Free Daniel by Kathi S. Barton

a
sandwich with and how to slice the bread when making one. Benny and Reilly
simply pulled the bread out of the bag and used it. They didn’t care much how
it was sliced so long as it was. He told them that when asked his opinion.
    “Heathens,” Roger said. “I will fatten
your girlfriend up when she comes to stay with us in a few days. That will stop
this baggage bread nastiness.”
    “Mom is your girlfriend?” Soup halfway
to his mouth sloshed on the table. “I don’t think…she doesn’t need a boyfriend.
I take care of her fine when she lets me. And you can’t be her boyfriend,” he
suddenly realized. “You don’t come over and knock her around when she makes you
mad.”
    Benny knew he’d made a big mistake the
moment he’d realized what he’d said. He looked around at the silent people and
started to stand. He’d leave before he let this guy hit him, too.
    “Sit, Benny. No one here is going to
knock anyone around. And your…mom isn’t my girlfriend. She can barely stand me
enough to let me near her, much less…besides, I think your mom can kick my
a…butt if I made her mad enough.”
    Benny sat, but he was no longer hungry.
He looked at the phone on the wall and wondered if he could call her. Mrs.
Hunter came into the room then and sat across from him.
    “I just spoke with your mom’s doctor,
and they said she is doing fine but will be out of it until tomorrow afternoon.
He is concerned about how bad the burn is, but says that other than a few small
scars she’ll be fine. Do you know how she did it?”
    “She was building that kiln and had to
burn off some of the wiring that she didn’t need. She said that she’d gotten it
hotter than she meant to, and when she tripped over some of the kiln bricks,
she’d fallen against the hot wall of other bricks. She gets burned all the time,
but it’s always little stuff.” Benny hugged his pack to his side. “She said if
she ever gets hurt enough to be in the hospital that I didn’t have to come see
her. She knows I hate hospitals.”
    But he found he wanted to see her, to
make sure she was all right and she wasn’t hurt like his mom had been. He
looked at the phone again, and then Daniel spoke up.
    “I’ll go and see her tomorrow and send
you a picture of her from her bed. If she’s awake, you can speak to her, and
she’ll tell you she’ll be fine herself.” Benny nodded and yawned. “Why don’t we
get you up to your room and to bed? It’s been a long day, and I’m sort of
tuckered out myself.”
    Mrs. Hunter left before he went upstairs,
while Roger went to his rooms. Daniel stood at the bottom of the stairs and
watched the cook go up. Benny turned to look at Daniel one more time and came
to a hasty decision.
    “You know, don’t you? That she’s not my
mom.” It wasn’t a question, but Daniel nodded anyway. “Then why are you taking
me in like this? Do you want to get into her pants like that man who hurt her
did by trying to be nice to me?”
    Daniel didn’t come up the stairs and hit
him like he expected him to, but he did lean against the handrail. “That’s very
crude, and you know it. What would O’Reilly think if she heard you speak like
that? Or better yet, what should I think if you’ll speak to me so
disrespectfully?”
    Benny wanted to cry. He’d meant to make
the man mad at him, but now he wasn’t sure why. He dropped his head and snapped
it back up when Daniel told him to look at him when he was being spoken to.
    “I don’t want to be here.” That wasn’t
quite right, so he tried again. “I saw what he did to her. My real mom. I saw
how he…he beat her with a bat before he let those men have her like an animal. Then
they all got to punch on her while she was screaming.”
    Daniel was up the stairs in a second and
pulled Benny into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Benny. I didn’t know you’d been
witness to that. What did your aunt say when you told her?”
    “I didn’t. I’ve not told her anything.”
He