“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.”
“Okay. So what if this was real? What if there’s a real mother and daughter out there, and what happens in Crib actually happened to them?”
He watched the color drain from her face. “But that’s horrible,” she said.
“Agreed. But think about it. If it’s real—real mother, real daughter—the last thing that woman wants is to read about what happened, let alone in a novel that’s being published all over the world. They’d obviously want to know who this author is, right?”
She nodded.
“And it’s right there on the back flap that I was associated with an MFA program at Ripley College. Where I would have crossed paths with the late Evan Parker. Where I could have heard his story.”
“Well, but even if that’s true, why be angry at you and not at Parker, for telling you in the first place? Why not be angry at whoever told Evan Parker the story to begin with?”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t think anyone told Parker. I think Parker was close to it. So close he saw it happen, firsthand. And when he realized what he’d seen, maybe he decided it was too good a story to waste. Because he was a writer, and writers understand how ridiculously rare a story like that is.” Jake shook his head. He was feeling, for the very first time, some actual respect for Evan Parker, his fellow writer. And his fellow victim.
“I don’t think this was ever about plagiarism,” Jake said. “Or theft of story, or whatever else you decide to call it. It’s never been a literary issue at all.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, okay, even if I did take something that wasn’t technically mine, Evan Parker took it first, and the person he took it from was furious about it. But then he died. So: end of story.”
“Obviously not,” Anna observed.
“Right. Because then, a couple of years later, along comes
“This is really scaring me.”
Then she sat up. “Wait,” Anna said. “You know who he is, don’t you? I can see that you do. Who is he?”
Jake was shaking his head. “She,” he said.
“Wait,” she said. “What?” She had a lock of her gray hair coiled between her fingers, and she was twisting it.
“She. It’s a woman.”
“How can you know that?” she said.
He hesitated before answering her. It seemed insane, now that he was about to actually say it out loud.
“At Evan’s tavern last night, the woman sitting next to me knew Parker. She loathed him. Said he was a complete asshole.”
“Okay. But it sounds like you already knew that.”
“Yes. And then she reminded me about something else. Parker had a younger sister. Dianna. I knew about her, but I never gave her any thought, because she’s also dead. She died even before her brother.”
Anna seemed relieved. She even attempted a smile. “But then it isn’t her. Obviously.”
“Nothing about this is obvious. Dianna had a daughter.
She stared at him for the longest time, and at last, she nodded. And then, for what it was worth, there were two of them who knew.
For weeks, they didn’t speak, and even after a lifetime of not speaking something about this felt different: harder, colder, relentlessly toxic. When they passed in the corridor or on the stairs or in the kitchen their eyes slid past each other, and Samantha felt, at certain moments, the actual physical vibration of what was accumulating inside her. She had no intention, still, just a growing idea of something approaching that would not be averted, even with effort, so what point could there be in trying to avert it? It was so much easier to just give up, and after that she felt nothing at all.
On the night Maria left home forever, she knocked on the door of her mother’s office and asked if she could borrow the Subaru.
“What for?”
“I’m moving out,” said Maria. “I’m leaving for college.”
Samantha tried not to react.
“What about senior year?”
Her daughter, maddeningly, shrugged. “Senior year is bullshit. I applied early. I’m going to Ohio State. I got a scholarship for out-of-state students.”
