“Martin has a lot of good qualities,” she said unexpectedly.

She was giving the good news before the bad.

“But you don’t know everything about him,” she went on slowly.

I had long suspected that.

“I don’t want to know unless he tells me,” I said.

That stopped her dead. And I couldn’t quite believe that had come out of my mouth. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “He has to.”

“He never will,” she said with calm certainty. Then her mouth twisted. “I’m not trying to be bitchy, and I wish you luck-I think. He never was bad to me. He just never told me everything.”

I watched her while she stared into a corner of the room, gathering her strength around her, regretting already her display of emotion. Then she just got up and left.

It took everything I had not to get up and run after her.

The next morning I met Mary Anne Bishop at her office. I was in a brisk frame of mind. I asked her which farms we were to see today, looked at the spec sheets, and asked that we see the one on Route 8 first. Looking a little puzzled, she agreed, and off we went. I looked carefully at each mailbox as we passed, and spotted one labeled “Flocken” just before the farm we’d come to see, which we toured quickly. I paved the way by telling Mary Anne that the area felt right, but the farmhouse was too small. On our way back to town, I asked her about the road that led from the mailbox over a low hill. Presumably, the farmhouse was not too far from that. “I liked not having the house visible from the road,” I commented. “Who owns that property?”

“Oh, that’s the Bartell farm,” she said instantly. “The man who owns it now is called Jacob-no, Joseph- Flocken, and he’s got a reputation for being cranky.” But she pulled to the side of the road and tapped her teeth with a pencil thoughtfully.