We talked about everything but the past. I see that a lot in my line of work. It didn't trouble me much. Now, in hindsight, I wondered, but back then it had added, I don't know, an air of mystery maybe. And more than that bear with me again it was as though there were no life before us. No love, no partners, no past, born the day we met.

Yeah, I know.

Melissa sat next to my father. I saw them both in profile. The resemblance was strong. I favored my mother. Melissa's husband, Ralph, circled the buffet table. He was middle-manager America, a man of shortsleeve dress shirts over wife-beater T's, a good oP boy with a firm handshake, shined shoes, slicked hair, limited intelligence. He never loosened his tie, not exactly uptight but comfortable only when things are in their proper place.

I have nothing in common with Ralph, but to be fair, I really don't know him very well. They live in Seattle and almost never come back. Still, I can't help but remember when Melissa was going through her wild stage, sneaking around with local bad boy Jimmy McCarthy. What a gleam in her eye there had been back then. How spontaneous and outrageously, even inappropriately, funny she could be. I don't know what happened, what changed her, what had scared her so. People claim that it was just maturity. I don't think that's the full story. I think there was something more.

Melissa we'd always called her Mel signaled me with her eyes. We slid into the den. I reached into my pocket and touched the photograph of Ken.

"Ralph and I are leaving in the morning," she told me.

"Fast," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I shook my head.

"We have children. Ralph has work."

"Right," I said. "Nice of you to show up at all."

Her eyes went wide. "That's a horrible thing to say."

It was. I looked behind me. Ralph sat with Dad and Lou Parley, downing a particularly messy sloppy joe, the cole slaw nestling in the corner of his lips. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. But I couldn't. Mel was the oldest of us, three years older than Ken, five years my senior. When Julie was found dead, she ran away. That was the only way to put it. She upped with her new husband and baby and moved across the country. Most of the time I understood, but I still felt the anger of what I perceived as abandonment.

I thought again about the picture of Ken in my pocket and made a sudden decision. "I want to show you something."

I thought I saw Melissa wince, as if bracing for a blow, but that might have been projection. Her hair was pure

Suzy Homemaker, what with the suburban-blond frost and bouncy shoulder-length probably just the way Ralph liked it. It looked wrong to me, out of place on her.

We moved a little farther away until we were near the door leading to the garage. I looked back. I could still see my father and Ralph and Lou Parley.

I opened the door. Mel looked at me curiously but she followed. We stepped onto the cement of the chilly garage. The place was done up in Early American Fire Hazard. Rusted paint cans, moldy cardboard boxes, baseball bats, old wicker, tread less tires all strewn about as though there'd been an explosion. There were oil stains on the floor, and the dust made it all drab and faded gray and hard to breathe. A rope still hung from the ceiling. I remembered when my father had cleared out some space, attached a tennis ball to that rope so I could practice my baseball swing. I couldn't believe it was still there.

Melissa kept her eyes on me.

I wasn't sure how to do this.

"Sheila and I were going through Mom's things yesterday," I began.

Her eyes narrowed a little. I was about to start explaining, how we had sifted through her drawers and looked at the laminated birth announcements and that old program from when Mom played Mame in the Little Livingston production and how Sheila and I bathed ourselves in the old pictures remember the one with King Hussein, Mel? but none of that passed my lips.

Without saying another word, I reached into my pocket, plucked out the photograph, and held it up in front of her face.

It didn't take long. Melissa turned away as if the photo could scald her. She gulped a few deep breaths and stepped back. I moved toward her, but she held up a hand, halting me. When she looked up again, her face was a total blank. No surprise anymore. No anguish or joy either. Nothing.

I held it up again. This time she didn't blink.

"It's Ken," I said stupidly.

"I can see that, Will."

"That's the sum total of your reaction?"

"How would you like me to react?"

"He's alive. Mom knew it. She had this picture."

Silence.

"Mel?"

"He's alive," she said. "I heard you."

Her response or lack thereof left me speechless.

"Is there anything else?" Melissa asked.

"What… that's all you have to say?"

"What else is there to say, Will?"

"Oh, right, I forgot. You have to get back to Seattle."

"Yes."

She stepped away from me.

The anger resurfaced. "Tell me something, Mel. Did running away help?"

"I didn't run away."

"Bullshit," I said.

"Ralph got a job out there."

"Right."

"How dare you judge me?"

I flashed back to when the three of us played Marco Polo for hours in the motel pool near Cape Cod. I flashed back to the time Tony Bonoza spread rumors about Mel, how Ken's face had turned red when he'd heard, how he'd taken Bonoza on, even though he'd given up two years and twenty pounds.

"Ken is alive," I said again.

Her voice was a plea. "And what do you want me to do about it?"

"You act like it doesn't matter."

"I'm not sure it does."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Ken's not a part of our lives anymore."

"Speak for yourself."

"Fine, Will. He's not a part of my life anymore."

"He's your brother."

"Ken made his choices."

"And now what? he's dead to you?"

"Wouldn't it be better if he were?" She shook her head and closed her eyes. I waited. "Maybe I did run away, Will. But so did you. We had a choice. Our brother was either dead or a brutal killer. Either way, yes, he's dead to me."

I held up the picture again. "He doesn't have to be guilty, you know."

Melissa looked at me, and suddenly she was the older sister again. "Come on, Will. You know better."

"He defended us. When we were kids. He looked out for us. He loved us."

"And I loved him. But I also saw him for what he was. He was drawn to violence, Will. You know that. Yes, he stuck up for us. But don't you think part of that was because he enjoyed it? You know he was mixed up in something bad when he died."

"That doesn't make him a killer."

Melissa closed her eyes again. I could see her mining for some inner strength. "For crying out loud, Will, what was he doing that night?"

Our eyes met and held. I said nothing. A sudden chill blew across my heart.

"Forget the murder, okay? What was Ken doing having sex with Julie Miller?"

Her words penetrated me, blossomed in my chest, big and cold. I couldn't breathe. My voice, when I finally found it, was tinny, faraway. "We'd been broken up for over a year."

"You telling me you were over her?"

"I… she was free. He was free. There was no reason "

"He betrayed you, Will. Face it already. At the very least, he slept with the woman you loved. What kind of brother does that?"

"We broke up," I said, floundering. "I held no claim to her."

"You loved her."

"That has nothing to do with it."

She wouldn't take her eyes off mine. "Now who's running away?"

I stumbled back and half collapsed onto the cement stairs. My face dropped into my hands. I put myself together a piece at a time. It took a while. "He's still our brother."

"So what do you want to do? Find him? Hand him over to the police? Help him keep hiding? What?"