The not so distant cousin of Nobody else gets to live your life, he thought.

“Anyway, I went through the house and I got together everything I didn’t want left behind. All the manuscript pages for his masterpiece, and the notes. Any pictures of me or Rose that were still lurking around. Oh, and I got my mom’s cookbook with all her recipes, including the one for that soup you like. It’s been out there in our kitchen for months, on the shelf over the sink, not that you ever noticed. Where’s that novelist’s eye for detail, Jake? You’re supposed to have one, you know.”

He knew.

“And I found his drugs, of course. He had a lot of drugs. So I waited for him to get home from the tavern, and when he did I said I thought it was time for us to have a civilized talk about selling the house. He needed a shitload of benzos, by the way, before I could get near him with that syringe, but that’s what happens when you abuse opiates for as long as he did. I had no sympathy for him. I still don’t. And the way he went, it was even more pleasant than this. And this is pleasant, I think. It’s supposed to be.

It wasn’t, but it wasn’t painful, either. He felt as if he was reaching out to claw through something that had the consistency of cotton candy, but he still couldn’t get to the other side of it. He might not be in pain, exactly, but there was an idea that kept hammering at him, like when you know you’re supposed to be somewhere else but you have no idea where that place is or why you were going there, and also he kept thinking the same ricocheting thought, which was: Wait, aren’t you Anna? Only that made no sense, because obviously she was, and what he didn’t understand was why he’d never questioned it before, and also why he was questioning it now.

“After that I decided to leave Athens. I’m so not cut out for the south. I stayed down there long enough to pack up and find an attorney to handle the sale of the Vermont house. What did you think of Pickens, by the way? Bit of a douchebag, isn’t he? He got handsy with me once and I had to threaten to contact the bar association. As you might know, he was already on thin ice with them because of assorted other transgressions, so he became very proper and attentive after that. I did call him last week to warn him a guy named Bonner might turn up, and remind him about the sacred bonds of attorney-client privilege, but I don’t think he’d have talked to you, even if I hadn’t. He definitely doesn’t want to get on my bad side.”

No, thought Jake. Jake, also, didn’t want to get on her bad side. He knew that now.

“Anyway, I wanted to go west to finish my degree, but I wasn’t sure where. I was thinking about San Francisco, but at the end of the day I picked Washington. Oh, and I changed my name, obviously. Anna sounds a bit like Dianna, and Williams is the third most common surname in America, did you know that? I guess I thought Smith and Johnson felt too obvious. Also I stopped coloring my hair. Seattle is full of gray-haired women, lots of them even younger than I was, so I felt super comfortable. I never lived on Whidbey, though I had a couple of fun weekends there with Randy. We did have a bit of a thing while I was interning at the station, which I’m pretty sure worked in my favor when the producer job opened up. Hey,” she said. “Why don’t you stop staring at those pills? You can’t do anything about it, you know.”

She tugged on his shoulder until he was on his back again, his eyes sometimes open, sometimes not. It was also getting harder to hear her.

“So everything’s cool. I’ve got a house and a job and an avocado plant, and then, one afternoon, in one of Seattle’s fine coffee establishments, I hear these women talking about a book they’re reading, this crazy story about a mom who kills her daughter and takes her place. And I can’t fucking believe it! I’m sitting there thinking, No goddamn way! I wasn’t thinking it was connected to me, because there wasn’t anyone left who could possibly have known, and besides, I took everything out of that house, and I destroyed it all after I read it. I left flash drives and pages in every trash bin on the Eisenhower interstate system. I threw his computer down a porta potty in Missouri! Like, it had to be some insane coincidence or else my fucking brother wrote his book in hell and emailed it to the publishing firm of Lucifer and Beelzebub, lies and stolen stories our specialty!” She actually smiled. “I went over to Elliott Bay and I asked for a book I’d heard about, about a woman who kills her daughter. And there it was. And when I looked you up and saw you’d taught at Ripley in the MFA program it was pretty obvious what happened. I mean, a plot like that doesn’t come out of nowhere, does it? Well, does it?”

Jake did not respond.

“Your book had its very own table, you’ll be happy to hear, right in the front of the store. Placement is so important to an author, I know. And Crib was number eight on the list that week, the guy at Elliott Bay told me. I didn’t know what ‘the list’ was. Not then. I do now. I couldn’t believe I had to spend my own money to read my own story. My story, Jake. Which wasn’t my brother’s to tell, and it sure as hell wasn’t yours. Before I even left that store I knew I was going to get it back from you, even if it took a while to figure out how. You’d already come through Seattle, on your book tour, and that was annoying, because it meant I had to wait for you to come back, but I started working on Randy as soon as they announced the City Arts lecture. That was my plot, I guess you could call it,” she said with extravagant sarcasm. “And I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with myself, though can you explain to me why should I have to actually marry someone who stole from me, just to get back what was already mine? There’s a subject for a novel, isn’t it? Not that I could write a novel, Jake. Because it’s not like I’m a writer. Not like you.”

He looked vaguely up at her. Already he was having trouble understanding how any of this related to him.

“Hey, wow,” she said. “Your pupils. They’re like little points. And you’re very clammy. How are you feeling, would you say? Because what we’re looking for here is depressed respiration—that’s fancy medical speak for slow breathing—drowsiness, weak pulse. And something they like to call ‘change in mental status,’ but I’m not really clear about what that means. Besides, how am I going to get you to describe your mental status now?”

His mental status was that he wanted it all to stop. But at the same time, he was feeling that he would still scream if only he could figure out how.

“I hate to cut this short,” said Anna, “but I’m going to be stressed about traffic if I stay much longer, so I’m going to head out. I just want to set your mind at ease about a couple of things before I go. First, I’ve left out a lot of food for the cat, and plenty of water, so don’t worry about him. Second, I don’t want you worrying out about how I’ll manage afterward. We got all that legal stuff taken care of, and the new book’s finished, so there shouldn’t be any problems. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Crib went right back up to the top of the Times list after this, and hey, if this nice offer from France is any indication, your new book’s going to do really well, too. You must be relieved. Sometimes that next book after a hit is kind of a letdown, isn’t it? But however it works out, you shouldn’t worry, because as your widow and your literary executor I’ll do everything I can to manage your estate prudently, because that’s my duty and, I think you’ll also agree, my right. And finally, I’ve taken the liberty of writing something along the lines of a suicide note into your phone while we’ve been hanging out here, and I’m making it clear that no one’s to feel responsible for this, and that you were in some kind of awful despair because, well, blah, blah blah, you were being harassed by someone online, and you have no idea who it is, but they accused you of plagiarism and that’s such a devastating experience for any writer.”

She held it up to show him, the phone, his phone, and he could hardly at all make out the blur of the words she’d composed. Sentences: his last, and not even chosen by him, or arranged by him, or vetted by him. It was nearly the worst thing of all.

“I’d read it to you, but I don’t think you’re up to making edits right now, and besides, I really need to go. I’ll leave this out on the kitchen counter so you won’t be bothered by any calls or texts while you’re trying to rest. And I think …” She stopped and looked around at the now darkened room. “Yep. I think that’s it. Good-bye, Jake.”

She seemed to wait for him to answer, then shrugged.