Red Leaves

need to take your computer.' He paused, then added significantly, 'At least, for now.'

The police left a few minutes later, just as Keith was coming down the drive on his bike. He pulled over to the side, got off the bike, and watched the cars go by.

'What did the cops want this time?' he asked as he came into the house.

'They searched your room,' I told him. 'They took a few things.' I handed him the inventory.

He scanned the list with surprising lack of interest until suddenly his eyes widened. 'My computer?' he cried. 'They have no right—'

'Yes, they do,' I interrupted. 'They can take anything they want.'

He looked at the inventory again, but now with a sense of helplessness. 'My computer,' he muttered. He slapped the paper against the side of his leg. 'Shit.'

Meredith had been standing silently a few feet away, observing Keith no less intently than I was. Now, she stepped forward. 'Keith, it's going to be okay.' Her tone of sympathy surprised me, as if she somehow understood his fear, knew what it was like to be threatened with exposure. 'It really is.'

Now it seemed up to me to state the hard facts of the case. 'Keith?' I asked, 'is there anything on that computer? Anything ... bad?'

He looked at me sourly. 'No.'

'Have you been in touch with Amy?'

'In touch?'

'E-mail.'

'No,' Keith said.

'Because if you have, they'll find that out,' I warned.

He laughed almost derisively. 'They would already know that, Dad,' he scoffed. 'They took the computer from Mr. Giordano's house, remember?'

I realized that Keith could only have known that the police had taken a computer from Amy's house if he'd actually been following news reports of the investigation. That the police had taken the Giordanos' computer had been mentioned on the evening news the night of her disappearance, and appeared only once in print, a brief notation in the local paper. From the beginning, he'd feigned indifference, even boredom, with the police. But clearly he had been keeping an eye on what they were doing.

'I asked you a question,' I said sharply.

'That's all you ever do,' Keith shot back. 'Ask me questions.' His eyes glittered angrily. 'Why don't you just get to the one question you really want to ask. Go ahead, Dad. Ask me.'

My lips jerked into an angry frown. 'Don't start that, Keith.'

'Ask the question,' Keith repeated insistently, offering it as a challenge. 'We all know what it is.' He laughed bitterly. 'All right, I'll ask it.' He cocked his head to the right, and switched to a low, exaggeratedly masculine, voice. 'So, Keith, did you kidnap Amy Giordano?'

'Stop it,' I said.

He continued in the same mock fatherly tone. 'Did you take her someplace and fuck her?'

'That's enough,' I said. 'Go to your room.'

He didn't move, save for his fingers, which instantly crushed the inventory 'No, Dad, not until I ask the last question.'

'Keith...'

He cocked his head back and pretended to suck on an imaginary pipe. 'So, my boy, did you kill Amy Giordano?'

'Shut up!' I shouted.

He stared at me brokenly, his tone now soft, almost mournful. 'You believed it from the very first, Dad.' With that, he turned away and walked slowly up the stairs.

I looked at Meredith, noticed that her eyes were glistening. 'Is he right, Eric?' she asked. 'Did you believe it from the beginning?'

'No, I didn't,' I told her. 'Why would I?'

She turned my question over in her mind, working it silently until she found the answer. 'Maybe because you don't like him,' she whispered. 'Oh, I know you love him. But maybe you don't like him. It's what people do in families, isn't it? They love people they don't like.'

I heard footsteps on the stairs, then the front door closed loudly.

'He's going for one of those walks, I guess,' I said.

Those walks—Peak's words soured in my mouth, sounding suspicious, vaguely ominous, as they had when I first heard them.

'He's just trying to deal with it the only way he can,' Meredith told me. 'Which is alone, I guess.'

Keith was already at the end of the walkway, moving swiftly, shoulders hunched head down, as if against a heavy wind.

'We'll never be normal again,' Meredith said quietly.

It was a dark pronouncement, and I refused to accept it.

'Of course, we will,' I said. 'All of this will go away once Amy Giordano is found.'

She kept her eyes on Keith, watching intently as he mounted the small hill and moved on up toward the main road. 'We have to help him, Eric.'

'How?'

'Get someone for him to talk to.'

I thought of all my first family must have held secret, of its legacy of drink, unhappiness, and an old mans bitter cackle. Anything seemed better than that. 'What was the counselor's name?' I asked. 'The one at the college?'

Meredith smiled softly. 'Rodenberry,' she said. 'He'll be at the party tomorrow.'

FIFTEEN

Dr. Mays lived in an old sea-captain's house only a few blocks from the home in which I'd grown up and which had seemed happy to me, at least until Jenny's death. After that my mother had sunk into a deep gloom, while my father's financial losses grew more and more severe, so that within the year the house itself had gone on the block. But none of that dreary history returned to me as we swept past the old house that evening. Instead, it was my father's dismissive outburst that played upon my mind—You have no idea.

He'd said it as an accusation but adamantly refused to clarify what he meant. Perhaps, I thought, my father was merely grasping for attention, his undefined charge against my mother was only his way of asserting himself when faced by her hallowed memory. If this were true, he'd chosen a crude method of gaining ground. But he'd always been reckless with his words, prone to vicious insult, and so it was perfectly in character for him to lift himself by bringing my mother down. And yet, for all that, I couldn't help wondering what he'd meant in saying that my mother hadn't been devoted to him. I'd seen nothing but devotion—patient and abiding. She had overlooked all his faults, stood by his side as his little empire shrank and finally disappeared. She had defended him no matter how outrageous his actions or negligent his fatherhood. How could it be that through all those years I'd had no idea of her?

'We'll just act normal,' Meredith said as I pulled the car up in front of Dr. Mays's house.

I offered a quick smile. 'We are normal,' I reminded her. 'We don't have to act.'

She seemed hardly to hear me. Her gaze was fixed on the house, the guests she could see milling about inside, her expression intense and oddly searching, like a woman on a widow's walk, peering out into the empty sea, hoping for the first fluttering glimpse of her husband's returning ship.

'What is it, Meredith?' I asked.

She turned toward me abruptly, as if I'd caught her unawares. 'I just hope he's here,' she said. 'Stuart.' She