"What do you want from me?"

"What every wife wants. Someone to love. Someone who'll love me. Trust. Faith. A future. Your babies."

"Shut up!"

"Do I take it this means you've changed your mind about children? Men are like that, so changeable. But I can wait. I won't trick you—no babies till you're ready to be a daddy."

"You never let up, do you?"

She leaned forward until she was spread like a lizard on the couch, leaning over the arm so they were nearly face to face. "Let me tell you a secret, my darling," she whispered. "I'm as real as any wife. What do you think marriage is? It's all pretense. Your mother pretending that your father's temper doesn't scare her. Your father pretending that he doesn't hate it when she gets him all riled up about something and then suddenly can't understand why he's upset. Pretending to be happy with each other when they're both so desperately lonely because along about week three of their marriage they realized that they didn't really know each other and they never would, they'd be strangers together for the rest of their lives. But they couldn't live with that, nobody can, I've seen thousands of marriages and they can't face it that they're paired up with a stranger and so the decent ones, the ones who want to be good, they pretend to be whatever they think their partner wants them to be, and then they pretend that they believe in their partner's pretense. The only difference between them and me is that I'm so good at it. When I pretend to be exactly the wife you really want, I am that wife. I am. It is my whole existence. And when I pretend to love you exactly as you are, I do. I'm totally focused on you, I'm witty when you want witty, sexy when you want sexy, weepy when you want sentimental, beautiful when you want to show me off. I am your true wife."

"You don't know anything," said Quentin.

"I know you."

"You know how to get power over me. And it worked, yeah, you had me dancing. Eating out of your hand. Give the boy exactly what he dreams of and he'll sit up and beg."

"I'm the one who's begging now," she said.

"You're the one who doesn't leave footprints in the snow," he said. "You're the one that orange juice pours right through."

"You think you don't believe in me."

"I don't."

"Then why am I still here?"

"You're not," he said.

He got to his feet. At first, for just a moment, he limped on the leg he had carved with the shard of glass. Except he hadn't cut it, there was no injury; he forced himself to walk without a limp.

"Even when you aren't looking at me, I'm here," she said.

She followed him as he walked through the doorway to his bedroom. He slammed it and it passed right through her. She stood there on the inside of the slammed door.

"I don't like it when you do that," she said.

"Slam doors?"

"I think that on the whole I've been pretty decent about this."

"You!" He climbed back under his sheets. "You're an indecency."

"I didn't have to come to you with love, you know."

He looked away from her, leaned over and switched off the light. Now only the faint light slanting in through the mostly-closed blinds illuminated the room.

"I can find other things in your mind," she said.

Suddenly he threw the bedclothes off him. A half-dozen huge shiny spiders were skittering rapidly along the sheet, over his legs. He flung himself off the bed onto the floor.

"I know those spiders aren't real," he said, panting.

A man's voice answered him, a bleak-sounding whisper. "What is reality?" And then a vast hand clamped him around the throat and picked him up and flung him back onto the bed. As he sprawled on his back, the huge, white, slimy figure with a pus-filled wound for a face raised its other hand and smashed it down into his groin. Quentin screamed in agony until the monster squeezed his throat shut.

This isn't happening, he told himself. The trouble was believing it.

If I believe it, he thought, she can kill me with my own fear. I have to stop fighting it because it isn't there. Like the broken glass wasn't there. Like the wounds in my leg. My throat is shut by my own panic, not by any hand because there is no hand.

Breathe slowly, let the air out a little, then bring in a little. There's nothing in the room with me. I'm alone here on my bed.

He opened his eyes. The monster was gone.

But Madeleine was lying on him, her head on his chest, her waist between his legs, her hair spilling onto the bedsheet. Her body felt warm. He could feel her heartbeat. And despite himself, he was filled with longing. He raised his hand to caress her. But he stopped himself. It would not happen. He brought his hands up and tucked them behind his head, fingers interlocking. Just like the monster, this image, too, would go away.

"Aren't you the strong one," she whispered. "Aren't you brave, to insist on reality. You never could face your own dreams."

She rose from his belly. But not as a normal woman might, raising herself up on her arms. Rather she rose like a marionette, pulled by strings. And yes, she was a marionette, with Madeleine's face, her naked body, but the joints were mechanical and her jaw moved on a string.

"Please. Someday, if I'm really good, can't I be a real girl?"

And then she was gone.

He lay there, panting, exhausted physically and emotionally.

"Oh, Lizzy, I did it," he whispered.

He rolled to one side, then onto his stomach, one leg drawn up, his fist doubled under his chin, the way he always slept, the way he had slept as a boy. But his eyes stayed wide open. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything.

12. Believer

"Sorry, Quentin, but he must have seen our surveillance team," said Wayne. "Doubled back twice and we lost him."

"Him?" That was something, Quentin figured, to know it was a man.

"A guy in a messenger service uniform. So you were right, she didn't just use a stamp."

"Guys from messenger services don't double back to avoid surveillance."

"Yeah, well, they assumed he was a messenger and the real quarry was whoever he brought the message to. And then he pulled his maneuver and he was gone."

"Well, the message arrived," said Quentin.

"You got a call?"

"A visit."

"And?"

"I learned nothing," said Quentin bitterly.

"How can you learn nothing? Who came?"

"Madeleine."

"So she's not dead?"

"Wayne, it wasn't the Madeleine you believe in, the flesh and blood one. It was the Madeleine who doesn't leave footprints."

"Quentin, how can I help you when you won't help me back?"

"Keep on believing I'm crazy if you want, Wayne. But don't let up on the investigation."

"Quentin, really. I'm trying to believe you. And you know me, I'm a lawyer, I can act like I believe my client whether I do or not. I learned that from watching the O. J. trial."

"OK, Wayne. It's cool."

"What is?"

"Madeleine visiting me. You not believing me no matter how hard you try. The investigators losing the messenger. Even if they don't find anything, I need them to keep going after everything."

"By the way, the deed to that house is in the name of a certain Anna Laurent Tyler. Seems she inherited from her mother, Delia Forrest Laurent, who got it from her late husband's will. It was originally built by a Laurent, though, back in the early 1800s."

"Any address for Anna Laurent Tyler?" Quentin was writing down the names. He remembered that in the graveyard there had been a Delia Forrest Laurent, Devoted Wife, sharing a headstone with Theodore Aurelius Laurent, Beloved Husband.

"Sure," said Wayne, "but it's the address of the house in the deed."