Thomas Cook - Red Leaves

"Probably," I admitted.

Meredith remained silent until we reached the car. Then she said, "I'm afraid, Eric."

I touched her face. "We can't get ahead of ourselves. I mean, there's no proof that anything has—"

"Are you sure you don't want to call Leo?"

I shook my head. "Not yet."

I opened the door of the car and pulled myself in behind the wheel, but made no effort to leave. Instead, I rolled down the window and looked at my wife in a way that later struck me as shockingly nostalgic, as if she were already drifting away or changing in some way, these the dwindling days of our previously unencumbered life together. For a moment everything that had gone before, the best years of our lives, seemed precariously balanced, happiness a kind of arrogance, a bounty we had taken for granted until then, death the only clear and present danger, and even that still very far away. And yet, despite such dark presentiments, I said, "It's going to be okay, Meredith. It really is."

I could see she didn't believe me, but that was not unusual for Meredith. She had always been a worrier, concerned about money before things got really tight, keeping a close eye on even Keith's most petty delinquencies, forever poised to nip something in the bud. I had countered with optimism, looking on the bright side, a pose I still thought it necessary to maintain.

"We can't go off the deep end," I told her. "Even if something happened to Amy, it has nothing to do with us."

"That doesn't matter," Meredith said.

"Of course it does."

"No, it doesn't," Meredith said, "because once something like this happens, once they start asking questions..."

"But Keith didn't leave the house until the Giordanos came home," I said emphatically. "So it doesn't matter about the questions. He'll have the answers."

She drew in a long breath. "Okay, Eric," she said with a thin, frail smile. "Whatever you say."

She turned and headed back toward the house, a cool gust of wind sweeping the ground before her, fierce and devilish, kicking up those stricken yellow leaves I'd seen an hour earlier so that they spiraled up and up to where I saw Keith at his bedroom window, staring down at me, his gaze cold and resentful, as if I were no longer his father at all, no longer his protector or benefactor, but instead arrayed against him, part of the assembling mob that soon would be crying for his head.

"Morning," Neil said, as I came into the store.

It was nearly nine, so I knew he'd already prepped the developers and dusted the stock He was thorough and reliable in that way, the perfect employee. Best of all, he gave no indication of having any larger ambition than to work in my shop, collect his small salary, and indulge his few modest pleasures. Twice a year he went to New York to take in four or five Broadway shows, usually the big musicals whose glitzy numbers clearly thrilled him. While there, he stayed at a small inexpensive hotel in Chelsea, ate street food, save for his final night when he splurged on Italian, and usually came back with a new snow globe to add to his collection of travel mementos. Briefly he'd had a partner named Gordon, a round, bearded man who often appeared in community theater presentations, though only as a bit player, listed in the program as "neighbor" or "prison guard." During the two years of their relationship, Neil's frame of mind had been closely tied to Gordon's severe mood swings, gloomy or cheerful depending, or so it often seemed, on the course of whatever show Gordon happened to be in at the time. Inevitably, they'd broken up, and since then Neil had lived with his ailing mother in a small house on one of the town's few remaining unpaved roads, an arrangement with which he seemed perfectly content, since, as he'd once told me, "anything else would require too much effort."

"Running late, boss," Neil added.

I nodded silently.

Neil cocked his head to the right. "Uh-oh, bad morning."

"A little," I admitted.

"Well, you'll perk up once the money starts rolling in. Speaking of which, I should probably go to the bank. We're low on change."

He left a few minutes later, and while I went about the usual preopening routine, restocking shelves, a quick sweep of the sidewalk outside the shop, I thought about Amy Giordano and how Vince seemed determined to lay the blame for whatever had happened to her at Keith's door.

But there was nowhere to go with such thoughts. I had no idea what had befallen Amy, whether she'd run away or suffered some monstrous fate. And so I retreated to the refuge I usually sought when I was feeling uneasy about money or Keith's grades or any of a hundred other petty troubles.

It was at the rear of the store, my little refuge, no more than a large table, really, along with a square of particle board hung with a modest assortment of stained-wood frames. Little skill was needed to frame the family photos that came my way. Usually people chose colors they thought appropriate to the scene: blue for families on the beach; greens and reds for families in forest encampments; gold or silver for families posed beside the tall sea grass that adorns the nearby bay; white for photos taken while whale watching.

Framing these smiling, bucolic scenes never failed to relax and reassure me. But a frame is just a frame, and the life it holds is frozen, static, beyond the reach of future events. Real life is another matter.

The phone rang.

It was Meredith. "Eric, come home," she told me.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," she said, "they're here."

FIVE

There were two of them, both dressed in dark suits, a tall, hawk-faced man named Kraus, and another, shorter and rounder, whose name was Peak. They were sitting in the living room when I arrived, and both smiled pleasantly as they introduced themselves.

"I understand," Kraus began, "that Mr. Giordano called you this morning?"

"Yes."

We were all standing, Kraus's dark deep-set eyes leveled directly upon me; Peak a little to my left, seemed more interested, or so it seemed, in a family portrait I'd taken four years before, the three of us posed before Keith's sixth-grade science project, a plaster of paris sculpture of the body's internal organs, red heart, blue lungs, brown liver, and so on.

"Amy is still missing," Kraus told me.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said.

Peak abruptly turned from the photograph. "Interested in anatomy, is he?" he asked.

"Anatomy?"

"It looks like a science project," Peak said. "In the picture here. Organs?"

"Yes."

"So, he's interested in that, your son?"

I shook my head. "Not really, no."

Kraus's smile was thin, anemic, forced rather than felt. "So why did he do a project like that?" he asked

"Because it was easy for him," I answered.

"Easy?"

"Other kids had much more elaborate projects," I explained.

"He's not a great student then?"

"No."

"How would you describe him?" Kraus asked.

"Keith? I don't know. He's a teenage boy. A little odd, maybe."

"In what way is he odd?"

"Well, not odd exactly," I added quickly. "Quiet."

Kraus looked at Peak and gave a faint nod, which brought the smaller man suddenly back into the game.

"No reason to be alarmed," Peak said.

"I'm not alarmed," I told him.

The two men exchanged glances.

"I suppose you'd like to talk to Keith," I added, careful to keep my voice firm and confident, a father who has not the slightest doubt that he knows his son thoroughly. I wanted them to believe that nothing could have escaped my notice—that I had searched Keith's closets and the drawers of his bedroom bureau, smelled his breath when he came in at night, routinely dragged him to the family physician for drug tests; that I monitored the books he read, the music he listened to, the sites he visited on the Internet; that I had researched the family histories of the friends he hung around with; that only God could possibly know more than I did about my son.