“In something of a daze, assuring the hostess that I was fine, apologizing for the commotion I caused. By the time I got to my chair, shaken and confused, a scene was underway on the patio. This waiter delivering appetizers, and this young woman refusing them but throwing money down to pay. Two glasses of wine hardly touched. Two rolls uneaten on the bread plates. She rushed off the patio, onto the sidewalk, just as a van pulled to the curb. She boarded it. I had a clear view of the driver, and I’ve no doubt that he was Pat Corley. Then they were off. I wasn’t able to get a license number.”

“What color was the van?”

“Sort of tan, I think. A Ford. I sat down and finished lunch. I ate very slowly, poring through the whole encounter again and again, so I wouldn’t forget any detail.”

David wondered if Pat Corley built this house. In moments like this, when he waited for Estella to continue, the room was as silent as a mausoleum, the structure so well insulated that no sound seemed able to penetrate from the street, as though the world beyond these walls had been vacated by humanity, while Nature, with all her power and creatures, had settled into stasis.

“How many people have you told about this?” he asked.

“Just two. Well, four now that I’ve told Mr. Ross and you. My daughter was the first. Rachel is a dear soul and good to me. But I didn’t have her until I was thirty-five. I’m sixty-three now, and she’s twenty-eight. She’s of a generation that thinks itself wise, that doesn’t even intuit its massive ignorance. She was kind when I shared the story, but she had a dozen explanations that made sense to her. I was only sixty-two when this happened, but I could tell she worried I might be in an early stage of dementia, so I relented and accepted one of her explanations, feeble as it was. When I got back to Santa Barbara, I told my best friend, Marsha Gasparelli. Marsha is three years older than I am and has no patience for anyone who thinks that old age inevitably involves a mental decline. She believed me implicitly, but neither of us has been able to imagine what it all means.”

Withdrawing his smartphone from an inside jacket pocket, David said, “It was Marsha who mentioned your story to Sam Markham.”

“I knew Sam casually, but I’d never heard about him meeting Pat Corley on the beach near Rock Point, two years after Pat died.”

“And over four years before you saw Corley in Menlo Park.”

“Yes. Apparently, Sam wasn’t shy about telling his little ghost story about the twin who never was. Mr. Ross found him, and Harry referred him to Marsha and me.”

David rose from his chair and circled the small table and stooped beside Estella. He showed her the photo he had summoned on his phone. “Do you recognize this woman?”