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were seated facing each other. I began with easy questions, things about Theresa’s childhood, to get Linda relaxed and over the initial discomfort of being in front of a camera.
    Theresa was a wonderful child, her mother told me: playful, smart, curious, and good in school. She was every parent’s dream. I’ve interviewed the parents of murderers, drug addicts, and gang members. It’s always the same—they were perfect children. I guess when all you have are memories, you want them to be sweet.
    In Theresa’s case, though, it seemed to be true.
    “She was named Volunteer of the Year . . . ,” I said.
    Linda immediately smiled. “Yes. And it was well deserved. Theresa’s always been a volunteer. When she was about six, she went around the neighborhood collecting change to send to starving children. She’d seen one of those ‘sponsor a child’ commercials and she wanted to do it,” she said. “She was upset that someone her own age was going hungry when she had so much. At six!” She laughed. “And then it was one thing after another. In high school, she organized a group of students to send letters to soldiers fighting overseas, and in college she volunteered at a hospice for cancer patients and organized the school blood drive.”
    “That’s amazing,” I said. And a little annoying. My most recent act of altruism was buying a sandwich for the homeless man on my corner. And I spent a week patting myself on the back over that.
    “She got the mayor’s award for raising funds for a local clinic that was about to shut its doors,” Linda said. “They were waiting on grant money, but it was slow in coming and in the meantime they had a budget deficit of a hundred thousand dollars. When Theresa heard about it, she just knocked on doors until she’d raised the money.” Her pride was evident.
    “She must have knocked on a lot of doors to get a hundred grand.”
    “That’s Theresa. She never gives up. Not on people, not on causes.” Her lip quivered. “That’s how I know she’s alive. I know she’d never give up.”
    “You weren’t very fond of her boyfriend, Jason.” I switched the subject. After ten minutes of listening to Theresa as Linda remembered her, it was time to get to the real person.
    Linda took a deep breath. “Jason wasn’t Theresa’s type. They dated for a short while, a few months, but when she realized he wasn’t right for her, she didn’t want to waste his time and she broke it off.”
    “What type is Jason?”
    She shrugged. “He’s a nice kid. He comes from a good family. They don’t live far from here. It’s just that Theresa wanted what her father and I had. She wanted a home and a family. Jason was a bit wild for her. She didn’t see him settling down.”
    “Is that what she told you?”
    “She didn’t have to tell me. A mother knows.”
    “When Theresa broke it off with him, how did Jason take it?”
    “He called the house a few times and left angry messages. He came to the door about a week before Theresa went missing. My son, Tom, told him that Theresa wasn’t interested in talking to him and he’d have to go. They got into it on the front lawn.”
    “Shouting?”
    “There was lots of shouting.”
    “Did it get physical?”
    “No. My son isn’t the violent type. He just said that Jason wasn’t welcome anymore. Tom was upset, though, for days afterward.”
    “What did your son and Jason say to each other?”
    “I don’t know. I heard Jason say something about Theresa not being the good girl we thought she was. Mean things like that. They got quiet for a minute, then it started up again. I went into the kitchen so I didn’t have to hear it.”
    “That’s a pretty awful thing to say to someone’s brother, that Theresa wasn’t a good girl. What do you think he meant?”
    “I think he was upset. People say things when they’re upset. He didn’t mean it, obviously. Jason was madly in love with Theresa. He was obsessed with her.”
    “Obsessed?