“I remember you,” Frank said. “I just can’t believe you’d come out here with this storm on its way. Lorna’s not going to want to talk to you today. Don’t you listen to the weather?”

Principal or not, Jane didn’t see the point in merely caving in. “It’s terrible the way they report things, isn’t it?” she said. “The media is completely out of control.”

He looked down at her disdainfully from his perch on the third step of the ladder. “As I understand it, you’re both from the media, one way or another.”

The wind blew Jane’s hair into her face. Maybe she should have taken her own advice and kept her mouth shut.

“We left some equipment here yesterday,” Desmond said. “We’ll just pick it up and be on our way.”

“Well, you’ll have to check that out with Lorna first.”

He, no doubt, was as terrified of litigation as everyone else in the country. Personally, Jane loathed the kind of people who reach for a lawsuit at the first signs of damage or disappointment. One of the women who worked at the station had discussed, with astonishing sincerity, the possibility of suing her son’s school for not giving him a passing grade in biology. Even if she’d never consider actually filing a lawsuit, it was certainly handy having them around as loose threats.

“The equipment is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said, “and we’d hate to burden you with the responsibility of having to shelter it and make sure nothing happened to it during a storm.”

When Lorna finally came to the door, she told them they’d have to postpone the interview. “You don’t think I’m going to sit in there and talk about mother with the house washing away, do you? I’ve got too many storm preparations. You can come back tomorrow if you like.”

“The fact is,” Desmond said, “I think we’ve got as much information as we need. We want to pick up the equipment and go.”

“You’re giving up,” Lorna said, triumphantly, as if she’d known all along her dead mother would ultimately prove too much for weak-willed people like them.

“We haven’t decided yet,” Desmond said. “Right now, we need to get the equipment. You agreed to let us in and we’re not leaving without it.”

Lorna finally stepped aside and opened the door for them. “Ten minutes,” she said. “That’s it.”

As Jane was stepping into the house, she looked up to the green sky. They were all overreacting. It was nice, for once, to be the person who was taking things in stride. A drop of rain hit her on the side of the nose and exploded against her skin, cold and wet.

3.