“As far as I’m aware.”
“Okay,” Anna said. “So Evan Parker isn’t the person who wrote to me. Who did it, then? Do you know?”
“I thought I knew. I thought it had to be someone who’d been with us at Ripley. I mean, if he told me about his book, why wouldn’t he have told somebody else in the program? That’s what the students were there for, to share their work.”
“And be taught how to become better writers.”
Jake shrugged. “Sure. If that’s even possible.”
“Says the former teacher of creative writing.”
He looked at her. She was clearly still angry at him. Which he deserved.
“I thought I could make it go away. I thought I could spare you this.”
“Why? Because it was going to be too much for me, this pathetic internet troll? If some loser out there decides to go after you because you’ve actually accomplished something in your life, that’s his issue, not yours. Please do not hide this kind of thing from me. I’m on your side.”
“You’re right,” he said, but his voice really was cracking now. “I’m sorry.”
Anna got to her feet. She took her own nearly full bowl of soup to the kitchen sink. Jake watched her back as she rinsed it and put it into the dishwasher. She brought the wine bottle back to the table and poured more for each of them.
“Honey,” Anna said, “I hope you know, I don’t care in the least about this creep. Like, zero compassion for somebody who does what he’s done, no matter how justified he thinks he is. I care about you. And from what I can see you’ve really been harmed by this. You must be devastated.”
Well, that’s absolutely true, he wanted to say, but all he could manage was: “Yeah.”
They sat together in silence for a few moments. He wondered if it made her feel better or worse to know how right she’d been, all these weeks, about how badly he was feeling. But Anna wasn’t a vindictive person. Just now, she might be frustrated at the extent of his secrecy and his withholding, but already empathy was getting the upper hand. What he needed to do, though, was tell her everything.
He took a sip of his wine and tried again.
“So, like I said, I thought it was someone from Ripley, but I was wrong.”
“Okay,” Anna said warily. “So who?”
“Let me ask you something. Why do you think Crib got the response it did? I’m not looking for praise, I’m saying … lots of novels are published every year. Plenty of them are tightly plotted, full of surprises, well written. Why did this one blow up?”
“Well,” she said with a shrug, “the story …”
“Yes. The story. And why was this story so shocking?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Because how could that ever happen in real life, to a real mother and daughter? It’s crazy! Fiction invites us into outrageous scenarios. That’s one of the things we ask it to do. Right? So we don’t have to think of them as real?”
Anna shrugged. “I suppose.”
“Okay. So what if this was real? What if there’s a real mother and daughter out there, and what happens in Crib actually happened to them?”
He watched the color drain from her face. “But that’s horrible,” she said.
“Agreed. But think about it. If it’s real—real mother, real daughter—the last thing that woman wants is to read about what happened, let alone in a novel that’s being published all over the world. They’d obviously want to know who this author is, right?”
She nodded.
“And it’s right there on the back flap that I was associated with an MFA program at Ripley College. Where I would have crossed paths with the late Evan Parker. Where I could have heard his story.”
“Well, but even if that’s true, why be angry at you and not at Parker, for telling you in the first place? Why not be angry at whoever told Evan Parker the story to begin with?”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t think anyone told Parker. I think Parker was close to it. So close he saw it happen, firsthand. And when he realized what he’d seen, maybe he decided it was too good a story to waste. Because he was a writer, and writers understand how ridiculously rare a story like that is.” Jake shook his head. He was feeling, for the very first time, some actual respect for Evan Parker, his fellow writer. And his fellow victim.
“I don’t think this was ever about plagiarism,” Jake said. “Or theft of story, or whatever else you decide to call it. It’s never been a literary issue at all.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, okay, even if I did take something that wasn’t technically mine, Evan Parker took it first, and the person he took it from was furious about it. But then he died. So: end of story.”
“Obviously not,” Anna observed.
“Right. Because then, a couple of years later, along comes Crib, and unlike Parker’s attempt it’s actually a finished book, and somebody’s actually published it. Now the story’s out there in black and white, in all its glory, and two million total strangers have read it—in hardcover, paperback, mass market, audio, large-print editions! Now it’s translated into thirty languages and Oprah’s putting a sticker on the cover and it’s coming soon to a theater near you, and every time this person gets on the subway somebody’s got a copy open, right in their face.” He paused. “You know, I actually understand how they must feel.”
“This is really scaring me.”
I’ve been scared for months, he didn’t say.
Then she sat up. “Wait,” Anna said. “You know who he is, don’t you? I can see that you do. Who is he?”
Jake was shaking his head. “She,” he said.
“Wait,” she said. “What?” She had a lock of her gray hair coiled between her fingers, and she was twisting it.
“She. It’s a woman.”
“How can you know that?” she said.
He hesitated before answering her. It seemed insane, now that he was about to actually say it out loud.
“At Evan’s tavern last night, the woman sitting next to me knew Parker. She loathed him. Said he was a complete asshole.”
“Okay. But it sounds like you already knew that.”
“Yes. And then she reminded me about something else. Parker had a younger sister. Dianna. I knew about her, but I never gave her any thought, because she’s also dead. She died even before her brother.”
Anna seemed relieved. She even attempted a smile. “But then it isn’t her. Obviously.”
“Nothing about this is obvious. Dianna had a daughter. Crib is about what happened to her. Do you understand?”
She stared at him for the longest time, and at last, she nodded. And then, for what it was worth, there were two of them who knew.
CRIB
BY JACOB FINCH BONNER
Macmillan, New York, 2017, pages 212–13
For weeks, they didn’t speak, and even after a lifetime of not speaking something about this felt different: harder, colder, relentlessly toxic. When they passed in the corridor or on the stairs or in the kitchen their eyes slid past each other, and Samantha felt, at certain moments, the actual physical vibration of what was accumulating inside her. She had no intention, still, just a growing idea of something approaching that would not be averted, even with effort, so what point could there be in trying to avert it? It was so much easier to just give up, and after that she felt nothing at all.
On the night Maria left home forever, she knocked on the door of her mother’s office and asked if she could borrow the Subaru.
“What for?”
“I’m moving out,” said Maria. “I’m leaving for college.”