In Polly’s office, where Maude would sleep, Jane was waiting with boxes. It was hard to get her to admit defeat, but this room was taking her to her knees. They were trying a new filing system, and Polly, who guessed Jane’s goal was to make some failed efforts disappear, handed over files docilely as they sorted a pile of the scripts submitted to Drake. Jane did the labeling. Polly loved Jane’s handwriting, and she loved having her to herself.

Jane paused, pen in midair, eyes in a confused middle distance. “What do we call this thing? ‘Untitled Stalking Killer’?”

“Psycho Fishing Guide,” said Polly, not joking. Drake liked mysteries and always claimed he wanted to write his own, so Polly kept an ongoing list of variations on common fates—death by cars (cars hitting walls, hitting mountain voids, dropping into volcanoes), guns (shot in the ear, shot in the eyeball, etc.), and the local rarities that got him going (a backflipping horse crushing its rider, a rattlesnake in a boat as rapids approached).

Drake’s absolute favorite way to kill someone off: falling.

Ways that Polly’s relatives had killed or been killed: mostly water.

What it meant: She had no idea, but she’d keep looking for a pattern.

At any given time, half a dozen scripts were being written or revised or planned based on Drake’s idly offered desires and curiosities. He was a holdover from the near end of Polly’s time in New York, when she’d gotten a job with a producer. Only one script she worked on was made, but it featured Drake in a role that she’d suggested—in a ream of specific notes—be much larger and central. The film made a fortune, and Drake, a nice eighteen-year-old from trailer park Spokane, won awards and became someone else.

By then Polly had bolted back to cooking, and on to Montana. Drake, to his credit, thanked Polly publicly at two awards ceremonies, which brought in some extra freelance work. Polly wondered how different life might be financially if she’d stuck it out, but it was fine. She was out of there, and happy, and Drake handled success well. He was tough but not the boy next door, smart but not British. He was beautiful without being fey, funny without apparent bigotry, and he lacked the arrogance and childhood sexual wounds of some of his competitors. He could act, and he mostly behaved.

One March day ten years later, when Polly was pregnant with Helen, she answered the door and found Drake on her porch. He was almost thirty, and after a decade on top of the pile, niggled by thoughts of a deviated septum, a yellow fatty liver, he judged that things were likely to go downhill. He wanted to disappear, and he drove around the country and decided he liked Montana.