Andy and Emile were watching the crate and noting where the sunlight was coming from.

“An afternoon show, definitely,” said Emile.

Andy looked toward the south side of the parking lot. “We could place the bleachers over there. They’d be in the shade of the parking garage by about two, and the sun would be behind the audience.”

Seamus leaned down. “Try cashing a check under that name. There’s a reason you have the name Eloise Kramer and a reason I created it for you: survival. Mandy is not the answer, it’s the problem. It’s the name for everything you need to put behind you.”

“Assuming it’s all a delusion.”

He half laughed with a roll of his eyes. “I thought you confirmed that with your ‘old friend’ who never met you before.”

She took the rebuff, letting him have the last word. She’d led him to believe that her visit with Joanie had come to nothing, that it was no more than a same-name coincidence. Compared to the truth, it hardly seemed a lie. Besides, there was no aspect of her story that he wouldn’t see as an excuse for an airheaded, career-threatening infatuation with a sixty-year-old man. If it took a lie to keep from going there … well, it did, didn’t it?

She let it go and watched the crate, now looking very small as it neared the mast of the crane some 150 feet off the ground. The thought of being locked inside that thing gave her stomach a twist.

“What do you think?” Seamus asked Emile.

Emile squinted as he studied the crate, now stark against the sky. “Any higher and it’ll be too small for the audience to see. You’ve got enough thrill for the money.”

“Great. We can’t afford a bigger crane.”

Andy asked, “Ready to drop?”

Emile and Seamus exchanged a glance and then Seamus said, “Okay, let her go.”

Andy signaled the crane operator. The crate came loose and dropped for an awesome stretch of time before smacking into the pavement and exploding into splinters.

“Doable?” Seamus asked Emile.

Emile nodded. “We can work with that.”

Mandy checked out the tops of the buildings around the parking lot. The Orpheus was the tallest, but now it would be to the audience’s right instead of behind the event. Not a problem, she supposed. “So then I rappel down that side?”

“Oh, no,” said Seamus, “we’re working the big room now. Big room, big stunt.” He gave her a whimsical look, shot a side glance at Emile, then said, “You’re going to hang-glide.”

Her mouth dropped open, but she immediately liked the idea, looking up at the hotel, envisioning it.

“I have an instructor lined up. We can get you started on that right away.”

“So …”

Seamus traced the imagined spectacle with his hand. “You’re trapped in the crate, the clock is ticking, the time runs out, and the crate drops into the pit, BOOM! But then your doves appear, they circle to draw attention, then they fly up … up … to the top of the hotel, where you cast off from the roof on a hang glider with the doves flying in formation with you. You circle down, make a pass in front of the bleachers, you come in for a landing right in front of them, the doves land on your arms, ta-da! Big finish!”

She shook her head, but there was that twist in her stomach again. “ Guy, you have a lot of confidence.”

He put his arm around her. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. But it’s all up to you. We’re going to need all your thoughts, all your senses, everything you are, and everything you have directed this way and nowhere else. This is your career. You’re on the rise now and you can be unstoppable if that’s what you choose. You understand what I’m saying?”

She regarded the splinters of wood littering the parking lot and the dizzying height of the Orpheus Hotel. “Oh, I understand.”

“Good, very good.” As he walked away he looked back and pointed at her. “Eloise.”

The lady who arrived at Priscilla’s boardinghouse drove a Mercedes but her eyes were empty as if the soul were gone, and her clothing was plain, like any unknown person on the street. She introduced herself to Priscilla as Mandy Whitacre’s Aunt Betsy. When Priscilla didn’t quite buy it, she said, “Oh dear, yes, I forgot. She would probably use her real name here: Eloise Kramer?”

Priscilla let Aunt Betsy into the house, but only as far as Eloise Kramer’s door. Aunt Betsy slipped a little pink envelope under the door, said thank you, and left.

That evening Mandy ducked into her room at Priscilla’s like a rabbit evading a hawk. She locked the door behind her and leaned against it as if she could hold everything at bay and then stood there, eyes closed, breathing, just breathing, hoping for a break, just one tiny moment of respite from all that, that stuffout there.

Time out,she prayed. Time out,please.

Dane. I’m gonna call Dane and I’m just gonna tell him, I’m gonna tell him everything and I don’t care what he thinks.

She reached into her shoulder bag …

There was an envelope at her feet. It was small and pink like the envelopes for thank-you cards or baby shower invitations. She cringed. Judging from the last time she saw an envelope like this, it wasn’t good news. She picked it up and tore it open. Inside was a note, same handwriting as before.

Dear Ms. Whitacre:

Though our personal acquaintance comes no closer than that moment in the hallway at Clark County Medical, I am familiar with the circumstances that have befallen you since September 17 and was, I regret to say, one of the instigators who brought them about.

As such, let me settle some questions I’m sure have haunted you:

Nothing you’ve seen or experienced is illusory or delusional, but the result of procedures performed upon my recommendation, but without your knowledge or permission, in the basement of Clark County Medical Center. It is all explainable and you are not mentally ill.

You had nothing to do with Doris Branson’s accident or Ernie Myers’s injuries, nor are you in any way responsible for their deaths; those were our doing. The obituary I sent was to warn you, but I’ve since come to realize that neither I nor anyone else can stop what has already happened.

I have kept something safe that belongs to you. If you will show this letter to the man whose address and phone number I have included, he will guide you to it.

I have destroyed everyone and everything I desired to save, including you and lastly, myself. All that is left for me is to destroy the lie I’ve become and hope the truth will help you put things together. I won’t ask you to forgive me. Maybe God will.

Yours truly,

Margo J. Kessler

The lady drove her Mercedes to a nice house on the west side, brewed some tea, then spent an hour at her kitchen table finishing a letter on her laptop. Leaving the letter open on the computer screen, she printed a hard copy, then folded and concealed it in the old family Bible she had stored away in a box in the basement. The wrong people were certain to find the letter on the computer; hopefully, they would be content in destroying that. Someday the right people would find the printed copy, and then the world would know.

Satisfied, she went to her bedroom, said a rosary, then injected herself as she lay upon her bed.

It was cold enough to wear a jacket, dark enough to make street signs and address numbers hard to read. Mandy used a penlight to consult a map and Dr. Kessler’s directions on the passenger seat and, after one wrong and one missed turn, found her way to an ugly, bumpy street on the outskirts of town. At this hour, her Bug was only one of the occasional cars, so she shifted down a gear, eased off the pedal, and carefully eyed the boxy, weathered-walled, single-story businesses she passed: USED FURNITURE, APPLIANCE LIQUIDATORS, RECYCLING CENTER. She passed a vacant lot, a redneck bar, an old school with plywood over the windows, and then came upon a high chain-link fence with hundreds of hubcaps hanging on it. This had to be it. Yep. There was a sign in customary black on yellow wired to the fence next to the gate, J & J’S AUTO WRECKING. Mandy pulled up to the sagging chain-link gate and beeped her horn, as Mr. Jansen had instructed her.