He turned away, dropped the remnant of her dress on the floor. Let her be angry; he’d pushed it one step too far by bringing up the telegrams. He should’ve tried to find and contact the lawyer himself, not asked his wife. She tolerated enough, but the single moment of tenderness he felt for her had allowed him to believe there was enough in her to bear another question, another wondering about Amy; as if what was important to him could not hurt her.

“Fool,” he mumbled to himself and walked to the bedroom. She was probably retrieving a present for the Reynoldses; she wouldn’t show up without a hostess gift. She was doing what she did best in the face of conflict: avoiding it.

In the bedroom he entered his closet—they had his and hers, another way to keep conflict to a minimum. She never opened his closet, except to put away his clothes. Years ago she’d stopped complaining about the way he scattered his clothes. He pushed aside the suits, wondering if he should wear a suit or just khakis and a button-down shirt. He hated suits. If he’d wanted to wear one, he wouldn’t have gone into land preservation. He pulled a pair of khakis from the bottom rack, pressed by Eliza. He leafed through the top rack of shirts and chose a Tommy Bahama shirt with red and green palm leaves—a gift from Eliza’s mother, and as Christmassy as he could get tonight. He was severely lacking in holiday spirit.

His mind was not on Christmas, on its meaning, on family. All this—all of what he was surrounded by now—was somehow transparent gauze compared to the solid existence of Amy. Sometimes he looked at his house, at his bedroom, at his wife and wondered how things so vaporous could appear so solid.

He started to the slam of the attic door, forgetting for a moment where Eliza was. In his boxers, he walked into the bedroom carrying his clothes. He dropped his pants and shirt on the bed and looked at Eliza . . . but not Eliza. The woman who stood at the foot of the bed, her outstretched hand holding wrinkled papers, was some façade of the woman he’d married. She was blanched, her face pinched in on itself. Her cheeks were splotched; makeup ran in grotesque furrows.

Something was drastically wrong; the world seemed to tilt, disorienting him. Routine Eliza behavior broken and panic rising—that was all he knew.

“You want to know so bad? To know what happened to your precious Amy, why she didn’t show up? Because I . . . I . . . I never sent the telegrams. That is why.” Eliza held out her hand and opened her palm. Crumpled yellowed papers fluttered to the floor.

His own strangled reply was as incoherent as his understanding. “What . . . ?”