Off Season by Jean Stone

eyes dropped to the ground so he couldn’t see her face or sense her anger.
    But instead of being angry, Jill laughed. “You were arrested?”
    He closed his hand over hers again. “Yes, I was.”
    In the quiet that followed, the night air grew silent.
    “Ben?” Jill asked, her voice no longer laughing but disconnected and worried.
    “Ben?”
Her tone changed to firm.
    He sucked in a short breath. “It’s all a mistake. Ashenbach is behind it.”
    “What mistake, Ben.” It was not a question this time, but a sentence with words that clearly needed answering.
    Ben looked around to assure himself that no one was nearby. “Dave Ashenbach’s granddaughter. Mindy. I’ve mentioned her to you.”
    “The little girl who helps out at the museum?”
    The acid in his throat might have dissipated if she hadn’t called Mindy
the little girl
. Tears—tears?—formed in his eyes. “God, Jill, I didn’t do it. She said I touched her, but I didn’t do it.”
    Jill must have heard him wrong. “She said what?”
    It took a few heartbeats—hers—before Ben answered.
    “She said I touched her breast, Jill. The charge is ‘indecent assault and battery on a child under age fourteen.’ What it really means is child molestation.”
    She pulled her hands from his. “This is a joke, right?”
    He stared at her with glazed, pained eyes that said it was no joke.
    “I don’t understand,” she said. Suddenly her hands chilled. She put them in her pockets.
    Ben put his arm around her. “Let’s go home, honey. We can have some coffee and I’ll explain everything.”

Chapter 5
    “How much is my grandfather paying you?” Mindy asked the straight-haired woman who’d showed up on their doorstep in the morning and said her name was Dr. Laura Reynolds, and that she’d come to talk.
    The woman didn’t smile. “Perhaps we should sit outside on the swing. It’s such a nice day,” she said.
    “No,” Mindy replied. “I’m fine right here in my room.” It was safe there upstairs, she wanted to say, but did not. From there she could see Menemsha House. She could see everyone who came and went, though she’d seen no one since the day before yesterday when Sheriff Talbot went up the hill then came back down a few minutes later.
    She had seen Sheriff Talbot, but she had not seen Ben. Grandpa had said Ben was in jail where he belonged.
    She picked at the edge of her bedspread and pretended not to notice that the woman made herself at home in the rocking chair beside the window.
    “Your grandfather is very worried about you, Mindy. He has hired me to help you sort out what happened with Mr. Niles.”
    Mindy looked at the woman. She knew what she was.She was a shrink like in the
Frasier
reruns. “So how much is he paying you?”
    The woman’s smile was pretty even though she wore only pink lipstick and no other makeup. Still, compared to Mindy’s mother, she was plain Jane. Plain Dr. Laura Reynolds, transported from Boston by the old Volvo that sat in their dirt and clamshell driveway now and by the Woods Hole ferry that brought everything to the island, unwanted guests included.
    “Does it bother you that your grandfather is paying me?”
    Mindy got up and went to the windowsill where her stuffed animals sat—Bowser the dog, Marlin the whale, Iggy the iguana—all gifts from her mother sent at one time or another. Raggedy Ann, of course, was long gone to the trash. “I don’t care what he does with his money.” She rearranged the animals, then went back to the bed.
    “Was this the first time, Mindy?” Dr. Reynolds asked. “Was this the first time that Mr. Niles—or any man—touched you inappropriately?”
    Inappropriately
. There was that word she’d heard so often from the health teacher and the school nurse. They said it when they talked about those movies of rape and assault and when men took out their penises and put them in
inappropriate
places.
    But sometimes they used the word, like now, when it just had to