“Detour?—I didn’t notice any detour, darling. You haven’t been out—what would you know of detours and road conditions? I’ve been out. I’ve never heard of any North Ridge Road—I think you must mean Northanger Road. But that’s nowhere near here, that’s over in Hunterdon County.” The man spoke patiently, and with an air of sorrow. Though white-haired, he wasn’t elderly; probably in his early sixties. You could see how disconsolate he was. How close to despair. How bitterly he blamed her.

And how awkward Abigail was in the flannel nightgown that fell billowing to her ankles and would have tripped her if she’d dared to push past her captor and escape out the door …

But no: she seemed to recall that there was no escape through that door, at least for her.

No escape!—as her captor insisted that she return to bed, as if she were ill. As if the fault were somehow hers, that she was in this predicament and he was obliged to be with her, overseeing her. For of course she could not be trusted to be alone. For of course she had proved that by her behavior. Insisting that of course she was home, this was her home, it was upsetting to him, as it was to their children, when she demanded to be allowed to go home when this was her home, for she was only just tired, and she was only just confused and had not taken her afternoon medication; but she should be comforted to know—she was home, this had been her home for thirty-two years.

Abigail protested: “But—you are not my husband! This is ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous. Of course I am your husband, and you are my wife.”

For a long, painful moment they stared at each other. Each was trembling, furious.

The thought came to Abigail—You have hurt this man’s feelings terribly. What if he is your husband—what if you are mistaken?

The sensation of faintness deepened. Vertigo, in the brain.

A mistake, some sort of mistake, but whose fault?—Abigail could not comprehend.

More likely, Abigail thought, the man with the gnarled-looking white hair and wounded, peevish face was intended to be her husband but had been poorly chosen for the role; as she, Abigail, the wife of another man, had been cast as his wife just as poorly.

As the house in which she found herself, this very bedroom, was intended to replicate or to actually be her bedroom, and her house—yet was not.

Abigail recalled that dreams are inaccurate in small, baffling ways. Why?—to understand, one would have to understand the human brain, which is beyond comprehension.

A small mistake can be a cataclysmic mistake. Once such a mistake has been made, who can unmake it?

Why didn’t they send better actors!—Abigail had to laugh.