“Soup for the raveled sleeve of care.”

“I believe that’s sleep,” he said. “And soup for the soul.”

“Well, this is for both. I figured we were going to be needing a lot of it, so I made a double batch and froze it.”

“I love your pioneer instincts.” He smiled, taking his first sip.

“Island instincts. Not that we didn’t have supermarkets on Whidbey. But people always seemed to want to prepare for being cut off.”

She tore the end off the bread and handed it to him. Then she watched him begin.

“So, how does this work? Do I have to ask you questions or are you just going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

In that instant, and despite the long day without food, he lost his appetite.

“I’m going to tell you,” he said.

And he tried.

“I had a student named Evan Parker. Back when I taught at Ripley. And he had this great idea for a novel. A plot that was … well, striking. Memorable. Involving a mother and her daughter.”

“Oh no,” Anna said quietly. It landed on him like a blow, but he made himself go on.

“It surprised me, because he had no real feeling for fiction that I could see. Not much of a reader, which is always an indicator. And the few pages of his work I saw, well, he could write, but it wasn’t anyone’s idea of a great book in progress. Maybe his own, but no one else’s. Certainly not mine. But still—he did have this great story.”

Jake stopped. It already wasn’t going well.

“So … did you take it, Jake? Is that what you’re telling me?”

He felt sick, suddenly. He put down his spoon. “Of course not. I didn’t do anything, except maybe feel a little sorry for myself. A little pissed at the universe that this guy had come up with such a great idea straight out of the gate. He was a nightmare as a student. Treated everyone else in the workshop as if they were wasting his time, and not a shred of respect for me as a teacher, of course. Sometimes I wonder, would I have done it if he hadn’t been such a jerk.”

“Well, I wouldn’t lead with any of that if you’re ever asked,” said Anna with heavy sarcasm.

He nodded. Of course, she was right.

“I think we might have spoken once, outside of class. In a conference. That’s when he took me through this plot. But never anything personal. I didn’t even know basic stuff like that he was from Vermont or what he did for a living.”

“He was from … Vermont,” Anna said slowly.

“Yeah.”

“Where you coincidentally just were. Giving a reading and working on your revisions.” She set down her glass.

Jake sighed. “Yes. I mean no, it wasn’t a coincidence. And I wasn’t working on my revisions. Or giving a reading, for that matter. I was meeting one of his friends from the Ripley program, in Rutland. His hometown.”

“You went to Rutland?” She seemed horrified.

“Well, yes. I’ve been kind of hiding away from this. I finally felt I needed to deal with it directly. See if there was anything I could figure out, by being there. Maybe by talking to some people.”

“What people?”

“Well, the Ripley friend, for one. And I went to Parker’s place.”

“His house?” she said with alarm.

“No,” Jake said. “Well, yes, that too. But I meant the bar he owned. Tavern,” he corrected himself.

After a moment she said: “Fine. What happened after you were his teacher and talked to him one time outside of your workshop.”

He nodded. “Well, basically, I forgot all about him, or almost forgot. Every year or so I’d think, Hey, that book still hasn’t come out. And maybe he found out it was a lot harder to write a book than he’d thought it was going to be.”

“So finally you decided, He’s never going to write it, so I’m going to write it. And now Evan Parker’s threatening to expose you for stealing his idea.”

Jake shook his head. “No. That’s not what happened. And whoever’s threatening me, it’s not him. Evan Parker is dead.”

Anna stared at him. “He’s dead.”

“Yeah. And actually a long time ago. Like, within a couple of months of that Ripley workshop. He never did write his book. Or at least, he never finished it.”

For a moment she said nothing. Then: “How did he die?”

“Overdose. Awful, but absolutely nothing to do with his story, or me. And when I heard about it … I really wrestled with this, of course. But I couldn’t just let it go. The plot. You see?”

Anna took a sip of her wine. Slowly, she nodded. “Okay. Keep going.”

“I will, but I need you to understand something. In my world, the migration of a story is something we recognize, and we respect. Works of art can overlap, or they can sort of chime with one another. Right now, with some of the anxieties we have around appropriation, it’s become downright combustible, but I’ve always thought there was a kind of beauty to it, the way narratives get told and retold. It’s how stories survive through the ages. You can follow an idea from one author’s work to another, and to me that’s something I find powerful and exciting.”

“Well, that sounds very artistic and magical and all that,” Anna said, with a definite edge to her voice, “but you’ll forgive me if what you writers think of as some kind of spiritual exchange looks like plagiarism to the rest of us.”

“How can it be plagiarism?” Jake said. “I never saw more than a couple of pages of what Parker was writing, and I absolutely avoided every detail I could remember. This isn’t plagiarism, not remotely.”

“All right,” she conceded. “So maybe plagiarism isn’t the right word. Maybe theft of story gets closer.”

That hurt terribly.

“Like how Jane Smiley stole A Thousand Acres from Shakespeare or Charles Frazier stole Cold Mountain from Homer?”

“Shakespeare and Homer were dead.”

“So was this guy. And unlike Shakespeare and Homer, Evan Parker never actually wrote something another person could steal from.”

“As far as you’re aware.”

Jake looked down into his rapidly cooling soup. Only a few spoonfuls had made their way into his mouth, and that seemed like a long time ago. She’d managed to put her finger on his worst fear.

“As far as I’m aware.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “So Evan Parker isn’t the person who wrote to me. Who did it, then? Do you know?”

“I thought I knew. I thought it had to be someone who’d been with us at Ripley. I mean, if he told me about his book, why wouldn’t he have told somebody else in the program? That’s what the students were there for, to share their work.”

“And be taught how to become better writers.”

Jake shrugged. “Sure. If that’s even possible.”

“Says the former teacher of creative writing.”

He looked at her. She was clearly still angry at him. Which he deserved.

“I thought I could make it go away. I thought I could spare you this.”

“Why? Because it was going to be too much for me, this pathetic internet troll? If some loser out there decides to go after you because you’ve actually accomplished something in your life, that’s his issue, not yours. Please do not hide this kind of thing from me. I’m on your side.”

“You’re right,” he said, but his voice really was cracking now. “I’m sorry.”

Anna got to her feet. She took her own nearly full bowl of soup to the kitchen sink. Jake watched her back as she rinsed it and put it into the dishwasher. She brought the wine bottle back to the table and poured more for each of them.

“Honey,” Anna said, “I hope you know, I don’t care in the least about this creep. Like, zero compassion for somebody who does what he’s done, no matter how justified he thinks he is. I care about you. And from what I can see you’ve really been harmed by this. You must be devastated.”

Well, that’s absolutely true, he wanted to say, but all he could manage was: “Yeah.”

They sat together in silence for a few moments. He wondered if it made her feel better or worse to know how right she’d been, all these weeks, about how badly he was feeling. But Anna wasn’t a vindictive person. Just now, she might be frustrated at the extent of his secrecy and his withholding, but already empathy was getting the upper hand. What he needed to do, though, was tell her everything.

He took a sip of his wine and tried again.

“So, like I said, I thought it was someone from Ripley, but I was wrong.”

“Okay,” Anna said warily. “So who?”

“Let me ask you something. Why do you think Crib got the response it did? I’m not looking for praise, I’m saying … lots of novels are published every year. Plenty of them are tightly plotted, full of surprises, well written. Why did this one blow up?”

“Well,” she said with a shrug, “the story …”

“Yes. The story. And why was this story so shocking?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Because how could that ever happen in real life, to a real mother and daughter? It’s crazy! Fiction invites us into outrageous scenarios. That’s one of the things we ask it to do. Right? So we don’t have to think of them as real?”

Anna shrugged. “I suppose.”