She stood up, putting her hand on the back of the chair. Hudson returned the papers to his briefcase. When he clicked it shut, he saw the old woman start, as if he’d fired a shot at her. He stood and faced her. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “If you do think of anything else, I would appreciate it if you would call me.”

“Of course,” Eleanor said. She didn’t offer to show him out, so Hudson walked alone to the door and opened it. He gave one final look back. Eleanor hadn’t moved from her spot by the chair. She was as still and stiff as a clock or a vase, as if she were waiting for someone to come along and dust her.

Hudson shut the door and went down the path to the sidewalk. The windows of the house, empty and dark, watched him as he walked to his car. He got in and started the engine. Was Eleanor Mintz on the phone with Helen Guerneyser? he wondered. Or with Edgar Macready? Were all of them guarding a secret they found too awful to even comprehend? No, not Helen, he thought. Helen wasn’t hiding anything. But the others, they were. Either that or they didn’t want to accept what they suspected—or knew—to be true. Either way, they were going to be of no help to him.

He put the car into gear and pulled away from the house. As he drove, he worried that he hadn’t handled Eleanor Mintz in the right way. Perhaps if he’d taken his time, he could have gotten her to open up. No way, he reassured himself. That woman is shut tighter than George Bush’s sphincter. She wouldn’t have talked about the manuscript if he’d spent a year with her.

It’s still possible she doesn’t know anything about it, said his other voice, the one that most often made him feel like he should just give up on his search. Maybe you just don’t want to admit it.

He shook his head. He wasn’t wrong. He’d seen the way Eleanor Mintz had reacted to seeing the copy of the manuscript. Why would she do that if she wasn’t afraid of it? And why would she be afraid of it if she didn’t know that it was more than just an unfinished story? She knows it’s about them, he told his inner critic.

But you still don’t have proof. This time the voice was Paul’s. It wasn’t accusatory, just sad. He sounded tired, as if whatever force kept him alive in Hudson’s mind was growing weaker and weaker, as if he might soon flicker out altogether.

“I don’t know that there’s proof!” Hudson cried.