Sliver Of Truth

I scanned through the rest of his pages. There were articles about the flu shot, Gulf War syndrome and depleted uranium, the dangers of website cookies, SARS, reality television, and a hackers hall of fame (using screen names only, of course). According to Grant, pretty much everything that is remotely disturbing about the world can be traced back to the “evil empire,” the United States federal government. He had an infectious writing style, and by the time I’d finished scanning the site, I was starting to agree with him.

I got up from my computer and walked over to the window to think. Something was bothering me. I know: Take your pick, right? I headed back into my office and sifted through some papers on my desk until I found a small pink notebook where I log in telephone messages. I flipped through the pages and found where I’d written down Myra Lyall’s name, number, date, and time of her calls. Jenna told me that Myra had put her article to bed over a month ago. The last call was just over two and a half weeks ago, a couple of days before she and her husband disappeared, according to Dylan Grace. If she hadn’t called me about the article she was writing on Project Rescue victims, then what?

EVEN THOUGH MAX had been dead for years, his apartment still sat untouched as he’d left it. My father refused to sell it, though the monthly maintenance was ridiculous. After Max’s death we both used to visit it like some people visit a grave, to remember, to feel close.

I used to go to Max’s place after he died to smell his clothes. I’d stand in his closet. It was a giant affair, bigger than my bedroom at home. With beautiful wood cabinets and a granite-topped island containing drawers for socks, underwear, and jewelry, it looked more like the designer men’s department at Barneys than anyone’s closet. I’d walk among the long rows of silk and wool gabardine, touch my fingers to the fabric, and breathe in the scent of those suits. I could smell him there-not just the trace remains of his cologne still clinging to the suit jackets, but something else. Something uniquely Max. It hurt me and comforted me simultaneously, the rainbow of silk ties, the neatly arranged boxes of shoes, the orderly parade of shirts in muted colors-white, gray, blue-one hundred percent cotton only, no starch. Anything else irritated the skin on his neck.

“It’s just stuff,” Zack, my ex-boyfriend and would-be murderer, used to say when I’d go up there. “It has no meaning now that he’s gone.” He couldn’t understand why I’d fall asleep on the couch among the million pictures of our family, feel safe and connected to a happier past when everyone was together.

Of course, that was before, when the loss of him was a hollow through the middle of me that I thought would never fill again. That was before I knew he was my father.

As I walked through the doors that midmorning, after my conversation with Jenna, it wasn’t to comfort myself with memory. There was no comfort to be had there any longer. My sadness for Max had waxed and gone cold. Now in my heart there was only anger and so many unanswered questions. Sadness was a place I couldn’t afford; it buckled the knees and weakened resolve. And I had a sense that I’d been a puddle of myself for too long. It was making me soft.

I suspected anything that might have offered some clue as to who Max had been-who he’d really been-was long gone. I’d discovered over a year ago that the lawyers had taken all his files and date books (which he kept like journals), and his computer. Valuables like watches and jewelry, and all other personal effects, had gone to my father and mother. So I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly. I just started opening drawers and cupboards, sifting through old books, looking behind photographs.

But the drawers and file cabinets were empty. There were no secret safes in the floor or behind pictures. Everything was just as it had been when he was alive, in perfect order…except that it was all dead. Void of the energy of a life being lived, of vital paperwork and important files. Gone.

Something I’d always noticed about Max while he was alive was his fastidiousness. His sock drawer, with each pair precisely folded in careful rows, organized by color, made me think about how he was always straightening-the pictures on the wall, the silverware on the table, the arrangements of objects on his desk or dresser. It used to drive my mother crazy, probably because she was equally particular. She seemed to think it was some kind of competition when he came to the house and rearranged the table she had set, fussing with the centerpiece or aligning the silverware even more precisely.