For a second, since I was standing on a grave, I was sure he meant all the dead people; and I already knew they were. Then I realized his meaning was much more mundane. The lawyer, Paul Edwards, and a uniformed man I’d never seen, were standing by the car talking to Tolliver. I was glad I’d left my shoes on. I took a breath and began walking toward the men.

“Good luck,” said Hollis, and I nodded. I knew he was watching, and he would see.

WE had a dismal time at the police station. The state police thought I was a blood-sucking leech. I’d anticipated their attitude as we drove into town, but it wore me out anyway. The male faces followed each other in slow succession. Thin, heavy, white, black, intelligent, dense; they all shared an opinion of me they didn’t take any pains to hide. I guess they thought Tolliver was the enabler of the blood-sucking leech.

I don’t like being treated like a confidence trickster, and I’m sure Tolliver likes it even less. I retreat inside myself, and I don’t let them touch my quick. Tolliver tries to do that, too, but he is less successful. He gets very upset when people impugn our honor.

“We looked into your file,” said a thin man with a greyhound face and cold, narrow eyes. The interrogation room was small and beige. They’d taken Tolliver into the one next door.

I breathed in, breathed out, looked at the wall behind his ear.

“You and your ‘brother’ have been questioned lots of times,” he said. His name tag read, Green. He waited to make sure I’d heard he’d put “brother” in quotes.

Since there was nothing to respond to, I did some of my own waiting.

“No one’s ever put you behind bars,” he said.

This was another indisputable fact, and I did some more waiting.

“Of course, they should’ve.”

Opinion. Didn’t call for a response. My parents hadn’t been lawyers for nothing.

“You know what they say about people from this neck of the woods,” Green said. “The kind of people who go to family reunions to get a date?”

Green was from somewhere else, I assumed. I slid lower in the plastic chair.

“I figure you and your brother are people like that,” he said, with a most unpleasant smile.

Another opinion, and one he knew was based on incorrect information.

“He’s not really your brother, is he?”

“Stepbrother,” I said.

He was taken aback. “But you introduce him as your brother.”