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

“Athletic injuries are so common now,” Michael said. “My right knee isn’t all it might be.” He was aware of a strange, tactile memory, not in his mind so much as in his shoulders: the weight of pads, the last of the old-fashioned leather pads, and the shock of impact, the springy force of bone and muscle and leather.

“Oh yes,” she agreed. He could feel how much she wanted to agree with him. “And contemporary lives have certain parallels, certain points in common. Like you and Mark. The same age, the same desire to ‘see the world.’ Music as a child, too, and sports? Did you play sports, too?”

“Soccer,” Michael said too quickly. “And a little tennis.”

“Tennis, too,” she said with a smile. Her smiles were beginning to make him uneasy. She seemed to be finding some sort of confirmation from him, and Michael told himself that he was crazy to be trapped in a cafe by this stranger.

“It’s getting late,” he said, looking at his watch. “I really do have a meeting.”

The old buildings were turning from sienna to a deep, shadowy umber, and the waiters were putting down the umbrellas. The sky had shifted imperceptibly from blue to pink, and her sunglasses reflected an amber and purple void.

“Of course,” she said, “of course you must keep your appointment.”

There was a hint of condescension in her voice, and Michael said, “It might not have been the way you remember. It might not have been that way at all.”

“But you know nothing about it,” she said.

“He never knew his father,” Michael said. “You told me that. What boy wouldn’t be unhappy? And in a small town...”

“Where everyone knows everything? Is that what you think?”

“Children are cruel.”

“And adults, too. We are not an attractive species, are we? You think he was miserable, that he ran away, that for twenty years, twenty years! he left his mother wondering what had happened to him. Is that what you think?”

“I don’t...”

“He wrote me every week,” she said triumphantly. “Or called. Called more than wrote. Collect. My phone bills were huge. Hi, Mom, he’d say. I’m in Cleveland or Denver or Mesa. Wherever. I was going to fly to San Francisco and meet him there in two weeks. To celebrate his cross-country trip. Does that sound like alienated youth? I got the records from the phone company and showed them to the police. Week after week, he called. Then new friends, the campsite up in the aspens with the lake and the lead-colored mountains, and he was never heard from again. What do you think?”

“His story might be different,” Michael said. “He might have wanted to know—”

“Secrets?” she asked. Her well-shaped hands had rather long nails. Rather long; he had not noticed that. And though the light was almost gone, she still had not removed her glasses. Michael turned slightly. Three of the waiters were back by their station. One was smoking, the other two were starting to wipe up the tables and put away the chairs.

“What do we owe children?” she asked. “Love, care, a decent life. Do we owe them our history? Yes? Even if it is a terrible one?”

“It isn’t for me to say. It was for your son.”

“But he’s been dead for twenty years. You must answer for him.”

Michael felt his chest tighten. He’d developed a touch of asthma after he turned thirty; it acted up under stress or in smoky places. “I would want to know,” he said. “He would be a grown man and he’d want to know.”

“But now Mark would have a secret, too,” she said. “As you must. By thirty-six, one has had time to accumulate follies and secrets. Isn’t that right?”

“But you believe your son is dead.”

“Mark has one of two secrets: the secret of his death or the secret of his disappearance.” She leaned forward in her chair, and for the first time, Michael caught a glimpse of her eyes, light, lighter than his own, intent, pained, and cruel. He understood that she was not pathetic but dangerous. “I propose a swap,” she said.

“I can see you were always manipulative,” he said before he could stop himself. “Trading off one thing for another. Trading silence for a ‘nice’ life, for money, for protection.”

“For my son’s happiness,” she replied quickly. “For a way to live. I was eighteen years old. No, I lied, I was barely seventeen when he was born, and scared to death. At seventeen, he was on a cross-country trip to ‘find himself,’ but at that age I was faced with supporting an infant and myself with all my hopes and dreams ended.”

“You should have thought of that before you got into bed.”

“Do you suppose that’s what he thought?” she asked. “I would be happy if he had, but I think he had other fears. You would understand that. I can see you have imagination. I can see you have an appreciation of what is not ordinary.”

“Things happen,” Michael said. A little breeze sprang up out of the arcades and chilled his damp chest.