They’re driving back to Jerry’s house at a steady pace, Hans behind the wheel, Jerry with his eyes scanning over the final entry in the journal, the entry ending with him wanting nature to take the pain and the memories away. He can’t remember writing these words. Jerry feels dissatisfied. Instead of the journal offering closure, it has been like reading a book with no ending.

“First thing we need to do,” Hans says, snapping Jerry back into the moment, “is make sure the police aren’t going to be there.”

“Be where?”

“At your old house.”

“They weren’t there earlier,” Jerry says.

“True. But since then you showed up, you assaulted your—”

“I didn’t assault her,” Jerry says. “She just fell over.”

“You think she’s going to remember it that way?” Hans asks.

“She’ll probably tell them I tried to kill her. But that was hours ago, right? The police will have been and gone.”

“Maybe,” Hans says. “Or maybe they’re still there and keeping an eye on the place, hoping you’ll return.”

“Or maybe they think I wouldn’t be stupid enough to return.”

“But you are returning,” Hans says.

“So what do we do?”

“You ring the nursing home,” Hans says.

“What?”

“You ring them, and you tell them everything that’s happened. You tell them about Eric, that he’s dead, and that you’re at his house and you’ve found proof of everything he’s done. You tell them you’re still there and you want them to come and pick you up.”

“Why would I tell them that?”

“Because then they’ll call the police. They have to. And the police will head to Eric’s house to get you. If there is anybody waiting for you at the old house, this should draw them away. We can’t call the police ourselves because we don’t want them to triangulate the call.”

“And what if it doesn’t work?”

“You just have to hope that it does,” Hans says, and he pulls the car over at the end of the block, about a hundred yards from the house.

“I don’t even know the number,” Jerry says.

“I do,” Hans says, and quotes it from memory.

Jerry makes the call. He asks for Nurse Hamilton. He can feel his heart racing at the prospect of talking to her, of lying, and he’s thinking this is why he used to be an author and not an actor, but then he realizes it doesn’t matter because either way Nurse Hamilton is going to call the police, either way she’s going to tell them where he said he was, and she isn’t going to editorialize the call and say Well, even though he said all that, I really think he was making everything up, so you should keep an eye out on all the other places you’re keeping an eye on.

Nurse Hamilton’s voice comes on the line. She tells him that she’s worried about him, that they all are, and in return he tells her everything Hans told him to say. When he’s finished all he hears is silence. Jerry thinks this must be the first time in Nurse Hamilton’s life she’s ever been speechless. But the silence doesn’t last long.

“You must be confusing the day with one of your books again,” she tells him, and he can hear hope that what she is saying is true, that this is nothing more than one of Jerry’s Days of Confusion. He can also hear her doubt. What she knows for a fact is that the police are hunting him because they believe he’s a killer.

“There are photographs of the women Eric killed. And he was keeping locks of their hair.”

“Listen to me, Jerry, you’re not yourself right now,” she says.

“I’m very much myself right now,” he tells her.

“Eric is really dead?”

“It was an accident.”

“Are you by yourself?” she asks.

He looks at Hans. He remembers what Hans asked of him earlier. “Yes.”

“You figured all of this out on your own.”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Don’t you see, Jerry? You’ve gotten confused again. You’ve—”

“This whole time everybody thought I was sick, but it was just Eric all along.”

“Eric didn’t make you sick, Jerry.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“Just lately. All the bad stuff lately is because of him.”

“Jerry—”

“Come to Eric’s house and take a look at what I’ve seen,” he says, “and then tell me I’m making things up.”

“Jerry—”

“I have to go now,” he says, and then he hangs up. When all of this is over, he’ll explain everything. He switches off the phone because it seems the thing to do.

“So now what?” he asks.

“Now we give it two minutes,” Hans says.

They give it two minutes, in which there are no signs of movement, in which neither of the two men talk. Without discussing it, they give it two more minutes.

“Either they’re not moving,” Hans says, “or they were never there to begin with. But we need to get in there. We have to get that journal. We can’t exactly go up and knock on the front door, because your bloody neighbor will call the police. We can knock on the back door, and if they’re home, then—”

“They’re not going to let us in,” Jerry says. “The owner yesterday thought I was crazy, and today he thinks I’m a killer.”

“Then we break in,” Hans says. “I have my lock picks with me.”

Jerry reaches into his pocket. He shows Hans the key. “We won’t need them.”

“You remember which house is the one behind yours?”

“No,” Jerry says, and shakes his head. Then he nods. “Yes. Maybe. Why?”

Hans starts the car. He takes the next right and comes down the street running parallel with Jerry’s. He starts slowing up halfway down the block. “Well?”

“They all look the same,” Jerry says, “and I only ever saw it from the back.”

Hans gets his phone out. He uses the GPS function and gets a location on where they are. He brings the car to a stop when the blue dot on the screen is in line with Jerry’s house, only with one house between.

“That’s the one,” Jerry says.

“You sure?”

“As sure as I can be.”

Hans kills the engine. “We climb the fence. We try to figure out if anybody is home. If not, then we go in. If the lights are on, we wait until they’ve gone to bed, then sneak in. You’re sure you know where the journal is?”

“I’m positive.”

“Then let’s go.”

The house they’re parked outside is a two-story house with a concrete tile roof and a flower bed jammed full of roses that catch at Jerry’s clothes as he passes them. They move quietly across the front yard and to the gate that enters the back. It opens quietly, and a few seconds later they’re at the fence line. Hans boosts himself up and confirms it’s the right house while Jerry continues to look at the house they’ve just snuck past. He can see the glow of a TV set, the glow of lights, but nothing to suggest they’ve been heard.

“This is it,” Hans whispers, then drops to the other side. Jerry climbs over, landing in a backyard that still feels as though it’s his. Up ahead is where the pool used to be, but now it’s a paved area with a long wooden barbecue table and a pair of outdoor gas heaters. There are no lights on inside the house.

They reach the deck and the sun lounger where they had left Mrs. Smith. Jerry half expects to see her still lying there, but it also won’t surprise him if she comes storming through the gate waving her hockey stick any second. A cat sits outside the door—it stares at him, then shifts its attention to Hans before running away. Jerry reaches into his pocket for the key. A moment later he has it in the door.

“What if it has an alarm?” Jerry asks, keeping his voice low.

“Then we run,” Hans says. “Just stay quiet. I can’t tell if they’re not home or if they’re asleep.”

“I thought you could tell these things.”

“Just open the door.”

He is expecting the key not to work, expecting one more problem in a day full of them. The key won’t work and the lock picks won’t work either, but it turns effortlessly. He slowly opens the door. He knows this house. He spent most of his adult life in this house. He knows every shape, every flaw, he knows where the floorboards creak, what doors squeak, and he knows where the secrets are buried. Or, in this case, the wall they are hidden behind. His heart is already hammering, but when he steps across the threshold into the house it hammers even more, so loud that if there are people asleep upstairs it’ll be his heart that wakes them.