The logic sat between us, plain and annoying.
“Process of elimination,” he added.
I wanted to argue. I had nothing to argue with. He wasn’t wrong about the math—somebody had broken the slat, and the list of candidates was short. But the certainty inhis voice, the quiet assumption that William was responsible, landed on something raw in me that had nothing to do with this man or this fence.
William frozen in Craig’s kitchen. The way he’d tried to make himself invisible while Craig screamed at him over fucking dirt on the floor.
This wasn’t that. I knew this wasn’t that. Ben wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t even being unkind. But the feeling was the same—someone looking at my child and seeing a fault.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said, my voice tight and controlled.
“Appreciate it.”
I was about to step down off the crate—conversation over, neighborly goodwill officially exhausted—when the back door opened and William stepped out.
He was still in his pajamas, the flannel ones with the rockets on them, his hair sticking up on one side from sleep. He took in the scene—me standing on a crate at the fence, a stranger on the other side—and stopped in the middle of the yard.
He didn’t come closer. One hand found the hem of his pajama shirt and held it, his weight shifting to his back foot, creating distance without actually moving. His eyes went to Ben first, then to me, then back to Ben, checking and rechecking.
“Hey, buddy.” I kept my voice easy. Warm. “Come here.”
He walked over slowly. When he reached me, I helped him up onto the crate.
“William, this is Mr. Ben. He lives next door.”
“Hi,” William said, in the small, polite voice he used with adults he hadn’t decided about yet.
Ben gave him a nod. “Hey.”
“William.” I crouched down on the crate, bringing myself closer to his level. “I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth. Okay?”
He nodded.
“Did you break one of the fence slats? The ones between our yard and Ben’s?”
“No.” The answer came quick and immediate.
But his hands were moving. Fingers pulling at the hem of his pajama shirt again, twisting the fabric, as they always did when the truth was more complicated than the words coming out of his mouth.
Shit. Maybe hehadbroken it.
“William?”
“I didn’t break it.” He looked at me then, and his eyes were wide and earnest and not quite meeting mine. He was telling the truth—or his version of it. I was sure of that. William didn’t lie outright. He just…left things out sometimes. Held pieces back when the full picture felt too risky to share.
If he was lying, I’d deal with it later. Right now, I just wanted him to know he was safe.
“Okay.” I smoothed his hair, the piece sticking up on the side. “I believe you.”
I did believe him. I just didn’t believe that was the whole story.
When I straightened and looked back over the fence, Ben was watching. Not staring—watching. Like someone watched a situation unfold when they were used to reading the dynamics of a room. His eyes moved from William to me and then away, back to the fence, back to his work.
Whatever he’d seen in that exchange, he kept it to himself.
“Mr. Ben has a dog,” I said, watching William’s face. “We need to make sure the fence doesn’t get broken so the dog doesn’t get out. His name is Jolly.”
Something happened in William’s expression. A flicker—his eyes cutting sideways toward Ben’s house, a stillness thatsettled over him for just a second before he looked down at his feet.
