To avoid an argument, I ask, “Is he able to read?”

“Of course he is,” she scoffs. “Well, maybe not for the long periods he used to, but his nose is always in some law journal.”

We all know—at least, Joy and I do—that a nose in a book doesn’t necessarily mean reading. But that isn’t the issue now. The issue is the phone call I just received. “Would he have gone to Jack’s?”

“He could have,” she allows, and my mind sees a shrug, like it’s no big thing dropping in on a neighbor. “I mean, I don’t lock him in when I leave the house. Can you imagine if I did that and there was a fire and he couldn’t get out? I’d never forgive myself. The poor guy has gone through so much. He’s earned the right to a little dementia, you know?”

Dementia versus Alzheimer’s—Anne and I are on opposite sides, but I’m not touching that now either. “Have you heard him talk about what happened that night?” That night was a euphemism for what the rest of Rhode Island called the Aldiss-MacKay affair.

“No,” she insists. “I told you. He doesn’t talk much.”

“You said he goes off on rants. What about?”

“Old cases.” She brightens. “It’s amazing what he remembers, Mal. He can’t tell me who came to see him yesterday, but those old cases? He’s a gold mine of legal history.”

Tom Aldiss had once been a respected judge on the Rhode Island Superior Court. He resigned from the bench six years ago—“resigned” being the word Anne uses, though given his mental decline in the years since, I suspect he was forced out. At seventy-four now, he is often confused. I see him when he and Anne come to New York for the theater, but I don’t go to Rhode Island, and he no longer travels well.

“He remembers everything,” Anne is saying, “lawyers’ names, defendants’ names, charges, findings. When he rants, it’s in that tone, like he’s wearing his robes up there on the bench and is charging the jury on a critical case.” Wistful now, she adds, “He was the best judge. These cases haunt him.”

The case of the disappearance of Elizabeth MacKay haunts us all.

Hearing that thought, Anne says, “No, Mallory, he doesn’t talk about Elizabeth. With all the ranting, he does not. That’s why I have trouble believing Jack.” Her voice lifts. “Dad comes to the shop a lot now, did I tell you?”

Anne owns a breakfast place in the square that is the heart of Bay Bluff. Sunny Side Up, she calls it, apropos of her approach to life, and although I’ve never been there myself, to hear her tell, it’s the place to be.

“I’m glad,” I say. “For a while there, he wasn’t getting out much.”