My father was right. I need to change this, but I can’t do it on my own.

I write back.

Nancy,

I understand and it’s difficult for me to explain my reasoning other than I’m fully convinced the scene doesn’t work as is. I want to change the method in which the character dies and the character’s name as well. I really hate the name Corey Brownstein and don’t know why I used it initially. I’d like to use the name John Simms instead. I think it works much better, and just changing the name should be an easy fix. Let me know if at least this is possible, and thank you.

Rose

I’ve done enough police-procedural research to know many murders are never solved, and once a crime is in cold-case status, there’s almost no hope of solving it unless new technology exposes a previously hidden clue or the killer makes a deathbed or prison-cell confession. If a murder has gone unsolved for twenty years, the killer (or killers) should have a high degree of confidence of never being caught, especially if that murder was the only one they committed.

But here’s the thing research never reveals: if you’re the killer, all that confidence can be shattered at the faintest shift in the wind. There’s never 100 percent confidence, and rarely even half that. Odds don’t mean anything to your nerves, your gut. And your conscience, if you have one.

“Miss Rose?”

I turn my head and see Abril, the housekeeper. She comes over a couple hours each day during the workweek, cooks, does light cleaning. She’s pleasant enough but quiet, keeping to herself even though we’ve been in the house several hours alone together. I tried to strike up a conversation a few times but received very short answers to my questions.

“Yes?”

“There’s a man at the door. Asking for you.”

I didn’t even hear the door ring. I was too entrenched in my email with Nancy.

“What does he want?” For a moment, I think maybe it’s Alec. One of those flash fantasies where I picture Alec stopping by under some transparent pretense, just to say hi.

Abril shatters this daydream.

“I don’t know. He says…he says he’s police.”

This is a word I neither expected nor wanted to hear.

“Police?”

“Sí. No uniform. But badge.”

My immediate, irrational, horrifying thought is that Cora went to the police and told them everything. But that makes no sense, since she’s much guiltier than I am. But what if she’s so paranoid about the chapter in the upcoming book that she decided to get ahead of everything and craft her own version of what happened to Caleb Benner, leaving me to shoulder all the responsibility?

That would be suicide. My father would cut her off forever.

But the improbability of the thought doesn’t give me comfort. Who knows what Cora is capable of doing? She’s as unpredictable as a rabid dog, and just as dangerous.

“Yes, of course.” I rise from the kitchen table, feeling the heat of my body rushing to my extremities. I’m certain my face is flushed, and even thinking about it is making it more so. My complexion always betrays any kind of heightened emotion: anger, embarrassment, lust, nervousness.