Her mom told her—ordered her—to take an Uber home. Mom insisted on paying, and while it felt a little weird to get in the car with a stranger driving after hearing the news about Madeline, it felt way better than walking to and from the bus stop in the freezing cold with the sun and the daylight slipping away. That—and her conversation with Dr. Nye—made her think of the other woman who was murdered two years ago, the woman she saw at the party.

With Madeline.

Was it possible the two were related?

When she walks into the apartment, Rebecca immediately locks the door and latches the chain. Mikaila and Steven are not on the couch. Rebecca saw their cars parked out front and assumed they’d be home. Strangely, she looked forward to seeing them, if only because she didn’t want to be alone after her hellish day. So when she goes inside and sees the empty couch, the blank TV screen, her heart sinks a little. Wouldn’t it feel good to see those two morons?

She goes to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. She finds some leftover pizza, two slices from a frozen one she baked two nights earlier. It’s a miracle it’s still here, since Mikaila tends to graze through anything Rebecca leaves behind.

Before she sits down to eat the cold pizza, Rebecca remembers the manuscript. She goes to her room and retrieves a stack of the pages. In the chaos of the day she’s forgotten about the book, but now that things are quiet again and she can hear herself think, she remembers how much she was enjoying it the night before.

Reading. For fun. Such a much-needed luxury.

When she leaves her room, she passes Mikaila’s. She hears giggling through the closed door.

“Baby, come on,” Mikaila says.

“Just for a few minutes.”

“Steven. No.”

And more giggling.

At least someone is having fun. At least it isn’t happening on the couch, a piece of furniture Rebecca’s mom bought for the apartment at the beginning of the semester.

And she’s happy they’re here. Company. A pack.

Rebecca sits down with her pizza and a glass of water and starts to read. It takes just a few sentences to fall back into the world of the book. She’s a third of the way through, and even though the town isn’t called Gatewood, all the descriptions totally match. And the writing is so vivid, it makes Rebecca uneasy because the book is clearly building up to a woman being murdered. The character is leaving work alone, late at night. And the character—Sarah—has the uneasy feeling someone is watching her.