“But you heard what the teachers were telling us.” I finally sat down on the bed. “They said she doesn’t know where her personal space ends and someone else’s begins and she can’t read facial expressions, and she’s nonresponsive when people are talking directly to her—”

“The ADD was ruled out, Bret,” Jayne said with barely contained fury.

“—and I mean, my God, didn’t you hear all that shit tonight?”

“You’re not her parent,” Jayne said. “I don’t care if she calls you ‘Daddy,’ but you’re not her parent.”

“But I did hear a teacher tonight tell you that your daughter stands too close to people and talks too loudly and she’s unable to put her thoughts into actions and—”

“What are you doing?” Jayne asked. “What in the hell are you doing right now?”

“I’m concerned about her, Jayne—”

“No, no, no, there’s something else.”

“She thinks her doll is alive,” I blurted out.

“She’s six years old, Bret. She’s six. Wrap your head around that. She’s six.” Jayne’s face was flushed, and she practically spat this out at me.

“And let’s not even get into Robby,” I said. My hands were in the air, signifying something. “We were told he walks around like an amnesiac. That was the word they used tonight, Jayne. Amnesiac.”

“I’m taking them out of that school,” Jayne said, placing the script on the nightstand. “And let’s just stick to your ranting about Sarah. You have thirty seconds, and then I’m turning out the lights. You can either stay or go.” The corners of her mouth were turned down, as they so often had been since I arrived last July.

“I’m not ranting,” I said. “I just don’t think she’s able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Calm down—that’s all this is about.”

“Let’s just talk about this tomorrow night, okay?”

“Why can’t we have a private conversation?” I asked. “Jayne, whatever our problems are—”

“I don’t want you here in this room tonight.”

“Jayne, your daughter thinks that doll is alive—”

(And I do too.)

“I don’t want you in here, Bret.”

“Jayne, please.”

“Everything you say and everything you do is so small and predictable—”

“What about new beginnings?” I reached out for her leg. She kicked my hand away.

“You screwed that up sometime last night between your second gallon of sangria and the pot you smoked and then racing around this house with a gun.” A desperate sadness passed over her face before she turned off the lights. “You screwed that up with your big Jack Torrance routine.”

I sat on the bed a little longer and then stood up and looked down at her in the faint darkness of the room. She had turned away from me, on her side, and I could hear her quietly crying. I stepped softly out of the bedroom and closed the door behind me.

The sconces flickered again as I walked down the hallway past Sarah’s closed door and the door Robby always locked, and downstairs in my office I tried reaching Aimee Light on my cell phone but only got her message. On my computer screen was an e-mail from Binky asking if I could meet with Harrison Ford’s people sometime this week, and I was looking at the screen about to type back an answer when another e-mail appeared from the Bank of America in Sherman Oaks. This one arrived earlier than usual, and I clicked on it to see if the “message” had changed, but there was only the same blank page. I started to call the bank but then realized that no one would pick up because they were closed by now, and I sighed and just stood up from the computer without turning it off, and then I was moving toward the bed I had become so used to when I suddenly heard sounds coming from the media room. I was too tired to be afraid at that point and I listlessly made my way toward the noise.

The giant plasma TV was on. The movie 1941 was playing yet again—John Belushi flying a plane high over Hollywood Boulevard, a cigar clenched between his teeth, a mad gleam in his eye. As I pressed Mute, I assumed this was a DVD we had bought and that maybe the automatic timer had switched it on. Robby had been watching it last night before Jayne and I left for the Allens’ and he probably hadn’t taken the disc out. But when I opened the DVD player, there was no disc in it. I stared at the TV again, puzzled. I picked up the remote and pressed Info and saw that the movie was playing on Channel 64, a local station. But when I looked through the cable guide for that week the movie wasn’t listed, on that channel or any other; and since Robby had watched it last night I checked the schedule to see if it had been listed for that date. According to the listings it had not been on last night either. And then I remembered passing by Robby’s room on the night of the Halloween party, when Ashton Allen had been sleeping while 1941 blared from Robby’s TV. I checked the cable guide for the thirtieth, and again there was no listing for 1941 anywhere. As I sat in front of the TV, desperately searching for any information about why this particular movie continued playing, I suddenly noticed scratching noises.