He sighed and shrugged. “Maybe screw-up is harsh. But we’re at wit’s end with him. He barely finished high school, he can’t hold a job and he keeps doing stupid things.”

“Were you aware that he’s gone?” Lauren asked. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but…”

“I know what you mean,” Ed Ponder said. “And you don’t sound rude. Yes, we know he’s gone. He lives here because he has no income. The Corzines came to us when they realized they were gone. So, yeah, we know.”

“Have you done anything about it?” I asked.

Tension pushed his shoulders up. “No.”

“Why not?”

He reached up and covered his wife’s hand, still resting on his shoulder, with his own. “He’s been in some trouble.”

I shifted on the couch. “What kind of trouble?”

“Minor stuff,” he said. “Some shoplifting. Vandalism. Stupid stuff. But it’s all added up. He’s on probation for another six months.”

“He’s never hurt anyone,” Marian added quickly. “It’s not like that.”

Ed Ponder’s mouth set itself in a firm line. “No, he hasn’t hurt anyone. Except himself.”

Marian looked away.

“So, you didn’t call the police because you didn’t want more trouble for him,” I said.

Ponder nodded. “Yeah. I honestly thought her parents…” He caught himself. “I thought they would call them. We asked them not to and they weren’t happy about that. So, I figured they would. But now it seems obvious why they haven’t.”

I was actually relieved that they hadn’t called the police. It allowed me to still make the decision about what to do. It felt like so long since I’d had any say in my daughter’s life and just having the opportunity to exert some influence made me feel like a quasi-parent again.

“Any idea where they went?” I asked.

“None,” he said, shaking his head. “He doesn’t have a ton of friends. He doesn’t do much except watch TV and spend time with the girl. Since he went on probation, he’s been home at nights. He doesn’t do much.”

“I went through his room,” Marian said. “I looked through everything. I looked in his email and on his computer. I couldn’t find anything.”

They were more worried about their son than they were letting on if they’d done all that. They just seemed like parents who were frustrated with their son’s behavior and didn’t know how to change it.

“Does he have a bank account?” I asked. “A cell phone?”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” Ed said. “We took it away. He’s allowed to borrow ours if he needs one, but he doesn’t have one that we know about.”

“What about the bank account?”

“He has one,” he said, slowly. “We deposit a little money into it each month. I’m not sure why. I think we convinced ourselves it might encourage him to get his own money to put into it.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you have access to it?”

He looked up at his wife. “Marian?”

“Yes, I can access it,” she said.

“Could you do that?” I asked. “Right now?”

“I don’t understand why,” she said. “And it’s his account. I don’t want to violate that. We’ve encouraged him to be more independent, more responsible. If I…”

“If we can access his account, we can see if he’s withdrawn any money,” Lauren said. “We can see if he’s made purchases. Where he might be.”

Marian closed her mouth, blinking rapidly.

Ed patted her hand. “Get the laptop. It’s okay.”

She exhaled, then disappeared down the hallway.

“My wife,” Ed said. “She wants to believe the best. That he’s going to change.” He shook his head. “But it ain’t gonna happen. He is who he is. And it’s time for us to stop protecting him.”

I appreciated his pragmatism about his own kid and I sympathized to a degree. If Elizabeth wasn’t involved, I would’ve been more inclined to ask more questions, find out more about the kid, where he was having trouble.

But at that moment, I was only concerned with the fact that Elizabeth had apparently taken on with a guy who seemed distinctly on the wrong track.

Marian reappeared with a laptop, the screen already lit up. She set it on the coffee table and knelt next to it.

“She does all of our banking,” Ed said, nodding at the computer. “His account is at our bank. We deposit two hundred a month in his account. No idea if, or how, he uses it.”

Marian tapped at the keys with two fingers, staring at the screen. She waited, then looked at me. “Are you going to call the police?”

“At some point, yes,” I said. “But if I can keep your son out of it, I will. I can’t promise, but if he hasn’t done anything wrong, I’ll make sure the authorities know that.”

This time, Ed put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It’ll be alright, Marian.”

She glanced down at the screen and I couldn’t read her expression.

“The account hasn’t been accessed for three weeks,” she said.

My stomach sank.

“The last time he took any money out was three weeks ago,” she repeated. “And it was here. At the grocery store. I remember. I sent him that day to get a few things.”

I leaned back in the couch. I felt like I’d gotten to take a look down a tunnel and now a boulder had just rolled in front of it, blocking my view.

“Did he keep money in his room?” Lauren asked. “Anything like that? They would need money.”

Ed shook his head. “We checked his room. We check it regularly and he knows that. He wouldn’t have kept anything there. And I don’t think he has that kind of discipline. To save money. He’s too hot to trot to go buy video games.”

Lauren looked at me, disheartened, disappointed. I was sure I looked the same way because I was feeling the same things.

“There might be something else,” Marian said, glancing at her husband, then moving her eyes away.

We all waited.

“About a year ago,” she said, her voice stuttering. “I gave him…I mean, I got him a credit card.”

“Jesus, Marian,” Ed said, closing his eyes.

“I know, I know,” she said, seemingly on the verge of tears. “You wanted to stop enabling him. And I have. But I was also trying to be logical. If we really want him to be independent, to be capable of moving out, he has to build credit. To rent an apartment. To do things on his own.” She looked at us, looking for approval. “I told him he had to pay it with his own money.”

“You mean the money we give him each month?” Ed said, frowning.

Her face reddened.

“The card,” I said. “Can you check the records on that?”

She tapped again at the keyboard. “I don’t know. It’s through our bank so I think I can.”

Ed leaned forward and I thought maybe he was angry with her. But he just patted her shoulder again, silently telling her he understood.

She bit her upper lip, then something flashed through her eyes. “He’s used it.”

I leaned forward with Lauren.

“Two days ago,” she said, her finger on the screen. “He stopped at a gas station in Iowa. It looks like he advanced cash off of it.” Her finger moved again. “Then yesterday. A hotel in Nebraska.” She looked at me. “That’s it.”

I pulled out my phone. “Name of the hotel?”

She recited it and I plugged it into the phone’s browser. Thirty seconds later, I was on the phone with a hotel staffer who informed me that Bryce Ponder had checked out that morning.

I stuck the phone back in my pocket. “They’ve already checked out.”

“Should I cancel the card?” Marian asked. “So he can’t use it?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “We want him to keep using it. To tell us where he is.” I hesitated. “How would you feel about giving me the account info? So I can continue to track them?”

She looked at her husband.

He looked at me. “I have your word that you’ll try to keep Bryce out of trouble?”

“Look, if he’s just driving the car,” I said. “If they decided to do this together for whatever reason and he’s just along for the ride? You have my word. If he hasn’t done anything wrong, I’ll do the best I can to make sure there’s no probation violation.”