With that Søren stepped to her side. She watched his face as he studied Zach through the glass. In all her life Nora had never known anyone as perceptive as Søren. He could read a soul with the merest glance. He’d known what she would become from the moment he first saw her. He had told her so. It had always been her favorite bedtime story. Tell me about that day, she would beg. Eleanor, he’d begin, his stories always in third person, had pulled her sleeves down over her hands. She was ashamed of the burn on her wrist. But as she reached for the cup, her sleeve slipped back and he saw what she was. Nora always interrupted with an eager, What was she? And Søren would pull her into his arms and answer, She was mine.

“Guilt.” Søren’s pronouncement wrenched her from the past. “Old guilt. He wears it awkwardly as if he hasn’t quite learned how to carry it yet. He committed no crime although he may believe he did.”

“Old guilt—I have to get it out of him,” she said, amused that she and Søren were at once adversaries and conspirators. “He’s choking on his own secrets. I have to break him. But how? That insufferable British dignity is impenetrable. The last thing he needs is some time on the rack and a good whipping.”

“I agree. It would merely insult him. I have seen that guilt before. He hurt someone once.”

Nora heard a turn in his last statement, heard the teacher’s hint.

“He hurt his wife.”

“Then you know what you have to do.” Søren smiled proudly at her. She was always his best pupil.

“Make him hurt me?”

“Yes, little one. Make him hurt you.”

* * *

“So you’re Nora’s new Maxwell Perkins, right?” Griffin asked Zach.

“Well, I am her editor. But Perkins and I have quite disparate philosophies of editing.”

“Good. I’d hate to see her books get all fucked up because her editor can’t keep his hands off her prose.”

“So,” Zach said evenly, “you read?”

Griffin shot him a dirty look.

“I may be a slut, Max, but I’m not a dumb slut. I read Nora’s books. They’re amazing. Of course, my favorite book of hers is the one she hasn’t written yet.”

“And that is?”

“The Nora Sutherlin Story.”

“It would be a page-turner,” Zach agreed. “Is he actually going to keep her all night?”

Zach glanced at his watch. Nora had been gone only a short while but he was already impatient for her return.

“If he wants to. The minute he steps into this place, martial law is in effect.”

“Does she come here often?”

“Used to come all the time. Had to. But she dropped off the face of the earth about a month ago.”