]  

She sank wearily onto a chair and looked at him. “He found the watch I gave you a few years ago. It was lying at the crash site. He came to the office where I work and asked about you. I denied that I knew you were back and he began to yell at me about my life being in danger and that I should stay away from you until he had a chance to put a bullet into you. My God, Nick! What have you done?”

“I dunno,” he lied. Should he tell her that he was not her husband, that he didn’t have the foggiest notion of who he was? He decided against it. “How’d he know where to find me?”

She sighed. “He helped you build the place. Now where is he?”

“Goddammit, Beth, I told you! How many times do I have to tell you that he vanished!”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“Then believe me! It happened! I saw it happen, and I wasn’t seeing things! Go out and look. If you can find his body out there, I’ll eat it.”

She uttered a little cry and came into his arms, holding him tightly. “Oh, darling, I want to believe you. I want very much to believe you; but men can’t vanish.”

“Brice did.”

“All right. If you say he did. All right. Now what?”

“I don’t know. I have to think. I have to try and remember what happened to me. It’s the only way that this crazy whirl will make sense, and it has to make sense. It has to.”

She nodded. “Let’s go into the room. I want to be with you tonight. Let me have the gun, dear?”

He stared at her, his jaws knotted. “You think [p95]  I’m nuts, don’t you? You think I’m crazy.”

[p95]  

[p

]  

“Darling, darling, of course not. But I wish you’d give me the gun.”

Resignedly he unstrapped the gun and gave it to her. He shrugged. “I don’t blame you. Hell, I think I’m crazy too.”

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