I was walking my six-year-old home from the bus stop when he asked, "Daddy, is Mr. King the really real Elvis?"

I didn't know how to answer that.

One of the strangest discoveries that I made, shortly after we moved here, was that Elvis, or someone who looked amazingly like him, lived on my paper route. He always answered the door in either a white sequined jumpsuit, or his equally-sequined bathrobe. He tipped really well, too.

What was even more amazing was that everyone in town apparently knew who he was, but no one ever seemed to care. He was just part of the town landscape, like the Civil War statue or the duck pond.

How he ended up babysitting my son three days a week is another story.

When Jack started kindergarten last year, it was a big adjustment. It would be the first time that both kids would be in separate schools; Holly at the daycare/preschool down the block, and Jack at the elementary school across town. He would be riding the bus, which meant that I would have to walk with him to the bus stop before dropping Holly off, and because Jack got out at noon, I would need to meet him at the bus stop in the middle of the day and walk him home, and then pick up Holly at five as usual.

"Don't forget me," Jack said, the night before his first day of school.
"I won't forget you," I reassured him.

"I mean it, Dad. Don't get so busy that you forget to check your watch."

"I'll set the alarm, so I don't forget."

"Make sure it's loud."

"I will."

"I know you put your headphones on sometimes when you're working, so you might not hear it."

"Jack," I said, "if you get to the bus stop and by some quirk of fate, I'm not there, I want you to go to Mrs. Minelli's house and call me from there. I've already spoken to her; she said it's okay for you to use her phone in an emergency. You have my cell phone number, right?"

"Uh huh." We'd printed up all the relevant numbers on a little card, which he would keep in his backpack.

"But you won't need to call, cause I'll be there. I'll be there even if I have to fight off a hundred trolls between here and the bus stop."

"What kind of trolls?"

I pretended to think about it. "Well . . . mountain trolls would be easy, cause they're big and dumb. Ice trolls are smarter, though, so they might slow me down a little. But I'll be there. And if the trolls bring reinforcements, I'll have my phone with me, so I'll call and let you know I'm on my way."

He giggled. "Save some trolls for me, Dad!"

"I will. Go to sleep, Tadpole. Don't want to be late on your first day."

I tucked him in and kissed him goodnight, and then I went to my office to finish my latest manuscript. Along the way, Sylvie stopped me.

"Is he all right?"

"He's fine," I told her. "He's worried about me missing him at the bus stop."

"I could change to the dinner shift and be there in the afternoon."

I shook my head. "We talked about this. The lunch rush is when they need you most, and dinner time is when we need you most. I'll be there, I promise."

"You won't get caught up in your work and forget?"

"I'll set all kinds of alarms to remind myself. Don't worry about a thing. I'll be there."

Ah, the proverbial Famous Last Words. Even knowing what was about to happen couldn't stop it from happening. I need to learn that whenever I say that something absolutely, positively, will not happen, that's the only thing that will happen.

Eerie. Gotta love a place where million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten.

Jack reminded me three more times not to forget him: once at the breakfast table, again when I was helping him on with his jacket, and then again when we made it to the bus stop. It wasn't until the bus pulled up and Jack got in line to board the big yellow behemoth that the reality hit me: my baby was growing up. One day they're boarding the bus to kindergarten; the next they're getting ready for college. I felt really sad . . . and really old, all of a sudden.

"Don't forget!" Jack called one last time, out the window. I waved to him until the bus was out of sight, and then I went home. (Sylvie had already dropped off Holly, so as not to interfere with a poignant father/son moment.)

I started work on a particularly difficult chapter. I had my headphones on, but the volume was low enough to just be audible. My cell phone was in my pocket, my watch alarm was set and activated, and I had even brought in the bedroom alarm clock and set that as well.

The next thing I knew, I glanced up at the clock.

It was 12:25.

I uttered a word that I wouldn't have dared use if the kids had been in earshot, and rushed out the door. I didn't expect him to still be at the bus stop, but I thought he might be waiting in Lucy Minelli's house. Lucy and I had gone to school together, back when she had still been Lucy Hanlon.

I rang her doorbell and waited. It took her a while to answer; she had a one-and-a-half-year-old and newborn twins, all of whom kept her busy. She had volunteered to be the bus stop mom because "I'm home all day anyway."

When she finally came to the door, she looked confused.

"He's not here," she said before I could even open my mouth to ask her. "He was here, but he left. He thought you might be walking down, so he went to meet you."

"Really? I thought I told him to wait here. I'll call around; maybe he went to a friend's house."

"I hope you find him." There was the wail of stereo crying from inside the house. "Gotta go. The two-headed monster awakes."

"Need an extra pair of hands to-"

"No, no, I'm good. Just go find Jack. I'm coming, I'm coming!" She didn't quite slam the door in my face, but she closed it in a hurry.

I was on my own. Great.

I called all of Jack's friends, but none of them had seen him since getting off the bus. Missy Bogart had seen him going into Mrs. Minelli's house, but she had left after that and hadn't seen him come out. No one had.

Now I was really getting nervous. I was about to start knocking on doors when a white van with KELLEY HOME REPAIR on the side lumbered past.

Of course! Dash!

He'd been doing some work in the neighborhood; maybe he'd stopped to pick Jack up. Only one way to find out.

The first time I called, it rang three times and then went to voice mail. "You've reached Dash X Contracting. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

I hung up, figuring he was on the road, and waited about five minutes. The second time I called, he answered right away.

"Hey, Mars."

"Is Jack with you?"

"Why would Jack be with me? Didn't he go to school today?"

"Yeah, but I forgot to meet the bus, and by the time I got there, he was gone. I thought you might have picked him up along the way."

"No, I haven't seen him. You tried calling around?"

"I've called everywhere he could possibly be. He isn't anywhere! Oh my God, I'm such a bad parent! How could I lose him like-"

"Marshall! You're panicking. Stop, take a deep breath, and think logically. Maybe while you've been canvassing the neighborhood, he went home. Try there."

"You're right. Thanks, Dash."

"Any time."

I hung up and headed home, hoping against hope that I'd find Jack sitting on the back porch, or if he'd been lucky enough to knock down the spare key, sitting on the couch watching Ninja Turtles. I was almost to the corner when I heard something.

Singing.

Someone close by was singing "Hound Dog"-and that someone sounded a lot like Jack.

I followed the sound until I reached a familiar house. This had been my favorite stop on my paper route, way back when. How many kids could say that they personally brought Elvis his evening paper every day? He always thanked me, in his characteristic way, and he always tipped me at least five bucks. Sometimes ten, and during the holidays he always slipped a hundred-dollar bill into an envelope as a Christmas bonus.

But it wasn't just the money. He was a fun guy, who loved performing whenever he had the chance. He crashed parties, took over town meetings and political rallies, and headlined karaoke night at the Eerie Tavern. And now it seemed he was passing on his talent to the next generation.

I hated to interrupt, but Jack had to come home. I rang the doorbell, which played "Don't Be Cruel." I've always liked that.

The door opened, and there he was, looking pretty much the same as always. His hair had gone all white now, but it was still styled in the classic pompadour. He looked at me for a second, and then he snapped his fingers. "Paper boy!"

"You remember me." Too bad he didn't seem to know my name. "Is my son here?"

"Oh, sure. Jacky boy!" he called back into the house. "Yer daddy's here!"

Jack came to the door. "Hi, Dad."

"Buddy, I am so sorry I wasn't at the bus stop for you. I was working, and I lost track of time."

He didn't seem too upset about it. "I figured it was something like that."

"Why didn't you stay at Mrs. Minelli's?"

"I wanted to walk down and meet you. I was almost there when Mr. King saw me and said I could wait at his house. He's got a lot of really cool stuff!"

"I'll bet. Let's go home now, buddy."

"Okay. Bye, Mr. King! Thank you!"

"No problem, little man."

"Thanks so much," I said. "I was going out of my mind wondering where he could be."

"My pleasure. I get so lonely, y'know? I ain't never even seen my own grandkids. Havin' him around . . . it's kinda fun. If ya want, we could make this a reg'lar thing."

That sounded like it might be a good idea. "Sure. Tuesday afternoons?"

"Lookin' forward to it. Uh huh huh."

It worked out really well for us. Tuesday soon turned into Tuesday and Thursday, and then Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The King even offered to take Holly as well when she starts kindergarten next year, but I've warned him that she's a little high-maintenance.

"Well, hell," he said. "So was my ex-wife."

So when Jack asked me, out of the blue, if the King was the real Elvis, I didn't know how to answer that.

"What do you think?" I asked him.

He wasn't buying my evasion. "I asked you!"

"Well, just tell me, what brought this on?"

He sighed. "I was looking up stuff for my oral report."

"You have oral reports in first grade?"

"Only a five-minute one. My teacher said it's supposed to be on someone we admire. So I said I wanted to do you, but she said it has to be someone who's no longer living. Anyway, I decided to do it on Elvis, so I asked Miss Dana to help me research."

Dana Stone is the librarian at Jack's school. Dash is doing some work on her house, so Jack has met her socially a few times. I think he really likes her.

"And?" I asked, expecting that someone had removed the entire section on Elvis from the encyclopedia. Wouldn't have surprised me.

"And it said that Elvis died in 1977. So Mr. King can't be the real Elvis. But he got everything right! How could he know so much if he's not?"

"I don't know, Jack."

"But if he is really Elvis, then I can't do my report on him! And it's due Monday! I'll never have time to look up somebody else before Monday!"

"Okay, calm down." Yeah, Jack has kind of inherited my tendency to get carried away sometimes. "The truth is, I don't know if Mr. King is really Elvis. There's a lot of evidence both pro and con, starting with the fact that Elvis died in August 1977, and Mr. King, under a different name, bought his house in September 1977."

"So it is him?"

"Maybe not. He could be somebody who just liked Elvis a lot and wanted to be like him. Evidence also points to him being a former Elvis impersonator-that means someone who would dress up like Elvis and perform in clubs and stuff-named Fred Sanderson. So we don't really know."

"You've done a lot of research on this, haven't you, Dad?"

"I did. A long time ago. I wanted to find out the truth once and for all . . . but someone pointed out to me that the truth isn't always a good thing."

"Okay, this is it." Simon spread a bunch of papers on the table in front of us. We were in a back booth at the World of Stuff, and in the middle of a weekday afternoon, no one was around to bother us. "I went to the Town Hall and looked up the deed for the house. It lists the buyer as a Mr. John Carpenter."

"So it's not him," said Dash.

I gave him a look. "John Carpenter was one of Elvis' most well-known aliases."

"So it could still be him."

"Or someone pretending to be him. What have you got in the Fred Sanderson file?"

Dash pulled out a notebook. "Fred Sanderson had a regular show at the Muncie Holiday Inn from March 1972 until September 1977. Then he just dropped off the map. His wife hired a private investigator, but the guy turned up nothing. She had him declared legally dead in 1984 and remarried."

"So we're back to square one." I slumped my shoulders, dejected. We'd been so close! I just knew the truth was out there. We just had to find it.

"What are you boys up to? School project?"

We looked up. Mr. Radford was hanging over the table, glancing at our pages but not really snooping. "Not really," I said.

"We're trying to find out if the guy in the white satin jumpsuit is really . . . you know," said Simon.

"Really? Well, you know, if I were you, I wouldn't look too closely."

"Why is that?" I asked.

Radford dragged a chair over and sat down. "Well . . . suppose that this individual really is Elvis. Makes sense, doesn't it? He got tired of being a celebrity and moved to a nice, quiet community where no one would bother him. So far, so good. But now, if you boys go to the papers and tell them that Elvis is living in our town, what happens next?"

I shrugged. "I thought everyone knew anyway."

"Not outsiders! See, here in Eerie, we know how to keep secrets. But it's not like that everywhere. If everyone else in the world found out he was here, they'd all come to town. There'd be miles of traffic in the streets, crowds everywhere trying to catch a glimpse of him, just general chaos. He wouldn't even be able to go out of his house. Which is why he faked his own death in the first place. I mean, if he did."

"I guess you're right."

We filed all the notes and papers in a folder labeled "Elvis Investigation," and stowed them away in the Evidence Locker. Much as I hated to drop a case before reaching a conclusion, Mr. Radford was right. Knowing the truth, in this case, would not be a good thing.

I explained all this to Jack while we walked the rest of the way home, and when we were at the back door, he asked, "Do people in town think he's the real Elvis or not?"

"Well, that's hard to say," I told him. "Everyone goes along with it because it's a harmless delusion, if it is a delusion, and because he's such a nice guy that we don't want to upset him. Maybe some of the people who were here in 1977 know the truth. We'll never know for sure."

"Maybe I should do my report on someone else, just to be safe."

"Okay. We can get something ready by Monday. Who are the other kids in your class doing their reports on?"

"Well," he said, scrunching up his face, "I don't know all of them, but I know Margot's doing John F. Kennedy. Devon's doing John Lennon. Malia said she wants to do Martin Luther King, and Sandra's doing hers on Rosa Parks."

"That's only a few. There's still a lot of dead people you could choose from."

"I don't want to do somebody obvious, like George Washington. It doesn't have to be someone famous, but my teacher said it should be someone who's made a difference in my life."

"How about Jacques Cousteau?"

"Dad!" He glared at me, clearly not appreciating my attempt at humor. "This is serious!"

"Okay. I'll think of someone. Let me just get some paper and pencils out of my office."

It was while I was gathering up some computer paper and a couple of sharpened pencils that I happened to glance up and saw the framed obituary that's been hanging on the wall for ten years. Funny how you can see something a thousand times, and then all of a sudden one day it strikes you.

"I just got a great idea," I told Jack, "of someone you can do your report on. And I know for a fact he's dead, because I spoke at his funeral."

Jack knew immediately who I was talking about. "I don't think anyone else will pick him."

"Come on, I'll help you with your research."

"Dr. Charles Furnell was a scientist who studied the human brain," Jack's report began. "He wanted to preserve intelligence for future generations, so he built a device he called the Brainalyzer. Nobody's ever seen it, because in 1979, he destroyed it, ripped up all the blueprints, and had a nervous breakdown. He ended up here in Eerie, where he lived for years without anyone knowing who he was.

"In 1992 he moved to Ohio with his wife, and he spent the last few years of his life teaching high school science. He died in 2005, but his genius lives on: there's a scholarship fund in his name at the high school he taught at, and next year the university is naming their new building after him.

"What I've learned from him is to keep your mind open. Always look for new ideas and new experiences, cause you never know what's waiting out there for you. Your life could change in ways you never expected."

He got an A. And I only helped a little.