Bremen left the hospital and his dying wife and drove east to the sea. The roads were thick with Philadelphians fleeing the city for the unusually warm Easter weekend, so Bremen had to concentrate on traffic, leaving only the most tenuous of touches in his wife’s mind.

Gail was sleeping. Her dreams were fitful and drug-induced. She was seeking her mother through endlessly interlinked rooms filled with Victorian furniture. Images from these dreams slid between the evening shadows of reality as Bremen crossed the Pine Barrens. She awoke just as Bremen was leaving the parkway, and for the few seconds that the pain was not with her, Bremen was able to share the clarity of sunlight falling across the blue blanket at the foot of her bed; then he shared the quick vertigo of confusion as she thought—only for a second—that it was morning on the farm.

Her thoughts reached for him just as the pain returned, stabbing behind her left eye like a thin but infinitely sharp needle. Bremen grimaced and dropped the coin he was handing the tollbooth attendant.

“Something wrong, pal?” Bremen shook his head, fumbled out a dollar, and thrust it blindly at the man. Tossing his change into the Triumph’s cluttered console, he concentrated on pushing the little car up through its gears while shielding himself from the worst of Gail’s pain. Slowly the agony faded, but her confusion washed over him like a wave of nausea.

She quickly gained control despite the shifting curtains of fear that fluttered at the edges of her consciousness. She subvocalized, concentrating on narrowing the spectrum of what she shared to a simulacrum of her voice.

Hi, Jerry.

Hi, yourself, kiddo. He sent the thought as he turned onto the exit of Long Beach Island. Bremen shared the visual—the startling green of grass and pine trees overlaid with the gold of April light, the sports car’s shadow leaping along the curve of the embankment as he followed the cloverleaf down to the road. Suddenly there came the unmistakable salt-and-rotting-vegetation scent of the Atlantic, and he shared that with her as well.