He phoned her again and was sent to voice mail. “Confused was the wrong word, Maddison. I’m bereft, I feel lost, and I’m afraid for you. I love you. Whatever your situation is, I know I can help. Give me a chance to help. Please, please, call me.”

For more than an hour, he restlessly toured the house, as though he would come across something else she’d left behind, other than the note, some cryptic clue that, with sufficient study, would reveal more about the truth of her than he had yet uncovered. He stood at one window after another, gazing out at the day, but the day offered him nothing, not even the comfort of familiarity. The street and the neighboring residences and the courtyard between his house and garage appeared shot through with a subtle but disturbing strangeness. One by one, he took books from the shelves in his study and focused intently on a page of this, a paragraph of that, and put them back without remembering a word of what he’d read.

Eventually, when Maddison did not respond to his phone calls, indignation rose in him, a sense of righteous offense, which became resentment, which grew into anger. He stalked into the bedroom and stared at the bed they had shared. She’d hidden the truth of herself from him, and she’d walked out on him. He couldn’t abide sleeping with the sheets in which were enfolded even the faintest scent of her. He tore the bedclothes off the bed and carried them to the laundry room and put them in the washing machine.

But the indignation and resentment and anger were not real, only fabricated feelings with which to mask from himself his hurt and fear. He could not sustain the faux outrage.

He started to phone her again, but stopped before he pressed Call. She had asked for his patience and faith. He owed her nothing less than what she requested.

He printed the proofs of his forthcoming novel, which Connie had sent earlier. But he could not concentrate on the text.

At 3:20, although he rarely drank before dinner, he opened a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and poured a generous portion and took solace in the smoothness of the grape.

He decided that in the morning, if he had not heard from her, he would drive to the house on Rock Point Lane. If his life really was at risk, the danger would likely be greater there than anywhere else, but he was in a mood to walk ledges and high wires.

When he was in New York, the management company that cared for this house also collected his mail at the street and sent it to him once a week. But it was now his to collect, which he hadn’t done for the past few days. Among the envelopes that he brought in from the mailbox, he found one from Ronny Lee Jessup, posted from Folsom State Prison, stamped with a warning that the contents were from a prisoner of a maximum-security facility.