The dog seeks my leg and whines a faint, choked sob. A newscaster tells a silent story on TV.

She closes her robe some and touches my cheek. "Bobby. Look, you're a sweetheart. I mean it." She wipes her eyes with a tiny laugh that almost echoes the one I remember. "I'm sure I was just high, though. I was taking a lot of acid back then."

Her fingers trace my jawline, stopping under my chin. "You're sweet. But you need to take care of your life."

Because there's nowhere to look but at her, I close my eyes.

This is where all my stories converge. Every lost moment between experience and memory meets at a crossroads: at the metal X in my jaw, where her fingers sit like a shotgun barrel.

"Can I have five more minutes?"

"No."

Someone shouts, and I open my eyes.

We move outside, where the noise came from. In the near distance, just beyond the porch light, Coach sits on the lawn, holding his face. Tony looms over him, fists clenched.

Tony sticks out his jaw. "He said he was going inside. I told him no."

It's hard not to pity Coach, crumbled on the lawn that way, struggling with a palm over his eye, but I manage. I walk over, and Tony steps in front of me. "You want some?"

"Tony," Amanda calls behind me. "Come on. It's all right. Come inside."

Coach sprawls at my feet, holding the chloroform out like some impotent offering. The front door shuts.

I tell Coach to get in the truck.

In the driver's seat, I toss the chloroform out the window. He slumps against his door with a bruise swelling over his left eye. "This really worked out great," he snaps.

I study him, tracing the lines on his face with my eyes, and keep staring after he meets my look. He stares at the window, and I watch him for a few moments before turning the key.

The engine turns over, stuttering, and we move forward.

A second search will occur. In Port Arthur I see an advertisement for Reunions, Inc. Because there is still one question to answer, one piece of unknowing I will not abide, I call them. For two months following I continue to work for Lone Star Environmental, letting the vacuous fields and long, empty skies pass by like frames of overexposed film, telling no stories, taking soil samples and testing air with my nose for signs of contamination. Only occasionally during this period do I reflect on Coach Duprene.

We made the drive back in silence. I drove, and Coach kept his face to the window. Red-clay mesas and purple skylines. Half-conceived mountains in distant mist. His guilt as certain as the road beneath our wheels.

I will not see him again.

Reunions, Inc., returns the report that cost me $300. The envelope sits on my kitchen table for an entire day. The company's logo seems to be trying to stare me down. After five beers I open the envelope and remove two sheets of paper. This is what they say:

Travis Corresi is a missing person. His last known whereabouts was as second mate on the SS Mary Charles, a trading ship that went down in the Yellow Sea in 1989. But I'd always known that. All my life my father had died at sea.