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away my apology, and I motioned for him to follow me into the kitchen.
    When I was five, we moved into the house next door to Drew’s family. Mom told me that the secret to making friends was to act as if you were having the time of your life. I rode my bike up and down the street, singing as loud as I could, convinced that I could lure the neighbor kids with my siren song of fun. After about an hour, all I had to show for it was a broken bike chain. While I was trying to fix the dislodged chain, six-year-old Drew appeared with what I thought was a small metal screw.
    “It’s a bike chain tool,” he said matter-of-factly. He deftly pushed out the pin, snapped the two sides of the chain apart, and reconnected them, pushing the pin back into place while loosening the new connection.
    “How do you know how to do that?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “I fix all my own stuff, mostly ’cause I break so much, my dad won’t fix anything for me anymore.”
    Drew’s parents were older, and they passed away when Drew was in his early twenties, two years apart from each other. Mr. Elliot went first from a heart attack, and Drew claimed his mom died of a broken heart. They left him with a sizable inheritance, and since Drew was a bona fide genius, he quit his job to be a day trader. He saw the dot-com bubble about to burst and sold everything he had in 1999. In five years, he made enough to keep him afloat for the rest of his life.
    With his newfound free time, he learned photography. He specialized in capturing images of the poor and indigent. Ironically, he recently sold a print collection for a few hundred thousand dollars. With that sale, he made a name for himself in the art world and has since fought off potential buyers with a stick.
    The kids adored Drew. He was loud and raucous and everything that Greg and I were not. Next to Greg and my children, I loved Drew more than anyone else in my life.
    “How long are you staying?” I asked. I needed a buffer between the girls and me, someone to absorb the silence and fill the spaces between my words, which were becoming few and very far between. Drew would fill the silent house with noise and laughter and voices again. I had to think to remember the last time I had seen him. A month ago? I wasn’t sure, but it had been a little while. While not seeing each other wasn’t unusual, we generally didn’t go more than a week without catching up on the phone. I felt another pang of guilt for not returning his call last week.
    “As long as you need me to.”
    Hannah whooped. “Leah! Uncle Drew is here and is staying with us forever !” She ran down the hall, her feet slapping the tile, the most animation we’d had in the house in days.
    “See? Now you have to stay. Hannah said it, so it’s unmitigated fact.” I grinned.
    “What’s going on, Claire?” he asked, ignoring my attempt at levity. I filled him in on the facts as I knew them over a cup of coffee. He shook his head. “It’s just not like Greg. I mean, I know what the police say, but do you think Greg left?”
    “No, I don’t. If it was just me, maybe. But even that seems weird and out of character. We weren’t great, but we weren’t bad. We had a great day together three days before his trip. Even if he could leave me, which I still doubt, Greg loved those girls. He wouldn’t just pick up and leave them. He’s not heartless. He’d miss them like crazy, and never mind the part where that leaves them fatherless. That would break his heart.”
    Drew nodded. “Greg is a rules guy. Not me. I don’t buy into the nine-to-five job. I don’t own a house because I don’t want to be nailed down. I don’t want a mortgage or even a long lease. Greg isn’t like that. He does what’s expected of him, what needs to be done.” He sighed. “I’m not saying this right. I know guys. I know guys like Greg. They make mistakes, sure, but they always do the right thing. There’s an underlying sense of responsibility. Does