That’s long gone, replaced at first by a Jack-like formality from Liz that’s slowly segued into something even less friendly. When we’re in the same room now, she can’t seem to stay in her chair. When our eyes meet, hers skid away from mine.

Behind it all is the undeniable fact that at rock bottom, she blames me. This comes up more and more, in the form of “if only” scenarios.

I tell myself it’s the same in the aftermath of any disaster: Once over the shock, the loved ones of victims look around for a way in which the event could have been prevented. I remember this from many assignments, the anguished faces of mourners after preventable disasters (the Rhode Island nightclub fire, the Florida Valujet crash, the explosion of the shuttle): “It’s such a tragedy because it didn’t have to happen.” It plays out in our legal system – suits are filed before the flames die down. The litigation of blame.

In this case, there’s no need for inquiry or reconstruction. I’m the embodiment of “human error.” And as the agent who could have prevented the catastrophe, I am slowly becoming – in the heart and mind of my wife – its cause.

We attend a fund-raiser sponsored by the Center for Abducted Children. It seemed impossible to refuse, but the event itself is tough to stomach. Liz and I sit at the dais, along with other celebrities of misfortune. Some of the parents wear laminated photographs of their children pinned to their chests like identity badges, a heartbreaking gallery of winsome smiles and sparkling eyes.

Dozens of strangers offer help and sympathy but there’s something about all this that sets my teeth on edge. In some cases, I get the impression that it’s a weird kind of stardust they’re really after.

The main speech is delivered by a single mother named Melinda. She tells the harrowing tale of her eight-year-old daughter’s abduction in the simple but powerful way of a born storyteller. She makes all the right pauses for effect. Eight years after the girl went missing, her remains were discovered buried in a neighbor’s yard.

“All told, about one hundred children a year are kidnapped and murdered by strangers,” she tells us. “Despite the saturation coverage such abductions and murders get from the media, that makes it one of the rarest of crimes. A child is more likely to be hit by lightning.” She pauses. “Some of us have been hit by that kind of lightning.” She crosses her hands over her heart, according a sad nod to some of us seated at the head table. One of the women lets out a lone sob. “When it does happen,” Melinda tells us in a husky voice, “it’s lightning fast. 74 percent of these kids – my daughter Bonnie was one of them – are killed within three hours of their abduction.

“Of the children who were abducted,” Melinda continues, “the vast majority, seventy-six percent, were girls, with the average age being eleven. In eighty percent of the cases, the children were grabbed within a quarter mile of their homes. So don’t feel your child is safe in your front yard, or riding her bike down your block. It’s the same with car accidents, most of which occur within a mile of home. The vast majority of other types of accidents occur in the home as well. Our homes, ladies and gentlemen, may be our castles – but they are not fortresses.”

While she pauses for effect, I think: Kevin and Sean don’t fit. They’re not girls, they’re much younger than the average age, they were more than fifty miles from home. And there were two of them.

“So we need the resources to act fast, too,” Melinda says. Her timing, as she launches into the plea for funds, is impeccable. I’m not surprised to learn that she’s pursuing a new career as a motivational speaker or that she’s written a book, Keeping Our Children Safe, full of pointers about how to protect children from predators without at the same time scaring them silly. The book is available outside the banquet room. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the center.

After the public departs, there’s a prayer circle for parents and relatives of the missing. We sit on folding chairs, holding hands. My neighbor clutches mine with such a ferocious grip, I almost lose feeling in my fingers. After the minute of silence, we take turns reciting aloud the details of our personal catastrophes.

I walk out when I realize that most of those in the circle are in fact grieving. They’ve come to share coping strategies for what they regard – except for the ritual nod to an unlikely miracle – as the permanent loss of their children. Like the parents and spouses of MIA victims lost in Vietnam, they no longer seek their “loved ones.” What they’re after is something else, something always referred to as “closure.” In other words: the remains. Evidence of death.

“I can’t stay here,” I whisper in my wife’s ear. “They think their kids are dead.” When I stand up to leave, she comes with me, but not because she wants to. “Excuse us, please excuse us,” she mutters as I yank my hand out of my neighbor’s and careen toward the door.

In the car, her eyes are hard and unforgiving. “Who do you think you are, Alex – judging them about how they were handling their loss?”

“They think their kids are dead. I don’t.”

Liz bursts into tears.

That night, she makes the announcement: “I’m going back to Maine,” she says. She looks at her fingernails and, once again, starts to cry.

The next day, she’s gone.

Work. Although Al told me from the moment he heard about the boys that I could forget about work for “as long as it takes,” last week I got an e-mail asking me to “clarify” my plans. Either I should come back soon, at least on a part-time basis, or I should request a formal leave of absence, one that specified a time frame and a date of return. The fine print noted that given the circumstances, the station would continue to provide benefits even if I did choose to remain on “compassionate leave.” Benefits, yes, but since my absence would require the hiring of a replacement – no “remuneration.”

Almost everyone agrees that returning to work is “the best thing.” The basis for this conclusion is some sketchy if universal notion of work as distracting and therefore therapeutic. It boils down to this: If I’m too busy to think about my missing sons, I’ll be less depressed.

I doubt this.

Getting up, getting dressed, the old familiar commute – it seems so strange to resume this routine. And the station itself feels like foreign terrain. TV stations are crazy places, loud and frantic with energy, everyone always careening toward or recovering from a deadline. Me? I feel inert and idle amid the hive of activity. I exist within a kind of insular bubble created by everyone’s elaborate courtesy. Voices lower when I walk by, glances slide away, no one knows what to say to me or how to act in my presence. I can see the wheels turning – should I mention it, or not? When I explain that nothing they can do or say could make me feel worse, they feel rebuffed.

One day, after I return to work, Shoffler drops by. He arrives with a six-pack of Sierra Nevada and a huge soggy pizza. “Health food,” he says, with his high-pitched stuttery laugh. “Stick with me and you, too, can be a fat slob.”

I’m glad to see him. In fact, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather see at my door – except my sons. For openers, Shoffler is just about the only person in the world who’s always ready to talk about the one thing of actual interest to me. Besides, he’s cynical, funny and, I’ve come to realize, very smart. We usually end up going over and over the busted leads to see if there’s something we missed: the origami rabbit, the whippet, the witnesses who saw the man getting into a black panel van, the latest Elvis sightings, the chicken blood, the “enemy” list of folks I’d attacked on the air. Shoffler checks his notebooks – he’s on his third now. The case file, he tells me, is seven binders thick. Each case, he’s explained, starts with a single three-inch loose-leaf binder. The binders – which Shoffler has allowed me to look at – contain copies of every piece of paper generated by the investigation: report, witness statement, interview, crime scene photo, forensics tests, search warrant, search warrant inventory, evidence receipt, and so on.