She’d been renting a small house on East Whittier Street in German Village, about five miles from campus, a quiet neighborhood with not too many OSU students. She still did her bill processing for Bassett Healthcare but mainly at night, keeping the days free for classes: history, philosophy, political science. It was all pleasure, even the term papers, even the exams, even the fact that she was obligated to lose herself among the 60,000 enrolled students on the Columbus campus and never become too familiar to her teachers; the deep thrill of having resurrected and met her once and forever goal, her so long buried goal, carried her through every day of her new life. Where would she be by now without that eighteen-year pause? Working as a lawyer, possibly, or a professor of some kind? A scientist or a doctor? Maybe even a writer! It didn’t bear thinking about, she supposed. She was somewhere now that she had given up all hope of being.

One afternoon at the end of May she arrived home to discover that most unwelcome mouse, Gab, waiting for her on the doorstep with a sad little backpack.

“Let’s go inside,” Samantha said, hustling her into the sitting room. As soon as the door closed, she demanded: “What are you doing here?”

“I got Maria’s address at the campus registrar,” said the girl. She was small, but covered in an extra layer of flesh. “I didn’t realize you were out here, too.”

“I moved a few months ago,” Samantha said tersely. “I sold our house.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. Her lank hair fell against her cheeks. “I heard that.”

“I told you, she has another girlfriend now.”

“No, I know. Only I’m driving to the West Coast. I want to try and live out there. I’m not sure where, yet. Probably San Francisco, but maybe LA. And I thought, I was passing by Columbus, so …”

She did a lot of passing by, this girl.

“So?”

“I just thought, it would be really nice to see Maria. Get some, you know …”

Closure? Samantha thought. She had a particular distaste for the word.

“Closure.”

“Oh. Of course. Well, she’s up at campus now. But she ought to be home in an hour or so. I’ll pick up a pizza for the three of us. Why don’t you come with me?”

So Gab did, which was just as well. Samantha certainly didn’t want her poking around the house with its single bedroom, wondering where Maria slept at night. She asked Gab polite questions as they drove to Luigi’s, where Samantha often ordered pizza, and learned that she—like Samantha herself—had no intention of ever returning to their hometown or maintaining ties to any living person there. Everything Gab owned, in fact, was in the Hyundai Accent she was bravely driving west, and once this last little bit of closure was achieved, she intended to head off, literally, into the sunset. That is, Samantha supposed, unless she made some unfortunate discovery here in Columbus that warranted a return to Earlville, New York. But really, it was all unfortunate discovery at this point. Wasn’t it? “I’ll just be a minute,” she said as she went inside to pick up the pie.

Later, as Gab set the table for three in the small dining room, Samantha crushed a handful of peanuts between a metal spatula and the countertop, and pressed them under the oily discs of pepperoni.

Pepperoni, of course.

Because she remembered that.

Because she had been a good mother, and even if she hadn’t, there was no one left to disagree about that now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Such a Waste of Energy

When he arrived home, Anna wasn’t there, but a pot of her green soup was on the stove and a bottle of Merlot open on the table. The sight of the two Pottery Barn place settings cheered him far more than the plain fact of them—or even the soup, or even the wine—might have warranted, but then again: he was home. That, on its own, would have been enough. But also, it had been so worth it, to know for sure.

He went into the bedroom and unpacked his bag extracting the bottle of Stillhouse Creek bourbon he’d picked up on the drive back to the Atlanta airport. Then he opened his laptop and saw, to his disbelief, that another message had been forwarded from the contact form on his website. He stared at it, and then he took a deep breath and clicked to open it.

Here’s the statement I’m getting ready to release in a day or two. Any corrections before it goes out?

“In 2013, while ‘teaching’ at Ripley College, Jacob ‘Finch’ Bonner encountered a student named Evan Parker who shared with him a novel he was writing. Parker died unexpectedly later that year, after which Bonner produced the novel called Crib with no acknowledgment of its true author. We call on Macmillan Publishers to confirm its commitment to original writing by authors of integrity, and to retract this fraudulent work.”

A jab at the artifice of his middle name—annoying, but it wasn’t exactly a secret: Jake had told innumerable interviewers about his love for Atticus Finch and To Kill a Mockingbird. An indictment of his worth as a teacher—that was new, and more than mildly annoying. But the headlines here were the imminent intention to publish, and the insinuation that he had stolen every word of Crib, rather than its plot alone, from its unfortunate “true” author. And was it Jake’s undeniable paranoia, or was there also a suggestion that he was somehow responsible for the unexpected death of that true author, his former student?

All things considered, he ought to be terrified by this latest missive, but even as Jake sat on the edge of his own bed and let the awfulness of the message pass over him, he wasn’t afraid. That “we,” for one thing, radiated weakness, like the invented comrades of the Unabomber or any other demented loner on a noble quest from his basement. More to the point, Jake now understood that his correspondent wanted to avoid exposure every bit as much as he did himself. The time had come for him to hit that Return button on their so far one-way conversation, and reveal that he knew who she was and was prepared to make her story known. And not his previous, unwitting version of that story, this time, but the actual, factual account of what she had done to her own daughter, and the fraudulent identity she was presenting to the world. And didn’t that make for a pretty compelling story of its own? Like, cover of People magazine compelling? In fact, Jake sat for a distinctly enjoyable moment, mentally composing his very first—and with luck, his last—email to her:

Here’s the statement I’ll be releasing if you don’t get out of my life and keep your mouth shut. Any corrections before it goes out?

“In 2012 a young woman named Rose Parker died violently at the hands of her own mother, who then stole her identity, appropriated her scholarship at the University of Georgia, and has been living as her daughter ever since. She is currently harassing a well-known author, but she really ought to be famous in her own right.”

He could smell the soup, and all of those health-giving greens in it. The cat, Whidbey, leapt up onto his lap and looked optimistically at the tabletop, but there was nothing there for him, so he absconded to the kilim-covered couch Anna had chosen, part of her campaign to make his life better. She hadn’t wanted him to go to Georgia, obviously, but when he told her everything he’d discovered she would understand why it had been the right decision, and she’d help him make the best possible use of the information he’d brought back.

He heard the door. She was home with a loaf of bread and an apology not to have been here on his return, and when he hugged her she hugged him back, and the relief he hadn’t realized he was so in need of came sweeping through him.

“Look what I brought,” he said, handing her the bourbon.

“Nice. I’d better not have any myself, though. You know I need to head to LaGuardia in a couple of hours.”

He looked at her. “I thought it was tomorrow.”

“Nope. Red-eye.”

“How long will you be gone?”

She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to keep it as brief as possible. “That’s why I’m flying at night. I’ll sleep on the plane and go right to the storage unit from the airport. I think I can get it all sorted out inside of three days, and the work stuff, too. If I have to stay another day, I will.”

“I hope you won’t,” Jake said. “I’ve missed you.”

“You missed me because you knew I was pissed at you for going.”

He frowned. “Maybe. But I’d have missed you anyway.”

She went to get the soup and brought back a single bowl.

“Aren’t you having any?” Jake said.

“In a bit. I want to hear about what happened.”