She tried not to let her eyes trail to the rear of the house, to the yard and the alley beyond, where Zach had placed his hands on her like she was a piece of meat. She hadn’t seen or heard anything from him or about him since Sophia’s death four months earlier. Just that he was a “person of interest” in her case but hadn’t been charged or arrested.

Every time she saw that phrase online—“person of interest”—in relation to Zach, she shivered. Were the hands that ran up her body and under her shirt the hands of a killer?

“I had some ideas about the behavior of the husband character,” Hoffman said.

It was like he’d read her mind. Did Hoffman know who everybody in the book was? Zach and Sophia? Would everyone?

Was that what it was like when you were a writer? Your innermost thoughts got shared with the whole world? And anyone who wanted could examine them and draw their own conclusions about you and the people around you?

Hoffman walked across the room. His bare feet shuffled, and the steps seemed to require more effort than they should. He went to the couch and slumped down onto it, the drink still in his hand. He rubbed his eyes, and when he took his hand away, the lids drooped.

On the coffee table in front of him, she saw pages of her manuscript. The ones he hadn’t read yet when they met at Troy’s. Ones he promised to give back just as soon as he made it through them.

“I told you I’d indulged a little,” he said. “Maybe more than a little. Let me just tell you this, and then you can take that machine out of here.”

Madeline stood with her arms crossed, her car keys still in her hand. She’d seen Hoffman drunk and high at the party, but him sitting on his own couch that way, on a weeknight, barefoot and sleepy, made him seem particularly pathetic. Was that the way he spent most of his evenings? And maybe all of his weekends too? Drowsy from booze, slipping away after reading the ten thousandth student poem or story of his career?

“This husband character,” he said, scratching his head. “What’s his name?”

“Trevor.”

Hoffman snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”

Madeline found her hand going up to her eye and stopped the tic. But she wasn’t sure how long she could hold it off while she was in that house.