Annie’s eyes misted. She looked away again, trying to hold it together. She picked up her drink and took a sip, felt its warmth work its way through her body.

“I know you’ve heard this a hundred times, but it wasn’t your fault,” he said. “No more than if some kid thought he was Superman. Did you know there were actually incidents related to Peter Pan? When it was first published, kids got hurt trying to fly, jumping off their beds and worse. Originally, J. M. Barrie had Peter and the Lost Boys flying without any kind of help, but when he heard about kids injuring themselves, he amended the story, that you could only fly if you had pixie dust blown on you. Trying to make the point that the flying was magical, that regular kids couldn’t do it.”

She still couldn’t look at him as he continued.

“Look, we’ve reached this point where you can’t do anything without legal stepping in and saying, well, that warrants some sort of caution. You want to reprint Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Maybe we need a disclaimer, that in the real world bears should not be approached because they can be very dangerous. If creative people hold back because there’s one chance in a million someone will interpret their work in a totally irrational way, what will we end up with?”

Annie slowly fixed her eyes on her editor. “He wasn’t some nut with a gun who went on a rampage because of social media. He was six, Finnegan. He was six years old.”

“And where were his parents? Why hadn’t they explained that not everything in a book is real? That just because a penguin in a book can learn to fly, it doesn’t mean a kid can jump out an apartment building? Why’d they leave that balcony door unlocked? Who was supervising? Annie, you can’t beat yourself up forever.”

“You sound like John,” Annie said faintly. “He said all the same things. I feel like . . . I can’t shake the idea that what happened to John was some kind of karma. The universe trying to even the score.”

“Annie.”

“I killed that boy, and then someone killed John.” She forced a sardonic smile. “Maybe I should let it go. My punishment has been meted out. The gods have spoken.”

Finnegan couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He scanned the room again for the waiter, wondering whether he should just ask for the check, if they should get out of here.

“Oh shit,” Annie said.

“What?”

“One of them’s coming over here.”

A slender woman, late thirties, early forties, looking like she’d walked off the page of an Ann Taylor catalogue, approached, looking apologetic.