“Yes and no,” I say. I feel like a fool, trying to justify something that has no justification. I’m not even sure what my own defense will be, but I have to say something. “I really wasn’t myself after Emily and Jacob died. To lose them in such a bizarre way, drowning in the ocean. I almost think if they’d died in a car accident close to home, I would have handled it better. I lost thirty pounds because I wasn’t able to eat. I mean, I was really in a fog. Jake had just turned fifteen, and I know that isn’t college age, but it was tough to go in and see all those young faces in class, faces that reminded me of him. I barely kept my job. Only through the good graces of my colleagues, who gave me a lot of rope. It’s not a time in my life I like to think about. Even though those years define everything. I’d sit in faculty meetings and start to sob. I’d go days without bathing or shaving. I’d sit at home and go through a bottle of Jim Beam in one evening. None of it was pretty.”

“I’m not trying to diminish your grief,” Madeline says. “I saw what it was doing to you back then. Everybody did.”

“When I read your thesis, Madeline . . .” I stand up and walk across the room. Grendel watches me, his mouth open. I rarely have company, so he must be wondering why a stranger is in the house. A nice stranger but a stranger. Emily had loved to entertain. Dinner parties, cocktails. She’d invite people over for the Super Bowl, the Derby, Halloween. Since she’s been gone, I haven’t done any of that. If people come over, it’s random. Scattered. “Your thesis was so good . . . for an undergraduate to write so well. That’s all I can say. The writing was so compelling.”

I remember the story so vividly. And not because I was just talking about it at the library.

And not because I read and reread it as I revised the book.

I remember the story because it was so well done.

On the surface it appears to be a conventional thriller. Two women are friends in a small college town. One is a student, the other in her late twenties. When the older woman’s husband starts to show an unhealthy interest in the younger woman, it threatens to tear their friendship apart.

But then the older woman ends up dead. Murdered in her car outside her place of employment. And the husband is the prime suspect. And since the younger woman is the only one who knows the troubles in their marriage, the husband may be coming after her next, hoping to silence her forever.