I thought of the frantic message-board posts, She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t get it … I asked, “Did you try telling Pat how you felt?”

Jenny’s hands flew up and out, the IV line swinging from that great purple bruise. “How? He literally wouldn’t have a conversation, in case he missed something on those fucking monitors. When I tried to say anything to him, even just asking him to get something off a shelf, he’d shush me. He’d never done that before. I couldn’t tell if I should give out, or if that would make Pat blow up at me, or pull away from me even more. And I couldn’t tell why I couldn’t tell—whether it was because I was so stressed out I wasn’t thinking straight, or whether there just wasn’t a right answer—”

I said soothingly, “I understand. I wasn’t implying—” Jenny didn’t stop.

“And anyway, we practically didn’t even see each other any more. Pat said the thing was ‘more active’ at night, so he was staying up late and sleeping half the day. We always used to go to bed together, always, but the kids get up early, so I couldn’t stay up with him. He wanted me to—he kept being like, ‘Come on, I know tonight’s the night we get a look at it, I can feel it’—he was always having some idea that was definitely going to catch the thing, like some new bait, or some tent-type thing over the hole and the camera so the animal would feel safe. And he’d be like, ‘Please, Jenny, please, I’m begging you—all it’ll take is one look and you’ll be so much happier, you won’t be worrying about me any more. I know you don’t believe me, but just stay up this one night and you’ll see …’”

“And did you?” I kept my voice low and hoped Jenny would take the hint, but hers looped higher and higher.

“I tried! I hated even looking at those holes, I hated them so much, but I thought if Pat was right then I owed it to him, and if he was wrong then I might as well be sure, you know? And either way, at least we’d be doing something together, even if it wasn’t exactly a romantic dinner. But I was getting so exhausted, a couple of times I thought I was going to fall asleep when I was driving; I couldn’t do it any more. So I’d go to bed at midnight, and Pat would come up whenever he got too tired to keep his eyes open. At first it was like two o’clock, but then it was three, four, five, sometimes not even then—in the morning I’d find him crashed out on the sofa, with all the monitors lined up on the coffee table. Or in the chair by the computer, because he’d spent the whole night online reading up on animals.”

I said, “‘If he was right.’ By this point, you had doubts.”