In July, Bradley took Isabelle and his boys on a car trip to Sequoia and Yosemite. Marion had begged him to use his vacation to get started on the screenplay, which she’d now completely outlined for him, but he said he owed the vacation to his boys, and off they went. As long as she hadn’t had to go more than four days without seeing him, as long as their rightness for each other was regularly confirmed, she’d avoided further episodes of slippage. But a weekend alone, after a week with no hope of seeing Bradley, was endless. The very sun seemed evil to her in the way it dawdled in her windows, took its insolent time in going down. She couldn’t read a book or go to the pictures. The passage of time needed vigilant monitoring. She sat perfectly still, trying not to even blink, until the fear of relaxing her vigilance became apocalyptic, as though the world might end if she so much as flexed a muscle in her foot. She was very, very low. For some reason, she was especially averse to bathing, the sensation of water on her skin.