“Madeline, are you okay?” I ask. “Are you hurt? Do you need me to call someone? My God, does your mother know you’re okay? Do the police?”

She turns the book around and studies the front. She runs her hand over the cover in a small circle, her skin against the paper making a rustling noise. “We can discuss all that in a minute. I want to talk about this book first.”

“How can we talk about anything except why and how you’re here? People have been looking for you. They’re worried about you. This is all a shock.”

“All in good time.”

Grendel has come back into the room, and he yawns and stretches out by my feet. He’s already bored by the rare appearance of a visitor in the house.

“My Best Friend’s Murder,” she says. “That’s a great title. Did you think of it yourself, or did the publisher come up with it?”

“It’s my title.”

“I remember you saying in class once that most writers don’t get to use the titles they want. The publisher always rejects them or changes them, so good on you getting this one in.”

“Do the police know you’re . . . here? Alive.”

“I’ve been following this,” she says, tapping the book. “Just because I was gone doesn’t mean I didn’t know what everyone in Gatewood was doing. If you can get to a computer, you can visit social media. I could keep track of my friends and family. What’s left of them. You. Other professors. You sure posted about this a lot on social media. Almost every day for the last six months. You must really want this book to sell. You used to tell us not to spend our time online, that social media is ruining us. I guess that all changes when you have a book coming out and you want to pimp it.”

“That’s part of a writer’s job,” I say. Like any teacher, I hate having my own words used against me.

“I guess so. Social media can be used for a lot of things. Promoting books. Searching for missing people.”

When she speaks and gestures, I see the Madeline I once knew. One of my best undergraduate students. Bright. Talented. Elusive. She talked a lot in class and wrote raw, vivid stories about troubled families with absent fathers, and the mothers were always calling the police on their lousy new boyfriends. It was hard for me not to assume they were autobiographical. In our conversations outside of class, she hinted at a difficult home life but never provided any details.

She looks like she’s lost about twenty pounds, and I wonder what she’s been doing for the past two years. Has she been in danger? Sleeping on the streets?