A welcome but bizarre calm wraps itself around me as I begin to tell the deputy all about the events of the last seven months, starting with the day before the earthquake. I tell him everything that happened on the stairs. And everything that happened afterward. When I am finished, the deputy says nothing for several tense seconds.

“So you do not have proof that the man you know as Martin Hocking is dead?” he finally asks.

“No.”

“Then it’s possible your husband is still missing,” he says, not taking his eyes off mine. And I can see so very clearly that he is not going to be arresting me today. A second or two passes as I ponder why.

“I suppose that’s true.”

He’s still staring at me, as though he is formulating a plan in his head. He is deciding something. I cannot discern his thoughts.

Then he leans forward and pushes the certified copies from the County Down records office toward me. Sophie’s death certificate. My birth certificate. My marriage certificate. Colm’s death certificate.

I look at the papers and then I raise my gaze. I don’t know what this action of his means. I have already confessed. I have already acknowledged what these documents mean.

“Take them,” he says softly, looking down at the papers.

“Pardon?” I whisper.

His gaze travels back up to mine. “I am the only one who knows you are Saoirse Whalen. I am the only one who knows who you truly are. I have not yet shared these documents with my superiors. It was premature to say anything until I talked to you. If you take these documents now, they will be out of this file and out of my investigation.”

“But . . . but you corresponded with officials in Ireland at the county offices. They know about me! Won’t they come for me now?”

“I requested copies of public records related to Sophie Whalen and Saoirse Whalen McGough of Donaghadee. It was not necessary to supply a reason. I said nothing about how these documents relate to an Irish immigrant named Sophie Hocking.”

“But . . . but what if the public records people mention it to the magistrate? What if they tell him that a U.S. marshal was asking for these records?”

“Do you think they will?”

“People like to talk.”

The deputy leans back in his chair. “You may someday have to answer for what happened on that boat in Donaghadee as you had to answer for what happened at your house here in San Francisco. All of us at some point, either in this life or the next, have to answer for our actions, Mrs. McGough. I will surely have to answer for mine in this moment. Take the documents.”

He lets this sit between us for a moment, this notion that we choose our actions at the moment when we must and he is choosing to let me go free. He is going to pretend he doesn’t know my true identity, or what I did. He could get fired for this. Perhaps arrested and sentenced to prison for it. But he is doing it anyway.