“I’m sure you’re right.”

He was running out of ideas and on his last nerve. He also had pages of notes, by now, on commercial properties in Rutland, Vermont, that he couldn’t have cared less about, and he was the proud possessor of a folder of state policies and programs and completely unneeded brochures about home buying, and also a useless list of Realtors with the William Gaylord, Esq., seal of approval, as well as printouts of listings for old houses in and around Rutland. Outside it was getting dark and still raining, and he was facing a long drive back to the city. And he still knew nothing more than when he’d come in.

“So,” said Jake, making a show of gathering up the papers and recapping his pen, “I suppose there’s no way of buying back that house from the new owners? I wouldn’t say no to updated septic and electricity, actually.”

Gaylord looked at him. “You’ve really got a thing for that place, don’t you? But I’d say no. Not after all the work those people have put in. If you’d come along three years ago I had a very motivated seller, I can tell you. Well, technically I didn’t have her. I was the in-state counsel for the sale, but I never dealt with her directly. She had representation down in Georgia.”

“Georgia?” Jake asked.

“She was going to college down there. I think she just wanted to start over somewhere, make a clean break. She didn’t come back for the closing, not even to clean out the house. With everything that went wrong in that family, I can’t say I blame her.”

“Sure,” said Jake, who blamed her enough for the both of them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Breakdown Lane

As he was passing Albany the phone vibrated on the seat behind him. Anna. He pulled off onto the shoulder to take the call. From the moment she spoke he knew there was something wrong.

“Jake. Are you all right?”

“Me? Of course. Yes. I’m all right. What is it?”

“I got a horrible letter. Why didn’t you tell me this was happening?”

He closed his eyes. He could only imagine.

“A letter from whom?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

“Some jackhole named Tom!” Her voice was shrill. He couldn’t tell if she was afraid or angry. Probably both. “He says you’re a crook and I’m supposed to ask you about somebody named Evan Parker who’s apparently the real author of Crib. I mean, what the fuck? I went online and … Jake, oh my god, why didn’t you tell me this has been going on? I found posts from back in the fall on Twitter. And Facebook! And there was something on a book blog, talking about it. Why the hell haven’t you told me about this?”

He felt the panic, pressing hard against his chest, liquifying his arms and legs. Here it was: the thing he’d spent all this time trying desperately to prevent, unfolding in the breakdown lane. He couldn’t believe it still surprised him that another wall into his private life had been breached. Or that he hadn’t prevented it from happening.

“I should have told you. I’m sorry. I just … I couldn’t stand thinking about how upset you’d be. You are.”

“But what is he talking about? And who is this Evan Parker person?”

“I’ll tell you, I promise,” he said. “I’m pulled over on the side of the New York State Thruway, but I’m on my way home.”

“But how did he get our address? Has he ever contacted you before? I mean directly, like this?”

It appalled him, the weight of what he’d hidden from her.

“Yes. Through my website. There’s also been contact with Macmillan. We had a meeting about it. And …” He especially hated to admit this part. “I got a letter, too.”

For a long moment, he heard nothing. Then she started screaming. “Are you kidding me? You knew he had our address? And you never told me about any of this? For months?”

“It wasn’t so much a decision. It just got away from me. I feel awful about it. I wish I’d said something when it started.”

“Or any moment since.”

“Yes.”

For a long moment, silence filled up the distance between them, and Jake looked forlornly at the cars rushing past.

“What time will you get home?”

By eight, he told her. “Do you want to go out?”

Anna didn’t want to go out. She wanted to cook.

“And we’ll talk about it then,” she said, as if he thought she might somehow forget.

After they hung up he sat there for a few more minutes, feeling horrible. He was trying to remember his own first decision not to tell her about TalentedTom, and to his surprise it went back—all the way back to the very day he and Anna had first met at the radio station. Over eight months of this, innuendo and threats and hashtags to spread the poison as far as it could go, and nothing had made it stop! It would have been one thing if he’d managed to handle the problem, but he hadn’t, and in fact, it had gotten bigger, like a nautilus circling farther and farther, ensnaring people he cared about: Matilda, Wendy, now, worst of all, Anna. She was right. His worst mistake had been not to tell her. He saw that now.

No. His worst mistake had been to take Evan Parker’s plot in the first place.

Did it even matter anymore that Crib was his—every word of it? That the book’s success was inextricably entwined with his own skill in presenting the story Evan Parker had told him that night in Richard Peng Hall? It had been an exceptional story, of course it had, but could Parker himself really have done justice to it? Yes, he’d had some moderate talent at making sentences, that much Jake had recognized back at Ripley. But creating narrative tension? Understanding what made a story track and grab and hold? Forging characters a reader felt inclined to care about and invest their time in? Jake hadn’t seen enough of Evan’s work to judge whether his former student was capable of doing that, but Parker had been the one telling the story that night, and that came with certain rights of possession; Jake had been the one it was told to, and that came with certain moral responsibilities.

At least while the teller was … alive.

Was Jake really supposed to throw a plot like that into some other writer’s grave? Any novelist would understand what he’d done. Any novelist would have done exactly the same!

And thus reacquainted with his righteousness on the matter, he started his car again and headed south to the city.

There was a spinach soup Anna liked to cook, so intensely green it made you feel healthier just looking at it, and she had that waiting for him when he arrived home, along with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread from Citarella. She was sitting in the living room with the disassembled Sunday Times, and he noticed, as he accepted her stiff hug, that she had the book section unfurled on the coffee table, open to the bestsellers page. He knew from Macmillan’s weekly dispatch that he was currently at number four on the paperback fiction list, something that would have thrilled and astonished him at any moment in his life except for the past month, when it represented an actual descent. But such were not his most pressing concerns this evening.

“You want to wash up? Are you hungry?”

He hadn’t eaten since that donut, many hours earlier in West Rutland.

“I’m definitely ready for that soup. Even more, though, for some wine.”

“Go put your stuff down. I’ll pour you a glass.”

In the bedroom he found the envelope she’d received, left for him on the bed. It was identical to his own with that single name, Talented Tom, as a return address and their own address—with her name, this time—front and center. He picked it up and slipped the page out, numb with horror as he read its single sentence:

Ask your plagiarist husband to tell you about Evan Parker, the real author of Crib.

He had to fight the urge to crumple it up on the spot.

Jake went to put his dirty clothes in the hamper and return his toothbrush to its usual place. He tried, by some fearful instinct, to avoid seeing himself in the mirror, but inevitably he caught his own gaze, and there it plainly was: the impact of these last months, deeply and unmistakably etched into dark circles around his eyes. Pale skin. Lank hair. And above all an expression of intractable dread. But there was no quick fix for it now, and no way out but through. He went back to the living room, and his wife.

Anna had brought from Seattle a set of well-used knives, a “Dutch oven,” an old wooden cutting board she’d had since college, and even a mason jar half full of something that looked like desiccated tapioca pudding, which turned out to be sourdough starter. With these she had been producing a continuum of actual food for months: balanced meals, confections, casseroles and soups and even condiments that now filled the freezer and the refrigerator shelves. She had also dispatched Jake’s existing dishes (and silverware, and glasses) to the Goodwill on Fourteenth Street, replacing them with new sets from Pottery Barn. She was setting down sturdy ceramic bowls of the green soup as he took his seat.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is beautiful.”