Too monstrous, of course. Mae wouldn't have plotted a thing like that. It was just that little accidents played into her hands. Like this murder.

He leaned on the wheel, clutching it, staring into the sunlight, and tried to bring order into his thoughts. He felt light-headed and sick. There was no use wandering off into a territory of utter nightmare. Mae was his wife. She was married to him for better or for worse. She wouldn't be wilfully planning his destruction.

But she was. She was.

Even as the conviction of truth roared through him, shattering his last hope of safety, he was reaching to release the hand brake, to head up the road for home, doing her bidding. He drove, and the road wobbled, familiar scenes crept past on either side. He came to a stretch of old orange groves, the trees dead, some of them uprooted, and then there was an outlying shopping area, and tract houses. He had the feeling that he should abandon the car and run off somewhere to hide. But he couldn't imagine where. There was really no place to go, finally, except home to Mae.

At the gate he slowed, looking around. Cooper was beside his car, on the curb at the right, just standing there morosely; he didn't even look up. Behind him on the steps of the little office sat old man Arthur; he was straight, something angry in his attitude, as if he might be waiting to report something. Holden stepped on the gas.