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she’s fooling about or something. It’s the last thing you worry about, really. We had much more fallout come through the gaps than disappearances from our place, and like everyone else, I truly thought they’d closed all the gaps.” He rubbed his hands against his knees, his chin shaking. “But then I look on the ground just as I’m walking out the cabin and I see… I see this ring, staring up at me, smoke around it. I reach down and pick it up and it’s hot to touch, y’know? It’s hot to touch. And then all of a sudden, I remember the news report of young Tommy Baker who went missing a few years back and… Well, I guess I just know.”
    The pair of them were silent for a few minutes. Poor guy—out and about with his missus one day and then, nothing. That said, he wasn’t much different from himself, but at least Donny had a chance, didn’t he? Some sort of chance?
    “I’m sorry… about your wife. I really am. But—”
    “I’m assuming from the fact that you were staying in her house that she isn’t with us anymore?”
    Donny gulped and nodded his head in acknowledgement.
    Instead of remorse, Reginald’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. For eleven months I’ve… I’ve just wanted to know that I’m not completely insane, and now—thanks to you—now I know.’
    The birds sang their unique songs outside as the sun began to heat up the kitchen. He had to ask him. He had to find out how to get back. If there was a way, he had to go. He’d helped Reginald—now it was Reginald’s turn to get him home.
    “I don’t… I don’t mean to sound rude or anything like that, but you mentioned that… that there was a way of getting ba—”
    “I’ve been waiting so, so long,” Reginald said. “I went to the authorities so often to tell them that a gap had opened but I had no real proof other than my wife’s disappearance. Do you know what they said to me? Do you, hmm? They said she’d probably done a runner. They said there was more of a chance she’d done a runner than falling through a gap. They—” He shifted his head to the side and stopped talking, gulping back the tears.
    “I know. I… I’m sorry I don’t have better news about your wife. It’s just—”
    “I was just waiting for someone like you, Donny. Waiting for someone like you to prove to them that I wasn’t mad all along.” He licked his chapped lips, the scraggy hair on his head reflecting the sun with its greasy coating. There was something different in his eyes—a shift in his entire demeanor.
    “Well, now you know. I need your help. If… if your wife fell through that gap and she’s somehow linked to me, then maybe that’s my key out of here. The gaps—you say that if the person remembers things they can go back through them. Then maybe I can go back. I… I remember things. Maybe I can… I can find some things out about your wife’s time in my world. Maybe… maybe I can get some sort of help.”
    Reginald shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? The only way you’re leaving this house is with me to go to the authorities. I need—I need to prove it to them. I need to prove it to them that—that I was right.”
    Donny’s body tensed up against the back of the chair. “But I thought—”
    “I’ve waited for months and months and months and months and months for a—a sign. A sign that I’m not insane.” His voice grew more disjointed as he gesticulated and waved his arms. “I—I waited for so long. And now, now you just want to leave, hmm? You just want to leave? You’re just like the rest. Just like the rest—selfish.” He stood up from the table, the chair falling backwards as he rose. “Come here. Just come here and we can get this done with.”
    Donny jumped out of his chair and backed away from Reginald, his heart pounding. Reginald pulled a white cloth out of his pocket and walked towards him. Not again. “Listen, I understand,” Donny said.