Hide and Seek

pretty angry. He pulled me into the car and then just sat torting,

shaking his head, his face getting redder and redder. I knew he wanted

to hit me, and I knew how hard it was for him not to.

1 guessed I'd disappointed him again.

So I told them all this over two rounds of egg creams. I had them

wide-eyed.

"Ben and Mary they never found, by the way."

"Never?" Steven had this habit of pointing his index finger at you

when he asked a question as though he were accusing you of lying. He

would also dip his head a little and look at you up from under those

dark eyebrows. I think he was practicing for the law. It was very

astute-looking.

"Never. We got some clues, though, about a week later. At least you

could figure why they'd disappeared. All of a sudden the big word

around town was that the bank had evicted them the month before for

nonpayment of their mortgage. So it looked like they just ignored the

notices for a while, and then, when Ben Murphy went out there to tell

them face-to-face that they'd have to leave, they just listened and

nodded and then when he was gone, they just cleared out."

"Awful thing to do to all those dogs, though." Kimberley slurped the

bottom of her glass through the long striped straw. "So cruel. How

could you care for all those animals and then be so rotten to them?"

"People do it all the time," said Steven.

Casey leaned toward me. "Did they look for them? Ben and whatsername,

Mary, I mean?"

"Sure they did. I don't know how hard, though. The eviction business

seemed to explain things well enough, so I don't know how hard anybody

worried about it, really.

"About the dogs, though. See, there was a lot of talk after that. My

mom and dad, for one thing, were a lot more free about discussing it in

front of me. And I remember being shocked at the time to hear a friend

of my mother's say that Ben and Mary were brother and sister, and only

in their thirties. We'd always pictured them as