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I pulled in, and by the time I parked my car in the garage and got out, he’d lowered the tailgate and picked up the first box. “Where would you like me to put these?”
    My plan was to put the things in the back of our storage shed with my Christmas stuff. But there was no need to further inconvenience Ray Brooks, so I said, “Let’s just put them on the back porch. I’ll take it from there.” I stepped toward the truck. “I’ll help you unload.” It didn’t take long before we were finished and Ray Brooks had waved good-bye.
    Three boxes. Just three boxes. The sum total of my son’s life possessions. The hope for a future now tempered my despair at the past, and I decided right then and there that after these boxes were emptied, I would save them. In a few years I would bring them out and say something like, “Kurt, remember when every one of your possessions fit in these three boxes? Now, look how far you’ve come.” I pictured him graduating from college, getting a nice job, maybe even working with troubled youth in his extra time. He would be exactly the role model those kids needed. Someone who had been there, had gone through the darkness and managed to dig his way out to the light again. I smiled with my dreams as I moved the boxes into the storage shed.
    In fact, I was still smiling when I started dinner a half hour later. The doorbell rang, and it seemed to chime in harmony with the tune I’d started humming. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but unexpected visits were both common and welcomed around here. I opened the door, wondering which of the neighborhood kids was selling coffee or candy or wrapping paper this week. Instead, I found Detective Thompson.
    “Sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Stewart, but I’m still trying to get a line on Kurt. No one on the streets seems to have seen him for a while.”
    I looked at him with smug satisfaction. I knew exactly what he was thinking—that my son’s absence was perhaps a sign of his guilt, like maybe he had killed and then left town. It was time to put an end to all of this. “You would be right about that. No one on the street has seen him in a while because my son is in a residential rehab. He has been for several weeks now.”
    He looked surprised by this, then nodded and smiled. “Good for him. I’ve met Kurt on a few occasions, never did think he was a bad kid, just mixed up in the wrong things.”
    “Well, now he is getting unmixed.” I lifted my chin just a little.
    He pulled a pen and paper from his pocket and scribbled some sort of note using the palm of his left hand as a desk. “Which rehab is he in?”
    It was just a simple question, which should have had an easy answer. Except that I had no answer to give. “I don’t know.”
    He looked up from his writing at this. “Don’t know?”
    I ran my hand along the doorframe. “It’s in Orange County somewhere, but that’s as much as I know. He called me to tell me what he was doing, but before I had time to get the name of the place or the phone number, he had to get off the phone. I haven’t heard from him since.” I’m no policewoman, but it doesn’t take a trained investigator to realize that this might sound like a mother trying to cover for her son. But that’s not what this was. I was telling the truth and I wanted him to know it. “He should be calling back soon.”
    He rubbed the back of his neck and leaned his head from side to side. “Mrs. Stewart, I don’t want to be the one to squash your joy here—really I don’t—but you’re the one who told me you couldn’t afford to be blindsided.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Maybe your son is in rehab and getting all better and life will soon be wonderful. For your sake and Kurt’s, I sure hope that’s the case. It’s just that I’ve seen a little too much of the other side of this world not to consider a couple of uglier possibilities.”
    “Such as?”
    “Maybe he’s lying to you about being in rehab, thinking