The crew took a break. One of the camera operators asked Deanie Kessler if they should get a dolly ready to film a walk through the neighborhood. I quickly put a lid on that idea.

“You’re not going to walk him past those marchers,” I said. By law, the protestors weren’t allowed to gather before nine in the morning, so we tried to be on our way to wherever we needed to go well before that time. But if Stefan or any of us was late getting out, the group would chant. Listen, Stefan! Stop Abuse Young! Save a Young Life! And Stefan, say, say, say her name!

“No, I’m thinking,” Deanie said. “We might finish with both of you at the arboretum later on. But let’s just move to another setting out here. Maybe by the tree?” I brought a pitcher of iced tea. There were several takers. As they bustled about, I kept searching their eyes for clues about the way they felt; but when they took a break or moved things around, they were breezy and impassive, telling jokey stories to each other about their upcoming weekend plans. Someone asked if I preferred “Dr. Thea Demetriou” to “Professor Thea Demetriou,” and I said no, professor was fine...and using no title at all was fine too. “We just have to write it on the files. Deanie will put it up.”

It was time to start up again.

Deanie steered the questioning back to Belinda’s death. “Stefan, you said you were desperate to keep her. Why desperate? You were still together when Belinda went away to Black Creek for college.”

“I thought, the more people she met, the more just stupid I would seem. I couldn’t think of her with someone else. I would have waited forever for her. But I was losing her. And my reaction was, I was putting pressure on her to stay with me.”

“Did she say it was over?”

“No, but she needed a chance to see who she really wanted to be.” Like all good interviewers, Deanie Kessler knew that sometimes, it was just better to wait, because people will plunge in to fill the silence. “She was my best friend. We loved each other enough that we figured that we could work everything out somehow and get married anyhow and have a family. She wanted that, too. I had to let her find herself.”

“But you couldn’t.”

Stefan roughly struck tears from his cheekbones with the heels of his hands. “I could sense that she was with someone else.”

“An older boy?”

“No, not that. It was a girl. I knew that Belinda was bisexual, but I thought she was just experimenting... I was just a kid. I didn’t know.”