Madeline had learned her lesson: she wasn’t going to write anywhere but in her apartment. She wasn’t even going to bring her legal pad home at night. It was going to stay in the apartment, tucked under the sofa cushions or hidden in the microwave oven.

Madeline was pretty sure Rachel had a duplicate key to her apartment, and at this point, Madeline wasn’t sure she was beyond using it.

The next day, Madeline e-mailed Angie about changing the title. Madeline had suggested an alternate title: Heaven Knows.

Angie wrote back, saying, We’re going with B/G. Besides, when I hear Heaven Knows, I think of that bad Donna Summer song.

Madeline then called Angie—three times—and three times she was greeted by Angie’s voice mail. She couldn’t even get Marlo, Angie’s assistant, on the phone.

At five o’clock in the evening, there was a knock on her door.

Eddie, she thought. With her check.

She raced to open it.

Trevor was standing there, holding his very cute pilot’s hat, looking grim.

“Hey, babe,” she said. “This is a surprise. I thought maybe you would be Eddie.” She kissed Trevor on the lips, but he didn’t respond. In fact, he flinched a little.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“I heard a rumor today, from Pamela at the Island Air desk.”

“Oh shit,” Madeline said. It was about Grace and Benton Coe; it had to be. This was so bad that Madeline felt sick. Pamela at the Island Air desk was one of the worst gossips on Nantucket—her, Blond Sharon, Janice the dental hygienist, and Rachel McMann.

Madeline pulled Trevor into the apartment and closed and locked the door behind him.

He collapsed on the sofa.

“What is it?” she said.

“You thought maybe I would be Eddie?” Trevor said. “Why would you think that? Does Eddie visit you here often?”

“No!” Madeline said. “He hasn’t been here since the day I first rented it.”

“Okay,” Trevor said. “Because the rumor I heard… what Pamela told me she’d heard from at least six other people… is that you’re having an affair with Eddie Pancik.”

“Good God,” Madeline said.

Trevor was quiet.

“It’s not true,” Madeline said. “Obviously. Where do people come up with this shit?”

“Oh, any one of a dozen places,” Trevor said. “You got your own apartment, and Eddie stopped by to see you on the first day, and someone saw him. Then, someone else overheard him on the phone with you.”

“I told you I called him,” Madeline said, “because I want our money back. Life is expensive, and right now that fifty grand is the difference.”

“What is so urgent all of a sudden?” Trevor asked. “Do you have gambling debts I don’t know about?”

Madeline sat gently on the sofa next to her husband. “I’m having a hard time with the next novel,” she said. “Like, a really hard time. And I’m afraid I might have to pay my advance back.”

“You’re having a hard time with the new novel?” Trevor said. “That’s not what I heard. I heard your new novel is all about this couple who is having some superhot extramarital affair.”

“Who told you that?” Madeline said. “Did Pamela tell you that?”

“It doesn’t really matter who told me that,” Trevor said. “The rumor is out there, Madeline. People are saying that you and Eddie are having an affair and that this is the fuel for your supersexy new novel.”

“You can’t possibly believe this,” Madeline said. “You know I would never be unfaithful.”

Trevor picked her legal pad up. “Is this the new novel?”

Madeline tried to snatch it from his hands, but he hung on, and Madeline feared that between them, they would rip the pages. She fell back against the sofa cushions and tried to breathe. “It is my new novel, but I’m not ready for you to read it yet.”

“Is it about a couple having a superhot extramarital affair?”

“Sort of,” Madeline said.

Trevor threw the legal pad onto the coffee table. “Great.”

“It’s fiction!” Madeline said. “I write fiction. The problem is that nobody wants fiction anymore! They want memoir! They want ‘based on a true story.’ Everyone should be reading Mary Karr and Erik Larson! But that”—Madeline pointed at the legal pad—“is made up! It is the purest of fiction! I made up a story to entertain my readers!”

“The Easy Coast wasn’t pure fiction,” Trevor said. “It was based on your real life. It was about Geoffrey. And Hotel Springford was about your relationship with your mother. So that means the only pure piece of fiction you’ve written was Islandia—and that was more like science fiction. I encouraged you to write a sequel. But no—apparently, you were compelled to write this garbage.”

“It isn’t garbage,” Madeline said.

“You’re right,” Trevor said. “As angry and as embarrassed as I am, I respect you too much to call your work garbage.”

“Maybe it is garbage,” Madeline said. “I can’t tell. It’s nowhere close to finished.” She stared at her husband’s handsome profile. Meeting Trevor had been life’s way of making amends for all the ways Madeline had been gypped earlier in life—the feeble parenting of her mother, the dangerous relationship with Geoffrey. With Trevor’s love, she had essentially become Gretchen Green, girl hero. She had become the woman she wanted to be. Or nearly. She reached out to hug him.