“She’s doing great. She’s looking at us right there,” the president told reporters, gesturing toward a window in the White House residence. But, in a twist worthy of Poe or Coleridge, when said reporters turned to the window to look for Melania Trump, she was nowhere to be found. That bizarre moment happened on May 25, when the First Lady had not been seen for 15 days, following a hospital stay for what the White House has described as a “benign kidney condition.” Now, as of June 4, the Days Since We’ve Seen Melania clock has ticked up to a whopping 24, presumably one of the longest stretches a First Lady has gone without showing her face in modern U.S. history. Supposedly, that’s going to change on Monday night, when the First Lady “is expected to attend a White House event . . . to honor Gold Star families,” according to her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham. But here’s the rub: the reception is closed to the press.

That’s not likely to quell the rumors that have sprouted to explain Melania’s absence, like that she’s hightailed it back to New York or moved in with the Obamas, with whom she was last spotted looking happier than she has at any point during the first 500 days of her husband’s presidency. In an apparent attempt to fix things, last week the First Lady’s office released a tweet telling the haters and losers to get a life, but given that the language and syntax sounded so suspiciously like like a certain social media addict, it only served to fuel the flames.

Of course, there’s always the chance that Melania is simply refusing to give the “opposition media” what it wants: as reporter Yashar Ali pointed out, the First Lady is “intensely private” and “stubborn . . . A simple statement could end speculation, but she refuses to give in.” But for conspiracy theorists eight layers deep into the Tale of the Missing Melania, it didn’t exactly help matters that she failed to head to Camp David with the family this past weekend—even Tiffany went!—or that her spokeswoman has said she will not travel to the G7 summit with Trump or accompany him when he goes to Singapore for his big on-again-off-again-on-again meeting with Kim Jong Un on June 12.

If the White House really wanted to derail this thing, they’d give the people what they want: live footage of Melania swatting Trump’s hand away like it’s the last thing on earth she wants to touch as they walk down a tarmac to board Air Force One. In its absence, we have no choice but to go on believing that something shady is afoot. (In the meantime, every day the First Lady is out of the public eye not promoting her “Be Best” campaign, innocent people are being mercilessly bullied online.)