Red Leaves

SIX

I like the night.

Odd how sinister a simple remark can sound, the questions it can suddenly raise.

In what way, I wondered, did my son like the night? Did he like it because it brought him a certain peace? Or did he like it simply because it meant the end of another tedious day at school or at home? Or did he like it because it shielded him from view, because, clothed in its darkness, he could skulk about unnoticed, hidden beneath the hood of the blue parka? Did he like it like a saint in search of solitude or like a stalker in search of cover?

It didn't matter really. What mattered was that my son had gotten through it, so that it might end here, a hope I fully embraced as I walked the two detectives to their car.

Kraus got in behind the wheel, but Peak remained standing at the passenger door. He wore a dark green suit, and in the slant of bright sunlight that washed over him, he looked like a thick shrub.

"Mr. Moore," he said, "what is your experience with your son?"

"Experience?" I asked.

"In your exchanges, I mean. Day to day."

"I still don't quite..."

"Has he been truthful?" Peak asked.

Suddenly, I thought of the two beams of light sweeping across the ragged undergrowth and recalled that only moments before, Keith had said that he had not been driven home the night before.Was that true? I wondered now. But despite that jarring vision and its accompanying doubt, I said, "As far as I know, he's always told me the truth."

Peak watched me closely. "About everything?"

"Well, I'm sure he's told a few little lies to me over the years," I said. "He's a kid, that's all. A little enclosed, but—" The look in Peak's eyes stopped me in my tracks. "But normal," I added quickly. "A teenager, that's all."

"Yes, of course," Peak said.

He tried to appear perfectly satisfied by my answer, but I knew he wasn't. "Well, thank you," he said. "We'll call if we need anything further."

With that he settled into the passenger seat and the car pulled away.

Meredith was washing the detectives' coffee cups when I returned to the house, her movements strangely frantic, almost violent, like someone trying to erase an incriminating stain.

"Well, that was easier than I expected," I told her.

"They'll be back," Meredith said.

Her certainty surprised me. "Why are you so sure of that?"

She had been facing the sink, her back to me, but now she whirled around. "Because something always comes up, Eric." There was a fire in her eyes, a sense that she was talking about more than Keith's connection, whatever it might be, to Amy Giordano's disappearance.

"What do you mean?"

"To spoil things"—her expression took on an indecipherable combination of anger and sadness, like someone mourning a death by freak accident—"when things were so perfect."

"Nothing is spoiled," I said in a gentle, comforting tone, pleased that our life had seemed so perfect to her until now. "Meredith, we don't even know what happened to Amy yet."

She glanced away, settled her gaze briefly on the woods outside the window, two small birds in a hanging feeder. "I just feel this terrible sinking," she said softly.

I came over to her and drew her into my arms. Her body was stiff and brittle, a bundle of sticks. "Nothing is sinking," I assured her.

She shook her head. "I'm just afraid, that's all. Afraid that it's all going to ... explode."

With that, she stepped out of my embrace and made her way up the stairs. I made no effort to follow her. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. Under stress, Meredith preferred being alone, at least in brief intervals. There was something about solitude that calmed her, and so I left her to herself, walked out into the yard, sat beside the brick grill, and tried to reason through my impulsive decision to say nothing to the police or even to Keith about my oddly building suspicion that he'd lied to them. Even then, I wasn't sure why I'd done it, save that I'd found no way to address the matter without either drawing Keith deeper into suspicion or grilling him myself, an action I wanted to delay as long as possible in the hope that Amy would suddenly turn up safe and sound, and so there would be no need for me to confront Keith at all. It was an illusion that couldn't be justified, or even maintained for very long, and I should have known that at the time. Since then I've learned that half of life is denial, that even in those we love, it's not what we see but what we choose to be blind to that sustains us.

I was still sitting in the same place when Warren's car made the lazy turn around the driveway and came to a halt in front of the house.

He got out and headed toward me, his gait far more determined than I'd ever seen it, an awkwardly charging bull.

"I just heard it on the radio," he said breathlessly when he reached me. "They're organizing a search. Volunteers. The whole town is gearing up for it." His face was red and appeared a bit puffy, the way it looked after he'd been drinking.

"So," he asked. "Are you okay?"

"I just hope Amy turns up," I said. "Because if she doesn't—"

"Don't think about that," Warren blurted.

This piece of advice did not surprise me. It was precisely the advice Warren had spent his life following. I recalled how he'd put my father's bankruptcy out of his mind, pretending that our precipitous fall into poverty had simply never happened. And so he'd obliviously urged me to hold to my plan to go to college, though there was no money for that. Years later, with my father now in a low-rent retirement home, he'd broached the subject of our starting a landscaping business. When I'd asked how he intended to come up with sufficient seed money, he'd replied, "Well, you know, when Pop goes," even though our father had long ago lost everything he had, everything he might have given us. Warren had reacted to Jenny's illness the same way, by simply refusing to face it. During the months of her dying, as she grew steadily weaker, losing one faculty after another to the growing tumor in her brain, Warren had talked on and on about a future she could not possibly have. "When Jenny gets a boyfriend," he'd say, or "When Jenny gets to high school." Only once, the afternoon of Jenny's death, when she lay mute and helpless, but nonetheless frantically trying to communicate, had he actually looked stricken by her circumstances. In my mind I could still see the way he'd stood at the door as she squirmed and sputtered, unable to speak, but seized with a raw determination to make some final statement. I'd leaned down and put my ear to her lips, heard nothing but her feverish breathing until even that had ended and she sank into a coma from which she never awakened.

Now Warren was with me once again in a time of trial, and once again he was refusing to admit the nature of the problem or how grave it might be or yet become.

"So," Warren said, "I just wanted to tell you that it's going to be okay, Bro."

There was no point in arguing with him, so I said simply, "The police have already been here. Keith told them that he never left Amy's house and that he walked home alone."

Warren plopped into a lawn chair opposite the grill and folded his hands over his belly. "The police had to talk to him," he said. "But they wouldn't think he had anything to do with something bad."

There it was again, mindless optimism, my brother's particular form of adaptation. He'd found a way to survive by taking in only the information that kept him afloat. In high school, he'd played the happy fat boy. In adulthood, the role of jovial alcoholic had fit like a glove. Now he was playing the steady family adviser, a role that clearly pleased him until I said, "They'll probably talk to you, too."

Warren smiled, but with a hint of nervousness. "Me? Why would they talk to me? I'm not involved."

"Of course you are, Warren."

The faint smile now drooped. "How?"

"You drove Keith to Amy's house," I explained.

"So?"

"I'm just telling you that they know about it," I said. "They asked for your address. They have to talk to everybody, Warren. Anyone who had any contact with Amy in the hours before she disappeared."

Warren said nothing, but his mind was clearly working hard.

"Did you have any contact with her?" I asked evenly.

"I wouldn't call it ... contact."

"Did you see her?"

Warren didn't answer, but I knew from the look in his eyes that he had.

"Where was she?" I asked.

Warren's face grew very still. "She was in the yard when I let Keith out in front of the house. Playing. She came up to the car."

I leaned forward. "Listen to me," I said. "This is serious business. So I'll tell you what I told Keith. When the cops come to you, when they ask you questions, think before you answer. And tell the truth."

Warren nodded gently, obediently, like a child receiving grave instructions.

"Did you talk to Amy?" I asked.

Warren shook his head.

"Not even a quick hi?"

"I don't know," Warren said.

"Think, Warren."

He shrugged. "Maybe something like that, like what you said. You know, a quick hi."

"Nothing else?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Warren answered.

I could see that he was worried now, but I also knew that this worry wouldn't last, his momentary fretfulness precisely that—momentary. Or so I thought. But to my surprise the veil of trouble didn't lift from my brother's face.

"Do you think they suspect me?" he asked.

"Why would they suspect you?"

Warren shrugged. "I don't know," he said weakly. "Maybe they just do."

I shook my head. "They have no reason to suspect you, Warren," I assured him.

But the pained expression remained on his face, an expression that reminded me of the look on Meredith's face, and on Keith's, so that it seemed to me that trouble had fallen upon my family like a net, leaving all our faces webbed in gray. "Everybody's a little worried at the moment"—I placed my hand on his shoulder and gave it a brotherly squeeze—"but it's nothing," I said, "compared to what Vince and Karen must be going through. A missing daughter, can you imagine?"

Warren nodded. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Such an adorable little girl."