It was the similarity in those two scenes that struck me now, one that went beyond the stark choreography of two teenage boys tired and bedraggled, walking down a hallway, standing rigidly before the closed doors of their rooms. There was a similarity of mood, tone, a sense that these two boys were laboring under similar pressures, both of which had to do, I realized suddenly, with the fate of a little girl.
My anxiety spiked abruptly. I drew myself from the bed, walked out into the corridor, then down the stairs to the unlit kitchen, where I sat in the darkness and thought each scene through again and again, trying to locate some reason beyond the obvious one as to why they so insistently bore down upon me.
It came to me slowly, like the building light of dawn, darkness giving way to gray, then to steadily brightening light. The real similarity was not between the two scenes, but between my brother and my son, the fact, hard though it was for me to admit, that in some sense I thought of both of them as losers in life's cruel lottery, locked in failure and disappointment, members of that despised legion of middle-aged drunks and teenage geeks whose one true power, I thought, must be their unheralded capacity to control their own consuming rage.
He took her hand and led her inside.
Warrens words suddenly called another scene into my mind, Keith summoned by the Giordanos to babysit this daughter they so completely loved. Amy Giordano. Raven-haired, with flawless skin, smart, inquisitive, her future impossibly bright and radiant, destined to be one of life's winners.
Keith's words tore through my brain in a sudden, chilling snarl—Princess Perfect.
In my mind I saw Keith take Amy's hand and lead her inside the house. Could it be, I wondered, that her beauty and giftedness worked on him like an incitement, everything about her an affront, her shining qualities always in his face, goading him from the general sluggishness that would have otherwise stayed his hand.
My own stark whisper broke the air. "Could he have hated her?"
I felt another anxious spike, walked out into the yard, and peered up into the nightbound sky where, in the past, I'd sometimes found comfort in the sheer beauty of the stars. But now each glint of light only reminded me of the mysterious headlights of the car I'd seen that night. Now I imagined a mysterious figure behind the wheel, Keith on the passenger side, then I added a frightful third image, a little girl crouched naked on the floorboard, tied and gagged, whimpering softly if still alive, and, if not, stiff and silent, my son's unlaced tennis shoes pressed against her pale, unmoving face.
ELEVEN
It was a horrible vision, a fear for which I had no real evidence, and yet I couldn't rid myself of it. All through the night, I thought of nothing but that car, the ghostly driver, my son, all of it tied to the fact that Amy Giordano was incontestably missing and my growing suspicions that Keith had lied to me and to others for no reason I could figure out.
I alone knew about the car, of course, but by morning I also knew that it wasn't a knowledge I could keep to myself anymore. And so, just after Keith trooped down the stairs, mounted his bike, and headed off to school, I broke the news to Meredith.
"I think Keith may be hiding something," I blurted.
Meredith had already put on her jacket and was headed for the door. She froze and immediately faced me.
"He said he walked home that night, but I'm not sure he did."
"What makes you think he didn't?"
"I saw a car pull into the driveway up by the road," I said. "Then, just a few seconds later, Keith came walking down the drive."
"So you think someone brought him home that night?"
"I don't know," I answered. "Maybe."
"Did you see who the driver was?"
"No," I answered. "The car didn't pull all the way down the driveway."
"So you couldn't tell if Keith got out of that car?"
"No."
"Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe I was afraid to—"
"Confront it?"
"Yes," I admitted.
She thought for a moment, then said, "We can't say anything about this, Eric. Not to the police or Leo. Not even to Keith."
"But what if he lied, Meredith?" I asked. "That's the worst thing he could have done. I told him that when I saw him in town the day the police were here. Before I brought him back. I told him that he had to tell the truth. If he didn't, then he has to..."
"No," Meredith repeated sternly, like a captain taking charge of a dangerously floundering vessel. "He can't take anything back. Or add anything. If he does, they'll keep at him. More and more questions. He'll have to lie again and again."
I heard it like distant thunder, dark and threatening, inexorably closing in. "Lie about what?"
She seemed to struggle for an appropriate answer, then gave up. "About that night."
"That night?" I asked. "You think he knows something about—?"
"Of course not, Eric," Meredith snapped. Her voice was strained and unconvincing, so that I wondered if, like me, she'd begun to entertain the worst possible suspicion.
"The problem, Eric," she added, "is that if they find out he lied, there'll be more questions. About him. About us."
"Us?"
"About why we covered it up."
"We're not covering anything up," I said.
"Yes, we are," Meredith said. "You've known about that car from the first night."
"Yes," I admitted, "But it's not as if I was trying to cover up something Keith did. Like hiding a bloody hammer, something like that. It was just a car. Keith might not even have been in it."
Meredith glared at me, exasperated. "Eric, you sat in our living room and listened to two cops question our son. You heard his answers, and you knew that one of them might have been a lie, but you didn't say anything." Her eyes flamed. "It's too late to take any of this back, Eric." She shook her head. "It's too late to take anything back."
For a moment I couldn't tell exactly what she was talking about, what, among perhaps scores of things, could not be taken back.
"All right," I said. "I won't say anything."
"Good," Meredith said. Then, with no further word, she whirled around, opened the door, and fled toward the car, the heels of her shoes popping like pistol shots on the hard brick walk.
Despite Meredith's conclusion that we couldn't say anything about the car I'd seen pull into our driveway that night, I thought of calling Leo Brock and telling him about it. But I never did. Meredith would no doubt argue that it was because I knew Leo would be irritated that I'd withheld something from him and I didn't want to confront that irritation.
But the reason is simpler even than that. The fact is, by midmorning I'd entered an irrational state of hope that it might all simply go away. This hope was based on nothing, and because of that I've come to believe that we are little more than machines designed to create hope in the face of doom. We hope for peace as the bombs explode around us. We hope the tumor will not grow and that our prayers will not dissolve into the empty space into which we lift them. We hope that love will not fade and that our children will turn out all right. As our car skids over the granite cliff, we hope, as we fall, that a cushion will receive us. And at the end, the last fibers of our hope throb for painless death and glorious resurrection.