“Both of us, yes. But I stayed on for a few extra days.”

“Oh, Mel told me about that. There was a murder, wasn’t there?”

“Unfortunately. It was very sad.”

“You should talk to Mel’s uncle.”

“Oh?”

“There’s something very weird in his life.”

“I’m not much of an expert on weird things,” I said, hoping to avoid being drawn into a family problem. “Do you live around here?”

She switched easily to talking about her home and her family, and after a moment, her husband joined in on my other side. They had suggestions on landscaping that I took note of. One of the things Jack and I wanted to do was increase the greenery on our property. Eventually it was time for dessert and coffee, for moving to chairs and sofas in the family and living rooms, for talking to other people and enjoying their conversation.

The afternoon passed so quickly, I was surprised to find it was after three and the first guests were getting their coats. I looked around to see whether Jack was ready to leave. Weekends are mainly for studying now that he goes to law school at night, but he seemed happily engaged talking to Rachel and her husband.

“Mrs. Brooks?”

I turned to see a tall, good-looking man about fifty standing next to me with a drink in his hand. His dark hair was newly graying, his eyes soft and gray-green, warm and easy. He was wearing a sporty shirt that struck me as expensive, the kind of appraisal I don’t often make. “I’m Chris,” I said. “Christine Bennett Brooks. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“I’m Sandy Gordon, part of Melanie’s diverse, unmanageable family.”

“Are you the diverse part or the unmanageable?” I asked, amused at the characterization.

“Probably both. Can we talk?”

“Sure.”

He led the way to the dining room, where the table, still covered with most of the dishes of the feast, was empty of people. Sandy Gordon pulled out a chair for me at what had been the head of the table, and he sat along the side so we faced each other.

“Mel’s told me a lot about you.”

“We’ve been neighbors for a year and a half and friends for most of that time.”

“I was talking to your husband earlier. He sounds smarter than most of the cops I’ve met.”

It’s one of the things that makes me bristle. “Jack isn’t the only smart person in the police department. They have a tough job, and sometimes the best they can do is follow the rules and procedures and not act as smart as they really are.”

He raised his hands as though to ward off a blow. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean anything insulting. I like your husband. I admire anyone who goes back to school when he has a full-time job and the usual responsibilities of life. I need your help, Chris. You may not think it to look at me, but I am a desperate man with a problem that no one has been able to solve, and believe me, I have tried to solve it.”

People’s lives are full of unsolvable problems. You don’t need to be religious to know that. Trouble hits all people equally, from what I’ve seen. And I feel for someone who has suffered misfortune. “Of course I’ll help you if I can,” I said.

At that moment my idea of what his problem might be was so far from the reality I was about to hear that we were almost in separate worlds. I imagined something to do with the church, with a convent, with a person having religious difficulty. So when he started to explain, when the impact of his profound calamity struck me, I hardly knew what to say.

“I was married two years ago. It wasn’t my first marriage, but it was everything I ever dreamed of. She was younger than I, a dozen years or so, it doesn’t matter, very beautiful, a little crazy, a little wild, very loving, very happy to be with me. We did a lot of things together. She would come into the city in the evening and we’d have dinner together, go to the theater, listen to music. I don’t travel much in my business, but when I did, she came with me. In the winter we skied, in the summer we hiked in the mountains. We were happy and well suited to one another.

“I had told her before we married that I didn’t want any children. I have two from my first marriage and I was already well into my forties when I met Natalie. I didn’t want to start over at fifty with a baby who would graduate college after I was retired. But I changed. She was so young and energetic and full of life, I told her I wouldn’t mind. I said if she wanted a child, it was fine with me. It was her decision. Whatever happened, I would be happy.”

I started feeling uncomfortable, almost a little sick. I could hear tragedy in every word he spoke. Whatever was coming, I didn’t want to hear it and I knew I had to.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Like something to drink?”

“No. Go on.”

“I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.” He left the table and went to the kitchen, returning in a minute with a tall glass of orange juice.

I drank it thirstily. “Go on, please.”

“A year ago last November we made plans to go to the Caribbean for Christmas. I told Natalie to go out and buy herself some cruise clothes. She came home with the most gorgeous stuff I’ve ever seen, bathing suits and sandals and colorful dresses to wear for dinner and dancing. And she was so excited, like a little kid. She modeled them for me and she looked great in everything. I can’t describe to you how happy she was.

“We were invited here for Thanksgiving dinner. You probably know what a great cook Mel is, and for one reason or another, she hadn’t met Natalie yet. So when she invited us, we accepted. Dinner wasn’t till afternoon, of course, and we decided to go to the Macy’s parade first. We got up early, drove into the city, parked up near Columbia, and took a cab down to the Seventies, near where the parade starts. We stood on the west side of Central Park West, the side where the apartment houses are, and watched the bands and jugglers and floats and balloons come down the street.”

Now, as he spoke, the strangest thing happened to me. As if from the deepest part of my memory, I saw the parade. I was with my father, and we, too, stood on the street in front of a large apartment house, surrounded by throngs, adults and children, vendors selling food and balloons. How had I forgotten? How could I have let such a wonderful memory slip away into obscurity?

“We didn’t eat anything,” Sandy Gordon went on, oblivious of my own personal involvement in the day, “because we were eating later. But I remember seeing a balloon man come down the street with a whole bouquet of colored balloons, and as he passed us, I saw Natalie look after him. Then she said, ‘I’m going to get one.’ I told her I’d get one for her, but she was already on her way. The balloon man had turned the corner toward Columbus Avenue, and I just barely saw her turn the corner, too, and go after him.” He stopped and took a breath. “I never saw her again.”

I didn’t know what to say. As he had spoken I had seen the image of the beautiful young woman, and I could feel her vitality in his words. I sensed she had the kind of good looks that needed no makeup, the kind of personality that sparkled in an empty room. He had conveyed her essence to me so completely that I believed I could pick her out in a crowd.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It’s so hard to believe. What a terrible blow it must have been, what a horror.”

“Horror is the word. I suppose it took me several minutes to realize she should have come back. One of the parade balloons was going by, Babar, I think, and I was looking up at it and then I looked around and she wasn’t there and I got a little anxious. I pushed my way through the crowd to the comer and went around to Seventy-fourth Street. It was empty. There were no people, there was no balloon man, there was no Natalie. I looked around, I looked up and there was one lone balloon rising into the sky. I was scared to death. I called her, I ran toward Columbus Avenue, looking in doorways, crossed the street and came back, told myself to calm down, that I’d just missed her, maybe she’d crossed Seventy-fourth to buy her balloon and as she was coming back to me, I was looking for her. I went back to where I was pretty sure we’d been standing, but I didn’t find her. The long and short of it is, I never saw her again.”