Probably one of those men was Glen, come to think of it. I find I’m rubbing my forehead between my eyebrows, as if trying to erase the faint frown line I’ve recently noticed I’m developing. I drop my hand to my lap. “So, what do you think happened? Did you have a theory? An accident? Foul play?”

“No grand theory.” He’s frowning himself, now. “Often you get a pretty good idea of what’s happened; it’s just whether or not you can prove it. You’d be surprised how seldom the police are surprised.” I suspect he’s used that line before. For all that he seems to eschew frivolity, I can sense a touch of the showman. “But on this one . . .” He shakes his head slowly. “I dinnae think he left. Not voluntarily. I think if your dad could be here now, he would be. So . . . aye, accident or foul play, one or the other.” He eyes me carefully again. “He’d be right proud of you, I bet. Fiona says you’re a big shot in television.”

His words trip me up, robbing me of the questions I had waiting in line. It seems an oddly personal thing for him to say among this no-frills discussion of my father’s disappearance. And . . . really? How can he tell my father would be proud? Of course he would be, in the versions of my father’s life where he’s the man Glen describes. But there are all the other versions I’ve considered, jostling for space in my head, where Glen is simply another person who didn’t understand the true nature of my father. I choose to step right over that quagmire. “I’m in television, yes. Not a big shot, though. More of an air rifle than a cannon.”

A bark of gravelly laughter escapes him, and I find a smile for him. I like that he tried to be kind, I realize. Though he makes me feel a bit like a schoolgirl again, craving approval from authority. By the time I was at university, my antiestablishment tendencies had come to the fore, and I had no such esteem for authority. Or maybe it was my mother’s antiestablishment tendencies bubbling up inside me. The thought throws me off-balance. I want to feel that I am me, created from pure air, my genes unsullied by ancestry. I want to feel that my thoughts and reactions and decisions are mine and mine alone. But being here, in Scotland, in the Manse of all places, has me feeling the weight of my DNA, of the history and memories and behavioral patterns it carries. Of the impact it has had, or might yet have, on what I think of as me.

“You have a sister, I hear.”