“Photographs? What kind of photographs?”

“By any chance,” he said, staring up at the ceiling, “by any chance did you and Mr. Mallory spend some time on the beach, while you were staying over in Honolulu?”

“Honolulu?”

“Early in the morning, I think. Just the two of you.”

Irene couldn’t speak. Morrow turned his attention from the ceiling to her face, and she saw that he was not kidding around, he was dead serious.

“You should know that someone took a couple of photographs and sold them to a newspaper,” George Morrow said.

She whispered, “It wasn’t how it looked. I was surfing, and Sam was on the beach, and he saw a shark out there. He thought it was going to get me. He was just relieved that I came in all right.”

“Listen, Irene. I don’t care. I can only tell you what it looked like. It looked like the two of you were—well, that you were actually . . . in the act of . . .” He shifted a bit, glanced to the window, overcome by the Puritanism that was stamped in his bones. “Embracing,” he said.

“But that’s not what happened. Not at all. Everyone’s got the wrong idea. I can make a statement—”

“Not now, you can’t. Right now, you have got to remain absolutely silent. You have got to remain right here in this house and not speak to another soul outside it.”

Irene stood up. “Where’s Sam? I want to talk to Sam.”

“Sam’s gone, Irene.”

“Gone? Where? Call him back. We’re a team. We—”

“Irene.” Morrow stood up and grabbed her shoulders. “Get a hold of yourself. Listen to me. Sam’s gone back to Sydney.”

She tried to pull away, to run for the door, but Morrow was stronger than she was and held her back, facing him, his eyes versus her eyes.

“Listen! There’s been a terrible accident. He’s got to go home.”

Irene stopped struggling and stared at Morrow’s kind, paternal face. She opened her mouth to say What’s happened, but the words remained stuck in her lungs somewhere, trapped and unable to rise.

He answered anyway.

“Mrs. Mallory’s in the hospital, Irene. She saw those photographs in the newspaper and tried to kill herself. Swallowed some pills and slit her wrists with a kitchen knife. The kid found her on the bathroom floor.”

Hanalei, Hawai’i

October 1947

When Lindquist and I return to Coolibah, I do something I haven’t done since I was a child. I crawl into bed in the middle of the afternoon and fall asleep.