Thomas Cook - Red Leaves

"I'd ask you how things are," I said. "But you hate that question."

He looked over at me and a faint smile fluttered on his lips. "I was going to ask you that. I mean, Mom's really mad at you, right?"

"Yes, she is."

"What about?"

"She blames me for being too suspicious."

"Of her?"

"Of everything, I guess," I answered. "I have to try harder, Keith. I have to get more evidence before I jump to conclusions."

"What were you suspicious about?"

"Just things."

"So, you won't tell me?"

"It's between your mother and me," I said.

"What if I told you something. A secret."

I felt a chill pass over me.

"Would you tell me then?" Keith asked. "Like, an exchange? You know, father and son?"

I watched him closely for a moment, then decided that where I'd gone wrong with Keith was in failing to recognize that despite his teenage aloofness, the sullen behavior that fixed him in an angry smirk, there was an adult growing inside him, forming within the brittle chrysalis of adolescence, and that this adult had to be recognized and carefully coaxed out, that it was time to confront not Keith's immaturity, but the fact that he was soon to be a man.

"Okay," I told him. "An exchange."

He drew in a long breath, then said, "The money. It wasn't for me. And what I told Mr. Price—about running away—that wasn't true."

"What was the money for?"

"This girl," Keith said. "We're sort of ... you know. And she has it really bad at home, and I thought, okay, maybe I could get her out of it. Get her away from it."

"Am I allowed to know who this girl is?" I asked.

"Her name is Polly," Keith said shyly. "She lives on the other side of town. Those walks I go on. At night. That's where we meet."

"The other side of town," I repeated. "Near the water tower."

He looked surprised. "Yes."

I smiled. "Okay, I guess it's my turn. This thing with your mother. The things she's so mad about. It's that I accused her of having a lover." I felt a tight ball of pain release its grip on me. "I didn't have any evidence, but I accused her anyway."

He looked at me softly. "You believed I hurt Amy Giordano, too."

I nodded. "Yes, Keith, I did."

"Do you still think that?"

I looked at him again and saw nothing but a shy, tender boy, reserved and oddly solitary, fighting his own inner battles as we all must, coming to terms with his limits, which we all must do, struggling to free himself from the bonds that seem unnatural, find himself within the incomprehensible tangle of hopes and fears that is the roiling substance of every human being. I saw all of that, and in seeing that, saw that my son was not the killer of a child.

"No, I don't, Keith," I said. Then I pulled the car over and drew him into my arms and felt his body grow soft and pliant in my embrace and my body do the same in his, and in that surrender, we both suddenly released the sweetest imaginable tears.

Then we released each other and wiped those same tears away and laughed at the sheer strangeness of the moment.

"Okay, pizza," I said as I started the car again.

Keith smiled. "Pepperoni and onion," he said.

Nico's wasn't crowded that night, and so Keith and I sat alone on a small bench and waited for our order. He took out a handheld video game and played silently, while I perused the local paper. There was a story about Amy Giordano, but it was short and on page four, relating only that police were still in the process of "eliminating suspects."

I showed the last two words to Keith. "That means you," I said. "You're being eliminated as a suspect."

He smiled and nodded, then went back to his game.

I glanced outside, toward the pizza delivery van that rested beside the curb. A deliveryman waited beside the truck. He was tall and very thin, with dark hair and small slightly bulging eyes. He leaned languidly against the front of the truck, smoking casually, and watching cars pull in and out of the parking lot. Then suddenly he straightened, tossed the cigarette on the ground, hustled into his van, and drove away.

"Pepperoni and onion," someone called from behind the counter.

Keith and I stepped up to get it. I paid for the pizza, handed it to Keith, and the two of us headed for the car. On the way, I glanced down to where the deliveryman had tossed his cigarette. There were several butts floating in a pool of oily water. All of them were Marlboros.

***

I kept that fact to myself until we reached the exit of the parking lot. Then I stopped the car and looked at Keith. "The night you ordered pizza for you and Amy, did you order it from Nico's?"

Keith nodded. "Where else?"

"What did the guy who delivered it look like?"

"Tall," Keith said. "Skinny."

"Did you happen to see the guy who was standing outside the delivery van a few minutes ago?"

"No."

"He was tall and skinny," I said. "Smoked one cigarette after another."

"So?"

"He smokes Marlboros."

Keith's face seemed to age before my eyes, grow dark and knowing, as if the full weight of life, the web of accident and circumstance in which we all are ensnared, had suddenly appeared to him.

"We should call the cops." he said.

I shook my head. "They've probably already checked him out. Besides, we don't even know if its the same guy who came to Amy's house that night."

"But if it is," Keith said. "He might still have her."

"No," I said. "If he took her, she's long dead by now."

Keith was not convinced. "But what if she's not. Shouldn't we at least try?"

"We have nothing to go on," I told him. "Just that a guy who delivers pizzas from Nico's also happens to smoke the kind of cigarette you smoke, along with millions of other people. Besides, like I said before, the police have already questioned him, I'm sure."

I couldn't be certain that Keith accepted my argument, but he said nothing more, and we went the rest of the way home in silence.

Meredith was in the kitchen when we arrived. We set the table together, then sat talking quietly, and during those few minutes I came to believe that for all the terrible disruptions our family had suffered during the past two weeks, we might yet reclaim the normal balance we had once possessed. I wanted to believe that Meredith's anger toward me might dissipate as Keith's resentment had seemed to dissipate, that we might regain our common footing as a family, if for no other reason than that we were all simply too exhausted by events to hold each other at knifepoint any longer. Anger takes energy, I told myself, and unless its devouring fire is steadily and continually stoked, it will cool to embers soon enough. It was for that reason perhaps more than any other that I decided simply to let things go, to say nothing more about Amy Giordano or Warren or Rodenberry, to hold back and wait and hope that after Amy Giordano had finally been found and the shock of Warren's death and the accusing finger I'd so recklessly pointed at Meredith had grown less painful, we might come together again as a family.

After dinner, Keith went to his room. From below, I could hear him pacing about, as if worrying a point, trying to come to a conclusion. Meredith heard him, too, but said nothing about it, and so the source of Keiths anxiety never came up that evening.

We went to bed at just before ten, Merediths back to me like a fortress.

"I love you, Meredith," I told her.

She didn't answer or turn toward me, but I hoped that in the end she would—that in the end we would survive.

She went to sleep a few minutes later, but I remained awake for a long time before finally drifting off.

By morning, Meredith seemed slightly less brittle, which gave me yet more hope. Still, I didn't press the issue, but instead remained quiet and kept my distance.