When I return to the house a half hour later, I carry a thick manila envelope from the lining of my suitcase, which I toss on the sofa table in front of Lindquist.

“You missed this.”

She looks up at me, brow furrowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“My suitcase. Never mind, that’s not important right now. This.” I press my finger on the envelope. “I want to talk about this.”

Though the sun fell below the ocean long ago, the air remains balmy. Lindquist has settled back outside to the lanai, where you can hear the surf beat upon the night sand. She drinks a glass of lemon water, iced; I’ve fetched something stronger from Olle’s stash. It’s just the two of us, and the absence of any male spirits in the atmosphere is both peculiar and tranquil.

Lindquist leans forward in her wicker chair to examine the envelope. “May I?”

I remove my hand and she takes the envelope and opens it. One by one she removes the photographs, examines them, and lays them on the table.

“Where did you get these?” she asks.

“Here and there. You’ll notice the AP owns the rights to most of them, so I’ve pulled favors and had prints made. You don’t get the same detail from a newspaper clipping.”

“That’s true.”

She pulls out the last photograph and lays the envelope to one side while she studies them. You would think the sight of these images might inspire some kind of emotion in that face of hers, but she’s just lost in thought, fingers knitted together and pressed to her bottom lip. I light a cigarette and stare over her shoulder.

There are a dozen of them, although I’ve got many more stored at the Los Angeles bureau office where I was conducting my research. I chose each one with care. Here’s Irene Foster standing next to Sam Mallory and his wife, while he holds a towheaded cherub in his arms. Here’s Foster and Mallory posed before their Rofrano Centauri, just before they depart on their landmark flight to Australia. Foster and Mallory, tired but triumphant, waving from the airplane door on arrival in Oahu. Foster delivering some speech in Honolulu, Hawai’i, while Mallory looks on. Lindquist points to that one.

“I couldn’t even hear my own voice,” she says. “The noise from the engines in those days, it was deafening. Literally deafening. That was my first speech.”

“First of many.”

“I didn’t even know what to say. I didn’t know I was supposed to speak at all. I thought that was Sam’s job.” She chuckles. “I remember standing there and wondering what my father would say. He could always hold an audience. He was a terrific raconteur. Also a drunk.”

“Wasn’t everybody’s dad a drunk?”