Two years pass, Mary does die from her temporal lobe tumor, and John Klein sets off as part of his job as a journalist at The Washington Post, to interview the mayor. After driving for what seems like quite a short time, he finds himself in a completely different part of the country in a small town called Point Pleasant in West Virginia.

It's the middle of the night and his car (an Audi, of course) just stops dead - some electrical anomaly and he walks to a local house to ask if he can use the telephone. There he is met with a rather crazed looking man, played by Will Patton, wielding a gun, who says to his wife, "I told you he'd come back". Patton forces Gere into the bathtub while he holds him prisoner until the local Deputy Connie Parker (Laura Linney) arrives. He tells her this "strange guy" has been paying him visits and that he's warned him off his property several times now, but that he keeps coming back. He describes the creature as half moth, half man. Linney manages to talk Patton into letting Gere go, but tells the reporter (Gere) "There have been some strange things going on around here lately" apparently referring to people seeing things - strange things that she can't explain. She drops Gere off at a local motel for the night and arranges for his car to be towed to a local garage.

The next morning, when Gere goes to get his car he is told that there is "nothing wrong with it and that there is "no charge", which is odd because it had just died - flat out, electrically zapped. He then visits Linney at the police department where she says, "Did you see that woman?" of course, Gere didn't see anyone. Linney describes the woman as "real pretty with red hair and green eyes" describing perfectly the two-year dead Mary Klein. Gere rushes out to the street, but sees nothing, though he is desperate to see her (this will be the first time that his dead wife tries to contact him. Messing reappears in the background several times in the film, though Gere never really makes contact. He may hear her, and even see her, several times in his own bed or receive a phone call - a voice that sounds like her. Frustratingly, he is never able to speak directly with Mary. Instead, it's a one way communication on her part as if she is trying to convey a message that he can't quite get no matter how hard he may try.