The passing of Robert Duvall brought back a small, vivid chapter of my life in northern Virginia—a world I visited each week, but to which I never fully belonged.

In the mid-1990s, my wife, Louise, and I lived in Manassas, VA, where we ran a modest weekend home bakery called The Virginia Epicurean. From Memorial Day through mid-October, every Sunday morning, we loaded breads, cakes, focaccias, and bottles of blended olive oils into the car and drove west to the farmers market in The Plains, where, as we gradually discovered, one of our quiet fellow regulars was Robert Duvall.

The short drive felt like crossing into another Virginia, from an ordinary suburb to the horse country of wide pastures, white fences, old estates, and quiet wealth. The market itself was held in a horse stable owned by Andrea Mellon, of the storied Mellon family. As an environmentalist, she was an avid promoter of “farm to table” food for her community. Among the vendors circulated a rumor, never confirmed, always retold, that her parents had vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. In small towns, mystery easily becomes........

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