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
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
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
Here’s the statement
“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.”
