I lead a normal life now, perhaps I should say again. Or right now. Yet in the blank hours that tend to accrue in a normal life, I find myself recounting what happened before, drawing it forth like a slow exorcism.

Why look back? When African violets bloom in the windows and bills are paid and nothing leaks. Relishing normalcy, I find it necessary to purge.

For a while the specifics hindered me—the names of people, streets, towns, groups—until I happened across a community a thousand miles away where women and men replicated my hometown unaware. All it takes is a strong communal sense of what's real. It could happen in a neighborhood in Atlanta, or Walnut Creek, or Kansas City, or Nashville, or Boise.

The place requires enough homogeneity that people's ideas don't get jarred more than once or twice in a lifetime. And there needs to be enough prosperity that people have extra space for the sharp-edged, awkward, homespun, sticky stuff that doesn't fit the room's visitors see but doesn't get discarded.

That's what I thought until I reached the part about Boyd, and I realized something else was required. Boyd could have been an Amish teenager, or a Hassid, or a devout Catholic. Maybe a Hopi. But he couldn't have been any boy in any American family in any American city. The structure, the expectations, would have to be tighter. Much tighter. So I decided to set the story where it belongs, in Salt Lake City.

Some days when I sneak back to writing for an hour, I wonder if I miss the excitement of that time, the wild, dream-like chase through shifting landscapes. But it's not that. I simply absorbed it all, that's the point. And I have to get it out of my system, my family's system, my computer's system.

For too many years to know why, I've been the one who listens to what lies under and around conversations. If others in this story contradict my account, I'll understand but won't be moved. I'll listen to their revisions, remembering what they said then, now shaded by the chiaroscuro of the present. I'll remember how they said it originally, how they imprinted me with their emotions. This is what it costs me. Their cost will be my retelling it, reflecting it all back to them.

Writing allows me an outside perspective. My fingers fly across the keys, and I see myself talking, moving, as if watching a movie play over my computer monitor. I have decided to write as I see. I'm Caitlin Findlay, or rather Caitlin is the visible, audible part of me.

To me, this story is true. I know that human memory edits and rewrites constantly, like the sky reworking cloud patterns. Yet what happened resuscitates as I tack it down with words. It rises up around me like proof.

Had anyone told Roger Lewis he would be capable at age thirty-three of abandoning his young family without a word, he wouldn't have believed it.

For that reason, he almost believed that what was happening wasn't happening. He wanted to say to his wife, his parents, his children, his sisters, "Hey, look at me. Can you believe I'm doing this?" An absurd thought running exactly counter to his purpose in leaving town.

Had anyone said he would doze off while speeding eastward away from home with a woman he barely knew, he'd have coughed his disbelief courteously into his hand. Roger had always had a reason for everything, a reason he could enunciate whenever necessary.

Yet on this October afternoon, he dozed with his right temple against the passenger window and dreamed he was finally outdistancing the lunging wolf who had haunted so many childhood nightmares. In some dreams his parents and siblings had run with him, screaming. Sometimes they were overtaken, although, more often, he felt the wolf's hot breath on the nape of his neck and woke screaming. In some dreams, later in adolescence, he had decided the wolf was only Duke, the family watchdog they thought had been killed by a car years ago.

Steady wailing and an abrupt halt on gravel jerked Roger's head back and woke him into confusion. He heard a door slam and realized that Gina was walking around to get her baby, whose cries crescendoed now that the car had stopped. Roger shook his head hard and breathed deeply. Outside the window a green sign announced Starvation Lake, and Roger stared at the gray earthen bowl cradling an equally drab reservoir below a faded sky. Gina approached his side of the car, so he got out and walked to the driver's seat. By the time she was belted in and the baby had a bottle plugging its cry, they were on their way east again. Gina was hunting for her boyfriend, the baby's father, and Roger had hitched a ride.

Roger could have given the baby her bottle, of course. Probably Gina didn't think about that. His son, Danny, still had a bottle at night and Kerry had relinquished hers only a year ago. Of course, Gina couldn't know unless sometime she had lingered beside his desk to see the portrait of Robyn and the kids and drawn the obvious conclusion.

Roger cracked his window a little, let the high, crisp air swoop away the memory of the photograph, and concentrated on the last tatters of his dream. He'd outdistanced the wolf, hadn't he? I got away, he told himself, slowing for a curve and squinting relieved tears from the corners of his eyes. I really got away. He kept driving.

As Barbara struggled to stay calm Sunday at noon, she absently noted that the rain had glued pumpkin-colored leaves against the kitchen window. The leaves resembled her children's grade school creations, cut from heavy paper.

That detail would remain in her memory rather than the exact words her father used when he telephoned to tell her that her younger brother, Roger, was missing. Outside the window, neighbors were still parading along the sidewalk in dressy clothes. Barbara half turned away, as if those placid souls could see the shock on her face. The vibrato in her father's voice gnawed Barbara's nerves. Poor Dad, she thought, always the emissary of upsetting news. Only a couple of weeks ago he'd called to tell her that her sister, Caitlin, had been in a bad accident but that both she and her daughter were okay. Now this. Mom must be desperate.

The stupidity of Roger disappearing did not penetrate but would seep gradually into Barbara's awareness. She instinctively fought thinking too much about it. A missing brother did not fit the careful structure of her life, or his. Maybe that was why the orange leaves helped her through the first awful minutes.

Almost immediately as her father fell silent, Barbara began to cope. Some mechanism within her switched on with a click, although she didn't yet have any details about this crisis. Her hands moved faster, assembling the roast and vegetables for Sunday dinner, the telephone still on her ear. Caitlin, she knew, would dig for details before she ever thought about coping. For Caitlin, finding out what had happened was coping.

Barbara couldn't understand that. Whenever she felt upset, she called to mind the mental photograph of her husband, Fred, leaning slightly on the podium at church and speaking clearly into the microphone. "We need not be troubled," Fred was known for intoning humbly. "Our leaders are shaping tomorrow for us to fit our every need, and we need only shape ourselves to fit that design."

Their congregation was filled with patient, professional men like Fred—though perhaps not quite so faithful or so well-spoken—and with educated but home-loving women like Barbara, though perhaps not quite so efficient or sympathetic. Fred and Barbara fit their world like cups on hooks.

Now Barbara's plans for the afternoon, maybe for the evening, possibly even for tomorrow, were zigzagging out of bounds. Thank goodness for Fred. When he found out, he would admire her ability to cope. He had moved into the sunless void left in her heart by her older brother Boyd's death, becoming almost a son to her parents. He'd help now, too, that Roger was missing. What was wrong with her brothers, anyway?

She hung up and called downstairs for Stacy, then dialed Roger's wife, Robyn. She pictured her sister-in-law—who looked more like a fifteen-year-old boy than a mother of two—rushing to the telephone, thinking it might be Roger.

"Just me," Barbara said quickly, sorry if she had raised hopes. Would Robyn and her children like to come to Barbara's home, or should Barbara go to hers? "Mine," Robyn said in a voice that sounded older. The police were there.

Police. Barbara kept her mind still, but her hands sped along. Stacy was beside her now, wearing earphones, which meant she was not listening to one of the stations her parents had approved. She quickly flicked off the dial when Barbara hung up the telephone.

Barbara gave her the look that Stacy called "crusty" to let her know she wasn't getting away with anything. Then she explained that there was a family problem—Uncle Roger was missing, nobody knew why, and Barbara needed to go over to Aunt Robyn's and, no, this time they couldn't come and play with their cousins. Maybe she would bring their cousins home with her. In the meantime, Stacy must tend the baby and pass the word to her younger brothers.

Brushing off Stacy's burst of questions, Barbara changed into a pale green sweater and slacks. The sun behind the shutters in her bedroom hinted she wouldn't need her coat. She quickly combed her honey blond hair, added lipstick, checked the contents of her bag, then walked through the side door into the garage. Five years ago she had formulated daily and weekly menus that altered with the seasons and balanced both calories and nutrition with foods the family generally liked. Since then her meals fell into place more easily and her weight remained stable, despite her last pregnancy, as long as she jogged three times a week.

She started the Buick and used the electronic gadget to open the door. Naturally Roger would have to disappear on a Sunday when the neighbors were home. Even driving away before Fred got home from church would seem unusual. Where Roger and Robyn lived in Taylorsville, southwest of the city, wasn't different except that the homes were a bedroom and bathroom smaller. A police car out front would pose quite a spectacle.

Boyd, Barbara thought suddenly, left them on a Sunday also. She shoved aside that thought. There was nothing she needed less at this moment than the memory of that wrenching day.

Pulling out of the garage, Barbara glimpsed Stacy waving out the kitchen window. I must have alarmed her, she thought, and waved back. Despite Stacy's small rebellions, Barbara knew she could count on her. She was a fifteen-year-old copy of herself. But was that fair to Stace? Sometimes Barbara tired of her own caregiver role. Still, most often, it brought her satisfaction to organize, manage, feed, clothe, and comfort, and if her daughter followed the same path, it would bring her satisfaction, too.

One-Who-Copes, Caitlin might dub her, now that Cait was back to her Native American stories. Everything Cait did, Barbara reflected, seemed to have some impact on the whole clan. Still, she wouldn't complain as long as her sister stayed away from crime articles. Better that Caitlin insist on their parents heading the line to the buffet table (to show respect for elders) rather than feeding the grandchildren first, as they always had, than to ruin the meal by discussing the results of exploding letters.

Someone had to cope, Barbara mused with satisfaction. The Lewis family, which had once been featured in a church film on parent and child communication, had matured along some unexpected directions. Yet Barbara still pictured her childhood the way the family had appeared in the film. As the oldest daughter, Barbara had helped her mother while Boyd backed up their father's tasks. Since their father was more often than not at work or church, Boyd had always seemed to have plenty of time to play. Besides, boys had organized fun—sports and Boy Scouts—activities their parents supported unconditionally. There was still no acceptable explanation why he was unexpectedly found dead.

Barbara had held that Boyd had been murdered while the rest of them were visiting relatives across town. It wasn't a situation that anyone could discuss, either then or now. Barbara had tendered her own good example to steady the family. She had graduated from college with a teaching certificate in elementary education. Then, in a lace wedding dress she sewed herself, she had married Fred in the temple downtown. Their babies arrived at regular intervals just as Barbara and her siblings had, as cute as she could have custom-ordered. Now they were all here, six of them. As Mindy—Stacy's bookend on the other side of a string of boys—approached her first birthday, Barbara felt her life assuming order without the disruptions of pregnancy and birth.

For years she had passed on to Caitlin many of the domestic tricks, routines, and systems she had developed. Caitlin seemed grateful for a while, particularly when she and Jake produced twins. Now, however, both Barbara's sisters seemed preoccupied with other interests and unable to find time. Robyn was more receptive. Watching her and Roger, Barbara had often felt a sense of deja vu. That's over, she thought wryly: she and Fred had never had police interrupt their Sunday.

Busyness provided the greatest challenge. If I can just get through this, Barbara often told herself, expecting peace and plenty to arrive not more than two weeks in the future. Now she was saying it again.

Meanwhile Caitlin, who, as a child had been content to tend Roger or Marly, had let her job grow into a career. Barbara couldn't help but disapprove. After all, her sister had a hard-working husband, the twins were only eleven, and the articles she wrote ranged from the offbeat to the downright bizarre.

For a boy, Roger had done everything right—served as a missionary, gone to college, married, then graduated in business administration. He had always been dependable. But now this.

What had her father meant, that Roger had disappeared? It sounded as if Robyn had wakened to find a puff of smoke billowing from the bathroom and Roger gone.

One could almost expect Marly to vanish, Barbara thought, but a certified public accountant? Marly, the youngest, had read her way through the public library instead of finishing college. She lived alone in a downtown apartment with no intention of setting a proper example for her ten nieces and nephews. Marly could look quite stunning, but she made no effort, donning either oversized sweaters and skirts, or sweatshirts and jeans. Barbara tried to get the family to call her Marlena, her neal name, but Marly she remained. She left her reddish eyebrows unplucked. Her hair had hung down her back since childhood, carelessly gathered into a ponytail or braid that looked leftover from yesterday. And she hadn't liked even one of the men Barbara had painstakingly lined up for her. She said they were boring. What, Barbara asked herself, could be more boring than living alone?

Barbara stopped and waited for traffic. Sunlight soaked the subdivision like a Sabbath blessing, warming roofs and windows. She tapped the horn, smiling at a neighbor who tacked a scalloped, lavender posterboard onto the interstate sign. "Homemaking Meeting Tuesday!" the sign announced. What was omitted was that fathers were expected to stay home and tend children on Tuesdays.

Barbara recalled this with satisfaction, not that such policies did her any good. Fred was the bishop's first counselor and couldn't stay home. "I don't know how you do it," young mothers would tell Barbara admiringly. If they were truly interested, Barbara would explain that she and Fred had worked out a system in which Stacy cared for Mindy, Brad, who was thirteen, tended three-year-old Micah, and Jared ten, tended Joshua, six. Each child graded his or her partner on color-coded index cards, which Fred filed by month. She and Fred knew, of course, that the system led to a certain amount of negotiation among the children since their allowances fluctuated according to their behavioral reports.

Roger's disappearance not only meant Barbara had to leave the children and let Fred come home to an unsettled house, but she wanted to spend the afternoon planning a fortieth anniversary party for her parents. The family had never celebrated these milestones since Boyd's death had come right before their parents' twentieth anniversary.

After Boyd died, things had been bad, with Marly hospitalized and Mother so heartbroken she could hardly speak. Neither of her parents really recovered, Barbara mused. How she missed those young, vibrant parents who had laughed so easily. She missed them even more than she missed Boyd. No wonder that for some time their anniversaries had crept by unmentioned.

Recently family life had been brighter with a grandchild appearing every couple of years, and their adventures and mishaps engaging everyone's attention. Her parents excelled as grandparents, no longer so shadowy.

These thoughts kept Barbara's mind occupied until she turned onto the feeder into the cul de sac. Suddenly she felt cold. Roger, she thought, what has happened to you? Are you all right? A can with a large antenna on the rear was parked at the circle. Barbara braked beside the curb and dried her clammy hands. Her parents' car already sat behind Roger's blue Tempo in the driveway. In her rear view mirror she saw Caitlin and Jake pulling up in Jake's gray Jeep. Why couldn't Fred be here when she really needed him? Underneath she realized she missed Boyd—still.

"Give me strength," Barbara whispered to the orderly God she felt hovered near her on Sundays. She opened the car door. Doing was Barbara's forte. She would take Robyn and her babies home with her. She could stretch dinner easily. They could forward Robyn's telephone, and all the children could play together while the adults kept busy, rendering silent support.

First, Caitlin would want to know who, what, when, where, why, and Barbara didn't want to sit through her questions or even the answers. Who could know, anyway, really? Better not to speculate, just to cope. She grabbed her new winter purse off the car seat and slammed the door behind her. The noise stiffened her spine. Fred would be proud of her. Certainly she could meet Caitlin's level, gray gaze without bursting into tears.