Chapter 26 Summary

David, Catherine and Marita dress on the beach and drive back to the hotel in the car. David immediately goes to his writing room and opens the locked suitcase. The cahiers are gone along with the big envelopes full of clippings. The narrative manuscript is all that is left. He locks the suitcase and searches the entire room, hoping Catherine has hidden the stories somewhere. He does not believe that she can possibly have burned them all. He was afraid of it at the beach, but he really does not believe anyone could.

At the beach, David and Marita were calm, as you are trained to be in a natural disaster, but now he is not. He thinks it might be a joke and searches the suitcase again. He does not believe anyone could do this to another human being. As soon as...