“I’m sorry,” Madeline said. She felt like an ass for pushing about things she had no business getting into. She always did that and never knew when to back off. She wanted to say more about her thesis, but her concerns seemed small next to a guy who’d lost his family.

“I’m drunk. My wisdom is sloshing around in my head. Pickled.” Connor handed a credit card to the bartender. “It’s okay. I have to get going. And if I want to talk, I’ll talk to Grendel.”

“Your dog?”

“He listens to me all the time.”

“You’re not driving, are you?”

“No chance. But that was the rumor one semester: that my family had been killed by a drunk driver. And the drunk driver was me.”

Connor signed the credit card slip with a flourish. Madeline wanted to be able to sign her name in a book like that someday. Confidently. Stylishly. Like she owned the world. Connor had published a book of short stories with a small press while he was in graduate school. Madeline had found a copy in a thrift store in town and bought it for a dollar. She’d never told Connor she’d read it, never asked him to sign it. That was the kind of thing the sycophants would do. But she loved the stories and wished she could get out of her own way enough to ask him about them. Where did the ideas come from? How long did it take to write them?

What was it like to see his own words in print?

“But the drunk-driving thing isn’t true,” he said. “The kayaking thing is right. A rip current. And it is so weird it sounds made-up, doesn’t it? It’s a heck of a lot weirder to try to live through.”

Madeline watched him go. His shoulders were still a little bent, and he stumbled once before he reached the door. She knew he lived about a ten-minute walk from Dubliners. But it was already dark, and he’d had way too much to drink.

Once again Madeline asked herself—Isn’t this the kind of thing I should just stay out of? Back off and let things play out the way they play out?

But if they reached his house, maybe she could ask for the thesis back. Maybe she could explain it all, and Dr. Nye would reassure her and tell her she was overreacting to everything. That what she thought she knew wasn’t really true, just one gigantic misunderstanding.

She threw back the rest of her beer and grabbed her purse. She rushed to the door, following him.

CHAPTER FIVE

CONNOR

PRESENT

“Madeline,” I say, “why don’t you just let me explain what happened?”

She leans back, the book and the oversized glasses in her lap, and gives me a long look. “I think I know what happened. It seems pretty obvious.”