U Is for Undertow

with heavy jowls or a double chin. As he aged, his face would shrink away from his skull, but it would otherwise retain its boyish cast.
    On the phone I hadn’t specified the reason for the meeting. I felt badly about it now because he suspected nothing, which made him all the more vulnerable. Though I didn’t understand the psychological dynamic, I sensed that after the destruction he’d brought down on his family, he’d moved from villainy to victimhood. By rights, the family should have been the ones to lay claim to all the suffering. Instead the burden was his.
    There was a bench situated at the halfway point between us. As he approached from the narrow parking strip, I crossed the grass and sat down, placing the folder beside me, saying, “Hi, Michael. I appreciate your meeting me.”
    He sat down. “I was going into town anyway, so it was easy enough to swing by. How are you?”
    “Not bad,” I said. “How’s Madaline?”
    “Good. I’m on my way to pick her up, as a matter of fact.”
    “Good? I heard she was arrested for public drunkenness.”
    “She was, but the judge said he’d give her probation if she promised to straighten up her act.”
    “I see. And what does that consist of?”
    “AA meetings twice a week. She doesn’t have a car so I take her over and pick her up afterward.”
    “Has it occurred to you she’s taking advantage of you?”
    “This is just until she gets back on her feet. She’s trying to find a job, but there’s not a lot available here in her field.”
    “Which is what?”
    “She’s a model.”
    “And in the meantime, you provide meals, housing, transportation, bail money, and Goldie’s dog food, right?”
    “She’d do the same for me.”
    “I’m not convinced of that, but let’s hope.”
    His smile faded. “You don’t seem happy with me. What’s wrong?”
    “I don’t even know where to start,” I said. I blew out a big breath, marshaling my thoughts. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a nice way of putting it. “Yesterday Ryan and Diana came to the office. She brought in a scrapbook that included memorabilia from your sixth-birthday party.”
    “Memorabilia?”
    “Yeah. You know, snapshots, ticket stubs, stuff like that.”
    “Ticket stubs. What are you talking about?”
    “July 21, you were all at Disneyland. Your mom and dad, Ryan, David, Diana, and you.”
    I watched the animation draining out of his face. “That can’t be right.”
    “That was my first response.”
    “She’s making things up, trying to get me in trouble.”
    I indicated the folder on the bench. “She made copies of the photographs. You can see for yourself.”
    “She’s wrong. She has to be.”
    “I don’t think so. She’s a reporter. She may be irritating, but she knows how to write a story and she knows she better get her facts straight. Take a look.”
    “I don’t need to look. I was at Billie’s house. My mother dropped me off.”
    “The Kirkendalls were gone by then. Billie’s dad stole a shitload of money. You said so yourself. He knew the police were closing in on him so he took his family and fled. The house was empty.”
    “You think I lied?”
    “I think you made a mistake.”
    “I saw the pirates that day. The two of them were digging a hole. It could have happened before we left for Disneyland.”
    “The timing is off. Whatever you saw, it must have been the week before. And as Diana so aptly pointed out, if you saw the guys on July 14 instead of July 21, it couldn’t have been Mary Claire’s body wrapped for burial. She wasn’t kidnapped until five days later.”
    He stared off at the sky, rocking his body on the bench. It was the self-comforting motion of a kid whose mother’s an hour late picking him up from nursery school. He was almost beyond hope.
    “Look, Michael. No one’s faulting you,” I said.
    When dealing with someone else’s emotional distress, it’s best to gloss over the enormity of the disaster. It doesn’t change reality, but it makes the moment easier . . . for the onlooker, at any rate.
    “Are you kidding? She must have had a good laugh at my expense. Ryan, too. They were always in cahoots.”
    Shit. Now he’d turned it into a conspiracy. I kept my mouth shut. I’d already offered as much comfort as I could muster.
    “What about Lieutenant Phillips? Does he know?”
    I glanced away from him, which told him what he’d already guessed.
    “She told him, too?”
    “Michael, don’t do this. Yes, she told him.