"I don't know if this is what you had in mind, Wayne, but at least you made me remember that I'm not the only guy in the world with problems."

"That's not what I had in mind. I don't know what I had in mind. I didn't really have anything in mind. I guess I am a getting-it-off-my-chest kind of guy."

"Why don't you divorce her?"

"Because she's still a good mother when she's home. And I love my kids. And I love my wife. Or at least I love what I thought she was."

"I love what I thought Madeleine was, too."

"Yeah, but at least your wife didn't exist." Wayne laughed but it caught in his throat. "Why aren't we drinkers, Quentin? Guys who drink can go to a bar at a time like this."

"Is Swensen's open? We can eat like a hundred scoops of ice cream and puke in the street."

"Well, that's half the fun of drinking, at least."

Quentin got up. "I'm sorry I spoiled your dinner with your wife."

"Yeah, well, maybe I would've stuck a fork in her eye, so you probably saved me from going up on assault charges."

"I hope nothing ever happens that's weird enough to make you believe me, Wayne."

"I hope the same thing. But I still like you and care about you and I'm the best lawyer you'll ever get, especially now that you're a complete loon."

"Thanks, Wayne."

"Come in tomorrow after two to sign the papers getting her name out of your will and off your policies. You'll have to eat the ice cream alone."

And that was that. Somebody else knew the truth—somebody alive—even if he didn't believe it. Now it was just a matter of waiting. For his investigation to lead him somewhere. For the police to start getting suspicious of him. The trouble was that all he was likely to come up with was negative evidence—nobody knew her, nobody had seen her. But there was a paper trail. The User couldn't alter the paper trail. At least he didn't think she could. She dealt in illusions, in getting people to do what she wanted. She hadn't actually changed physical reality one bit. If she wanted that house to look clean, she could fool people. If she wanted it to be clean, somebody had to come in with a mop. The same applied to documents and records. It wasn't easy to fake a life. This Ray Cryer could be exposed. It could be proved, eventually, if he spent enough money, that Madeleine Cryer had never been born.

Which wasn't to say that the User would stay defeated. If one attempt failed, she'd make another—he knew that about her now. She needed him, for some reason. Needed him. And as long as she needed him, she would keep coming at him, and he'd never know it was her. He could never trust anybody again.

That was the worst. Knowing that the User could come at him however she wanted, in any disguise. He'd never guess it was connected to her. After all, there hadn't seemed to be any connection at all between his sightings of Lizzy and meeting Madeleine at the grande dame's party. Every single person he ever met for the rest of his life, he'd have to wonder if it was really the User, trying again and again.

In the long run, he wasn't going to get out of this until he found the User herself and confronted her. The night before, he had imagined, in his rage, finding the User's mortal body and putting a .45 slug in her head. Now, in the light of day, did he really have the heart for that? Was he a murderer, just waiting for the right provocation? He shuddered at the thought. There had to be a way to defeat her short of killing her. To get her out of his life.

Of course, the simplest way would be to go back to New York and open the damn box.

Only he didn't want to do that. If only because the User wanted it so much. Whatever was in there, it would be a very bad thing if the User got it. Because the User loved power, didn't she? That part of Madeleine, that disturbing part of her—that was the User talking. It had to have been. Certainly she didn't find it in Lizzy, or in Quentin's image of the perfect woman. That had been the User telling the truth about herself. The love of power. Whatever was in that treasure box was about power, and if there was one sure thing in this whole business, it was that the User should not get her hands on more power.

Power. Madeleine had told him that she was in Washington in order to be around power, to get some kind of influence. Was any part of that true? The User must have noticed him somewhere, and it was after he moved to the DC area that he started seeing things—Lizzy, and then Madeleine. The User might have grown up in the Hudson River Valley, but that house had been closed down for years. She had to be living somewhere, and it made sense that it was in the DC area. And if she lived there, somebody knew her.

He made a connection. The grande dame's party, where he met Madeleine. There was someone in DC who had known Madeleine before he did.

But he wouldn't send one of his investigators to talk to the grande dame. He owed her more civility than that. He'd go and talk to her himself.

10. Memories

"I remember you. Or do I?" She was as gracious as before, and the confusion of her words didn't show on her face.

"You were very kind to me at a party one night," said Quentin. "In fact, you introduced me to my wife."

"That would be clumsy of me, to introduce a husband and wife to each other."

"No, no, she wasn't my wife at the time, we—"

"Please, Mr. Fears, I was joking. I'm old, but I still understand the ins and outs of simple communication. I spoke to you for a while, didn't I? I think I ran on and on, but you were very patient."

"Conversing with you made me glad that I had read my sister's collection of Jane Austen novels."

"I was not around in the Georgian period, Mr. Fears."

"You converse as elegantly as if you had been. It makes a California boy like me struggle to keep up."

"Now I remember you. I caught you fingering the books in the library."

"I thought of myself as eyeing them."

"You were climbing the ladder, anyway. Did you come to thank me for introducing you to... what was the young lady's name? Not Duncan, anyway."

Not Duncan? "Madeleine Cryer."

"The niece, yes."

"Niece?"

"Well, of course to you she's your wife, but to me, she's the niece of my good friends the Duncans. They have been so kind to me in the last few years, since my husband passed on."

"And so you invited their niece to your party."

"How could I not? Such a lovely girl. Not at all like the Duncans' rather unfortunate daughter. Oh, but now I'm being a gossip."

"What's the Margaret Truman quote? 'If you can't say something nice, come sit by me'?"

"It wasn't Margaret, my dear boy. But these stories have a way of attaching themselves to the people the newsmen have actually met. Of course no one invites newspapermen to any real parties. So they never know the truly clever people."

"You aren't telling me that it was you who originated that—"

"How old do you think I am, young man!" She feigned horror. "That story was ancient before Margaret Truman was born. My great-grandmother's diary mentions hearing that line attributed to the wife of James Buchanan."

"He was the president before Lincoln, wasn't he?"

"Very good—you are in the top two percent of your generation, for knowing that."

"Do I make the top one percent for knowing that Buchanan was a bachelor?"

She clapped her hands together, hankie and all. "Oh, you are a delight, Mr. Fears! It's no fun teasing people who never understand they're being teased."

"Do the Duncans understand?"

She looked at him sharply. "So we're on a fishing expedition. But I think your purpose is either loftier or lower than mere gossip."