“What’s so strange? Sad. Painful, I get. But I was still at the cabin, less than a mile away,” I tell her. “I got an alert on my phone, so I went. I’d never been to Octopus Hole before, if that’s what you’re getting at, Linda.”

She blinks. “I’m not getting at anything. Your father-in-law put forth some pretty strong accusations, and it’s my job to find out what’s true and what isn’t.”

It’s your job to stir the pot, I think. I also wonder, with Sophie being dead, if Frank Flynn is still my father-in-law. I hope not. I hope that I can just lop off his branch from my family tree. Helen’s too.

“I understand,” I tell her, though of course I know she’s a liar.

She looks around with her obvious and practiced sympathy. “He said that you purged the house of all things that belonged to Sophie.”

I knew that would piss him off. Good. I’m glad. I bet he’s railed about that to everyone from the kid taking the money at a drive-through to his buddies at the golf course.

“That’s not exactly true,” I say.

“‘Exactly,’” Linda repeats. “What does that mean?”

I keep on her. “I boxed up a few of her things. Not everything. I boxed up what I thought Frank and Helen might want to have and what I no longer wanted to live with. Mostly things that had to do with them, not me. I wasn’t purging my wife’s memory from this house. Not at all.”

“Your in-laws are concerned,” she says.

Suspicious, you mean, I think.

“Look,” I say, “my in-laws are grieving. I’m grieving. I have a little girl to think about. Maybe I got a little drunk. Maybe I was a little stupid. Maybe it was too soon. Giving back some family photos that meant nothing to me and some bullshit gifts that I could just have easily tossed out with the trash isn’t a sign of anything. I loved Sophie. I never cheated on her. I don’t want to forget her.”

The reporter with the shrinking balloon face looks away. I think I got her. I think I shut her down.

And then she rises from the dead.

“I think there was a love affair,” she says. “I’ve been asking a lot of questions. People you know. When people talk, things happen.”

Now she’s irritating me with a threat.

“I think you should leave now,” I say.

“I’m not done with my coffee,” she lamely says, as if that would be a reason that I’d keep her at my table for one more second.

“I’ll get you a to-go cup,” I say.

I’ll throw it on your stretched-like-a-drum face, I think.