"Open," she whispered, her face a mask of fury. "The. Box."

Quentin took his hands away from the trembling box and pressed them to his face. "Mad. Mad, what's happening to us?"

She screamed. Not the scream of a child in tantrum, but a high wail that sounded like a woman keening with grief. He turned to her, reached out his hands in pleading. She recoiled from him, spun around, and ran, staggering, from the room.

Confused and frightened and hurt, Quentin turned back toward the box. "I'll open it, Mad! Come back, I'm opening it, see?"

But Uncle Paul's hand was on the box now. "Not without Mrs. Fears in here, Mr. Fears," he said, smiling. "It's in the will."

Quentin looked around the room. Somehow, without his noticing it, all the others had slipped out of the room. Well, he wasn't surprised—this hadn't been a pleasant scene to watch. Only Uncle Paul and Grandmother remained, both of them touching the treasure box. Quentin looked Grandmother in the eye. "Doesn't she love me, Grandmother?" he asked.

The old lady's lips began to move. Slightly, no sound coming out.

"I should follow her," Quentin said. "I'm going to follow her and bring her back and we'll open the box and then we'll get out of here and everything will be all right. That's what I should do, isn't it?"

Her lips moved again. He leaned close, to hear her.

"Babbling old woman," murmured Uncle Paul, but he removed his hand from the box and stepped back out of the way.

Grandmother, almost nose-to-nose with him now, whispered to him. "Find me," she said.

It made no sense at all. The woman was senile. She was no more in control of this house than Quentin was.

Madeleine. Somehow she could explain it all. She could make sense of it. She was his wife, after all. She loved him, he loved her, they had everything in common, they had their lives together, she was his and he was hers forever. This was just some insane quarrel, some stupid misunderstanding.

Where was she? He ran out of the parlor into the entry hall. He checked the library, the drawing room, the dining room. The door to the back portico was open, the winter chill already skimming the floor so his feet went cold as soon as he entered the room.

He ran to the French doors leading out to the portico. She wasn't there. He cast his gaze out across the lawn of snow just in time to catch a glimpse of her, her hands at her face, as she ran awkwardly into the walled graveyard.

Immediately he took off after her across the snow.

8. Footprints

Quentin couldn't see her in the graveyard. He ran among the headstones, looking left and right, but she wasn't kneeling anywhere, wasn't standing behind anything. There were bushes, but all of them were leafless. If she was within the graveyard walls, he would see her.

There was no other gate. He ran to each of the far corners of the enclosure, to see if her footprints led to the wall, if by some chance she had climbed it.

How absurd! She was wearing a dress, she was angry, upset—why would she climb a wall?

But then, where was she?

He must have looked away as he ran toward the graveyard. While he was watching his footing in the snow she must have seen him coming and slipped back out again, wanting to avoid him. And maybe she was right. Let her calm down, let him calm down. They could face this problem rationally. She had warned him that there would be problems when she went home. She had told him that she didn't like the person she became when she was here. Well, she had been right all along. He didn't like the person she became, either. But the person she was outside of this place, the person she really was—he loved her, and they could get away from this place and go back to their life and this would become a half-funny memory, to be told to no one. It would become in-references between them. They would call some longstaying visitor a "friend of the family" and both of them would think of Simon. Someone would be obnoxiously formal and they would wink and whisper, "Uncle Stephen." Someone would say something foolish in the attempt to be wise, and they would say, "Athena," and remember this breakfast and the dear foolish spinster aunt who sat at table with them.

But they would never joke about Grandmother. Or Uncle Paul. Or the treasure box. There was real pain there, and if Quentin ever understood it, fine, but if he never did that was also fine, as long as he had his Madeleine and they never had to come back to this place.

He had run the circuit of the graveyard, looking for her footprints. They weren't there. She hadn't come in here after all.

He stood in the entrance, looking down at the snow. Only one set of prints led into the graveyard. His own.

But he had seen her run in here. From the portico he had watched her before he ran across the lawn to meet her here.

He looked out onto the lawn. There were the footprints the two of them had made that morning, the distant ones leading down to the bluff, the near ones that marked their return journey. He walked over to the near prints. Only one set of shoes had broken the crusty surface of the snow. Again, they were his.

She was with him. He had his arm around her; she held him by the waist. They jostled together as they walked. He remembered it. It was impossible that she left no prints in the snow. But then, he had also seen her enter the graveyard.

As he had seen a woman who looked something like Lizzy unlock the door of a townhouse in Herndon and walk in and switch on the lights.

He returned to the graveyard and leaned his back against one of the legs of the stone arch of the gateway. He was hallucinating again. This was disturbing, but not terrifying. It happened the first time out of loneliness, out of longing. This time it was a different kind of stress. But both times he had seen what he needed desperately to see: the first time, Lizzy grown up and leading a normal life; the second time, Madeleine going into a place where he could find her and talk to her and make things right between them. Where he could make sure of her, that she was the woman he knew and loved and not this stranger, this tantrum-throwing, greedy child who had to have someone open up her treasure box.

Of course, normal people didn't hallucinate, even in times of stress. It meant that he had some sort of mental illness. But it wasn't really impairing his functioning yet. They had drugs now to help schizophrenics control their psychosis. That must be what was going on with him, the early symptoms of advancing schizophrenia. But he could go to a psychiatrist and get the drugs he needed to continue functioning. This could be controlled. There was no reason to be afraid.

No, come to think of it, there was a reason. Because he hadn't been under stress when he walked with Madeleine along the bluffs, and that had to have been a hallucination, too, because she left no footprints.

Unless it was a hallucination now. Unless his mind was erasing footprints that really were there, because he couldn't bear to have her with him if she was the person he saw in the parlor. That would explain it. He was in the middle of a serious psychotic episode but it would pass. Even without treatment, these episodes passed, didn't they? Especially in the early stages of the mental illness. He had read a book about this a few years ago and he thought that was how it worked. Once he had control of himself, he would walk out of the graveyard and see two sets of footprints, and he would go back to the house and find Madeleine in the bedroom. That's where she had to be. He hadn't even looked for her upstairs. His need to find her had been so great that he had looked out the open dining room doors and seen her outside when in fact she was probably up on their bed, crying and waiting for him to come to her.