"But those aren't facts," Sheila said. "That's one man's word against his mother's. Against the whole town."

"That may be so." He'd gone back to searching, and spoke with a tired sigh. "Though I suppose you've spent enough time in the courtroom to know a thing or two about facts and how they can be malleable, should enough people choose to believe in them. American history certainly proves that. There is no doubt in my mind, Ms. Tanner, that those old psycho-biddies had the wherewithal to drum that man out of town. They tried to do it with Barbara and me. I made a devil's bargain, though I choose to believe I did it for love. As I said, I've come to regret that decision with Barbara gone. Which is why I agreed to speak with the two of you in the first place, when you emailed me."

Dr. Mulligan turned again, fixing each of them with an ominous look. The look of a man tired of bearing too many secrets, who'd gorged himself on the historical sins of an entire town and grown sick from it. Possibly even delirious, judging by what the doctor said next.

"I believe if you dig up that poor girl whose funeral you've just attended, you'll find an empty casket. Call me a fool, call me crazy, but that's what the facts lead me to believe—ah, there it is."

He pried something down from the top shelf, brought it over to the sofa, and placed it carefully between them on the coffee table.

It was a photograph, sepia-toned and worn at the edges, of a large gathering around a bandshell. Martin and Sheila bent to study it closer and nearly batted heads. He let her pick it up. She studied it a moment, then her breath caught.

"You see it?" Dr. Mulligan said. He was still standing over them, waiting for their reaction. Sheila nodded and passed it to Martin.

A summery photo, the crowd thick with people: children holding pinwheels on the shoulders of their fathers, dogs panting, ice cream cones melting in closed fists, several men in army fatigues and women in hippie dresses. The banner spanning the bandshell said MISS HARVEST FESTIVAL, 1969.

"What am I looking for?"

As Sheila reached over to point it out to him, he spotted the woman himself. It was only the side of her face in among the crowd, but he would swear in court it was the same woman.

Not just the same woman but the same woman at the exact same age.

Standing among the crowd of revelers at the 1969 Barrows Bay Harvest Festival was the woman with the fancy hat. The woman named Mavis Lynch.

Martin and Sheila walked the dirt road back to the car from Dr. Mulligan's farm. Once they'd put it in the distance, with only the lingering smell of pigs to remind them of the doctor's strange and rambling story, Sheila finally spoke.