“Because all this time she’s been—she’s been your slave.”

“No.” Leonard sat up. “No, not my slave.”

“Your beard, then.”

An almost-smile played at Leonard’s lips, but he swallowed it back.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not.”

It was very strange to be talking to his father while surrounded by such a large selection of his father’s (mother’s?) books. The store had stocked up, naturally, on dozens and dozens and dozens of copies of The Thrill of the Chase, but also trade paperbacks and mass-market paperbacks of some of his earlier titles. Anthony picked up Escape the Unknown and flipped it over to look at the author photo, then he did the same with Grasshopper, which was published three years later. (In between were three more Gabriel Shelton books.) Leonard Puckett got a new author photo taken every two years (“Whether I need to or not!”), so Anthony could trace the evolution of his father’s face, of his aging, simply by looking through a vast collection such as this one.

“I want to stop,” Dorothy had said. “I’m ready. But he’s not.”

“So why don’t you stop?”

“Stop?” Leonard, a man of letters, appeared not to understand the meaning of this very basic word. “Stop what?”

“Stop writing, Dad. Why don’t you stop writing? Mom wants to. But she said you don’t.”

“We can’t stop. We’re under contract.” So now it was we, Anthony noticed. Now that the cat was out of the bag, it was first-person plural all around.

“For how many more?”

“Two. After this one.”

“So why don’t you stop after that? She told me she wants to be done. You can take her on a trip around the world.”

“Your mother,” Leonard said, “has been around the world.”

“Only in bits and pieces. And never on vacation, apparently. All this time I thought she was out and about, gazing at the Mona Lisa, touring the Kronborg Castle, but she was working. The two of you were working. And you took all of the credit.”

“Don’t talk about credit.” Leonard slammed his hand down onto the table. “This has nothing to do with credit. Why must you fight me on this?”

“I won’t stop,” Anthony pressed on. “I’m fighting for Mom, who nobody ever fights for. Why not put her name on the last two books? Why keep going after that, against her wishes? You have more money than you’ll ever spend. How much more do you need, Dad? To make you happy?” The twenty grand he owed Huxley reared its unattractive, inconvenient head once again.

“Need?” Leonard Puckett seemed to consider the question. He looked around the room, peered into his tumbler, then said, “Well, none, I guess. No more. But it’s not about being happy.”

“What’s it about, then?”

“I don’t know what else I’d do, if I stopped.” His entire being seemed to sag. “Die, I guess.”

“Oh, Dad,” said Anthony. “Come on, now.”

For the first time in his life, at the tender age of seventy-two, his father looked weak and old. It wasn’t just the way the skin of his lower face slumped; it wasn’t the unfamiliar veins that throbbed at his temple. It was something internal turned outward: it was the revelation of the long-held secret.