Libby DayNOW
Moony as a grade-school girl, I drove home thinking about Ben. Since I was seven, I pictured him in the same haunted-house flashes: Ben, black-haired, smooth-faced, with his hands clasped around an axe, charging down the hall at Debby, a humming noise coming from his tight lips. Ben’s face speckled in blood, howling, the shotgun going up to his shoulder.
I’d forgotten there was once just Ben, shy and serious, those weird unsettling blasts of humor. Just Ben my brother, who couldn’t have done what they said. What I said.
At a stoplight, my blood sizzling, I reached behind my seat and grabbed the envelope from an old bill. Above the plastic window, I wrote: Suspects. Then I wrote: Runner. Then I stopped. Someone with a grudge against Runner? I wrote. Someone Runner owed money
