"So why did you want us here, Mrs. Cotton?"
"I've got a friend you helped a couple of years ago. Linda Barnard, in Kentucky? Wanted to know what had happened to her little grandbaby, the one who was found a mile away from home, no marks on her?"
"I remember."
"So I thought about calling you in, and Sandra researched you-all. Talked to some policewoman in Memphis."
"Jeff, your grandson. Is he your son's son? He's sixteen?" Tolliver asked, trying to lead Twyla to the subject we'd come to discuss. Though almost everyone we looked for turned out to be dead, Tolliver and I had learned a long time ago to refer to the missing person in the present tense. It just sounded more respectful and more optimistic.
"He was sixteen. He was the older boy of my son Parker."
She'd had no hesitation in using the past tense. She read the question in our faces.
"I know he's dead," Twyla said, her round face rigid with grief. "He would never run away, like the police say. He would never go this long without letting us hear."
"He's been gone three months?" I asked. We already knew enough about Jeff McGraw, but I felt it would be indecent not to ask.
"Since October twentieth."
"No one's heard from him." I knew the answer, but I had to ask.
"No, and he had no reason to go. He was already playing varsity football; he had a little girlfriend; he and his mom and dad got along good. Parker—Parker McGraw, that was my last name before I married Archie—Parker loved that boy so much.