Red Leaves

'Run away? To where?'

'Anywhere, I guess.'

Meaning, anywhere as long as it was away from me, from Meredith, from the burden of our family life.

'When was he going to do it?' I asked icily.

'As soon as he got enough money, I suppose.' Peak leaned back and raked the side of his face.

'Unless this whole thing about Keith stealing isn't true,' I said quickly. 'Have you thought of that? Maybe Price is lying. Maybe Keith never took anything.'

'Maybe,' Peak said. 'Why don't you ask him?'

He was setting me up, and I knew it. He was setting me up to do his work for him, interrogate my son.

'What have you asked him, Mr. Moore?' Peak said. 'Have you asked him directly if he hurt Amy Giordano?'

He saw the answer in my eyes.

'Have you asked him anything about that night?'

'Of course, I have.'

'What?'

'Well, for one thing, I asked him if he had any reason to think that Amy might have run away,' I said. 'Or if he'd seen anything suspicious around her house. A prowler, something like that.'

'And he said no, right?'

I nodded.

'And you believed him, of course,' Peak said. 'Any father would.' He leaned toward me slightly. 'But Keith's not exactly who you think he is,' he said gravely.

It was all I could do not to sneer. 'Yeah, well,' I said, 'who is?'

NINETEEN

Yeah, well, who is?

I had never said anything so disturbing, and for the rest of the morning, as it echoed in my mind, I recalled similar sentiments I'd heard of late: Meredith's Because people lie, Eric; Warren's Everybody's fake. That I would remember such painful statements didn't strike me as particularly unusual. What was incontestably alarming was that this time I'd made such a statement myself. Why? I couldn't find an answer. All I knew was that each time I tried to think it through, examine the tortuous changes I could feel in myself, I returned to a single gnawing memory. Again and again, like a loop of film continually unfolding the same image, I saw Jenny that last time, mute, dying, her eyes full of a terrible urgency as she pressed her lips to my ear. Clearly she had been struggling against all odds to tell me something. In the years since her death I'd imagined it as some great truth she'd glimpsed on the precipice of death. But now, I wondered if that urgent communication might have been no more than some similarly dreary truth: Don't trust anyone or anything—ever.

I thought of Keith, the way I'd found him smoking sullenly near the playground, then of the things Peak had told me, that he had 'a father-son thing' with Delmot Price and that he was a thief and planned to run away. All of this had come as a complete surprise, facts, if they were facts, which I couldn't have guessed, and which, if true, pointed to the single unavoidable truth that I did not know my son.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a boiling wave of anger washed over me, anger at myself. What kind of father was I, really, if Keith had found it necessary to find another man, confide in him, reveal his most secret plans?

I had always felt terribly superior to my own father, far more involved with my son than he had ever been with any of his children. Even during Jenny's last days he'd made overnight business trips to Boston and New York, assigning Warren to stay at her bedside, see her through the night, a job my brother had made no effort to avoid, save on that last night, as I recalled now, when he'd emerged from Jenny's room looking old and haggard, a boy who, from his pale, stricken appearance on that gloomy morning, looked as if he'd seen the worst of things.

But now I wondered if, in fact, I was any better at fatherhood than my own father had been. When was the last time I'd actually talked with my son? Sure, we chatted over dinner, exchanged hasty asides as we passed each other in the hallway. But that was not real talk. Real talk bore the weight of hopes and dreams, tore away facades, and let each face shine in revealing light. Real talk was about life, the way we try to get through it, make the best of it, what we learn along the way. This kind of talk Keith had saved for Delmot Price, the man he'd gone to because he could not come to me, and who, if I were to begin to get a handle on my son before it was too late, I knew I would have to seek out, too.

Delmot Price wasn't hard to find, and the moment he saw me come through the door of his flower shop, he looked like a man who'd suddenly found himself in the crosshairs of a rifle scope.

He'd been wrapping a dozen long-stem red roses as I came into the shop. I stood off to the side and waited while he completed the task, took payment, and with a quick smile, thanked the woman whose roses they were.

During that time, I noted how gracefully he moved, his white hair gleaming in the overhead light, his long fingers folding the silver foil just so, tying the gold ribbon with a perfect knot. His fingers moved like dancers in a flowing and oddly beautiful choreography. There was no room for the slightest misstep, they had that kind of precision. And so it was obvious that in Keith, Price had not found a boy who was like himself, the way an English teacher might find a student with the same literary aspirations the teacher had once known as a youth. But instead, Delmot Price had found his opposite in Keith, a graceless, slovenly boy with tangled hair and a sullen smirk, a boy he'd befriended not out of admiration but because he pitied my son, felt sorry for how awkward and isolated and utterly directionless he was, how in need, as Price must have supposed, of a father.

He came toward me like a man wending his way out of a perfumed garden, weaving through swollen buds and broad-petaled flowers.

'Mr. Moore,' he said. He started to offer his hand, then stopped, unsure if I'd take it.

And so I offered mine.

'I don't mean to intrude,' I said.

He nodded, stepped to the door, turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and ushered me to the rear of the shop where we stood discreedy hidden behind a wall of ferns.

'The police talked to me,' he said. 'I suppose you know that.'

'Yes.'

'Just so you know, I don't believe Keith had anything to do with the disappearance of that little girl.'

'I don't, either,' I said, then realized that in part this was a lie, and so, I added, 'but he's done troubling things. He stole from you.'

Price nodded softly.

'Why does he want to run away?' I asked.

Price hesitated, like a doctor just asked how long a precious relative actually has to live. 'He's not happy, Mr. Moore.'

'Can you be more specific?'

I could see him working toward an answer, searching through a lifetime of words, images, experiences, looking for just the right one.

'Let me put it this way,' Price said at last. 'I have a greenhouse at my home, and most of the time, when I order a particular seed, it comes just the way it's supposed to. If I order a rose, I get a rose. But once in a while, I get something I didn't order, maybe don't even like. Geranium, something like that. I plant the seed, hoping for a rose, and up comes a geranium. At that point, I have to change the plan. I can't feed it and water it like I would if it were the rose I'd hoped for. I have to say, Okay, it's a geranium. It'll never be a rose. But at least I can raise it to be a healthy geranium. See what I mean? I have to adjust, because I didn't get what I ordered.'

'Keith thinks I want a different son?' I asked.

'No,' Price said. 'He knows you do.'

'Okay, but what good would running away do?' I asked.

'None, probably,' Price said. 'Which is what I told him. 'No matter where you go,' I said, 'it goes with