Another moment passed before I drew the door quietly back to its original position. I went outside again and stood at the rail awhile. Then I adjusted the reclining chair to full length and lay flat on my back, eyes shut, hands on chest, and tried to feel like nobody nowhere, a shadow that's part of the night.

Elster drove in grim silence. This was routine. Even with no traffic, there were forces massed in opposition, depending on day and time-road conditions, threat of rain, impending nightfall, people in the car, the car itself. The GPS unit was okay, alerting him to turns, confirming the details of past experience. When Jessie was along, stretched across the rear seat, he'd try to listen to whatever she might be saying and the effort made him hunch toward the steering wheel in tense concentration. She liked to read road signs aloud, Restricted Area, Flash Flood Area, Call Box, Rock Slide Next 6 Miles. We were alone this time, he and I, going to town to stock up on groceries. He didn't want me to drive, he didn't trust other drivers, other drivers were not him.

In the market he moved along the shelves choosing items, tossing them in a basket. I did the same, we divided the store, moving quickly and capably and passing each other now and then in one of the aisles, avoiding eye contact.

On the way back I found myself engaged by the scribbled tar of repair work on the paved road. I was drowsy, staring straight ahead, and soon the spatter on the windshield seemed even more interesting than the tar. When we were off-road, on rubble, he reduced speed drastically and the easy bouncing nearly put me to sleep. My seat belt wasn't fastened. He usually said "Seat belts" when he started the car. I sat up straight and rolled my shoulders. I looked at the grit under my fingernails. The rule of seat belts was meant for Jessie but she didn't always comply. We went past a spindly creek bed and I wanted to pound the dashboard a few times, tom-tom-like, to get the blood pumping. But I just closed my eyes and sat there, nowhere, listening.

When we got back to the house she was gone.

From the kitchen he called her name. Then he went through the house looking. I wanted to tell him that she'd gone for a walk. But it would have sounded false. She didn't do that here. She hadn't done that since she'd arrived. I left the groceries on the kitchen counter and went outside to scan the immediate area, kicking through thorny bushes and ducking under mesquite snags. I wasn't sure what I was looking for. My rented car was where I'd left it. I checked the car's interior and then tried to detect fresh tire marks on the sandy approach to the house and later we both stood on the deck looking intently into the stillness.

It was hard to think clearly. The enormity of it, all that empty country. She kept appearing in some inner field of vision, indistinct, like something I'd forgotten to say or do.

We went into the house again and looked more closely, room to room, finding her suitcase, poking through her closet, opening drawers in the bureau. We hardly spoke, did not speculate on what or where. Elster spoke but not to me, a few puzzled mutterings about her unpredictability. I crossed the hall to the bathroom that she and I shared. Toilet kit on the windowsill. No note taped to the mirror. I threw back the shower curtain, making more noise than I'd intended.

Then I thought of the shed, how had we forgotten the shed. I felt a strange brainless elation. I told Elster. The shed.

This was the first time we'd gone anywhere without her. She hadn't wanted to come with us but we should have said something, and her father did, but we should have insisted, should have been unyielding.

All right it was not impossible, a long walk. The heat had diminished these past few days, there was cloud cover, even a breeze.

Maybe she didn't want to spend another minute here and walked all the way out to the nearest paved road hoping to hitch a ride. This was hard to believe, that she might expect to reach San Diego and then get on a flight to New York, apparently carrying nothing, not even a wallet. The wallet was on her dresser with bills and change scattered around it, credit card in its slot.

I stood at the entrance to the shed. A hundred years of junk, this is what I saw, glass, rags, metal, wood, alone here, we'd left her, and the feeling in the body, the sheer deadness in my arms and shoulders, and not knowing what to say to him, and the chance, the faint prospect that we'd be standing on the deck in faded light and she'd come walking along the sandpath and we'd barely believe what we were seeing, he and I, and it would take only moments to forget the past several hours and we'd go in to dinner and be the people we always were.

He was in the house, on the sofa, leaning well forward and talking into the floor.

"I tried to get her to come with me. I talked to her. You heard me. She said she wasn't feeling well. Headache. She gets headaches sometimes. She wanted to stay here and take a nap. I gave her an aspirin. I brought her an aspirin and a glass of water. I watched her swallow the damn thing."

He seemed to be trying to convince himself that all of this had happened precisely as he was stating it.

"We have to call."

"We have to call," he said. "But won't they say it's too early? She's only been gone an hour or two."

"They must get calls for lost hikers all the time. People missing all the time. Out here, this time of year, whatever the situation, they have to take action fast," I said.

The only phones were our cell phones, the quickest link we had to assistance of any kind. Elster had a map of the area with numbers he'd written down for the caretaker, the sheriff's office and the park rangers. I got both our phones and snatched the map off the kitchen wall.

I reached a man in the park rangers' office. I supplied name, description, rough location of Elster's house. I explained Jessie's circumstances, not a trailwalker or mountain biker, not driving a car, not prepared to withstand even a limited period in the elements. He said he was a volunteer and would try to reach the superintendent, who was with a search party now, looking for Mexicans who'd been led across the border and then abandoned, no food or water. There were search planes, tracking dogs, GPS hand units and they often searched at night. They would be on lookout, he said.

Elster was still on the sofa, phone at his side. No one answering in the sheriff's office, he'd left a message. He wanted to call the caretaker now, someone who knew the area, and I tried to recall the man clearly, face stained by sun and wind, eyes tight. If Jessie was the victim of a crime, I'd want to know where he was when it happened.

Elster called, phone rang a dozen times.

I finished putting away the groceries. I tried to concentrate on this, where things go, but objects seemed transparent, I could see through them, think through them. He was out on the deck again. I went through the house one more time, looking for an indication, a glimmer of intent. The impact, gathering from the first moment, hard to absorb. I didn't want to go out there and stand watch alongside him. The fear deepened in his presence, the foreboding. But after a while I poured scotch over ice in a tall glass and took it out to him and soon night was everywhere around us.