I would not want to be a child again, for a child exists in uainty and danger. Our flesh and blood, we ot help but fear for them, as we hope for them to make their way in this life. After the break-in, I worried about our son all of the time. Edward is not who we say he is because his father is an imposter. He is not a Day, but a gelings child. I passed on my inal genes, giving him the fad features of the Ungerlands, and who knows what other traits leapt the geions. Of my own childhood, I know little more than a name on a piece of paper: Gustav Ungerland. I was stolen long ago. And when the gelings came again, I began to believe they saw Edward as one of their own and wished to reclaim him. The mess they left i was a subterfuge for a more sinister purpose. The disturbed photographs on the wall indicated that they were searg for someone. Wiess hovered in the background and crept through the woods, plotting to steal our son.
We lost Edward one Sunday in springtime. On that gloriously warm afternoon, eo be iy, for I had discovered a passable pipe an in a chur Shadyside, and after services the musiister allowed me an hour to experiment with the mae, trying out what new sounds coursed through my imagination. Afterward, Tess and I took Edward to the zoo for his first face-to-fater with elephants and monkeys. A huge crowd shared our idea, and the walkways were crammed with couples pushing strollers, desultory teenagers, even a family with six redheaded children, staggered a year apart, a spiracy of freckles and blue eyes. Too many people for my taste, but we jostled along without plaint. Edward was fasated by the tigers and loitered in front of the iron fence, pulling at his cotton dy, r at the beasts to ence them out of their drowsiness. In its blad-e dreams, oiger twitched its tail, annoyed by my soreaties. Tess took advantage of Edwards distra to front me.
"Henry, I want to talk to you about Eddie. Does he seem all right to you? Theres been a ge lately, and something—I dont know—not normal."
I could see him over her shoulder. "Hes perfectly normal."
"Or maybe its you," she said. "Youve been different with him lately. Overprotective, not letting him be a kid. He should be outdoors catg polliwogs and climbing trees, but its as if youre afraid of him being out of yht. He he ce to beore indepe."
I pulled her off to the side, out of our sons hearing. "Do you remember the night someone broke into the house?"
"I k," she said. "You said not to worry, but youve been preoccupied with that, havent you?"
"No, no, I just remembered, when I was looking at the photographs on the walls that night, it made me think of my own childhood dreams—years at the piano, searg for the right music to express myself. I have been looking for the answers, Tess, and they were right under my fiips. Today in the church, the an sounded just like the o St. Nicholass ihe an is the ao the symphony. an and orchestra."
She ed her arms around me and pulled herself against my chest. Her eyes were full of light and hope, and in all of my several lives, no one had shown such faith in me, in the essence of who I sidered myself to be. I was so in love with her at that moment that I fot the world and everything in it, and thats when I noticed, over her shoulder, our son was gone. Vanished from the space where he had been standing. My first thought was that he had tired of the tigers and was now underfoot or nearby, ready to beg us to l