“When he left,” Colm said, taking a seat at the other end of the couch.

“Nothing since? Letters, phone calls?”

Colm shook his head, chewed at the corner of a fingernail.

“Based on what you know about him, can you guess at where he might have gone when he ran away?”

Colm shook his head again.

“Can you tell me anything about why it was Aidan who was sent away?” I asked. “As opposed to both the twins, or one of the younger kids.”

Colm shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You can’t speculate at all?”

“I was nine,” he said. “Nobody told me anything.”

“Thanks,” I said, flipping the notebook closed.

“That’s it?” Colm said, startled.

“That’s it,” I affirmed, getting up.

“You didn’t even write anything down,” Colm said.

“I don’t usually write down things like ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I was nine,’ ” I said.

Colm looked a little sheepish.

“There’s not a lot you can tell me if you haven’t seen or heard from him,” I explained.

He turned the television back on. The agents-in-training were now learning to break down and clean their guns. I wondered if the field of law enforcement held an appeal for Colm Hennessy, like it did for many boys his age.

“They do really good weapons training at Quantico,” I offered.

Colm’s light-blue eyes flicked to me again. “What kind of gun do you use?”

“A.40 caliber Smith & Wesson.”

“Isn’t that a lot of gun for a woman to handle?” Colm asked.

“Excuse me?” I said, though I’d heard him clearly.

He shrugged. “It’s a big gun.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I’d been the second-best shooter in my Sheriff’s academy class, but it was probably beneath the dignity of a county detective to get into a verbal pissing match with a boy half her age. So I bit my tongue and asked, “Are you interested in shooting?”

“Not really,” Colm said. “Dad hates guns. He won’t have one in the house, not even for hunting.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m more into close-quarters fighting.”

“With what,” I asked, “a television remote?” Something in his dismissive tone had pushed me over the edge.

Colm really looked at me for the first time, as if he’d been bitten by something that he didn’t think had a mouth. His lips tightened with embarrassment, and finally he said, “No, I have a heavy bag. And weights, out in the far garage.”

Upstairs, I found Liam Hennessy at the computer in his father’s study. There, he told me essentially the same thing Colm had, just in more words. Liam, too, hadn’t heard from or written to Aidan since his older brother left for Illinois, and he too felt that Aidan had been sent away from home only because their father was struggling to raise five kids.

“It seems odd to me, though,” I said, “that Aidan didn’t come home for summers, or on holidays.”

Liam looked at the computer screen, blue light reflecting off his glasses, as though the answer could be found there. “Summer is an important time on a farm,” he said, “so it’s unlikely that Pete could have spared him then. As for holidays, I guess Dad felt that Aidan really needed to settle in at Pete’s, and think of that as his home.”

“For five years? That’s an awful long ban on visits home.”

Liam nodded slowly. It was clear he was uncomfortable. “I wish I could tell you more,” he said, “but I was young at the time. No one really explained it to me.”

“Okay,” I said. “If you think of anything else…”

“I’ll let you know,” he said hastily.

I got to my feet. Liam had lifted his long-fingered hands back to the keyboard, as if eager to escape again into whatever he’d been writing when I interrupted him, and I realized for the first time that it might not be homework that absorbed him. Liam, Marlinchen had said, was the aspiring writer among the kids.

On the way out, I paused at the doorway. “What happened to your carpet here?” The edge, where it met the carpeting of the hall, was rough-edged and fraying, as if the person who’d laid it had hacked it off carelessly with a utility knife.

“Dad happened to it,” Liam said, a flicker of amusement on his face. “He put down the carpet in here himself. It’s like that all around the edges. We’re used to it.”

It was true; the whole perimeter of the room looked the same as the doorway, rough-edged.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but was your father drinking when he was on this home-improvement kick?”

It wasn’t as light a question as my tone implied. Whenever there’s trouble in a family, it’s good to know which way the alcohol is flowing, if at all.

Liam smiled, untroubled by my inquiry. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I mean, Dad put down the carpet a long time ago, before my time. But I do know that he never drank much, and he quit a few years back. Just for general health reasons. It was never a problem.”

Marlinchen walked me out to my car, after I’d finished. “Were the boys helpful?” she asked.

“Yes, they were,” I said. The truth was that they hadn’t said anything useful, but neither had they seemed deliberately obstructionist. I’d spoken to Donal last, just to be thorough, but he scarcely remembered his older brother, and I’d only spent about three minutes with him.

A white cat emerged from the grass and went to Marlinchen, winding a figure eight around her ankles, pushing its trapezoidal head against Marlinchen’s shins.

“Friend of yours?” I said.

“Snowball,” she affirmed. “Our cat. I hardly ever see her in the daytime anymore. She gets around.” She sat on her heels to run one hand over the cat’s arched spine, then straightened.

“Well, she’s got plenty of room for that,” I said, looking around. The Hennessys and their neighbors had lots of open space between lots.

I also noticed again the freestanding outbuilding that I’d taken for a nineteenth-century carriage house; it was what Colm must have meant by “the far garage,” where he had his exercise equipment. Closer to Marlinchen and me was the lone tree on the bank of the lake. In this area, sugar maples were everywhere, as were smaller spruces and hardy little pines. Lilacs seemed to be the flowering tree of choice; some were still in bloom. This tree was none of them. It was obviously ornamental, deliberately planted in its solitary spot. I didn’t think I’d ever seen one like it before, though its few flowers, cream-colored and orchidaceous, were vaguely familiar.

“What kind of tree is that?” I asked.

“It’s a magnolia,” Marlinchen said.

“Really? I didn’t know they’d grow this far north,” I commented.

Marlinchen’s face was turned from me, looking toward the tree. “It was here when a real-estate agent showed our parents this place. It’s what convinced my mother that this house was The One.” I could hear a smile in Marlinchen’s voice. “She and Dad met in Georgia. She thought it was fate.”