Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Like so many determined and energetic people, she was immune to satire. “What would we do in their place?” she asked in turn. “In their place, with poverty and disaster? That is one thing. But on a camping trip in the West?”

“Sometimes extraordinary things find us in ordinary places.”

“That was what I said! I said something terrible must have happened. That’s why I believe he must be dead.”

“Other things can happen,” Michael began. “People have been known to—”

“No, no, you don’t understand. Let me tell you...”

“I’m sorry. It’s been good talking to you, but I really must be going.” Even to himself, Michael found his voice unconvincing. “I’ve got this meeting.”

“Not now, surely,” she said, imperturbably, relentlessly. “This is the hour for cafes, for aperitifs, for reflection. Especially for reflection. I see you are the sort of man who reflects, who remembers. As soon as I mentioned the lake and the aspens, I saw that you were a man who remembers.”

Michael laughed and gathered his forces. “You made me think about camping in the mid-seventies. Evenings in a sleeping bag, listening to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and the Stones.”

“Yes,” she said eagerly, “all that wonderful music. All that loud, wonderful music. Generation-breaking music, but not for us. Mark and I grew up together. Was that an advantage or a disadvantage, do you think?”

Michael shrugged. “My parents were older than average. Quite a bit older.”

“I had Mark when I was eighteen. So, you see, I understood him. I understood his generation. The wanting to get away, to experience life, to see the world. Our town was small. The button factory and the cloth mill were still running then. ‘Make something of yourself or you’ll end up in the mill,’ that was what I was told as a girl. And then the sixties came and the new electronics plaint and the real-estate businesses and it wasn’t as hard for a woman to earn a living anymore.”

“And Mark’s father? What did he do?” Michael asked abruptly, although it was rude, although it would surely delay his departure.

“That’s what Mark always wanted to know.”

“He didn’t know?”

“It was irrelevant, completely irrelevant.”

“Perhaps not to him,” Michael protested.

“Mark’s father was like me, young and foolish. But he didn’t have any staying power, and so he became irrelevant.”

“Boys need a man in their lives.”

“Of course, you had a father. A conventional life. But Mark had his grandfather. My parents were very kind. I had a wonderful life when Mark was small. I had a part-time job with the local travel agent. Twenty-five hours a week. The rest of the time I took care of Mark. We went fishing and on picnics along the river; we went to the swings in the little town park. We never missed the children’s matinee at the movie theater or the special programs at the library. That was the happiest time of my life.”

“Then he grew up,” Michael said. “He got too old for the park and picnics and being perfect.”

She took a sip of her mineral water and ignored the implications. “It was an adjustment when he went to school. Though I had to work, so I was away part of the time anyway. And then he did so well, no one could say I hadn’t done a good job with him. No one. He started the trumpet in elementary school, then played with the high-school band. Do you play an instrument?”

“As a child.” He remembered the shiny, flaring brass mouth, the padded valves, the amazing amount of slimy fluid distilled from puffing out the notes of the “Triumphal March.”

She smiled. “And sports. Baseball, of course. That was the big sport in our town. We had an adult team as well. And he insisted on playing football, although he was too light. That was the only thing we ever argued about. I went to all his games, and I suffered through every one of them until his junior’ year. Junior year, he broke his right leg in a game. I remember that awful sound, that terrible, unmistakable crack. I was in the stands and the sound went right through my heart.”

She put her hand to the base of her throat. Her hands were strong and capable, Michael noticed, but spotted with age and beginning to wrinkle.

“After that, I said ‘no more,’ though I think he played sometimes with the boys after school. I think he did.”

“But he was off the team?” Michael asked.

“The leg didn’t heal quite right. It was shattered. A bad, bad break. And the local hospital wasn’t the greatest — I still regret I didn’t insist he be taken to Providence or Hartford. But he was in such pain, and I was scared to death. Do you have children?”

Michael shook his head. “I haven’t been married long. We’re hoping.”

“You will know when you have children. The fear, the regrets. It left him with a slight limp. Most of the time it was undetectable, but when he was tired, you noticed.”