Saving Elijah

husband's impenetrable logic, though it didn't persuade me.
    "I do have one question though," he said. "Why in the world were you involved with a guy like that?"
    "Because I was stupid and young and needy. Here's my question to you. Then you don't believe me?"
    "I know I love you." He put his arms around me. "I think that's good enough," I said.

    *    *    *

    When the Westport Library opened that morning, we were on the doorstep. It took a two-hour search on microfiche before we finally found a 1961 front-page story with the headline: AMERICAN AIRLINES PLANE CRASHES IN KANSAS CORNFIELD, 54 DEAD.
    American Airlines flight 9960, we learned, had left Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport at 7:30 a.m. that morning, bound for Los Angeles, with two stops scheduled. The plane developed unspecified mechanical difficulties after a stop in Chicago and crashed near Kansas City. On impact, the fuselage split into one small piece and one large one. Everyone not in the first few rows was killed in a conflagration, burned beyond recognition; eight passengers had survived. The story concluded with a list of the dead and the survivors, along with their ages and places of residence. Seth Lucien wasn't on either list, but among the survivors was one Andrew Cantrell, age ten, and Ronald Cantrell, age thirty-four. Wanda Cantrell, age thirty-two, was listed among the dead. Hometown, Greenwich, Connecticut.
    Around noon we parked under the portico of a stately colonial house in the estate section of back-country Greenwich. The young woman who answered the door, holding it half open, was pretty and slim, elegantly but casually dressed in slacks and a sweater.
    "We're sorry to bother you," Sam said. "I'm Sam Galligan, and this is my wife, Dinah. We're looking for someone named Andrew Cantrell."
    The woman opened the door enough for me to see that she wasn't so young after all, in fact she was older than me, maybe in her late forties. Probably she owed the appearance of youth to health spas, constant exercise, and the ministrations of an excellent surgeon.
    "My husband was his father. Ronald. He died last year, I'm afraid. I'm Mrs. Cantrell. Virginia."
    "I'm sorry," Sam said. "Do you know where Andrew is?"
    "Why?" She frowned. "Is he wanted by the police?"
    "Why do you ask that?"
    "If you have to ask, you've never met him."
    "Do you have a picture of him?"
    She gave a little snort. "Not in this house. I'm sorry I can't help."
    She started to close the door; Sam put a warning hand on my arm. "Please, Mrs. Cantrell. Can't you tell us anything about him? You might prevent a tragedy."
    She cast a dubious eye. "What kind of a tragedy?"
    "We think Andrew Cantrell may be stalking my wife." Sam glanced at me, and I smiled, full of admiration for his quick thinking.
    "Stalking? Why don't you go to the police?"
    "It's very complicated," Sam said. "And if we're right, he's very dangerous."
    She looked back and forth, from my face to Sam's, sighed. "All right, if you put it that way, I suppose I could tell you what I know about him. It isn't much."
    She opened the door, led us into the house through a very large foyer and an even larger formal dining room, then into a small sunroom just beyond it. Open windows almost floor to ceiling on three sides gave it an expansive view of a formal English garden complete with manicured hedges, set around a small gray weathered statue of Pan.
    "This is my favorite room in the house."
    "I can understand why," I said. It was open and airy, full of greenery, wicker, and chintz. She sat down in a rocker and motioned for us to sit on the wicker sofa.
    "Drew was gone before I arrived on the scene," she began. "That was more than twenty years ago. My husband hadn't ever said why he kicked him out, but eventually I learned that when Drew was seventeen he'd been accused of rape. The girl didn't press charges, and Drew insisted she'd wanted it, you know the old story, but his father believed Drew had forced her into it. He sent him to college, anyway, but then—"
    "What college?" I asked.
    She shrugged. "I don't really know, some small college, in Virginia, maybe. He dropped out before the end of his freshman year. Lived in Washington, D.C., for a while, I think." She crossed her legs and sat back, lit a cigarette from a pack of Virginia Slims on the glass-and-wicker coffee table next to the rocker.
    "Forgive and forget, that's what I was always taught," she continued. "So after Ron and I got back from our honeymoon, I