She handed him the letter and he read it over. Halfway down the page, he knew the Michelle to whom she was referring. Michelle Brunner, an old girlfriend from college, the only woman besides Tritia with whom he’d ever had what could be legitimately termed a sexual relationship. He frowned as he continued reading. The letter made it sound as though he and Michelle had been carrying on a hot and heavy affair for years, seeing each other whenever they could, though in reality he had not seen her since his Junior year in college, two semesters before he’d met Tritia.

“It’s fake,” he said, folding the letter.

“Who’s Michelle?”

“Michelle Brunner. I told you about her. The crazy one?”

“The slut?”

Doug smiled wanly. “That’s her.”

“She still writes to you?”

“You know who wrote this,” he said, his smile fading. “And it wasn’t Michelle.”

She nodded tiredly. “So what are we going to do? This is just getting worse.”

“We’ve got to put a stop to this. After breakfast, I’m going to talk to Howard. And if I can’t get him to do anything, I’m going to call the main post office in Phoenix. I don’t know why I didn’t do it before. I should have called them the first thing. I should have sent them samples of the letters we found in the creek—”

“They never would’ve got there.”

“That’s true.”

“And how are you going to tell them everything? You think they’ll believe you? They’ll just think you’re some paranoid crank.”

“No, I won’t tell them everything. But I’ll tell them about the mail delivery. At the very least, they’ll transfer the mailman somewhere else.”

“And if he won’t go?”

The question hung, unanswered, between them.

“Come on,” Doug said. “Let’s go have breakfast.”

The line in front of the post office was long, the patrons irate. Doug walked slowly across the parking lot. The people in line looked different than usual. Shabbier, seedier. They were dressed not in the nice clothes they usually wore when going into town but in older dirtier garb—painting clothes, work pants, torn undershirts. There was grease on the arms and faces of some of the men, and few of the women had bothered to comb their hair or take it out of rollers. One old woman was wearing a bathrobe and slippers.

Even from here, Doug could hear the menacing tone of the crowd’s conversational buzz. The people in line were not chatting of the news, sports, or weather, not catching up on local gossip. They were not even sharing complaints or grievances. They were venting their anger, telling and retelling the same events in order to keep that anger fueled, speaking of canceled insurance, threatened lawsuits for nonpayment of bills, problems caused by the mail.