Neither the Kramers nor Carolyn MacKenzie were going to cause him to lose it!

H ope is fading that Leesey Andrews will be found alive,” Dr. David Andrews read as the latest news report scrolled across the bottom of the television screen. He was sitting on the leather couch in the den of his son’s Park Avenue apartment. Unable to sleep, he had gone in there sometime in the predawn hours. He knew he must have dozed off at some point, because shortly after he heard Gregg leave to make his rounds at the hospital, he became aware that a blanket was tucked around him neatly.

Now, three hours later, he was still there, alternately dozing and watching television. I should get showered and dressed, he thought, but he was too weary to move. The clock on the mantelpiece showed that it was quarter of ten. I’m still in pajamas, he thought-that’s ridiculous. He looked up at the television screen. What had he just seen on it? I must have read it because the setting is on mute, he realized.

He groped for the remote control, which he remembered placing on the cushion so that he could adjust the volume in an instant if something came on about Leesey.

It’s Sunday, he thought. It’s been more than five days now. What do I feel right at this minute? Nothing. Not fear, nor grief, nor that murderous anger at whoever has taken her. Right now, at this minute, I just feel numb.

It won’t last.

Hope is fading, he thought. Is that what I just read in the news tape on the screen? Or did I make it up? Why does that sound familiar?

A mental image of his mother, playing the piano at family parties and everyone joining in the singing, burst into his mind. They loved the old vaudeville songs, he thought. One of them began with the words, “Darling I am growing old.”

Leesey won’t ever grow old. He closed his eyes against the tidal wave of pain. The emotional numbness was gone.

Darling, I am growing old…Silver threads among the gold…Shine upon my brow today…Life is fading fast away…

Hope is fading…Those were the words that made me think of that song.

“Dad, are you okay?”

David Andrews looked up and saw the concerned face of his son. “I didn’t hear you come in, Gregg.” He rubbed his eyes. “Did you know that life is fading fast away? Leesey’s life.” He stopped, tried again. “No, I’m wrong. It’s hope that’s fading that she’ll be found alive.”

Gregg Andrews crossed the room, sat next to his father, and put an arm around his shoulders. “My hope isn’t fading, Dad.”

“Isn’t it? Then you believe in miracles. Why not? I used to believe in them myself, too.”

“Keep believing in them, Dad.”

“Remember how your mother seemed to be doing so well, then overnight the picture changed and we lost her? That’s when I stopped believing in miracles.”

David shook his head, trying to clear it, and patted his son’s knee. “You’d better take good care of yourself for me. You’re all I have.” He stood up. “I feel as if I’m talking in my sleep. I’ll be okay, Gregg. I’m going to shower and dress and go home. I’m absolutely useless here. With your schedule at the hospital, you need downtime when you’re here, and at home I’ll be better able to keep a grip on myself, I hope. I’ll try to get back into some kind of routine while we’re waiting to see what develops.”

Gregg Andrews looked at his father with the clinical eye of a doctor, observing the deep circles under his eyes, the bleak expression in them, the way in these four days his trim frame suddenly seemed extremely thin. He hasn’t eaten a thing since he heard about Leesey, Gregg thought. In one way he wanted to object to his father leaving, in another he sensed that he’d be better off in Greenwich where he volunteered at the urgent care center three days a week and where he was among close friends.

“I understand, Dad,” he said. “And maybe you think you’ve given up hope, but I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me,” his father said simply.

Forty minutes later, showered and dressed, he was ready to leave. At the door of the apartment, the two men embraced. “Dad, you know you’ll have a dozen people wanting to have dinner with you. Go out to the club with some of them tonight,” Gregg urged.

“If not tonight, I will very soon.”

After his father left, the apartment felt empty. We’ve been trying to keep up appearances for each other’s sake, Gregg thought. I’d better take my own advice and stay busy. I’ll take a long run in Central Park, then try to nap. He had already planned to go back and forth between the Woodshed and Leesey’s apartment tonight at three A.M., the same time she had started to make that walk. Maybe I’ll find someone to talk to, someone the cops have missed, he thought. Detective Barrott had told him that plainclothes detectives were doing that every night, but the need to help in the search had been building to a fever pitch in Gregg.

While Dad was here I couldn’t do it, he thought. He’d have insisted on coming with me.

The day had started overcast, but when he went outside at eleven, the sun had broken through the clouds, and Gregg felt his own spirits lift a bit. Surely on a beautiful spring morning like this, his kid sister, funny, pretty Leesey, could not be gone. But if she wasn’t dead, then where was she? Let it be an emotional breakdown or a spell of amnesia, Gregg prayed, as he covered the three blocks to the park with long strides. There, he decided to head north and swing back around the Central Park Boathouse.

Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Let…us…find…her…Let…us…find…her…He prayed in cadence to the rhythm of the run.

An hour later, tired but somewhat less tense, he was walking back to his apartment when his cell phone rang. With conflicting emotions of hope and dread, he grabbed it from the pocket of his jacket, flipped it open, and saw that the call was from his father.

The words, “Hello, Dad,” died on his lips as he listened despairingly. He heard uncontrollable sobbing. Oh, God, he thought, they’ve found her body.

“Leesey,” David Andrews managed to say. “Gregg, it’s Leesey. She phoned!”

“She what?”

“She left a message on the answering machine less than ten minutes ago. I just walked in. I can’t believe it. I just missed her call.”

Again, Gregg Andrews heard his father’s sobs.

“Dad, what did she say? Where is she?”

The sobs suddenly stopped. “She said…that…she loves me but has to be by herself. She asked me to forgive her. She said…she said…that she’ll call again on Mother’s Day.”

I spent Saturday morning in Mack’s room in the Sutton Place apartment. I won’t say it had a Sunset Boulevard quality to it, but I do know that it no longer held any sense of his presence for me. After Mack had been missing a few days, Dad ransacked his desk, hoping to find some clue as to where he might have gone, but the only things he found were the usual trappings of a college student-notes for exams, postcards, blank personal stationery. One file contained a copy of Mack’s application to Duke Law School and his letter of acceptance from them. On it he had scrawled an exuberant “YES!”

But Dad didn’t find what he was looking for-Mack’s daily calendar-which might have given us a clue to any appointments he had made prior to his disappearance. Years ago, Mom had our housekeeper take down the banners Mack had tacked on the wall and the corkboard covered with group pictures of him and his friends. Everyone in those pictures had been questioned by the cops, and later by the private investigator.

The brown and beige coverlet, matching pillows, and contrasting window treatments were the same, as was the cocoa brown carpet.

There was still a picture of the four of us on top of the dresser. I found myself studying it and wondering if by now Mack had any strands of gray on his temples. It was hard to imagine. He’d had such a boyish face ten years ago. Now he was not only long past being a college student, was probably a suspect in absentia in more than one kidnapping and/or murder case.