Under pressure, I finally arranged for Nikki to meet us both, and for Jay to question her. First, he warned her for her safety and flattered her for her courage. I watched him work, also in his thrall: the wise, renowned, handsome author and the country girls. Nikki flushed and bit her nails, but she didn’t leave.

“They’re going to come after me,” she said when she explained the dimensions of the drug ring and their use of snowmobile trails to ferry the drugs. “But I don’t care. I just want my mom back.”

When Nikki was found dead, and her mother lost her only daughter, Jay told me we’d be safer if we stayed apart. He then retreated to New York. My tutelage with him abruptly ended in a few strained e-mails. I moved home and started applying for teaching jobs in Asia, feeling dazed and grim, older than my age, and also like a child who had damaged herself playing with dangerous toys. After a couple of months, Jay returned to Vermont to tie up loose ends. He wrote that he knew I was angry and sad about Nikki, but he insisted on seeing me. I don’t like how this ended, he wrote me. Any of it. I agreed to meet for lunch. Jay chose a dim, romantic alley restaurant, and, hating myself a little, I dressed like it was a date.

He was waiting at the table when I walked in, and his face brightened forcefully at the sight of me but then darkened when he saw my expression. For the first twenty minutes, it was a one-way interview. Familiar ground for Jay Eastman, famous reporter. What was I doing now. How would I like moving to a hot country like Thailand after growing up in freezing Vermont. Was I learning the language. It was a tonal language, hard to pronounce, wasn’t it. Jay had wanted to see me, but now that I was in front of him, his damage was evident. He speared his salad and gulped his drink. He was racing to be done.

“How’s the book?” I said finally.

“It’s coming together.” Jay set down his club sandwich and apologized to me again for what happened to our young source. “It wasn’t your fault. Ever,” he said, his usually strident voice humble and broken. “You were working for me, and I’m sorry, okay? I’m so desperately sorry that this occurred.” He also told me the police had subpoenaed him, but they wouldn’t subpoena me because he had erased my tapes with Nikki and shredded all my notes. “I don’t want you victimized by some idiotic law,” he said. “It could put you in danger, not to mention ruin your career.”