They moved out of their condo and into the five-bedroom home on Marblehead Neck when Anthony was eleven. Anthony’s sense of his father became the sound of the heavy oak door to his office closing, the tinkle of ice in a rocks glass, the Puccini he played at full volume when he was stuck on a plot point.

But in truth Leonard Puckett was so rarely stuck on a plot point. He was rarely stuck on anything! The ideas kept coming, as if to a river fed by an endless supply of tributaries. The Gabriel Shelton series. The Delgado Marina series. The series that took place entirely on board a Navy submarine in the Indian Ocean. There were foreign editions by the bucketload, film rights and audio rights and large-print rights and mass-market editions. You couldn’t take a plane, a train, a goddamn Greyhound without being offered the chance to buy the latest Puckett.

Leonard Puckett, in the reviews he never read (“Those who can’t, review,” he said), had been called both formulaic and thrilling. He’d been called a genius and he’d been called a cad. Talentless and overhyped and underhyped and a faker and a realist. None of it mattered, none of it. The books kept selling.

“I’ve got one word for you, Travis,” Leonard said on the television screen.

Travis leaned forward, riveted, almost drooling. He looked like he might start making out with Leonard right then and there.

“Discipline.”

Travis sat back, disappointed. Discipline wasn’t magical; it wasn’t even interesting.

“You don’t write a book if you don’t log those hours in the chair,” Leonard added. “You certainly don’t write fifty-nine of them.”

“Fifty-nine,” breathed Travis, his disappointment tempered by grudging respect.

“A cup of strong black coffee in the morning,” Leonard went on, “a scotch at exactly five o’clock. Lunch with my wife every day. Those are the things that keep me going.”

“You heard it here!” cried Travis. “Right out of the horse’s mouth.”

They went to another commercial break; Anthony’s phone rang again. This time he answered. He owed his mother that.

“Your father is on the television, Anthony.”

“I know. I watched. Are you with him?”

“Oh, no. I stayed home. He did a nice job, didn’t he?”

Anthony sighed. “He always does.”

“Please call your father, Anthony. Tell him you saw him. Tell him he did a nice job.”

“He doesn’t want to hear from me.”

“Of course he does.”

“He doesn’t! Or he would have called. Emailed. Something.”

“He wasn’t sure how to handle it, that’s all.” There was a pause, and he pictured his mother’s pristine silver bob, her classy pants and blouses. She was a woman who dressed up to go shopping, who never left the house without lipstick and perfume. After a beat Dorothy said, “Can you blame him for that?”

Anthony didn’t answer. Yes, he thought.

“How long are you going to hide out there, Anthony?”

“Mom. I’m not hiding out.”

“Of course you are.”

“I had to leave! Cassie threw me out.” His voice cracked. “She doesn’t want me around right now, and I can’t say I blame her. I had to find somewhere to go.”