“Sandy? Good Lord, of course not. I’m going to pick her up at the vet’s right now. I wanted her cremated.” She puts her hands back on the steering wheel and stares at the pale house before us. “Tell Olle where I’ve gone, will you? Ask him to take the children to school this morning?”

There’s something funny about the way she says this. I sit there by her side, hand on the door handle, not quite ready to open it. She’s the one who breaks the silence.

“I appreciate your forbearance, by the way.”

“Forbearance?”

“Not killing me.” She tilts her head in the direction of my jacket pocket. “I wasn’t sure what you meant to do with that.”

“I wasn’t sure, either, to be perfectly honest.”

“I guess you had every right to hate me, growing up. It was either hate me or hate Sam, and I’d rather you hated me.”

I open the door and step out. “You’ve got it all wrong, Foster,” I say, through the open window. “The person I hated was myself.”

Captain Leo has already left for the docks. I can tell because his moped is gone from its usual spot, near the gazebo. I march indoors to the noise of the Buick, turning around to head back down the highway toward Lihue. I make straight for the library with my cardboard box.

Now, I forget. Have I described this library? Because it’s certainly not in the usual style, if you know what I mean. That masculine leather-and-mahogany atmosphere you expect to seep from the cornices? Why, there aren’t even any cornices! The walls are covered by simple shelves, containing nothing but books—Lindquist is not the knickknack sort of person, she hasn’t got the time of day for objects that offer no practical purpose—and the furniture is spare, except for an armchair near the window that looks as if it was meant to sleep in. The liquor cabinet is built into the wall, not far from the desk. You open the door and rummage through all the bottles until you find the right poison. The owner walks in just as I’m walking away with a nice double bourbon.

“Where’s Irene?” he demands.

“Relax. She’s alive and well. She took me on a little trip last night to unburden herself. Now she’s headed to the vet to pick up the cat’s ashes. She asked me to tell you to deliver the tadpoles to school this morning.”

He nods to the box, which I’ve laid on the sofa table. “What’s that?”

“Some photographs she wanted me to have.”

A frown drifts across his face. “Have you seen them?”

“Not yet. I thought they might require a little fortification.” I jiggle the glass. “Say, you look as if you could use a little fortification yourself. Can I pour you another?”