Would you be willing to take a polygraph test? It is in this company – Susan Smith, the tearful infanticidal Florida couple – that I am being placed.

So I know. Asking me to take a polygraph test means that the bloody shirt… or maybe they’ve found something else in the house… makes them think I might be involved in the boys’ disappearance. And, of course, I also know that they’re wrong.

Before I can answer Shoffler, he does that traffic cop thing with his hand. “You’re not required to take the test,” the detective says. “It’s strictly voluntary – you understand that, right?”

“What?” Liz says. “What?”

I just stand there. Anger bubbles up in me. “I’ll take the test,” I say, “but it’s a waste of time. I don’t get it. There had to be hundreds of people who saw my kids at the fair. And Kevin called me, he called me from here. Your guy – Christiansen – he was in the car.”

Shoffler screws up his face, looks at the ceiling, as if he’s getting some kind of information from up there. Then he nods, makes up his mind about something. “Look,” he says, “the phone call? You say that was your kid – but no one else can confirm that. It could have been anyone. Even if the call did come from here.” It seems as if he’s going to say more, but he changes his mind and just shakes his head.

I know what he’s thinking though, and the word goes off in my mind like a cherry bomb: accomplice.

“It’s just like that shoe you spotted out by the fence,” Shoffler says. “You know? I’m not implying anything here, but the thing is – who spotted it?”

“What shoe?” Liz asks in a panicky voice. “There’s a shoe?”

“We found a child’s shoe at the fairgrounds,” Shoffler says. “According to your husband, it belongs to one of your boys.”

“Kevin,” I say. “One of Kevin’s Nikes.”

“You can understand why we’d like you to take a test,” Shoffler says in what I guess is meant to be a soothing voice, “because… the thing is, what we’ve got, it’s all…” He stops there, ending with a little shrug. He doesn’t say it, but I get the message. I could have put the shoe there, outside the jousting ring, then pointed it out to Shoffler. An accomplice could have made the phone call from this house to my cell phone. There’s been no ransom note, no telephone call. Shoffler himself said it: Why take two kids? It’s not like a bake sale. There’s no outside corroboration for my story. It all begins and ends with me.

“Somebody had to see us there,” I say. “I mean – it’s crazy. Thousands of people saw us.”

“Well, as for the fair visitors,” Shoffler says in a conciliatory tone, “I’m sure you’re right. For certain we got plenty of volunteers claiming to remember you.” He makes that clicking noise with his mouth. A regretful click. “But of course the thing’s been all over the tube. Most of the folks who have come forward weren’t even there during the right stretch of time. Now, I’m sure we’ll eventually find plenty of reliable witnesses who saw you and your sons and can confirm the time frame.” His hands shoot up in a what-can-I-do gesture. “But until we do, my advice is – take the test.”

“Of course I’ll take the test,” I say.

“Good,” the detective says. “I’ll schedule it.”

My parents and Jack have materialized in the hall behind the detective. “They told us to go to the kitchen,” my mother says.

“What’s this about a test?” Jack asks.

“They want Alex to take a polygraph,” Liz blurts out in a shaky voice.

“A lie detector test?” my father says to Shoffler. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Shoffler holds out his traffic cop hand. “It’s routine,” he says. “Exclusionary.”

“Like the fingerprints?” my mother puts in.

Shoffler nods.

My father squares his shoulders. “Look, Detective Shoffler,” he says, “be frank with me: Do we need a lawyer here?”

“This is all on a strictly voluntary basis,” Shoffler says. “If your son wants-”

“No,” I say, interrupting the detective. “Dad – Jesus! No lawyer – I don’t need a lawyer.”

“It’s not…” my father starts, “I don’t mean…” He shakes his head. I see that he’s holding my mother’s hand tight, their fingers intertwined, knuckles white. “It’s just, I don’t like this is all, Alex. I don’t like the way this is going.”

“I’ll set it up for the morning,” Shoffler says.

For a moment, the false accusation gets to me – to be accused of such a thing. I can write the sound bites myself, imagine the breathless but somber delivery:

“More developments in the case of the missing Callahan twins: Police found a blood-soaked T-shirt in the father’s house.”

“Police have requested that the father take a polygraph test.”

But my wounded outrage about being accused, the flare of sadness – these emotions persist for only a few seconds. They barely register against the despair that’s enveloped me since Shoffler displayed Kevin’s blood-drenched T-shirt. The one glimmer of hope came from a thought that in itself was so hideous I hate to admit to it: there was only one T-shirt, not two. Maybe two kids were too much trouble. And it was Kevin’s shoe, too. Maybe Sean…

I’m sinking.

It isn’t that consciously I’ve put much into believing that Shoffler and the authorities will track down whoever took my sons, will find Kevin and Sean and bring them home. Yet on some level I invested more in that idea than I realized. I put faith in the professionalism and energy of the authorities, in their manpower and resources, in helicopters, search grids, canine trackers, evidence technicians, and databases.

But if the request that I take a polygraph means – and what else can it mean? – they think I played some active role in my sons’ disappearance, then there’s no hope. The authorities are so far off the track that I may as well put my faith in the yellow ribbons neighbors have begun to string around the trees up and down Ordway Street.

The polygraph test is scheduled for this morning at eleven. Despite my innocence, I can’t help worrying. How can a machine designed to measure galvanic response (and I have only a vague idea what this is) distinguish kinds of stress? How can a mechanical device separate anxiety about telling deliberate lies from anxiety about taking the test, about being falsely accused, about the fate of my missing children?

Mostly, though, the test is a distraction – almost a welcome one – from the horror of the T-shirt. And although I don’t look forward to the walk to the car, especially since Shoffler failed to keep news about the “child’s blood-soaked T-shirt” from leaking to the press, in a way I can’t wait to get out of the house. Hour by hour, the atmosphere becomes more suffocating, a bell jar of anguished waiting.

Every time the phone rings – which is at least once every five minutes – we wait, suspended between hope and fear.

Mostly fear. We’re relieved when the call offers no information about the boys, when it’s just another call from the press or the police, from a friend or a stranger wanting to help. The cliché turns out to be true. No news is good news; no news feels like a reprieve.

My parents and Liz may be incensed over the accusations against me, but with Jack I’d have to say the jury’s out. He’s not sure. In some ways, this is easier to take than my mother’s constant litany of affronted woe.

My father wants to go with me to the police station, even Liz makes the offer, but I won’t put them through it.

At this morning’s press conference, which we all watched in the family room, Shoffler refused to answer questions or comment about the bloody T-shirt and warned against “leaping to conclusions.”

Still, I know what to expect when I step out the door.

And then it’s time. Christiansen arrives with a fellow officer to escort me to the squad car. Although I’m not in handcuffs or shackles, escorting doesn’t begin to describe how I’m hustled down the steps and propelled through the shouting, strobe-dappled crowd.