We end up side by side on the sofa, drinking a pair of doubles at six o’clock in the morning, as we stare at the cardboard box of photographs Irene gave me. Now, another thing I should have mentioned earlier. For all its grace and homelike comfort, Coolibah is curiously sparse of photographs. Believe me, I notice these things. Most people will have far too many photos cramming the walls and shelves and every available surface; it’s the curse of the modern home, in my opinion. All those framed images lined up in rows, like soldiers, and not one of them in twenty shows any regard for form or light or subject or composition, even by accident; they’re just jumbles of anonymous, blurred, badly lit, badly dressed people or—worse yet!—that deadly plague, the landscape. A photograph should be a thing of beauty, in my opinion, and if it’s just there to recall a family reunion or show off some delightful holiday you took to San Diego or remember how Aunt Mildred looked at her high school graduation, why, stick the old thing in an album so it doesn’t steal the limelight from something worth looking at.

So it’s not as if I don’t approve the paucity of photographs in the Lindquist household. It’s just odd. And I have the feeling the solution to this mystery lies before me, except I’m unwilling to lift the lid that conceals it. I feel as if I have spent the past month approaching a precipice, step by step, and now there’s nowhere left to go, the edge lies before me—much as it did on Ki’ilau, as Lindquist described the events in Spain to me in calm, precise, terrible words like the dripping of rain into a barrel. And I cannot take that last step, because where will I go? Right over the edge into nothing.

“Did she seem upset to you?” asks Olle.

“Does she ever seem upset? That’s not her style, and you know it.”

“I know. But you understand me. Is she going to be okay?”

“She’s survived worse. It’s just a cat.”

“It’s not just a cat. You know that.” He drinks. I pull out my cigarettes and offer him one, and he’s grateful. He lights me up first, then himself, and then he adds, “You loved that cat.”

“Says you. Now, listen up. There’s something you need to understand. You know her dad was a drunk, right?”

“She’s mentioned it.”

“So when your parent is a drunk, you learn certain things. You learn to hide what you’re feeling. You learn that most people can’t be trusted. You learn that if you love somebody, that person is probably going to hurt you, and there’s nothing you can do about it but try not to love people if you can possibly help it.”

Olle reaches for an ashtray.