I could see Robert beside the pool.<\/p>\n
That was the memory.<\/p>\n
Not the beach.<\/p>\n
Not the water.<\/p>\n
The pool.<\/p>\n
I had not thought about that distinction in years.<\/p>\n
At the time, everything had happened so quickly that I had not stopped to ask why he was standing there.<\/p>\n
I was looking for Matthew.<\/p>\n
Nothing else seemed important.<\/p>\n
Now, with the photograph in front of me, I found myself returning to Robert's position.<\/p>\n
He had been watching.<\/p>\n
That was what I remembered most clearly.<\/p>\n
Other people were frightened.<\/p>\n
People were reacting to Matthew's disappearance.<\/p>\n
Robert had stood apart from the search.<\/p>\n
I tried to picture his face.<\/p>\n
I could remember where he had been.<\/p>\n
I could remember that he was not calling out.<\/p>\n
But I could not honestly say what he had been thinking.<\/p>\n
That mattered.<\/p>\n
I did not want to turn an incomplete memory into proof.<\/p>\n
For eleven years, I had believed Robert might have been overwhelmed.<\/p>\n
Shock could make people behave strangely.<\/p>\n
Some shouted.<\/p>\n
Some moved without knowing where they were going.<\/p>\n
Others went quiet.<\/p>\n
I had seen enough grief to know there was no single way a person reacted to fear.<\/p>\n
That was how I had explained Robert's behavior.<\/p>\n
He must have been stunned.<\/p>\n
He must not have known what to do.<\/p>\n
It had seemed reasonable.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps it had been easier than asking questions.<\/p>\n
I could not tell anymore.<\/p>\n
I looked again at Matthew's little red bucket.<\/p>\n
The photograph had captured an ordinary moment.<\/p>\n
A child enjoying himself.<\/p>\n
An adult standing nearby.<\/p>\n
Nothing in that picture told me what happened afterward.<\/p>\n
That was what made it difficult.<\/p>\n
I knew what I remembered.<\/p>\n
I did not know what it meant.<\/p>\n
I leaned toward the photograph.<\/p>\n
Robert's expression belonged to the hours before Matthew disappeared.<\/p>\n
He looked relaxed.<\/p>\n
He looked like someone spending an ordinary day near the beach.<\/p>\n
I remembered his laughter.<\/p>\n
I remembered how readily I had accepted his reassurance.<\/p>\n
There had been no argument between us in the moment shown by the photograph.<\/p>\n
No warning that I recognized.<\/p>\n
No reason for me to think Matthew would disappear.<\/p>\n
I had gone upstairs to deal with the excursion.<\/p>\n
I had expected to return to the same ordinary day.<\/p>\n
Instead, I came back to a situation I could not understand.<\/p>\n
Matthew was gone.<\/p>\n
People were searching.<\/p>\n
And Robert was standing near the pool.<\/p>\n
I kept circling that memory.<\/p>\n
I could not remember him running toward the water.<\/p>\n
I could not remember him joining the others who were calling out.<\/p>\n
I remembered him looking on.<\/p>\n
That did not prove he knew anything.<\/p>\n
I told myself that repeatedly.<\/p>\n
But it did leave me with something I had failed to ask.<\/p>\n
Why was he not searching?<\/p>\n
I wondered what I would have thought if I had noticed his behavior on the day itself.<\/p>\n
Would I have questioned him?<\/p>\n
Would I have demanded an explanation?<\/p>\n
Or would I have been too frightened to focus on anything but finding Matthew?<\/p>\n
I knew the answer to that last question.<\/p>\n
I had been terrified.<\/p>\n
There had been no room in my mind for anything else.<\/p>\n
I had not been studying Robert.<\/p>\n
I had been looking for my son.<\/p>\n
That was why I had accepted the explanation of shock.<\/p>\n
It gave Robert's behavior a reason.<\/p>\n
It let me move on to the next urgent thing.<\/p>\n
Back then, I had needed everyone to be trying to help.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I was not certain everyone had been.<\/p>\n
I hated thinking that.<\/p>\n
It felt unfair to judge a person from one memory.<\/p>\n
Eleven years had passed.<\/p>\n
Memories could change.<\/p>\n
Details could become sharper simply because a person wanted them to explain something.<\/p>\n
I knew all of that.<\/p>\n
But I also knew the difference between remembering something and inventing it.<\/p>\n
I remembered Robert by the pool.<\/p>\n
I remembered other people searching.<\/p>\n
And I remembered that I had never found it necessary to question the difference.<\/p>\n
Until now.<\/p>\n
I raised my eyes from the picture.<\/p>\n
Ramirez was sitting across from me.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask about Robert.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether the photograph had led Ramirez to something I had missed.<\/p>\n
But another question mattered more.<\/p>\n
The one that had mattered every day since Matthew disappeared.<\/p>\n
I no longer wanted to spend another moment studying Robert's expression.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know where my son was.<\/p>\n
I could see Robert beside the pool. That was the memory. Not the beach. Not the water. The pool. I had not thought about that distinction in years. At the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37222,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37202\/revisions\/37222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}