant sees us come in and grins. ”You two never come in on a Sunday.”

Patrick looks at some poor waitress, shivering in a bikini as she serves a table. “And now we know why.”

Stuyv sets two napkins down in front of us. “The first margarita is on the house,” he offers.

“Thanks, but we need something a little less ...”

“Festive,” I finish.

Stuyvesant shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

After he turns away to get our drinks and burgers, I feel Patrick's eyes on me . He is ready to talk, but I'm not, not just yet. Once the words are hanging t here in the open air, there is no taking back what is going to happen. I look at the singer, clutching the mike like a magic wand. She has absolutely no voice to speak of, but here she is, belting out her off-key rendition of a song that's crappy to begin with. “What makes people do things like that?” I say absently.

“What makes people do any of the things they do?” Patrick lifts his drink, bares his teeth after he takes a sip. There is a smattering of applause as the woman gets down from the makeshift stage, probably because she's done.

“I hear that karaoke's some kind of self-discovery deal. Like yoga, you know? You go up there and you muster the courage to do something you never in a million years thought you could do, and when it's over, you're a better person because of it.”

“Yeah, and the rest of the audience needs Excedrin. Give me hot coals to walk over, any day. Oh, that's right, I've already done that.” To my embarrassment, tears come to my eyes; to hide this, I take a great gulp of my whiskey. “Do you know when I talked to him, he told me to think about forgiveness? Can you believe he had the nerve to say that to me, Patrick?”

“He wouldn't admit anything,” Patrick answers softly. “He looked at me like he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Like when I told him about the underwear, and the semen stain, it was a shock.”

“Patrick,” I say, lifting my gaze to his, “what am I going to do?”

“If Nathaniel testifies-”

“No.”

“Nina ...”

I shake my head. “I'm not going to be the one who does that to him.”

“Then wait a while, until he's stronger.”

“He is never going to be strong enough for that. Am I supposed to wait until his mind has managed to erase it ... and then make him sit on a witness stand and bring it all back again? Tell me, Patrick, how is that in Nathaniel's best interests?”

Patrick is quiet for a moment. He knows this system like I do; he knows I'm right. “Maybe once the semen comes back as a match, the priest's lawyer can talk to him and work out some kind of deal.”

“A deal,” I repeat. “Nathaniel's childhood is being traded for a deal.” Without saying a word, Patrick lifts my whiskey glass and hands it to me. I take a tentative sip. Then a larger one, even though my throat bursts into flame. “This ... is horrible,” I wheeze, coughing.

“Then why did you order it?”

“Because you always do. And I don't feel like being myself tonight.” Patrick grins. “Maybe you should just have your usual white wine, then, and go up and sing for us.”

As if he has cued it, the woman who assists the karaoke machine man approaches us, holding out a binder. Her bleached hair hangs into her face, and she is wearing pantyhose with her tropical sarong miniskirt. “Hons,” she says to us. “You want to do a duet?”

Patrick shakes his head. “I don't think so.”

“Oh, come on. There are some cute songs here for couples like you. 'Summer Nights,' remember that one from Grease? Or how about that one Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt do?”

I am not here; this is not happening. A woman is not pressuring me into singing karaoke when I have come to discuss putting my son's rapist in jail. “Go away,” I say succinctly.

She glances down at my hamburger, untouched. “Maybe you can get a side of manners with that,” she says, and twitches back to the stage. When she's gone, the weight of Patrick's eyes rests heavy on me. “What?” I demand.

“Nothing.”

“Clearly, there's something.”

He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “You may not ever forgive Szyszynski, Nina, but you won't be able to move past this ... to help Nathaniel move past this . . . until you stop cursing him.”

I drain the rest of my liquor. "I will curse him, Patrick, until the day he dies."

A new singer fills in the space that has fallen between the two of us. A heavyweight woman with hair that touches her ass, she sways her considerable hips as the riff begins playing on the karaoke machine.

It only takes a minute . . .

For your life to move on past., .

“What is she doing up there?” I murmur.

“Yeah . . . she's actually good.”

We both look away from the stage, and our eyes meet. “Nina,” Patrick says, “you're not the only one hurting. When I see you like this . . . well, it kills me.” He looks down at his drink, stirs it once. “I wish-”

“I wish too. But I could wish till the world stops turning, and it wouldn't change a thing, Patrick.”

History was once today . . . Before the moment got away. . . . Nice guys, baby, always finish last.

Patrick laces his fingers with mine on the table. He looks at me, hard, as if he is going to be quizzed on the details of my face. Then, with what seems to be a great effort, he turns away. “The truth is there shouldn't be any justice for motherfuckers like him. People like that, they ought to be shot.” Clasped together, our hands look like a heart. Patrick squeezes, I squeeze back. It is all the communication we need, this pulse between us, my reply. The most pressing issue the next morning involves what we are supposed to do with Nathaniel. It hasn't occurred to either Caleb or myself before this; only when the courthouse looms into view do I realize that Nathaniel cannot beat this arraignment . . . and cannot be left alone. In the hallway, he stands between us, holding both of our hands-a living bridge.

“I could sit with him in the lobby,” Caleb volunteers, but I immediately reject that solution. Caleb looks down at Nathaniel. “Don't you have a secretary who could watch him for a while?”

“This isn't my district,” I point out. “And I'm not leaving him with someone I don't know.”

Of course not, never again. Although, as it turns out, it is not the strangers we have to be wary of.

We are leaning hard against this impasse when a guardian angel arrives. Nathaniel sees her first, and tears down the hallway. “Monica!” he shrieks, and she lifts him into the air, swinging him around.

“That is the most fabulous word I've ever heard,” Monica laughs. Nathaniel beams. “I can talk now.”

“That's what Dr. Robichaud told me. She said she can't get a word in edgewise anymore when you come to her office.” She switches Nathaniel onto her other hip and turns to us. “How are you holding up?” As if there is an answer to that question, today.

“Well,” Monica says, as if we've responded. “We're just going to head down to the playroom near the family court. Sound good, Nathaniel?” She raises her brows. “Or do you have alternate plans for him?”

“No . . . not at all,” I murmur.

“That's what I figured. Child care this morning ... it probably wasn't your top priority.”

Caleb touches Nathaniel's golden hair. “Be good,” he says, and kisses his cheek.

“He's always good.” Monica sets him on his feet, and begins to lead him away. “Nina, you know where to find us when you're done.” I watch them walk for a moment. Two weeks ago I could not stand Monica L aFlamme; now I am indebted to her. “Monica,” I call out, and she turns.

“Why don't you have children?”

Shrugging, she smiles faintly. “To date, no one's asked me.” Our eyes meet, and that is all it takes to erase the history between us. “Their loss,” I say, and I smile.

Thomas LaCroix is two inches shorter than I am, and going bald. It makes no difference whatsoever, of course, but I find myself shooting glances at Wally during this meeting, wondering why he could not find the most perfect specimen of a prosecutor, one polished on the outside as well as the inside, so that no jury could possibly find fault.

“We're turning this entirely over to Tom,” my boss says. “You know we support you and Caleb, we're a hundred percent behind you . . . but we don't want there to be any problems on appeal. And if we're in the courtroom, it might look like we're stacking the decks against this guy.”

“I understand, Wally,” I say. “No offense taken.”

“Well!” Wally stands, having done his job here for the day. “We'll all be waiting to hear what transpires.”

He pats my shoulder as he exits. When he leaves, it is just the three of us left-Caleb, myself, and Thomas LaCroix. Like a good prosecutor-like me-he jumps right into business. “They're not going to arraign him until after lunch because of all the publicity,” Tom says. “Did you see the media when you came in?”

See it? We had to run the gauntlet. If I hadn't known a service entrance into the court, I never would have gotten Nathaniel inside.

“Anyway, I've already talked to the bailiffs. They're going to clear the other prisoners off the docket before they bring in Szyszynski.” He checks his watch. “We're scheduled for one o'clock right now, so you've got some time.” I flatten my hands on the table. “You will not be putting my son on the stand,” I announce.

“Nina, you know this is just an arraignment. A rubber stamp process. Let's just-”

“I want you to know this, and to know it now. Nathaniel isn't going to be testifying.”

He sighs. "I've done this for fifteen years. And we're just going to have to see what comes to pass. Right now, you know better than I do what the evidence is. You certainly know better than I do how Nathaniel is faring. But you also know there are some pieces of the puzzle we're waiting on-like the lab reports, and your son's recovery. Six months from now, a year from now . . . Nathaniel might be doing a whole lot better, and taking the stand might not be as much of a hardship. "

“He is five years old. In those fifteen years, Tom, how many cases with a five-year-old witness ended up with a perp in jail for life?” Not a single one, and he knows it. “Then we'll wait,” Tom says. “We have some time, and the defendant is going to want time too, you know that.”

“You can't hold him in jail forever.”

“I'm going to ask for $150,000 bail. And I doubt the Catholic Church will post it for him.” He smiles at me. “He's not going anywhere, Nina.” I feel Caleb's hand steal into my lap, and I grab onto it. I think he is supporting me, at first, but then he squeezes my fingers nearly to the point of pain. “Nina,” he says pleasantly, “maybe we should just let Mr. LaCroix do his job right now.”

“It's my job too,” I point out. “I put children on the stand every day, and I watch them fall apart, and then I watch the abusers walk. How can you ask me to forget that, when we're talking about Nathaniel?”

“Exactly-we're talking about Nathaniel. And today he needs a mother more than he needs a mother who is a prosecutor. We need to look at this in steps, and today that step is keeping Szyszynski locked up,” Tom says. “Let's just focus, and once we clear this hurdle, we can decide what to do next.” I stare into my lap, where I've nervously pleated my skirt into a thousand wrinkles. “I know what you're saying.”

“Good, then.”

Lifting my gaze, I smile slightly. "You're saying the same thing I do, to victims, when I really don't know if I have any chance of securing a conviction."

To his credit, Tom nods. “You're right. But I'm not trying to con you. We never know which cases are going to work out, which cases are going to take a plea, which kids will make a turnaround, which kids will heal to the point where a year from now, they're able to contribute in a way they can't that first day.”

I get to my feet. “But you said it yourself, Tom. Today I'm not supposed to give a damn about those other kids. Today I just care about my own.” I walk to the door before Caleb even has risen from his seat. “One o'clock,” I say, and it is a warning.

Caleb doesn't catch up to her until they are in the lobby, and then, he has to pull her aside to a small nook, where reporters will not find them. “What was that all about?”

“I'm protecting Nathaniel.” Nina crosses her arms, daring him to say otherwise.

She seems shaky and unsteady, not at all herself. Maybe it is just the truth of this day. God knows, Caleb isn't faring all that well either. “We ought to go tell Monica that there's a delay.”

But Nina is busy putting on her coat. “Can you do it?” she asks. “I need to run to the office.”

“Now?” Alfred, and the superior court building, is only fifteen minutes away. But still.

“It's something I have to give to Thomas,” she explains. Caleb shrugs. He watches Nina walk out the front steps. The flashes of several cameras strike her like bullets, freezing her in time as she jogs down the steps. Caleb sees her brush off a reporter with no more effort than she would use to wave away a fly.

He wants to run after her, hold Nina until that wall around her cracks and all the pain spills out. He wants to tell her that she doesn't have to be so strong around him, because they are in this together. He wants to take her downstairs to the bright room with alphabet squares on the floor, sit with their son between them. All she has to do is take off those focused blinders; then she will see that she isn't alone.

Caleb goes so far as to open the glass door, to stick his head outside. By now she is a dot, far across the parking lot. Her name hovers on his lips, but then there is an explosion that blinds him-a newspaper photographer, again. Backing inside, he tries to shake the double vision, but it is a long time before he can see clearly; and so he never witnesses Nina's car leaving the courthouse lot, turning in the opposite direction of her office.

I'm late.

I hurry through the front door of the court, around the line of people waiting to go through the metal detector. “Hey, Mike,” I say breathlessly, slipping behind the familiar bailiff, who just nods. Our courtroom is to the left; I open the double doors and walk inside.

It is filled with reporters and cameramen, all lined up in the back rows like the bad kids on the rear seats of a bus. This is a big story for York County, Maine. This is a big story for any place.

I walk to the front, where Patrick and Caleb are sitting. They have left a seat on the aisle for me. For a moment I fight my natural inclination-to continue through the gate, and sit at the prosecutor's table with Thomas LaCroix. That is why we “pass the bar”-we are allowed, by virtue of that test, to work in the front of the courtroom.

I don't know the defense attorney. Probably someone from Portland. Someone the diocese keeps on retainer for things like this. There is a cameraman set up to the right of the defense table, his head bent close to the machine in preparation.

Patrick notices me first. “Hey,” he says. “You all right?” As I expect, Caleb is angry. “Where have you been? I've tried-” Whatever he is about to say is interrupted as a bailiff speaks. “The Honorable Judge Jeremiah Bartlett presiding.”

The judge, of course, I know. He signed the restraining order against Caleb. He instructs us to sit down, and I try, but my body has gone stiff as a board and the seat does not fit me. My eyes take in everything and nothing all at once.

“Are we set for the arraignment on State v. Szyszynski?” the judge asks. Thomas rises smoothly. “Yes, Your Honor.”

At the defense table, the other attorney stands. “I'm representing Father Sz yszynski, and we're ready, Your Honor.”

I have seen this a thousand times before; one bailiff moves forward toward the bench. He does this to protect the judge. After all, the people brought in as defendants are criminals. Anything could happen.

The door to the holding cell opens, and the priest is led out. His hands are cuffed in front of him. Beside me, I feel Caleb forget to take his next breath. I hold my purse on my lap, a death grip.

The second bailiff leads the priest to the defense table, the inside seat, bec ause he will have to stand up in front of the judge to enter his plea. He is close enough, now, that I could spit at him. I could whisper, and he might hear me.

I tell myself to be patient.

My eyes go to the judge, then to the bailiffs. They are the ones I am worrie d about. They stand behind the priest, make sure he sits down. Move back. Move back move back move back.

I slide my hand into my purse, past the familiar, to the heat that leaps into my hand. The bailiff takes a step away-this defendant, scum of the earth, still has the right to privacy with his own attorney. There are words moving around the courtroom like small insects, distractions I do not really notice. The minute I stand up, I've jumped off the cliff. The world goes by in a haze of color and light; my weight accelerates, head-over-heels. Then I think, Falling is the first step in learning how to fly.

In two steps, I am across the aisle of the courtroom. In a breath, I hold the gun up to the priest's head. I pull the trigger four times.

The bailiff grabs my arm but I won't let go of the weapon. I can't, until I know that I've done it. There is blood spreading, and screams, and then I'm falling again, forward, past the bar, where I am supposed to be. “Did I get him? Is he dead?”

They slam me onto the ground, and when I open my eyes, I can see him. The priest lies with half his head missing, just a few feet away.

I let go of the gun.

The weight on me takes familiar shape, and then I hear Patrick in my ear. “Nina, stop. Stop fighting.” His voice brings me back. I see the defense attorney, hiding under the stenographer's table. The press, their cameras flashing like a field of fireflies. The judge, pushing the panic button on his desk and yelling to clear the courtroom. And Caleb, white as snow, wondering who I am.

“Who's got cuffs?” Patrick asks. A bailiff hands him a pair from his belt, and Patrick secures my hands behind me. He lifts me up and bustles me toward the same door through which the priest entered. Patrick's body is unyielding, his chin firm against my ear. “Nina,” he whispers to me. “What did you do?”

Once, not long ago, standing in my own home, I had asked Patrick this same question. Now I give his own answer back to him. “I did what I had to,” I say, and I let myself believe it.

II To be once in doubt Is once to be resolv'd.

-Shakespeare, Othello 124 ts my eyes to look.

Summer camp is a place that hums with crickets and is so green it sometimes hurts my eyes to look.

I'm afraid to be here, because it is outside, and because outside there are bees. Bees make my stomach feel like a fist, even seeing one makes me want to run and hide. In my nightmares I picture them sucking my blood like it is honey.

My mother tells the camp counselors I'm afraid of bees. They say that in all the years of camp, not a single child has been stung.

I think, Someone has to be first.

One morning, my counselor-a girl with a macrame necklace that she wears even during swim time-takes us into the woods on a hike. It's time for a circle, she says. She moves one log, to make a bench. She moves a second log, an d there are all the yellow jackets.

I freeze. The bees cover the counselor's face and arms and belly. She tries to bat them away while she's screaming. I throw myself at her. I slap my hands on her skin. I save her, even while I am being stung and stung. At the end of camp that summer, the counselors give out awards. They are blue ribbons, each one, printed with fat black letters. Mine says Bravest Boy .

I still have it.