Riley looked as if she had aged ten years since I had seen her at the funeral. Even so, I was immediately struck when she opened the door by what I hadn't realized before.

Theresa Lofton looked like a nineteen-year-old Riley McEvoy. I wondered if Scalari or anybody else had asked the shrinks about that.

She asked me in. She knew she looked bad. After she opened the door she casually raised her hand to the side of her face to hide it. She tried a feeble smile. We went into the kitchen and she asked if I wanted her to make coffee but I said I wasn't staying long. I sat down at the kitchen table. It seemed that whenever I visited we would gather around the kitchen table. Even with Sean gone that hadn't changed.

"I wanted to tell you that I'm going to write about Sean."

She was silent for a long time and she didn't look at me.

She got up and started emptying the dishwasher. I waited.

"Do you have to?" she finally asked.

"Yes ... I think so."

She said nothing.

"I'm going to call the psychologist, Dorschner. I don't know if he'll talk to me, but now that Sean's gone I don't see why not. But, uh, he might call you for permission 'Don't worry, Jack, I won't,try to stop you."

I nodded my thanks but I noted the edge to her words.

"I was with the cops today and I went up to the lake."

"I don't want to hear about it, Jack. If you have to write about it that's your choice. Do what you have to do. But my choice is that I don't want to hear about it. And if you do write about Sean, I won't read that, either. I have to do what I have to do."

I nodded and said, "I understand. There is one thing I need to ask, though. Then I'll leave you out of it."

"What do you mean, leave me out of it?" she asked angrily. "I wish I could be left out of it. But I'm in it. For the rest of my life I'm in it. You want to write about it? You think that's a way to get rid of it? What do I do, Jack?"

I looked down at the floor. I wanted to go but didn't know how to exit. Her pain and anger radiated toward me like heat from a closed oven.

"'You want to know about that girl," she said in a low, calmer voice. "That's what all the detectives asked about."

"Yes. Why did this one ... ?"

I didn't know how to phrase the question.

"Why did it make him forget about everything good in his life? The answer is I don't know. I don't goddamn KNOW." I could see anger and tears welling in her eyes again. It was as if her husband had deserted her for another woman.

And here I was, as close a flesh and blood approximation of Sean as she would ever see now. No wonder she was venting her anger and pain at me.