From down the hall, he heard Margot and Tony laughing about something. He’d been getting the cold shoulder from both of them ever since he’d disposed of the doll, and he was getting pretty damn sick of it. He and Margot hadn’t made love in a week, and she seemed to be dead serious about wanting him to seek psychological help. He’d tried to explain to her how he felt, what he’d seen, why he was acting this way, but his far-flung concerns had no connections, there were no discernible bridges between the disparate elements of his only partially tied-together tale, and he had to admit that his story sounded loony even to himself.

Tony seemed to be afraid of him.

Daniel sighed. Maybe he did need help. Maybe everything was in his mind, and nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The world was a logical, rational straightforward place, and the thoughts he’d been thinking had a place only in pulp fiction and B movies.

Margot walked into the kitchen, looked at him, and for the first time this week, the sight of him did not knock the smile off her face. She was finally beginning to thaw. He attempted a halfhearted grin and was grateful when she passed by and touched his shoulder.

“Are we pals again?” he asked.

“We’re always pals.”

He reached for her hand, gave it a small squeeze. There was a lot more he wanted to say, a lot more he wanted to ask, a lot more he wanted to tell her, but while he was in her good graces again, it was only by a slim margin, and the slightest misstep could send him back. He’d have to broach things slowly, subtly, carefully for the next few days.

Margot opened the refrigerator, took out a plastic bag of tomatoes from the vegetable drawer. “Brian’s coming over for dinner tonight,” she said.

The last thing he wanted right now was to spend the evening with her brother, but he smiled and nodded and said, “Great.”

The evening didn’t turn out to be that bad. Brian didn’t bring up Daniel’s job status even once, and he left early, just after nine-thirty. While he was there, he was pleasant, playful with Tony, cheerful with Margot, and after dinner, when the two of them were alone—Tony having disappeared into his bedroom, Margot washing the dishes—even he found Brian entertaining and fun to be around. The two of them would never be best buds, but Daniel thought that he’d probably been too hard on his brother-in-law, and he vowed to be nicer to him in the future.