Where was it? It wasn’t in her suitcase, she had already rummaged through that and left it hanging open on the flowery motel bed. It was too big to fit in her makeup bag, but she had looked there too, knowing it couldn’t be there, but starting to panic as she realized she didn’t have the one thing she swore to James she would not lose. She started to feel ill, thinking of James and how he had placed it on her kitchen table, in their old apartment,and then held her hands. He had looked at her so seriously, and had said to her, “That object is the one thing that can keep us together throughout all this mess, please Audrey, take it with you if you ever have to leave here.”
Well, she had had to leave, and suddenly, so she had thrown the object in her big suitcase without really thinking it could get lost from being zipped in there. And of course, it was missing now. Missing! How could it have dematerialized through the material? Not possible! Yet, she had searched the room for half an hour now, and nothing.