“That’s enough.” Lance stands up from the desk. He looks small at the front of the room, surrounded by students whose faces are now all frozen in expressions of disbelief. “I’m sorry Dr. Nye isn’t able to contain himself and has to come back and interrupt our work today. He’s never quite been the devotee of teaching that I am. You all have a reading assignment for today, don’t you?”

Twenty heads nod in unison.

“Well, why don’t you review that while I talk to my former colleague? We’ll see if we can’t get him to leave quietly and allow us to get back to the work at hand.”

Lance starts my way, so I back out into the hall and wait for him.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

MADELINE

WINTER, TWO YEARS EARLIER

Madeline’s book took an even darker turn once Sophia was dead.

Hoffman had been right when he first read the early chapters of her thesis—Madeline planned on the story building up to some act of violence. And when she experienced Zach’s behavior at the party, she started to have an idea of which way the story could go.

But could it simply be about a man killing his wife?

When she was ten, a woman in her hometown, someone her mother knew a little, had been found murdered in her home. Beaten to death. For days, the police looked for the killer, and they seemed to have no idea who it was. Long before they made an arrest, Madeline’s mother had looked at her and said: Maddy girl, it’s always the husband.

And she’d been right.

So what would make her story different?

Weeks and then months had passed since Sophia’s death. Madeline stumbled through her life like a zombie, like she was so deeply sedated she didn’t even notice what was going on around her. She sleepwalked across campus, going to her classes. She worked at the grocery store but barely talked to anyone.

She came home in the evenings, always jamming the chair under the doorknob, and stared at the blank pages she needed to fill with words.

Nothing came.

Her mind drifted away from the task at hand. She spent an inordinate amount of time on social media, refreshing Twitter feeds from local journalists and the police department, hoping to get some new information about Sophia’s death.

But the news grew stale. No new leads, they said. Zach was being questioned, his life being turned upside down. But he maintained his innocence. And no arrests were made.

Madeline thought about calling the tip line set up in the wake of Sophia’s death and telling them about the party. The way Zach had touched her. The way he had looked at her the first time they met outside the Owl’s Nest. The way he had seemed to be ordering Sophia home.

But . . .