saw nothing but a dull determination to endure the next few minutes, then slink back to the dark burrow of his room.
'So, I hear the cops came by,' Leo began. His tone was light, almost chatty. He might have been asking Keith about a favorite movie. 'They stay long?'
Keith shook his head.
'Good,' Leo said. 'They're not much fun to have around, are they?'
Again, Keith shook his head.
Leo flung one hand over the back of the sofa and with the other unbuttoned his jacket with a great show of casualness. 'What'd they want to know?'
'About Amy,' Keith said with a halfhearted shrug.
Leo's next question was carried on the back of a slight yawn. 'What'd you tell them?'
'That I put her to bed at around eight-thirty.'
'And that was the last time you saw her?'
'Yes.'
'When did you leave Amy's house?'
'When her parents came home.'
'And that would be?'
'Around ten.'
Leo leaned forward with a soft grunt and leisurely massaged his ankle. 'Then what?'
For the next few minutes, I listened as my son told Leo the same story he'd told the police—that he'd gone into the village, wandered the streets, lingered awhile at the ball field, then walked home. As he spoke, I let myself believe that he might actually be telling the truth, that perhaps I was wrong and hadn't really heard a car stop on the road that night, watched its lights sweep through the undergrowth, then draw away. I'd seen other parents find ways to deny the horrible possibility that their son or daughter might have done a terrible thing. In the past, the way they'd demonstrated such blind faith in their child's innocence had amazed me. But suddenly, when Leo turned to me and said, 'Were you awake when Keith came home?' I knew that I was now one of those parents, willing to do or say or believe anything that would hold back the grim tide of doubt.
'Yes, I was awake,' I answered.
'So you saw Keith when he came home?'
'Yes.'
'When did you see him?'
'I heard him come down the driveway,' I said.
Mercifully the next question—
Leo smiled at me appreciatively. 'Good,' he said, as if I were a schoolboy who'd spelled the word correctly. He turned to Keith. 'I'll keep track of the investigation for you.' He leaned over and patted my son's knee. 'Don't worry about a thing.' He started to rise, then stopped and lowered himself back down on the sofa. 'One other thing,' he said, his eyes on Keith. 'Were you ever over around the water tower?'
I saw a dark sparkle in my son's eyes.
'Water tower?' Keith asked.
'The town water tower, you know where it is, don't you?' Leo said. 'About a mile outside town.'
'I know where it is,' Keith answered warily, as if it were a guilty knowledge.
'So, were you ever over that way?'
Keith shook his head. 'No,' he said.
With no further word, Leo got abruptly to his feet again. 'Well, I'll keep you all informed as this thing goes forward,' he said. He turned and walked to the door. 'Well, have a nice day.'
Meredith stepped forward quickly. 'I'll walk you to your car, Leo,' she said.
Seconds later I was alone in the living room, Keith upstairs, Meredith and Leo strolling down the walkway toward his impressive black Mercedes.
Briefly, I sat on the sofa, but anxiety soon overtook me, and I rose and walked to the front window. Meredith and Leo were standing beside his car, Leo nodding in that worldly way of his as he listened to Meredith. She seemed more animated than she'd been since Amy Giordano's disappearance, her hands fluttering about as if she were trying to catch an invisible butterfly. Then Leo said something, and her hands stopped their edgy flight, froze for a moment, and finally dropped to her sides like weights.
She listened as Leo spoke in what appeared to be slow, deliberate terms, her gaze fixed on him with great intensity until she abruptly glanced toward the house, the window where I stood, and in response to which, I stepped quickly out of view, like a peeper unexpectedly caught in the act.
I'd returned to the sofa by the time she came back into the house.
'Well, how do you think it went?' I asked.
She sat down beside me, calmer now, and less angry than before. 'We'll get through this, won't we, Eric?' she asked.
'What?'
'No matter what happens, we'll get through it.'
'Why wouldn't we?'
She appeared at a loss for an answer but said finally, 'Because of the strain, the pressure. Sometimes families break.'
'Or come together,' I said. 'Like those covered wagons when the Indians attack.'
Her smile was ghostly faint. 'Like covered wagons, yes,' was all she said.
I went back to the shop a few minutes later, hoping that Leo Brock was right, that there was nothing to worry about.
'Everything okay?' Neil asked.
'Well, we have a lawyer now,' I answered.
Neil received this in the way I'd offered it, as an indication that in some unknowable way things had grown more serious.
'If there's anything I can do,' he said.
I'd always thought Neil a somewhat inconsequential man, not because he was clownishly gay and effeminate, but because he was so excessively emotional, easily moved by tearjerker movies. But now that very excess struck me as sweet and genuine, an empathy that lay deep within him, like the marrow of his bones. And it struck me then that trouble was like a turn of a lens, a shift that brings everything into sharper focus. Suddenly, you see who cares and who doesn't, the genuinely kind and those who only fake their kindness.
'I just think that good people shouldn't, you know, have bad things happen to them,' Neil added. 'People like you and Meredith. Mr. and Mrs. Giordano. Innocent people. Like Amy.'
'Yes.'
'And Keith,' Neil added.
I felt a catch, as if a stream deep inside me, one that had always been open and freely flowing toward my son, had abruptly narrowed.
'Yes, Keith,' I said.
Neil caught something in my eyes. 'I just hope Keith has someone to talk to,' he said, then edged away and pointedly busied himself with unpacking a box of camera cases.
I walked behind the framing counter and went to work. Several orders had come in during the previous afternoon. Neil had written them up on slips that gave the precise size and number of the frame required for each photograph. As usual, they were family pictures, save for one of a golden retriever as it loped along the shoreline. In one, a family was gathered on the steps of a small rented cottage, the father at the rear, tanned and shirtless, his arms draped over his wife's shoulders, two children seated on the wooden steps. In another, a much larger family was sprawled around a campsite, dappled sunlight falling through the overhanging limbs. Some were in bathing suits, and the teenage daughter's blond hair hung in wet curls as she dried it with a towel.
