Long lost

1

When I was a boy, my kid brother disappeared. Vanished off the face of the earth. His name was Petey, and he was bicycling home from an after-school baseball game. Not that he'd been playing. The game was for older guys like me, which is to say that I was all of thirteen and Petey was only nine. He thought the world of me; he always wanted to tag along. But the rest of the guys complained that he was in the way, so I told Petey to "bug off, go home." I still remember the hurt look he gave me before he got on his bike and pedaled away, a skinny little kid with a brush cut, glasses, braces on his teeth, and freckles, wearing a droopy T-shirt, baggy jeans, and sneakers-the last I saw of him. That was a quarter of a century ago. Yesterday.

By the time supper was ready and Petey hadn't shown up, my mother phoned his friends in the neighborhood, but they hadn't seen him. Twenty minutes later, my father called the police. His worst fear (until that moment at least) was that Petey had been hit by a car, but the police dispatcher said that there hadn't been any accidents involving a youngster on a bicycle. The dispatcher promised to call back if he heard anything and, meanwhile, to have patrol cars looking for him.

My father couldn't bear waiting. He had me show him the likely route Petey would have taken between the playground and home. We drove this way and that. By then it was dusk, and we almost passed the bicycle before I spotted one of its red reflectors glinting from the last of the sunset. The bike had been shoved between bushes in a vacant lot. Petey's baseball glove was under it. We searched the lot. We shouted Petey's name. We asked people who lived on the street if they'd seen a boy who matched Petey's description. We didn't learn anything. As my father sped back home, the skin on his face got so tight that his cheekbones stood out. He kept murmuring to himself, "Oh Jesus."

All I could hope was that Petey had stayed away because he was mad at me for sending him home from the baseball game. I fantasized that he'd show up just before bedtime and say, "Now aren't you sorry? Maybe you want me around more than you guess." In fact, I was sorry, because I couldn't fool myself into believing that Petey had shoved his bike between those bushes-he loved that bike. Why would he have dropped his baseball glove? Something bad had happened to him, but it never would have happened if I hadn't told him to get lost.

My mom became hysterical. My dad called the police again. A detective soon arrived, and the next day, a search was organized. The newspaper (this happened in a town called Woodford, just outside Columbus, Ohio) was filled with the story. My parents went on television and radio, begging whoever had kidnapped Petey to return him. Nothing did any good.

I can't begin to describe the pain and ruin that Petey's disappearance caused. My mother needed pills to steady her nerves. Lots of times in the night, I heard her sobbing. I couldn't stop feeling guilty for making Petey leave the baseball game. Every time I heard our front door creak open, I prayed it was him coming home at last. My father started drinking and lost his job. He and Mom argued. A month after he moved out, he was killed when his car veered off a highway, flipped several times, and crashed onto its roof. There wasn't any life insurance. My mother had to sell the house. We moved to a small apartment and then went to live with my mom's parents in Columbus. I spent a lot of time worrying about how Petey would find us if he returned to the house.

He haunted me. I grew older, finished college, married, had a son, and enjoyed a successful career. But in my mind Petey never aged. He was still that skinny nine-year-old giving me a hurt look, then bicycling away. I never stopped missing him. If a farmer had plowed up the skeleton of a little boy and those remains had somehow been identified as Petey's, I'd have mourned bitterly for my kid brother, but at least there would have been some finality. I needed desperately to know what had happened.

I'm an architect. For a while, I was with a big firm in Philadelphia, but my best designs were too unorthodox for them, so I finally started my own business. I also decided it would be exciting to change locales-not just move to another East Coast city but move from the East Coast altogether. My wife surprised me by liking the idea even more than I did. I won't go into all the reasons we chose Denver -the lure of the mountains, the myth of the West. The main thing is, we settled there, and almost from the start, my designs were in demand.

Two of my office buildings are situated next to city parks. They not only blend with but also reflect their surroundings; their glass and tile walls act like huge mirrors that capture the images of the ponds, trees, and grassland near them, one with nature. My houses are what I was especially proud of, though. Many of my clients lived near megadollar resorts like Aspen and Vail, but they respected the mountains and didn't want to be conspicuous. They preferred to be with nature without intruding upon it. I understood. The houses I designed blended so much that you couldn't see them until you were practically at their entrances. Trees and ridges concealed them. Streams flowed under them. Flat stretches of rock were decks. Boulders were steps. Cliffs were walls.

It's ironic that structures designed to be inconspicuous attracted so much attention. My clients, despite their claims about wanting to be invisible, couldn't resist showing off their new homes. House Beautiful and Architectural Digest did articles about them, although the photographs of the exteriors seemed more like nature shots than pictures of homes. The local CBS TV station taped a two-minute spot for the ten o'clock news. The reporter, dressed as a hiker, challenged her viewers to a game: "Can you see a house among these ridges and trees?" She was standing ten feet from a wall, but only when she pointed it out did the viewer realize how thoroughly the house was camouflaged. That report was noticed by CBS headquarters in New York, and a few weeks later, I was being interviewed for a ten-minute segment on the CBS Sunday Morning show.

I keep asking myself why I agreed. Lord knows, I didn't need any more publicity to get business. So if it wasn't for economic reasons, it must have been because of vanity. Maybe I wanted my son to see me on television. In fact, both he and my wife appeared briefly in a shot where we walked past what the reporter called one of my "chameleon" houses. I wish we'd all been chameleons.

2

A man called my name. "Brad!"

That was three days after the CBS Sunday Morning show. Wednesday. Early June. A bright, gorgeous day. I'd been in meetings all morning, and the rumblings in my stomach reminded me that I'd missed lunch. I could have sent my secretary to get me a sandwich, but what she was doing was a lot more important than running an errand for me. Besides, I felt like going outside and enjoying the sun. Downtown Denver is a model of urban planning- spacious and welcoming, with buildings low enough to let in the light. My destination was a deli across the street, Bagels and More, nothing on my mind but a corned-beef sandwich, when I heard my name being called.

"Brad!"

At first, I thought it was one of my staff trying to catch my attention about something I'd forgotten. But when I turned, I didn't recognize the man hurrying toward me. He was in his mid-thirties, rough-looking, with a dirty tan and matted long hair. For a moment, I thought he might be a construction worker I'd met on one of my projects. His clothes certainly looked the part: scuffed work boots, dusty jeans, and a wrinkled denim shirt with its sleeves rolled up. But I've got a good memory for faces, and I was sure I'd have remembered the two-inch scar on his chin.

"Brad! My God, I can't believe it!" The man dropped a battered knapsack to the sidewalk. "After all these years! Christ Almighty!"

I must have looked baffled. I like to think people enjoy my company, but very few have ever been so enthusiastic about seeing me. Apparently we had once known each other, although I hadn't the vaguest idea who the guy was.

His broad grin revealed a chipped front tooth. "You don't recognize me? Come on, I'd have recognized you anywhere! I did on television! It's me!"

My brain was working slowly, trying to search my memory. "I'm afraid I don't-"

"Peter! Your brother!"

Now everything became totally clear. My brain worked very fast.

The man reached out. "It's so damned good to see you!"

"Keep your hands away from me, you son of a bitch."

"What?" The man looked shocked.

"Come any closer, I'll call the police. If you think you're going to get money from-"

"Brad, what are you talking about?"

"You watched the CBS Sunday program, didn't you?"

"Yes, but-"

"You made a mistake, you bastard. It isn't going to work."

On TV, the reporter had mentioned Petey's disappearance. The day after the show, six different men had called my office, claiming to be Petey. "Your long-lost brother," each of them cheerily said. The first call had excited me, but after a few minutes' conversation, I realized that the guy hadn't the faintest idea about how Petey had disappeared or where it had happened or what our home life had been like. The next two callers had been even worse liars. They all wanted money. I told my secretary not to put through any more calls from anyone who claimed to be my brother. The next three con men lied to her, pretending to have legitimate business, tricking her into transferring the call. The moment they started their spiel, I slammed down the phone. The day after that, my secretary managed to intercept eight more calls from men who claimed to be Petey.

Now they were showing up in person.

"Stay the hell away from me." Too impatient to go down to the traffic light, I turned sharply, found a break in traffic, and headed across the street.

"Brad! For God's sake, listen!" the man yelled. "It really is me!"

My back stiffened with anger as I kept walking.

"What do I have to do to make you believe me?" the man shouted.

I reached the street's center line, waiting impatiently for another break in traffic.

"When they grabbed me, I was riding home on my bicycle!" the man yelled.

Furious, I spun. "The reporter mentioned that on television! Get away from me before I beat the shit out of you."

"Brad, you'd have a harder time outfighting me than when we were kids. The bike was blue."

That last statement almost didn't register, I was so angry. Then the image of Petey's blue bike hit me.

"That wasn't mentioned on television," the man said.

"It was in the newspaper at the time. All you needed to do was phone the Woodford library and ask the reference department to check the issues of the local newspaper for that month and year. It wouldn't have been hard to get details about Petey's disappearance."

"My disappearance," the man said.

On each side, cars beeped in warning as they sped past.

"We shared the same room," the man said. "Was that ever printed?"

I frowned, uneasy.

"We slept in bunk beds," the man said, raising his voice. "I had the top. I had a model of a helicopter hanging from a cord attached to the ceiling just above me. I liked to take it down and spin the blades."

My frown deepened.

"Dad had the tip of the little finger on his left hand cut off in an accident at the furniture factory. He loved to fish. The summer before I disappeared, he took you and me camping out here in Colorado. Mom wouldn't go. She was afraid of being outdoors because of her allergy to bee stings. Even the sight of a bee threw her into a panic."

Memories flooded through me. There was no way this stranger could have learned any of those details just by checking old newspapers. None of that information had ever been printed.

"Petey?"

"We had a goldfish in our room. But neither of us liked to clean the bowl. One day we came home from school, and the bedroom stank. The fish was dead. We put the fish in a matchbox and had a funeral in the backyard. When we came back to where we'd buried it, we found a hole where the neighbor's cat had dug up the fish."

"Petey." As I started back toward him, I almost got hit by a car. "Jesus, it is you."

"We once broke a window playing catch in the house. Dad grounded us for a week."

This time, I was the one reaching out. I've never hugged anybody harder. He smelled of spearmint gum and cigarette smoke. His arms were tremendously strong. "Petey." I could barely get the words out. "Whatever happened to you?"

3

Pedaling home. Angry. Feelings hurt. A car coming next to him, moving slowly, keeping pace with him. A woman in the front passenger seat rolling down her window, asking directions to the interstate. Telling her. The woman not seeming to listen. The sour-looking man at the steering wheel not seeming to care, either. The woman asking, "Do you believe in God?" What kind of question? The woman asking, "Do you believe in the end of the world?" The car veering in front of him. Scared. Hopping the bicycle onto the sidewalk. The woman jumping from the car, chasing him. A sneaker slipping off a pedal. A vacant lot. Bushes. The woman grabbing him. The man unlocking the trunk, throwing him in. The trunk lid banging shut. Darkness. Screaming. Pounding. Not enough air. Passing out.

Petey described it to me as we faced each other in an isolated booth at the rear of the deli I'd been headed toward.

"You never should have made me leave that baseball game," he said.

"I know that." My voice broke. "God, don't I know it."

"The woman was older than Mom. She had crow's-feet around her eyes. Gray roots in her hair. Pinched lips. Awful thin… Stooped shoulders… Floppy arms. Reminded me of a bird, but she sure was strong. The man had dirty long hair and hadn't shaved. He wore coveralls and smelled of chewing tobacco."

"What did they want with you? Were you…" I couldn't make myself use the word molested.

Petey looked away. "They drove me to a farm in West Virginia."

"Just across the border? You were that close?"

"Near a town called Redemption. Sick joke, huh? Really, that's what it was called, although I didn't find out the name for quite a while. They kept me a prisoner, until I escaped. When I was sixteen."

"Sixteen? But all this time? Why didn't you come to us?"

"I thought about it." Petey looked uncomfortable. "I just couldn't make myself." He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

But as he lit a match, a waitress stopped at our table. "I'm sorry, sir. Smoking isn't permitted in here."

Petey's craggy features hardened. "Fine."

"Can I take your orders?"

"You're good at giving them."

"What?"

"Corned beef," I told the waitress, breaking the tension.

Petey impatiently shoved his cigarettes back into his pocket. "A couple of Buds."

As she left, I glanced around, assuring myself that no customers were close enough to hear what we were saying.

"What did you mean, you couldn't make yourself come to us?"

"The man kept telling me Mom and Dad would never take me back."

"What?"

"Not after what he did to… He said Mom and Dad would be disgusted, they'd…"

"Disown you? They wouldn't have." I felt tight with sadness.

"I understand that now. But when I escaped… let's just say I wasn't myself. Where they kept me a prisoner was an underground room."

"Jesus."

"I didn't see the light of day for seven years." His cheek muscles hardened. "Not that I knew how much time had passed. When I got out, it took me quite a while to figure what was what."

"But what have you been doing?"

Petey looked tortured. "Roaming around. Working construction jobs. Driving trucks. A little of everything. Just after my twenty-first birthday, I happened to be driving a rig to Columbus. I worked up the nerve to go to Woodford and take a look at our place."

"The house had been sold by then."

"So I found out."

"And Dad had died."

"I found that out, too. Nobody remembered where Mrs. Denning and her son Brad had moved."

"We were in Columbus with Mom's parents."

"So close." Petey shook his head in despair. "I didn't know Mom's maiden name, so I couldn't track her through her parents."

"But the police could have helped you find us."

"Not without asking me a lot of questions I didn't want to answer."

"They'd have arrested the man and woman who kidnapped you."

"What good would that have done me? There'd have been a trial. I'd have had to testify. The story would have been in all the newspapers." He gestured helplessly. "I felt so…"

"It's over now. Try to put it behind you. None of it was your fault."

"I still feel…" Petey struggled with the next word, then stopped when the waitress brought our beers. He took a long swallow from his bottle and changed the subject. "What about Mom?"

The question caught me by surprise. "Mom?"

"Yeah, how's she doing?"

I needed a moment before I could make myself answer. "She died last year."

"… Oh." Petey's voice dropped.

"Cancer."

"Uh." It was a quiet exhale. At the same time, it was almost as if he'd been punched. He stared at his beer bottle, but his painful gaze was on something far away.

4

Kate's normally attractive features looked strained when I walked into the kitchen. She was pacing, talking on the phone, tugging an anxious hand through her long blond hair. Then she saw me, and her shoulders sagged with relief. "He just walked in. I'll call you back."

I smiled as she hung up the phone.

"Where have you been? Everybody's been worried," Kate said.

"Worried?"

"You had several important meetings this afternoon, but you never showed up. Your office was afraid you'd been in an accident or-"

"Everything's great. I lost track of the time."

"-been mugged or-"

"Better than great."

"-had a heart attack or-"

"I've got wonderful news."

"-or God knows what. You're always Mr. Dependable. Now it's almost six, and you didn't call to let me know you were okay, and… Do I smell alcohol on your breath? Have you been drinking?"

"You bet." I smiled more broadly.

"During the day? Ignoring appointments with clients? What's gotten into you?"

"I told you, I have wonderful news."

"What news?"

"Petey showed up."

Kate's blue eyes looked confused, as if I was speaking gibberish. "Who's…" At once, she got it. "Good Lord, you don't mean… your brother."

"Exactly."

"But… but you told me you assumed he was dead."

"I was wrong."

"You're positive it's him?"

"You bet. He told me things only Petey could know. It has to be him."

"And he's really here? In Denver?"

"Closer than that. He's on the front porch."

"What? You left him outside?"

"I didn't want to spring him on you. I wanted to prepare you." I explained what had happened. "I'll fill in the details when there's time. The main thing to know is, he's been through an awful lot."

"Then he shouldn't be cooling his heels on the porch. For heaven's sake, get him."

Just then, Jason came in from the backyard. He was eleven but small for his age, so that he looked a lot like Petey had when he'd disappeared. Braces, freckles, glasses, thin. "What's all the noise about? You guys having an argument?"

"The opposite," Kate said.

"What's up?"

Looking at Jason's glasses, I was reminded that Petey had needed glasses, too. But the man outside wasn't wearing any. I suddenly felt as if I had needles in my stomach. Had I been conned?

Kate crouched before Jason. "Do you remember we told you that your father had a brother?"

"Sure. Dad talked about him on that TV show."

"He disappeared when he was a boy," Kate said.

Jason nodded uneasily. "I had a nightmare about it."

"Well, you don't have to have nightmares about it anymore," Kate said. "Guess what? He came back today. You're going to meet him."

"Yeah?" Jason brightened. "When?"

"Just as soon as we open the front door."

I tried to say something to Kate, to express my sudden misgivings, but she was already heading down the hallway toward the front door. The next thing, she had it open, and I don't know what she expected, but I doubt that the scruffy-looking man out there matched her idealized image of the long-lost brother. He turned from where he'd been smoking a cigarette, admiring the treed area in front of the house. His knapsack was next to him.

"Petey?" Kate asked.

He shifted from one work boot to the other, ill at ease. "These days, I think 'Peter' sounds a little more grown-up."

"Please, come in."

"Thanks." He looked down at his half-smoked cigarette, glanced at the interior of the house, pinched off the glowing tip, then put the remnant in his shirt pocket.

"I hope you can stay for supper," Kate said.

"I don't want to put you out any."

"Nonsense. We'd love to have you."

"To tell the truth, I'd appreciate it. I can't remember when I last had a home-cooked meal."

"This is Jason." Kate gestured proudly toward our son.

"Hi, Jace." The man shook hands with him. "Do you like to play baseball?"

"Yeah," Jason said, "but I'm not very good at it."

"Reminds me of myself at your age. Tell you what. After supper, we'll play catch. How does that sound?"

"Great."

"Well, let's not keep you standing on the porch. Come in," Kate said. "I'll get you something to drink."

"A beer if you've got it." The man who said he was Petey started to follow Kate inside.

But before he crossed the threshold, I had to know. "Are you wearing contact lenses?"

"No." The man frowned in confusion. "What makes you ask?"

"You needed glasses when you were a kid."

"Still do." The man reached into his knapsack and pulled out a small case, opening it, showing a pair of spectacles, one lens of which was broken. "This happened yesterday morning. But I can get around all right. As you know, I need glasses just for distance. Was that a little test or something?"

Emotion made my throat ache. "Petey… welcome home."

5

"This is the best pot roast I ever tasted, Mrs. Denning."

"Please, you're part of the family. Call me Kate."

"And these mashed potatoes are out of this world."

"I'm afraid I cheated and used butter. Now our cholesterol counts will be shot to hell."

"I never pay attention to stuff like that. As long as it's food, it's welcome." When Petey smiled, his chipped front tooth was visible.

Jason couldn't help staring at it.

"You want to know how I got this?" Petey gestured toward the tooth.

"Jason, you're being rude," Kate said.

"Not at all." Petey chuckled. "He's just curious, the same as I was when I was a kid. Jace, last summer I was on a roofing project in Colorado Springs. I fell off a ladder. That's also how I got this scar on my chin. Good thing I was close to the ground when I fell. I could have broken my neck."

"Is that where you live now?" I asked. "In Colorado Springs?"

"Lord no. I don't live anywhere."

I stopped chewing.

"But everybody lives somewhere," Kate said.

"Not me."

Jason looked puzzled. "But where do you sleep?"

"Wherever I happen to be, there's always someplace to bed down."

"That seems…" Kate shook her head.

"What?"

"Awfully lonely. No friends. Nothing to call your own."

"I guess it depends on what you're used to. People have a habit of letting me down." Petey didn't look at me, but I couldn't help taking his comment personally. "And as for owning things, well, everything of any importance to me is in my knapsack. If I can't carry it, I figure it holds me back."

"King of the road," I said.

"Exactly. You see"-Petey leaned toward Jason, propping his elbows on the table-"I roam around a lot, depending on where the work is and how the weather feels. Each day's a new adventure. I never know what to expect. Like last Sunday, I happened to be in Butte, Montana, eating breakfast in a diner that had a television. I don't normally look at television and I don't have any use for those Sunday-morning talk shows, but this one caught my attention. Something about the voice of the guy being interviewed. I looked up from my eggs and sausage, and Lord, the guy on TV sure made me think of somebody-but not from recently. A long time ago. I kept waiting for the announcer to say who the guy was. Then he didn't need to-because the announcer mentioned that the guy's kid brother had disappeared while bicycling home from a baseball game when they were youngsters. Of course, the guy on television was your father."

Petey turned to me. "As I got older, I thought more and more about looking you up, Brad, but I had no idea where you'd gone. When the announcer said you lived in Denver, I set down my knife and fork and started for here at once. Took me all Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Mind you, I tried phoning along the road, but your home number isn't listed. As for your business number, well, your secretary wouldn't put me through."

"Because of all those crank calls I told you about on the way over here." I felt guilty, as if he thought I'd intentionally rejected him.

"Three days to drive from Montana? You must have had car trouble," Kate said.

Petey shook his head from side to side. "A car's just something else that would own me. I hitchhiked."

"Hitchhiked?" Kate asked in surprise. "Why didn't you take a bus?"

"Well, there are two good reasons. The first is, in my experience, people who ride buses tend to have the same boring stories, but any driver with the courage to pick up a hitchhiker is definitely someone worth talking to."

The way he said that made us chuckle.

"If it turns out they're not interesting, I can always say, 'Let me off in the next town.' Then I take my chances with another car. Each ride's a small adventure." Petey's eyes crinkled with amusement.

"And what's the second reason for not taking the bus?" I asked.

The amusement faded. "Work's been a little scarce lately. I didn't have the money for the ticket."

"That's going to change," I said. "I know where there's plenty of work on construction projects-if you want it."

"I sure do."

"I can give you some pocket money in the meantime."

"Hey, I didn't come here for handouts," Petey said.

"I know that. But what'll you do for cash until then?"

Petey didn't have an answer.

"Come on," I said. "Accept a gift."

"I guess I could use some cash to rent a motel room."

"No way," Kate said. "You're not renting any motel room."

"You're spending the night with us."

6

Petey threw a baseball to Jason, who was usually awkward, but this time he caught the ball perfectly and grinned.

"Look, Dad! Look at what Uncle Peter taught me!"

"You're doing great. Maybe your uncle ought to think about becoming a coach."

Petey shrugged. "Just some tricks I picked up on the road, from Friday nights when I ended up at baseball parks in various towns. All you have to remember, Jace, is to keep your eye on the ball instead of on your glove. And make sure your glove is ready to snap shut."

Kate appeared at the back door, her blond hair silhouetted by the kitchen light. "It's time for bed, Little Leaguer."

"Aw, do I have to, Mom?"

"I've already let you stay up a half hour longer than usual. Tomorrow's a school day."

Disappointed, Jason turned to his uncle.

"Don't look at me for help," Petey said. "What your mother says goes."

"Thanks for the lesson, Uncle Peter. Now maybe the other kids'll let me play on the team."

"Well, if they don't, you let me know, and I'll go down to the ballpark to have a word with them." Petey mussed Jason's sandy hair and nudged him toward the house. "You better not keep your mother waiting."

"See you in the morning."

"You bet."

"I'm glad you found us, Uncle Peter."

"Me, too." Petey's voice was unsteady. "Me, too."

Jason went inside, and my brother turned to me. "Nice boy."

"Yes, we're very proud of him."

The setting sun cast a crimson glow over the backyard's trees.

"And Kate's…"

"Wonderful," I said. "It was my lucky day when I met her."

"There's no getting around it. You've done great for yourself. Look at this house."

I felt embarrassed to have so much. "My staff teases me about it. As you saw from the TV show, my specialty is designing buildings that are almost invisible in their environment. But when we first came to town, this big old Victorian seemed to have our name on it. Of course, all the trees in the front and back conceal it pretty well."

"It feels solid." Petey glanced down at his calloused hands. "Funny how things worked out. Well…" He roused himself and grinned. "Coaching's thirsty work. I could use another beer."

"Be right back."

When I returned with the beers (inside, Kate had raised her eyebrows, not used to seeing me drink so much), I also had something in a shopping bag.

"What's that?" Petey wondered.

"Something I've been keeping for you."

"I can't imagine what you'd-"

"I'm afraid it's too small for you to use if you want to play catch with Jason another time," I said.

Petey shook his head in confusion.

"Recognize this?" I reached in the bag and pulled out the battered baseball glove that I'd found under Petey's bike so long ago.

"My God."

"I kept it all these years. I never let it out of my room. I used to hold it next to me when I went to bed, and I'd try to imagine where you were and what you were doing and…" I forced the words out. "… if you were still alive."

"A lot of times, I wished I wasn't alive."

"Don't think about that. The past doesn't matter now. We're together again, Petey. That's what matters. God, I've missed you." I handed him the glove, although I couldn't see him very well-my eyes were misted.

7

"So what do you think of him?" I asked Kate, keeping my voice low as I turned off the light and got under the covers. Petey's room was at the opposite end of the hall. He wouldn't be able to hear us. Even so, I felt self-conscious talking about him.

Lying next to me in the darkness, Kate didn't answer for a moment. "He's had a hard life."

"That's for sure. And yet he seems to enjoy it."

"A virtue of necessity."

"I suppose. All the same…"

"What are you thinking?" Kate asked.

"Well, if he didn't like it, he could always have lived another way."

"How?"

"I guess he could have gone to school and entered a profession."

"Maybe have become an architect, like you?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. It wouldn't have been out of the question. I've seen a couple of stories on the news about twins separated at birth and reunited as adults. They discover they have the same job, the same hobbies, wives who look the same and have the same personality."

"I'm not sure I like being linked with someone's hobby. Besides, you and your brother aren't twins."

"Granted. Even so, you know what I mean. Petey could have ended up like me, but he chose not to."

"You really think people have that much choice in their lives? You told me you never would have become an architect if it hadn't been for a geometry teacher you really liked in high school."

Wistful, I stared at moonlight streaming through our bedroom window. "Yeah, I sure was weird-the only kid in high school who liked geometry. To me, that teacher made the subject fascinating. He told me what I had to do, where to go to college and all, if I wanted to be an architect."

"Well, I seriously doubt that your brother had a geometry teacher. Did he even go to high school?" Kate asked.

"Somebody must have taught him something. He's awfully well spoken. I haven't heard a foul word from him."

Kate turned to face me, propping herself on an elbow. "Look, I'm willing to do all I can to help. If he wants to stay here for a while until he decides what to do next, that's fine with me."

"I was hoping you'd feel that way." I leaned over and kissed her. "Thanks."

"Is that the best way you can think of to thank me?" she asked.

I kissed her again, this time deeply.

"Far more sincere." She drew a hand up my leg.

"Mmm." It was the last sound for a while. The presence of a stranger in the house made us more self-conscious about being overheard. When we climaxed, our kiss was so deep that we swallowed each other's moans.

We lay silently, coming back to ourselves.

"If we get more sincere than that, I'll need to be resuscitated," I murmured.

"Mouth-to-mouth? "

"Brings me to life every time." Getting up to go to the bathroom, I glanced out the window. In the darkness, peering down toward the backyard, I saw something I didn't expect.

"What are you looking at?" Kate asked.

"Petey."

"What?"

"I can see him in the moonlight. He's down there in a lounge chair."

"Asleep?" Kate asked.

"No, he's smoking, staring up at the stars."

"Given everything that's happened, he probably couldn't sleep."

"I know how he feels."

"I'll tell you one thing," Kate said. "Anyone who's polite enough not to smoke in the house is welcome."

8

Although Petey had said that he enjoyed his life on the road, I was determined to make sure he enjoyed it even more by paying attention to a few basic matters: his appearance, for example. That chipped front tooth made a terrible first impression. I had a suspicion that Petey had been losing work because contractors he approached to hire him felt he looked like a troublemaker. So, the next morning, I phoned our family dentist, explained the situation, and got him to agree (for double his usual fee) to give up his lunch hour.

"Dentist?" Petey told me. "Hell no. I'm not going to any dentist."

"Just to smooth out that chip in your tooth. It's not going to hurt."

"No way. I haven't been to a dentist since I needed a back tooth taken out six years ago."

"Six years ago? Good God. All the more reason for you to have a checkup." I didn't tell him that the hygienist had agreed to give up her lunch hour, too.

Before that, I phoned several barbershops, until I found one that wasn't busy. Long hair-my own's hardly what you'd call short- doesn't have to look tangled and scruffy. After the barbershop, we bought some clothes. Not that I deluded myself into thinking that Petey could use dress slacks and a sport coat, but some new jeans and a nice-looking shirt wouldn't do any harm. After that, a shoe store: new work boots and sneakers.

"I can't accept all this," Petey said.

"I'm glad to do it. If you want, we'll call it a loan. Sometime, when you're flush, you can pay me back."

Then it was time for the dentist. Afterward, Petey's teeth looked great, although he had several cavities, the dentist said. They'd be taken care of when Petey went back in a couple of weeks. Petey's hair looked stylishly windblown. I was almost tempted to ask a plastic surgeon if anything could be done about the scar on Petey's chin. No matter, a little maintenance had accomplished a lot. He looked like he'd just gotten dressed after playing tennis.

"Hungry?"

"Always," Petey said.

"Yeah, I get the impression you've been missing a few meals lately. You could use about ten more pounds. Do you like Italian food?"

"You mean spaghetti and meatballs?"

"Sort of. But where we're going, spaghetti's called pasta, and the dishes have names like chicken marsala."

"Hold on a second."

"After lunch, I'm going to take you to see a man about a job."

"Brad… Stop____________________Hold it."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Don't you have work to do?" Petey asked. "You took yesterday afternoon off. This morning, you didn't go to work, either. Kate said you had appointments, meetings."

"None of it's as important as you."

"But you can't run a business that way, not and spend money on me the way you are. We have a lot to catch up on, but we don't have to do it all at once."

Petey's worried expression started me laughing. "You think I'm getting carried away?"

"Just a little."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"Go to work. There's a park across the street. I'd like to hang out there for a while. Get my mind straight. All these changes. I'll meet you at home for supper."

"That's really what you want?" I asked.

"You've done enough for me."

"But how will you get home?"

"Hitchhike," Petey said.

"What if you don't get a ride?"

"Don't worry. I've got a knack for it." Petey's teeth looked great when he grinned.

"I have a better idea," I said. "Use my car. You can pick me up at the end of the day."

"Can't. I don't have a driver's license."

"That's something else we'll take care of."

"Tomorrow," Petey said.

"We're going to see about getting your glasses fixed, too."

"Right," Petey said. "Tomorrow."

9

Petey and Jason were cutting the lawn when I got home. The power mower was awkward for Jason, so Petey was walking beside him, helping him make the turns.

"Hey, look at me, Dad!" Jason yelled to be heard above the motor's roar.

I raised my thumb enthusiastically.

They stopped beside me.

"Can you control it, Jace?" Petey asked.

"I'm pretty sure."

"Then it's all yours. I'll be over here talking to your dad."

Jason nodded, concentrating on keeping the mower in a straight line. Its roar diminished as he navigated among trees toward the far side of the yard.

Petey motioned me toward the porch steps, where he picked up a bottle of beer. "I might've created a monster. If he gets any better at this, you're going to have to raise his allowance."

"It's the first time he's shown an interest. Could be you've hit on something," I said. "Normally, a lawn service does this for me, but it'd be good for him to help a little and learn some responsibility."

"Can't be too young to learn responsibility." Petey took a drink of his beer.

"Listen, I appreciate the effort, but you didn't have to mow the grass," I said.

"No big deal. It looked a little long. I want to do my share."

"Honestly, it isn't necessary. I'm just glad to have you here. Anyway, since you'll be working next week, take it easy for now."

Petey cocked his head. "Working next week?"

"Yeah, I made some calls. I got you a job."

"You did? Great!"

"On a building I designed."

"Couldn't be better."

"Uncle Peter!" Jason yelled in panic. At the end of a row, the boy struggled to turn the mower. It veered toward a shrub.

"Hang on!" Petey ran to help him.

10

"No need to help with the dishes," Kate said.

"It's the least I can do." Petey dried another pot. "I can't remember when I had a tastier beef stew."

"We don't normally eat this much red meat," she said. "I'm trying to put some weight on you."

"The lemon pie was spectacular."

Jason eyed a second piece. "Yeah, we hardly ever get desserts in the middle of the week."

"Well, you worked hard mowing the lawn," Kate said. "You deserve a treat."

Sitting at the end of the table, I couldn't help smiling. The reality that Petey was actually over there by the sink, reaching to dry another pot, still overwhelmed me.

"Anyway," he said, returning to an earlier topic, "it doesn't surprise me that you moved here to Denver."

"Oh?"

"That camping trip you and I and Dad went on. Remember?" Petey asked.

"I sure do."

"Out here to Colorado. What a good time. Of course, the long drive from Ohio was a pain. If it hadn't been for the comic books Dad kept buying us along the highway… Once we got here, the effort sure was worth it. Camping, hiking, rock climbing, and fishing, Dad showing us what to do."

"The first fish you ever caught, you were so excited that you reeled in before you hooked it good," I said. "It jumped back into the lake."

"You remember that much?"

"I thought about that trip a lot over the years. A month after we got back, school started, and…" I couldn't make myself refer to Petey's disappearance. "For a lot of years, it was the last good summer of my life."

"Mine, too." Petey looked down. A long second later, he shrugged off his regret and picked up the last pot. "Anyway, what I'm getting at is, maybe you came out here because in the back of your mind you wanted to return to that summer."

"Camping?" Jason broke the somber mood.

We looked at him. He'd been silent for a while, eating his second piece of pie.

"Dad promised to take me, but we never did," Jason said.

I felt embarrassed. "We went on plenty of hikes."

"But we never used tents."

"Are you telling me you've never actually gone camping?" Petey asked.

Jason nodded, then corrected himself. "Except, I once slept in a tent in Tom Burbick's backyard."

"Doesn't count," Petey said. "You've gotta be where you hear the lions and tigers and bears."

"Lions and tigers?" Jason frowned, looking vulnerable behind his glasses.

"It's a joke." Kate rumpled his hair.

She left some soapsuds. He swatted at them. "Mom!"

"But that might not be a bad idea." She looked at Petey and me. "A camping trip. The two of you can pick up where you left off. Jump over the years. I know it's been hard for you, Peter, but now the good times are starting again."

"I think you're right, Kate," Petey said. "I can feel them."

"What about me?" Jason asked. "Can't I come?"

"We'll all go," Petey said.

"Sorry. Not me, gentlemen." Kate held up her hands. "Saturday, I'm scheduled to give a seminar." Kate was a stress-management counselor; her specialty was advising corporations whose employees were burned out because of downsizing. "Besides, sleeping in the woods isn't high on my list."

"Just like Mom." Petey turned to me. "Remember?"

"Yeah, just like Mom."

"Except your mother," Kate said, "was afraid of bees, whereas in my case it's a matter of natural selection."

"Natural selection?" I asked, puzzled.

"You guys are a lot better equipped to crawl out of a tent at night and pee in the woods."

11

"I've been meaning to ask you something."

Petey quit studying the map and looked at me. "About what?"

It was almost eleven o'clock: a radiant Saturday morning. My Ford Expedition was loaded with all kinds of camping equipment. We'd followed Interstate 70 west out of Denver and were now well into the mountains, although Jason wasn't appreciating their snowcaps. He was dozing in a sleeping bag on the backseat.

"After you…" I had trouble continuing. "It suddenly occurs to me that you might not want to talk about it."

"There's only one way to find out."

"After you got away from…"

"Say it. The sick bastards who kidnapped me. It's a fact. You don't need to tap-dance around the subject."

"You were sixteen when you escaped. You've talked about roaming the country, working on construction jobs or whatever. But you never mentioned anything about school. When you disappeared, you were in the fourth grade, but you've obviously had more education than that. Who taught you?"

"Oh, I had plenty of education in politeness," Petey said bitterly. "The man and woman who kept me in that underground room insisted on a lot of 'Yes, sir, yes, ma'am, please and thank you.' If I ever forgot, they punched my face to remind me." The sinews in his neck tightened into ropes.

"I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't raised the subject," I said.

"It's fine. There's no point in hiding from the past. It'll only catch up in other ways." Petey's gaze hardened. He took a deep breath, subduing his emotions. "Anyhow, in terms of education, I have better memories. As I wandered from town to town, I learned that an easy way to get a free meal was to show up at church socials after Sunday-morning services. Of course, I had to sit through the services in order to get the free meals. But most times, I didn't mind-the services were peaceful. After so many years of not reading, I'd sort of forgotten how to do it. When members of this or that congregation realized that I couldn't read the Bible, they took steps to make sure I learned my ABC's and, more important, the Good Book. There were always teachers in the congregations. After work some evenings, I'd get private classes at a church in whatever town I happened to be in. There are a lot of decent folks out there."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Hear what, Dad?" Jason asked sleepily from the backseat, where he'd woken up.

"Just that there are decent people in the world."

"Didn't you know that?"

"Sometimes I wondered. You and your uncle better concentrate on the map. Our turnoff isn't far ahead."

12

We were looking for a place called Breakhorse Ridge. It's odd how some names stay in my memory. Twenty-five years earlier, that was where Dad had taken Petey and me on our camping trip. Somebody at the furniture factory where Dad was the foreman had once lived in Colorado and had described to Dad how beautiful the Breakhorse Ridge area was. So Dad, who'd already committed to taking us camping in Colorado, had decided that would be our destination. But back then, all during the long drive, I'd had a horrifying mental image of somebody breaking horses in half. Not knowing anything about how cowboys "broke" wild horses so people could ride them, I'd been afraid of what we were going to see. Dad finally got me to tell him what was bothering me. After he explained, my fear turned to curiosity. But when we arrived, there weren't any horses or cowboys, just a few old wooden corrals, and a meadow leading down to a lake and an aspen forest with mountains above it.

I never forgot the name. But as Petey, Jason, and I had made plans, I couldn't find the place on a map. I finally had to phone the headquarters for park services in Colorado. A ranger had faxed me a section of a much more detailed map than I was using, showing me the route to Breakhorse Ridge. I'd spread my general map on the dining room table, put the fax over the section we were interested in, and shown Petey and Jason where we were going.

Now we were almost there, turning to the right onto Highway 9, heading north into the Arapaho National Forest.

"It gets tricky from here on, guys. Keep comparing the map to what's around us," I said.

Jason crawled into the front, and Petey buckled his seat belt over both of them.

"What are we searching for?" Jason asked.

"This squiggly line." Petey showed him the fax. "It'll be a narrow dirt road on the right. With all these pine trees, we'll have to watch closely. It'll be hard to spot."

I steered around a curve. The trees got thicker. Even so, I thought I saw a break in them on the right. But I didn't say anything, wanting Jason to make the discovery. Petey must have read my mind. I saw him look up from the map and focus his eyes as if he'd noticed the break, but he didn't say anything, either.

I drove closer.

The break became a little more distinct.

"There!" Jason pointed. "I see it!"

"Good job," Petey said.

"For sure," I added. "I almost went past it."

I steered to the right and entered a bumpy dirt lane. Scrub grass grew between its wheel ruts. Bushes squeezed its sides. Pine branches formed a canopy.

"Gosh, do you think we'll get stuck?" Jason leaned forward with concern.

"Not with this four-wheel drive," Petey said. "It'd take a lot worse terrain than this to put us in trouble. Even if it snowed, we wouldn't have to worry."

"Snowed?" Jason frowned. "In June?"

"Sure," Petey said. "This time of year, you can still get a storm in the mountains." The trees became sparse. "See those peaks ahead and how much snow they still have? Up here, the sun hasn't gotten hot enough to melt it yet."

Taking sharp angles, the lane zigzagged higher. The slope below us became dizzyingly steep. The bumps were so severe that only those cowboys who'd ridden bucking wild horses here years earlier could have enjoyed the ride.

"Who do you suppose built this road?" Jason asked. "It looks awfully old."

"The forest service maybe," I said. "Or maybe loggers or ranchers before this area became part of the national forest system. I remember our dad saying that in the old days cattlemen kept small herds here to feed prospectors in mining towns."

"Prospectors? Gold?" Jason asked.

"And silver. A long time ago. Most of the towns are abandoned now."

"Ghost towns," Petey said.

"Gosh," Jason said.

"Or else the towns became ski resorts," I said, hoping to subdue Jason's imagination so Petey and I wouldn't be wakened by his nightmares about ghosts.

The road crested the slope and took us into a bright meadow, the new grass waving in a gentle breeze.

"It's the way I remember it when Dad drove us here," I told Petey.

"After all these years," Petey said in awe.

"Are we there yet?" Jason asked.

The age-old question from kids. I imagined that Petey or I had asked our dad the same thing. We looked at each other and couldn't keep from laughing.

"What's so funny?" Jason asked.

"Nothing," Petey said. "No, we're not there yet."

13

It took another half hour. The meadow gave way to more pine trees and a slope steeper than the first one, the zigzag angles sharper. We crested a bumpy rise, and I stopped suddenly, staring down toward where the barely detectable road descended into a gentle grassy bowl. Sunlight glinted off a picture-book lake, aspens beyond it, then pine trees, then mountains towering above.

"Yes," I said, my chest tight. "Just as I remember."

"It hasn't changed," Petey said.

On the right, old corrals were the only variation in the meadow. Their gray weathered posts and railings had long ago collapsed into rotting piles. We drove past them, nearing the lake. There weren't any other cars. In fact, I couldn't find an indication that anyone had been around in a very long time.

We stopped fifty feet from the lake, where I recalled Dad stopping. When we got out of the car, I savored the fresh, pleasantly cool air.

"Look at this old campfire, Dad!"

Petey and he were on the right side of the car. I looked over toward a scorched circle of rocks that had charred hunks of wood in the middle.

"Old is right," Petey said. "I bet it hasn't been used in years." He looked at me. "I wonder if this is the same place you and I and Dad built our campfire?"

"It's nice to think so."

Jason brimmed with energy. "Where are we going to put up the tent?"

"How about over there?" I pointed to the right of the old campfire site. "I think that's where Petey and I helped Dad put up our tent."

"Can I help, Dad?"

"Of course," Petey said.

There was a moment after I lifted the back hatch and we unloaded our gear when the deja vu I'd been feeling reached an overwhelming intensity. Everything seemed realer than real. I looked over at Jason and Petey as they pulled the collapsed tent from its nylon sack and tried to figure how to put it together. Jason's glasses and freckles, his sandy hair at the edge of his baseball cap, his baggy jeans and loose-fitting shirt, made him look so much like Petey had looked as a boy that I shivered.

Jason noticed. "What's the matter, Dad?"

"Nothing. This breeze is a little cold is all. I'm going to put on my windbreaker. You want yours?"

"Naw, I'm fine."

"Big brother," Petey called. "You're the expert in how buildings are put together. Do you think you can show us how to put this damned tent together?"

The three of us needed an hour to get the job done.

14

By then, it was almost 1:30. Kate had packed a lunch in a cooler: chicken, beef, and peanut butter sandwiches, along with soft drinks, apples, and little packages of potato chips. Jason didn't touch the apples. Otherwise, he wolfed everything down, the same as Petey and I did. We saw fish splashing in the lake but decided to get our poles out later. For now, there was plenty to do, exploring. We put our lunch trash in a bag, locked it in the car, and set out, hiking to the left around the lake.

"I remember there was a cave up there." I pointed above the aspens. "And lots of places to climb."

Petey yelled to Jason, who was running ahead of us. "Do you like to climb?"

"I don't know!" Jason turned to look at us, continuing to run. "I've never done it!"

"You're going to love it!"

The lake was about a hundred yards across. We reached the other side and found a stream that fed into it. The stream was swift from the spring snowmelt, too wide to cross, so we followed its cascading path up through the aspens, the roar of the water sometimes so loud that we couldn't hear one another.

Even though we were three thousand feet higher than the altitude of five thousand feet we were used to in Denver, the thin mountain air didn't slow us. If anything, it was invigorating. It was like inhaling vitamins. Stretching my legs to climb over fallen trees or to clamber on and off boulders, I felt such pleasure from my body that I criticized myself for not having taken time from work to do this earlier.

Across the stream, above us, a deer moved, its brown silhouette stiffening at our approach, then bounding gracefully away through the white trunks of the aspens. With the noise from the stream, it couldn't have heard us coming, I thought. It must have smelled us. Then another silhouette stiffened and bounded away. A third. Even with the noise from the stream, I heard their hooves thunder.

Soon we reached where the stream cascaded from a high, narrow draw that was too dangerous to go into. We angled to the left, following a steep upward trail that had hoof marks on it. The trail veered farther to the left, maintaining a consistent level along a wooded slope, so predictable that when a sunlit outcrop above us attracted our attention, we decided to explore. Getting to it was more difficult than it appeared. At one time or another, both Petey and I slipped on loose rocks underfoot. We'd have rolled to the bottom, scraping our arms and legs, maybe even breaking something, if we hadn't managed to clutch exposed tree roots. By contrast, Jason scurried up like a mountain goat.

Breathing hoarsely, Petey and I crawled over the rim and found Jason waiting for us on a wide slab of rock that provided a view of the stream below us and the chasm through which it churned. Two hundred feet above it, we were far enough from the roar for me not to need to shout when I warned Jason, "Stay away from the edge."

"I will," he promised. "But, gosh, this is totally neat, Dad."

"Beats watching television, huh?" Petey said.

Jason thought about it. His face assumed an expression of "I wouldn't go that far."

Petey laughed.

"Where's that cave you mentioned?" Jason asked.

"I'm having trouble remembering," I said. "Somewhere on this side of the stream is all I know for sure."

"Can we look for it?"

"Absolutely. After we take a break."

I settled onto the stone slab, unhooked my canteen from my belt, and took a long swallow of slightly warm, slightly metallic-tasting, incredibly delicious water. The park ranger I'd spoken to on the telephone had emphasized that we needed to take canteens with us and knapsacks containing trail food, a compass and a topographical map (neither of which I knew how to use), a first-aid kit, and a rain slicker in case the weather turned bad. "Dress in layers," she'd advised. "Keep a dry jacket in your knapsack." I'd already put on my denim windbreaker before we left the car. Now the hike had so warmed me that I took off the jacket and stuffed it into the knapsack.

"Anybody want some peanuts and raisins?" I asked.

"I'm still full from lunch," Petey said.

Jason looked uncomfortable.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I have to…"

It took me a moment to understand. "Pee?"

Jason nodded, bashful.

"Go around that boulder over there," I told him.

Hesitant, he disappeared behind it.

My parental obligations taken care of for the moment, I stepped forward to admire the chasm. The stream tumbled down a series of low waterfalls. Spray hovered over it. How had Jason described the view? "Neat"? He was right. This was totally neat.

Behind me, he suddenly shouted, "Dad!"

Something slammed my back with such force that it took my breath away. I hurtled into space.

15

The drop sucked more of my breath away. The little that was left jolted from my mouth when I struck loose stones. Avalanching with them, rolling sideways, I groaned. Abruptly, I hurtled into the air again, plummeting farther, my stomach squeezing toward my throat. I jerked to an agonizing stop, my left arm stretching as if it were about to be ripped from its socket. My arm slipped free of something. I dropped again and hit something hard. Cold mist swallowed me. Darkness swirled.

When my eyelids slowly opened, black turned to gray, but the swirling continued. Pain awoke throughout my body. Delirious, I took a long time to realize that the gray swirling around me was vapor thrown up from the cascading stream. The roar aggravated my dizziness.

I felt that I was breathing through a cold, wet washcloth. Gradually, I understood that my left arm was across my nose and mouth. My shirtsleeve was soaked from the vapor that the thundering stream tossed into the air. Then I trembled, seeing that my sleeve was wet from something besides the mist. Blood. My arm was gashed.

Alarm shot through me. I fought to raise my head, and discovered that I was on my back on a ledge. Below was a fall of what I judged to be I50 feet. A series of outcrops led sharply down to the roaring stream.

Jesus, what had happened?

I peered up. The vapor made it difficult for me to see the top of the cliff. Nonetheless, through the haze, I could distinguish a long slope of loose stones below the rim. The slope had saved my life. If I'd fallen directly to where I now lay, my injuries would have been catastrophic. Instead, I'd rolled down the slope, painfully reducing the length of the fall. But beneath the slope of loose stones, there had been a ledge over which I'd tumbled to the ledge I'd landed on, and the distance between them was about twenty feet. A potentially lethal drop. Why wasn't I dead?

My knapsack dangled above me. It was caught on a sharp branch of a stunted pine tree that had managed to grow from the side of the cliff. I remembered stuffing my windbreaker into the knapsack and hanging the knapsack over my left shoulder before I'd walked over to peer into the chasm. The branch had snagged the knapsack. The sharp pain in my left shoulder indicated the force with which I'd been jerked to a stop. My arm had slipped free from the strap. I'd fallen a body length to this ledge. Luck was all that had saved me.

Every movement excruciating, I strained to sit up. My mind tilted, as if ball bearings rolled from the front of my skull to the back. For a moment, I feared that I'd vomit.

"Jason!" I tried to yell. "Petey!"

But the words were like stones in my throat.

"Jason!" I tried harder. "Petey!"

The roar of the stream overpowered my voice.

Don't panic, I fought to assure myself. It doesn't matter if they can't hear me. They know where I am. They'll help me.

My God, I hope they don't try to climb down, I suddenly thought.

"Jason! Petey! Stay where you are! You'll fall and get killed!"

My voice cracked, making my words a hoarse whisper.

Straining to see through the haze, I hoped to catch a glimpse of Jason and Petey peering over the rim to try to find me. No sign of them. Maybe they're trying to get a better vantage point, I thought. Or maybe they're hurrying back to the mouth of the chasm, hoping to reach me from below.

I prayed that they'd be careful, that Jason wouldn't take foolish chances, that Petey would make sure he didn't. Trembling, I parted the rip in my sleeve. Wiping away the blood, I saw a gash five inches long between my elbow and my wrist. Blood immediately welled up, obscuring the wound. It dripped from my arm, pooling on the ledge.

Bile shot into my mouth.

Do something, I thought. I can't just sit here and let myself bleed to death.

My knapsack seemed to float above me. I stretched my good arm but couldn't reach it. In greater pain, I mustered the strength to try to stand.

The first-aid kit in the knapsack, I thought.

My legs gave out. I clawed at a niche and barely avoided toppling into the chasm. Despite the cold from the stream, I sweated. Shock made me tremble as I grabbed for a higher niche and wavered to my feet. For a moment, I saw specks in front of my eyes. Then my vision cleared, and I stared up toward the knapsack. Despairingly, it seemed as high as ever. My injured left arm dangled at my side. I extended my right arm upward. Another six inches. All I need is six inches more, I thought.

Pressing my chest against the cliff, standing on tiptoes, wincing from new throbbing pain in my hips, my sides, and my ribs, I stretched as high as I could, then breathed out in triumph as I touched the knapsack's strap.

Vapor from the stream had slicked the nylon. I lost my grip but instantly pawed for the strap again, pushing my tiptoes to their limits, this time clutching with all my strength. I tugged the knapsack to the side, toward the chasm, working to free it from the stout branch it had snagged on. I tugged once, twice, and suddenly felt weightless as the knapsack jerked free.

Falling, I dove toward the ledge. I screamed as my injured arm landed, but I couldn't let myself react. I had to concentrate solely on my good arm hanging over the ledge, the knapsack dangling from my fingers.

Cautiously, I rolled onto my back and placed the knapsack on my chest. The temptation to rest was canceled by the increased flow of blood from my arm. Nauseated, I opened the knapsack, pawed past my windbreaker and rain slicker, pushed the Ziploc bags of trail food aside, and found the plastic case of the first-aid kit.

I clumsily pried it open, dismayed to find only Band-Aids and two-inch-square pads along with scissors, antiseptic swabs, antibiotic cream, and a plastic bottle of Tylenol. None of that was going to stop the bleeding.

A tourniquet, I thought. I'll use my belt. I'll tighten it around my arm and…

But even as I unbuckled my belt, I remembered something I'd read about tourniquets being dangerous, about the risk of blood clots and gangrene if the tourniquet wasn't loosened at proper intervals.

What difference does it make? I thought. I'll bleed to death before I die from gangrene.

A pressure bandage. Whatever I'd read about tourniquets had warned that a pressure bandage was the safe way to stop bleeding, something that put pressure on the wound without cutting off the flow of blood. But where was I going to find something like that?

The bleeding worsened.

Perhaps because I was light-headed, I took more time than I should have to remember something else that might be in the knapsack. Once when Kate had been on a college trip to Paris, she'd sprained an ankle and had limped painfully from drugstore to drugstore, trying to find an Ace bandage, the wide, long elastic material you wrap around a sprain to give the injured area some support. Since then, whenever she traveled, she made sure to carry one in her luggage, and she always took care to pack one for me.

More dizzy, I used my right hand to search through the knapsack. Where is it? I thought. It isn't like Kate not to have packed one.

Damn it, this time she hadn't.

Desperate, I was about to dump everything out, when I noticed a bulge at the side of the knapsack. Struggling to clear my mind, I freed a zipper on a pouch and almost wept when I found a folded elastic bandage.

Working awkwardly with one hand, sometimes using my teeth to open packets, I cleaned the gash with antiseptic swabs, spread antibiotic ointment over it, and pressed several two-inch pads onto it. Blood soaked them. Hurrying, I wrapped the elastic bandage around my left forearm. Keeping it tight, circling layer upon layer, I saw blood tint each layer.

I urgently wrapped more layers, applying more pressure, worried about how little of the bandage remained. I prayed that the blood wouldn't soak all the way through. Two more layers. One. I secured the end with two barbed clips that came with the bandage. Then I stared at the bandage, shivering, concentrating to see if blood would soak through. For a moment, I feared that the pale brown of the bandage would become pink, about to turn red. I held my breath, exhaling only when a small area of pink didn't spread.

My watch's crystal was shattered, the hands frozen at ten after two. I had no idea how long I'd been on the ledge, but when I peered up through the vapor from the stream, the sun seemed to have shifted farther west than. I would have expected from the brief time since I'd fallen. Evidently I'd been unconscious longer than it seemed.

I stared up at the rim but still didn't see Petey and Jason. Give them time, I thought.

The trouble was, if I didn't get off the ledge soon, I was going to be in a lot worse trouble.

I wasn't an outdoorsman-I'd certainly proven that. But it wasn't possible to live in a mountain state like Colorado without seeing stories in the newspaper or on the TV news about the dangers of hypothermia. Hikers would go into the mountains, wearing only shorts and T-shirts. A sudden storm would soak them. If the temperature dropped, if the hikers were more than three hours from warm clothes and hot fluids to raise their rapidly dropping core temperature, they died from exposure.

Lying on the damp, chill ledge, I shivered. My hands and feet felt numb. If I don't get off this ledge soon, I thought, it won't matter that I stopped the bleeding. Hypothermia will kill me.

I tried to calculate how to climb up the almost sheer face to the next ledge and then up the slope of loose stones to the rim. I knew that my injured arm wouldn't support me. The only other way to get off the ledge was…

I stared down, trying to judge how the cliff led to the stream. It was a steep slope of outcrops, the ledge below me five feet away, the one after that twice as far. I didn't want to think about the obstacles farther down.

But the sun was already past the rim of the cliff. The bottom of the chasm was in shadow. Even though it was only late afternoon, darkness would come soon. The nearby mountains would block the sun earlier than I was used to. Once it was dark, I couldn't hope to be rescued until morning.

By then, I'd be dead.

The pain of movement was excruciating as I eased the knapsack onto my back, lay on my stomach, and squirmed over the edge. I dangled as far as my good arm would allow, then dropped.

The shock of landing jolted me to the bone. I almost fainted. Crawling over the side of the next outcrop, I ripped my shirt and scraped my chest. My lacerated knees showed through my torn jeans. Straining to control my emotions, I kept struggling downward. A few spots that looked impossible from above turned out to be deceptive, boulders acting like steps. Other spots that looked easy were terrifyingly difficult.

Throughout, the light faded. As the stream's roar grew closer, I descended with greater caution. Testing my footing, I almost fell when a boulder dislodged under my weight and rumbled to the bottom. While the dusk thickened, so did the vapor from the stream, beading my face, soaking my clothes, making me shiver harder. I remembered reading that victims of hypothermia become stupefied near the end, unaware of what's around them. I fought to keep my thoughts clear.

As it was, I struggled to the bottom before I realized it, nearly stepping into the raging current, so deadened by its thunder that I hadn't been aware how close I was. Lurching back, I almost twisted my ankle. Unnerved by the surreal contrast between the blue sky above the chasm and the gathering dusk within it, I shifted along the roiling water with delicate care. Spray drenched me. As the chasm sloped toward its murky exit, I worried that I'd break a leg within sight of my escape. I made my way over slick rocks, gripping boulders for support, my mind and body so numbed that it took me a minute to understand that the object I leaned against was an aspen tree, not a boulder, that sunlight was angling toward me, that I'd left the chasm a while ago and now was stumbling through a forest.

It's almost over, I told myself. All I need to do is follow the stream through the trees to the lake. As my steps quickened, I imagined unlocking the car. I anticipated the relief of crawling in and starting the engine, of turning on the heater and feeling hot air blow over me as I changed into warm clothes from my suitcase.

"Jason! Petey!"

I lurched from the aspens to the edge of the lake and squinted through dimming sunlight toward the opposite side.

My stomach sank when I saw that the car wasn't there.

Easily explained. Petey and Jason went for help, I thought.

They'll be back soon. All I have to do is crawl into the tent and try to get warm.

The tent was also gone.

"No!" The veins in my neck threatened to burst, but I couldn't stop screaming. "Noooo!"

16

Denial's an amazing emotion. During my descent, suspicions had nagged at me, but I'd managed to suppress them, too preoccupied with staying alive. Now I still kept trying to tell myself that I was wrong. After all, six hours previously, the possibility that my brother would push me off a cliff would have been unthinkable, especially given the load of guilt that I'd been carrying around.

My God, what had Petey done with Jason?

Furious, shivering so hard that my teeth clicked together, I yanked off my wet shirt, pulled my denim jacket from the knapsack, and quickly put it over my bare skin. The jacket was damp from having been near the stream, but it felt luxurious compared to what I'd been wearing.

It wasn't going to be enough. I had to get a fire started, had to dry my jeans and socks and shoes. After opening a pouch on my knapsack and confirming that a metal container of matchbooks was as waterproof as the camping-equipment clerk had promised, I went to the aspens to get wood.

A breeze made my wet jeans cold and penetrated my jacket. I hugged myself, trying to generate warmth, but trembled worse than ever. Not knowing what I was doing, I imitated the campfire arrangement on the other side of the lake and put rocks in a circle in a clearing. I placed some twigs and dead leaves in the middle, set some broken sticks over them, and struck a match, but my hand shook so severely that as I brought the match toward the leaves, the flame went out. I tried again, desperate to keep my hand still, concentrating to control my arm muscles, and this time the flame touched the leaves, smoke rising, fire crackling.

A terrible thirst overtook me, but when I reached for the canteen on my belt, it wasn't there. I was dismayed not only that I'd lost it but that I hadn't noticed until now. My tongue was so pasty that it stuck to the roof of my mouth. The roar of the nearby stream tempted me to go to it and scoop water from my hands to my mouth, but I had no idea what kind of bacteria might be in it. I didn't dare risk getting sick. Vomiting or diarrhea would dehydrate me more than I already was.

All the while, sunset dimmed. I needed to pile up all the branches I could. As the last of the sun dipped below the mountains, I worked with greater urgency, dragging back large fallen limbs. Too soon, darkness enveloped me.

But it wasn't as black as my thoughts. Jason. Had Petey hurt him? Please, God, protect my son. Please.

The word became my mantra as the night's chill made me huddle closer to the fire. I was caught between the need to get warm and the fear of depleting my fuel supply before the night was over. I picked up the shirt I'd taken off. Holding it to the fire, turning it often, I feared that I'd burn it before I dried it. Although parts of it were in rags, it would provide an extra layer. Hating to expose my chest and back to the cold, I quickly removed my jacket and put on the shirt, then got into the jacket again. I took the rain slicker from my knapsack and put that on as well, pulling its hood over my head, anything to provide more insulation. My hands felt stung by the cold. Rubbing them over the fire, I blamed myself for not having been smart enough to bring gloves.

Hell, if I'd been smart, I never would have invited Petey into my home. But as hard as I tried to find some warning signs from the previous few days, I couldn't think of any.

You bastard! I inwardly screamed, then regretted the word, hating myself for insulting my parents. Every curse I could think of somehow involved them, but what had happened wasn't their fault. It was mine.

The weather forecaster had predicted a low of forty degrees Fahrenheit. If I fell asleep and the flames died, my body might get so cold that I'd never wake up. I thought of the warm sleeping bags that had been in the car. I imagined zipping into one of them and…

Awakening with a start, I found myself lying on the cold grass next to the barely glowing embers of the fire. Terrified, I tried to make my right hand work, groped for a handful of twigs, used a stick to poke them into the ash-covered coals, and watched the twigs burst into flame. Clumsy, I added larger pieces, my numbness slowly leaving me, but not the terror of dying from exposure. Dry-mouthed, I tried to chew peanuts and raisins. Praying for Jason helped energize my mind. Guarding the fire, I brooded about Petey.

Hated him.

And stayed awake.

17

At first, the feeling was so soft that I thought I imagined it, an invisible cool feather tickling my face in the darkness. Then I heard a subtle hissing on the hot rocks around the fire. In my confusion, it reminded me of the hiss from our coffeemaker whenever a few drops fell from the unit's spout and landed on the burner. At once, the flurries became a little stronger, the breeze that brought them turning colder.

I straightened from the stupor I'd been in, the gray of false dawn hinting at what swirled around me. My first alarmed instinct was to pile more wood on the fire, but as snow sizzled louder on the hot stones, the sun tried to struggle above the eastern peak, providing sufficient light for me to see the white on the grass around me. Dark clouds hung low. Despite the extra wood I'd thrown on the fire, the flames lessened. Smoke rose.

Panicked, I put on my knapsack. As Petey had told Jason when we'd left the highway, early June wasn't too late for snow in the mountains. On TV, the forecasters sometimes cautioned people that at high altitude, the weather could change for the worse without warning. But that hadn't been predicted, and I'd figured that with the car and the tent, there wasn't anything to worry about. Now I cursed myself for not making better plans.

The highway was a half hour away by car. Frowning at the thickening, angrier clouds, I tried to calculate how far I'd have to go on foot. The road into the mountains had been so bad, the terrain so rough, that most of the time I hadn't been able to drive more than twenty miles an hour. That meant the highway was about ten miles off. But with my ankle hurting, ten miles might take me five or six hours on foot. In clothes too flimsy for the cold. Besides, as the flurries intensified, preventing me from seeing the lake, I realized that I probably wouldn't be able to find my way to the highway, that I'd risk wandering in circles until I dropped. Of course, if I'd known how to use the compass the camping-equipment clerk had sold me, my chances might have been different. But regret wasn't a survival emotion. Fear for Jason was. Rage at Petey was.

Thinking of Jason, I was suddenly reminded of the last time I'd seen him. The shelf of rock. "Where's that cave you mentioned?" he'd asked.

The cave.

If I could find it before the storm got worse…

Fighting for strength, I lurched into the trees. Abruptly, visibility lessened, and I stumbled to the right toward the stream, not to drink from it but to use it as a guide. A white veil enveloped me as I followed the churning water up through the trees. The flakes became thicker. The snow on the ground covered my tennis shoes.

My tennis shoes. I'd bought a compass, which I didn't know how to use, and yet I hadn't taken the camping-equipment clerk's advice to buy sturdy hiking boots. They weren't necessary, I'd told him. We weren't going to be doing anything heavy-duty.

My feet started to lose sensation. Limping, I worked my way along a slope, worrying that a rock beneath the snow would shift and cause me to fall. Could I rely on my memory of where the cave was? For all I knew, it was on the opposite side of the stream, and it was merely a crevice in a cliff, which, as a thirteen-year-old boy, I had thought was huge.

The slope reached a steep ridge that went to the left. While I plodded along it, the aspens became pine trees. Branches jabbed at my arms and scratched my face. As the snow gusted thicker, I feared that I'd stumble past the cave and never see it. In the summer, hikers would find my body, or what was left of it after the forest scavengers had feasted on it.

I'm an architect, not a survival expert, I thought. I could hardly feel my hands. Why the hell hadn't I put gloves in my knapsack? I was so stupid, I deserved to die.

Trying to avoid a pine branch, I lost my footing, fell, and almost banged my head against a boulder on my right. Stupid. Deserve to…

18

Architect.

The vague thought nudged my dimming consciousness.

Know how to…

Slowly, the thought insisted, making me turn toward the boulder my head had nearly struck.

Build things.

When I struggled to my feet, I discovered that the boulder was as high as my chest. A second boulder, five feet to the left, was slightly less high. The boulders lay against a cliff, which formed a rear wall.

Build things, I repeated.

I stumbled to the pine branch I'd tried to avoid, put all my weight into it, and felt a surge of hope when a snap intruded on the smothering stillness. Working as hard as I could, I dragged the branch through the snow to the boulders and hefted it on top, bracing it across them. Staggering, I repeated the process several times, overlaying the needles, trying to form a roof.

The cold made my hands ache so much that tears streamed from my eyes, freezing on my cheeks, but I didn't have time to stick my hands, raw and bloody, under my rain slicker to try to warm them against my chest. There was too much to do. I used football-size rocks to weigh down the edges of the branches.

Delirious, I kicked the snow from the ground between the boulders, adding it to the drift outside the shelter. I stuck two needled branches at the shelter's entrance, forming a further windbreak. No matter how pained my hands were, I couldn't stop. I had to get dead twigs, leaves, and sticks, piling them at the back of the shelter.

I'd left a small hole at the back, where the boulders touched the cliff, hoping that smoke would escape through it. Away from the wind and the falling snow, I felt less assaulted by the cold. But my hands were like paws as I clumsily made a small pile of leaves and twigs, then fumbled to open the container of matches and pull out a book of them. I could hardly peel off one of the matches. My fingers didn't seem to belong to me. The match kept falling. It was finally so damaged that I had to peel off a second match, and this one, blessedly, caught fire when I struck it. It fell from my hands onto the clump of leaves and twigs, remained burning, and started a small fire. Smoke rose. I held my breath to keep from coughing. Pushed by heat, the smoke drifted toward the hole in the back.

My throat was so dry that it swelled shut, restricting the passage of air to my lungs. Desperate for something to drink, I reached my unfeeling right hand outside and fumbled to raise snow to my mouth. Instantly, I regretted it. The melting snow made my lips and tongue more numb than they already were. Shivering, I felt a deeper cold. I dimly remembered TV news reports that warned hikers caught in a blizzard not to eat snow as a way of getting moisture. They'd use so much body heat melting the snow in their mouths that they had a greater risk of dying from hypothermia.

The small amount of water from the melted snow hadn't done any good. Almost instantly, my lips became dry again. My swollen tongue seemed to fill my mouth. It was a measure of how dazed I'd become that I stared blearily down at the metal container of matches for a long time before my muddled thoughts cleared and I realized what I had to do. Shaking, I put the matches in the first-aid kit. I picked up their metal container, reached outside into the wind, packed the container with snow, and set it near the fire.

Slowly, the crystals melted. Worried about burning my hand, I put my shirtsleeve over my fingers before I gripped the hot container and pulled it away from the fire. It was only half an inch thick and two inches square, but it might as well have been a sixteen-ounce glass, so irresistible was the tiny amount of water in it. I forced myself to let it cool.

Finally, I couldn't be patient any longer. I used my sleeve to raise the container. I brought it close to my lips, blew on it, then gulped the warm, bitter water. My parched mouth absorbed it before I could swallow. I reached greedily outside and packed it with more snow. The lingering heat in the metal reduced the snow to water without my needing to set the container near the fire. Again, I gulped it. Again, the water never got near my throat. I refilled the container, placed it near the fire, and put a few more sticks on the flames.

That became my pattern. When my mouth and throat were moist enough, I pulled a plastic bag of peanuts and raisins from my knapsack, chewing each mouthful thoroughly, making them last. Worrying about Jason, hating Petey, I stared at the fire.

19

I vaguely remember going out to clear a drift from the smoke hole and to find more fuel. Otherwise, everything blurred. A couple of times when I woke, the flames had died out. On those occasions, all that kept me from freezing to death was the heat that the boulders had absorbed.

When I noticed that the pressure bandage around my left forearm was completely pink from the bleeding under it, I didn't react with dismay-the arm seemed to belong to someone else. Even when I saw sunlight beyond the branches and drifts at the entrance to my shelter, I felt oddly apart from it. Eventually, I discovered that an entire day had passed, but while I was trapped in the shelter, time hardly moved.

Probably I'd have lain in a stupor until energy totally failed me, if it hadn't been for water dripping through the roof. The cold drops struck my eyelids, shocking me. The sunlight was painfully bright. I moved my head. The drops fell into my mouth, tasting vaguely of turpentine from the resin on the pine branches. I gagged and spat the water out, sitting up to reach a dry spot.

More drops splashed around me, raising smoke from the almost-dead fire. Coughing, I grabbed my knapsack and stumbled outside, kneeing through the branches and drifts at the entrance. The heat of the sun was luxurious. Snow fell from trees. Rivulets started to form. Standing in the melting snow, my feet and shins became wet again, but it was a different kind of wet, the sun warming me, so that I didn't shiver. From the sun's angle in the east, I judged that the time was midmorning. As much as my body didn't want to move, I knew that if I didn't take advantage of the improved weather, I might never have another chance.

I took a long look back at the shelter. It was loose and flimsy, as if a child had put it together, and yet I'd never been prouder of anything I'd designed.

I started down. Light reflecting off the snow lanced my eyes. By the time the sun was directly overhead, much of the snow had melted, the ground turning to mud as I crossed the first meadow. Still, the road remained hidden, and with little to guide me, all I could do was keep heading downward, aiming toward breaks in the trees where the road possibly went through them.

I don't remember reaching Highway 9, or collapsing there, or being found by a passing motorist. Apparently, that was at sunset. I woke up in a small medical clinic in a town called Frisco.

By then, a state trooper had been summoned. He leaned over the bed and wanted to know what had happened to me. I later found out that it took him twenty minutes to get a coherent account from me. I kept screaming for Jason, as if my son was within arm's reach and I could help him.

The doctor stitched my left forearm. He disinfected and bandaged my hands, which he was worried might have frostbite.

The state trooper returned from talking on the phone. "Mr. Denning, the Denver police sent a patrol car to your house. The lights were off. No one answered the doorbell. When they aimed a flashlight through a garage window, they saw your Ford Expedition."

"In the garage? That doesn't make sense. Why would Petey have gone back to the house?" The awful implication hit me. "Jesus."

I tried to scramble out of bed. It took both the doctor and the state trooper to stop me.

"The officers broke a window and entered your house. They searched it thoroughly. It's deserted. Mr. Denning, do you have any other vehicles?"

"What difference does…" My head pounded. "My wife has a Volvo."

"It isn't in the garage."

That didn't make sense, either. "The bastard must have taken it. Why? And where are my wife and son?" The increasingly troubled look on the trooper's face made me realize that he hadn't told me everything.

"The master bedroom and your son's room had been ransacked," the trooper said.

"What?"

"Drawers had been pulled out, clothes scattered. It looked to the Denver officers as if somebody tore through those bedrooms in an awful hurry."

I screamed.