Later, though, we decided against the idea. I said that my father wouldn’t kill himself, that he wouldn’t do that to us, to me, that he was, essentially, happy. My mother said that if my father were going to kill himself, he’d have done it where everyone could see. It would have been a spectacle; he would have wanted a fuss. He’d have wanted to be cremated too. Buddhists are typically cremated. You can also cremate your pets, whatever their chosen faiths. By the time my father disappeared, I had a row of little tins, each lid adorned with a cheery still life of fruit or field, each one with the dusted bones of a rabbit or finch or guinea pig inside.

Next, I developed a theory that he’d been kidnapped. That someone, someone who was unhappy with his veneers, say, had waited for him after work and jumped into his car and forced him to drive to a secret hideout, where he tied him to a chair and gave him filling after filling. Why not? Everyone hates the dentist.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother said. “He just ran away.” She was drinking coffee at the kitchen table, somehow taking up all the space at once. “Like a little boy. That was always his greatest dream, did you know? To be a little boy again.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I said.

“Remember that thought when your brain is fully developed,” she said.

In the morning, the Garudas had Kyūdō. This was Janet’s favorite activity at the Center, and we never skipped it. Janet even did her rota with Sarah, the Kyūdō instructor, and apparently had for years, except for last year, when she’d had a broken arm and had to sit in the office with Harriet. You could still see a faint tan line on her arm from the cast. Bicycle accident, she said when I asked.

We met Sarah at the Center’s simple archery range, which was set in a clearing at the end of a cedar-chip path. Three targets pinned to hay bales sat at the far end of the range, shaded under a green wooden canopy. Sarah went around to the back and came out with an armful of bows.

“Remember, the object is not necessarily to hit the target,” Sarah said, passing out the bows. “The object is synchronization of body and mind and the present moment, okay? Hitting the target is just a plus.” When she reached Janet, she shuffled the bows in her arms and handed her the one with a faded purple ribbon tied to the tip.