PETER
SWANSON

DO YOU
SEE WHAT
I SEE?

A CHRISTMAS MURDER MYSTERY

For Angus Cargill

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Character List

1

2

3

Acknowledgments

Also by Peter Swanson

Copyright

Character List

Marco Tavares—A mystery writer, fresh off the success of a New York Times number-one bestseller.

Maeve Finch—Marco’s wife, a painter. They share a seaside house called Grey Gables, but not a bedroom.

Catherine Tavares—Marco’s sister, known as Cat. She is grateful to Marco, who lets her live in Grey Gables, although her gratitude only goes so far.

Louisa Tavares—Marco’s grandmother. She raised both her grandchildren and now also lives at Grey Gables.

Billy Sousa—Marco’s best friend from childhood. He has endured Marco’s competitive streak and cruelty his whole life.

Eve Margolis—Marco’s ex-girlfriend, and a writer currently living in New York City. Does she still have unresolved feelings for her old boyfriend?

Ben Strickland—Eve’s husband, a financial analyst with a jealous side.

James Beers—He accused Marco of stealing his story idea but has since become friends with Marco and Maeve. Or is it Maeve he is most interested in?

Nicholas Child—Like Marco, a mystery writer, but one currently without a publisher. Your narrator for this story.

“How are you feeling right now?” Detective Hedges said, with what looked like genuine concern in her eyes. We were in the downstairs den at Grey Gables. The window behind her showed only a cold blue December sky.

“A little bit in shock,” I said.

“I’d imagine. Before I ask you specific questions, can you just tell me why you’re here and everything you remember from last night? Pretend you’re telling me a story. You’re a writer too.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Perfect,” she said, sitting back a little on her wooden chair. “Then tell it to me like you’re telling a story.”

“Where should I start?” I said.

“That’s up to you. It’s your story. Where do you think you should start?”

This is a Christmas story, but it doesn’t begin at Christmas.

It starts, I suppose, when my agent, Linda Barkin, sold my first novel, Dark at Its Rising, in a two-book deal to one of the big five publishers. Linda took me to lunch to celebrate. I was nervous and don’t recall what I ordered, but I do remember standing outside her brownstone two blocks west of Union Square Park afterward. I was drunk enough that I was telling her how she’d changed my life, how all my dreams had come true. She put a hand on my arm and said, “Your debut will probably do okay, it’s a shiny new thing, but the second book needs to do better than the first, and the third needs to do better than either of those. And if that doesn’t happen, well, then it’s over, but you’ll have made some money and had some fun, darling.” She looked past me into the middle distance, then held up a hand clustered with chunky rings. “Okay, Nicholas. Call me soon.”

The next time I had lunch with Linda was six years later, a wet November day, and I was remembering those words she’d said to me as I searched for the restaurant she’d picked for our meeting. That first book, about a detective who, since returning from World War I, believes that he is dead, had done respectable business—Linda’s words—but my next effort, a sequel called Though No One Pursues You, had taken the inevitable second-book dip—fewer reviews, less social-media buzz, dismal ranking on Amazon. Presumably, this all meant fewer sales, although neither my publisher nor Linda had sent me numbers. And I hadn’t asked.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t get a second contract. Linda suggested I write a contemporary standalone thriller and leave Adam Noone, my ghostlike detective, behind, and that she would send me out on submission again. And I had been working on something, slowly but steadily, when she’d called me up out of the blue and asked me to come to New York for lunch, as she had something to discuss with me face-to-face.

I took a bus from Boston to New York, having booked myself into a hotel that was considerably less pricey than the one I’d stayed in the last time I’d visited the city. My assumption, not unfounded, was that I was being dumped, and that Linda was trying to do the right thing by softening the blow over another paid-for meal.

The restaurant was called Casa Sacha and we arrived at the same time, Linda emerging from under an enormous black umbrella in front of the entrance. The inside was narrow and overly warm, our table toward the back, and I tried not to speculate on the significance of the difference between this place and the high-ceilinged steakhouse she’d brought me to six years earlier.

“I don’t like to discuss business, as you know, until coffee, so let’s enjoy some of this food.” Linda unfolded her menu and I did the same.

We made small talk while we ate—movies we’d seen, books we’d read—and I tried to enjoy the food, but it all tasted like ash in my mouth. My body somehow knew that this lunch marked the end of my career as a published author.

“Coffee?” Linda said, still chewing on a piece of charred octopus.

On edge already, I didn’t particularly want any coffee but ordered a cappuccino just to have something in front of me while the boom was lowered. Linda ordered the same plus a blood-orange flan and two spoons.

“So, Nicholas,” she said, fixing me with a stare. One of her eyes seemed to be far more made up than the other. “You must be wondering why I brought you here.”

“I’m assuming bad news,” I said.

“Oh, no. It’s not bad news. It’s good news—well, that depends, I guess, on if you’re interested. I have a very … a very exciting proposal for you. You know Marco Tavares?”

His third book, The Girl at the Door, had spent the previous year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list. It was the “it” book of the moment, and a film version, with an A-lister in the lead, was slated to start filming in the spring. Marco and I knew each other, but not well. We’d been at the same writer’s residency in Downeast Maine about ten years earlier. But what I really knew about Marco Tavares was due to the shameful amount of time I spent tracking the careers of other clients of Linda Barkin Associates, Inc.

“I know all about him,” I said, “and I’ve read his books, of course.”

“So, here’s the thing, Nicholas, and I know I don’t really need to be telling you this, but regardless of whether you’re interested, I’d like you to keep what I’m about to tell you under wraps. Agency business. Or, as I like to call it, family business.”

“Yes, of course.”

The coffees arrived, and Linda turned the cup on its plate but didn’t take a sip. “Marco’s next book is due and, as you can imagine, his publishing house is very eager to see it. They’ll wait, of course, until I’m ready to show them something, but between you and me, we’re a long way off. I’m only telling you this because of what I’m about to propose, otherwise I would never say these words out loud. He’s a long way off. The pages he’s shown me are just not publishable. There’re some good ideas there, and the writing is not terrible, but it’s a mess.” She raised her eyebrows, still fiddling with her coffee cup. “It’s a fucking mess.”

I had never seen Linda smoke a cigarette, but always assumed that she had quit the very minute before I’d first met her. It was the only way to explain the booming deep notes of her ravaged voice. “What does Marco think about it?” I said.

“He thinks it’s a fucking mess as well. He knows it is. And here’s the thing, Nicholas, I’m far more worried about him than I am about the book. The success of The Girl at the Door, although it has made him a hell of a lot of money, has had some not-so-great effects as well. Maeve, that’s his wife, says he’s drinking too much, and I’m assuming that’s only half the story. She’s very worried. ‘Hey,’ I told her. ‘Who cares about the next book. We’ll let them dangle. It’s not as though people are going to forget about a book as big as Girl. When he’s ready to write another bestseller, that’s when we’ll publish.’

“But according to Maeve, Marco doesn’t think that way. He feels like he’s letting everyone down and he’s determined to finish his book by the end of the year. And that, Nicholas, is where you come in.”

I took an automatic sip of my coffee, scalding the roof of my mouth. The quivering flan in a pool of orange syrup sat at the center of the table and I couldn’t remember when the waitress had brought it. “I’m intrigued,” I said.

“I thought you would be. You’re still in Boston, right?”

“Yes,” I said, choosing not to mention that I’d recently lost my lease in the Back Bay and had been subletting a grim basement apartment in the neighborhood of Alston.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” Linda said after a pause during which she sliced off an almost translucent sliver of flan with a dessert spoon and popped it into her mouth. “Marco has been in Italy, trying to write, but he’s coming back for Christmas. He and Maeve have a house in Truro, on the Cape. It’s very large. Marco’s sister, Cat, lives there, and their grandmother. What I’m proposing—and Marco is on board with this—is that you go out there for Christmas week and for the beginning of January, if necessary. I know it’s Christmastime, but …”

I held up a hand. Linda knew my story. I was a genuine orphan with no family, so Christmas was not exactly my favorite season.

“You’ll have your own room and your own workspace. I want you to keep working on your book. But I also want you to help out Marco, see if you can whip his book into some kind of shape, get him motivated. Like I said, this was my idea and Maeve’s, but Marco is on board. He wasn’t at first, but now he’s excited. And, hold on, before you jump in here, I just want to add that this is a paid gig. I’ve held some of Marco’s money back so that Uncle Sam doesn’t get it, and I’d like to use that money to pay you a consultant rate while you’re there. It’ll be fifty thousand dollars just to get Marco back on track.”

“What happens if it doesn’t work?”

“Nothing. We’ll have tried. That’s all I’m looking for. And you’ll get a nice Christmas at a stunning property.”

“One more question. What exactly does it mean for me to help him with his writing? Will I be writing portions myself, making suggestions, editing?”

“I think that’s up to the two of you, Nicholas. Like I said, his work-in-progress is not near good enough. I was hoping you’d help him fix it, but I don’t envision you writing the thing for him.”

“Okay,” I said. “It does occur to me that if I ended up writing portions, I’d get fifty thousand dollars and he’d get millions.”

“I’ve thought of that, too, and trust me, you’re my client as much as he is, and I won’t let you get used. I’m going to have twenty-five thousand sent to you right away, and the remainder at the end of the visit. You call me after you get there and let me know the situation. If you’re going to be doing actual writing, then we’ll renegotiate.”

I drank some more coffee, then wiped foam from my upper lip. “I don’t currently have a car,” I said, partly to stall.

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem. There’s got to be a bus. Or I’ll drive you myself. This is a full-service agency, as you know.” She smiled for the first time since she’d brought up the proposal. “Look, I can tell you’re trying to come up with all the reasons for saying no, and I get it. I’m not expecting an answer right now, but I want you to think about it. It’s a no-lose situation as far as I’m concerned. Marco needs help and I think that you are just the person to help him. But if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.” She reached out to shave another piece from the flan while lowering her voice. “And we’ll get you that money no matter what, okay? Like I said, I don’t think there’s a downside. And you’ll love Maeve, she’s a firecracker.”

I leaned in for a bit of flan myself. “Can I call you tomorrow, after I get back to Boston?” I said.

“Honey, of course.”

*

I ended up calling her back two days later. Maybe I was being petty, or maybe I just didn’t want to seem desperate, but even though I’d known I was going to take the gig the moment I’d walked away from Casa Sacha, I wanted to at least pretend to be thinking about it, to pretend that my current life as it now stood might be better than being paid to spend Christmas at a seaside mansion as a glorified assistant. I wanted her to wait for my answer.

“Darling,” she said. “You’ve made the right choice. Maeve is going to be happy. Marco, too, of course. I’ll call her and let her know. Marco gets back on December fourteenth, a Friday, so I thought it might be good for you to show up the following Monday. The seventeenth. Does that work for you? And I’ve thought some more about the car situation. I’d like to hire a service to drive you out there. That one will be an agency expense. On me. I think you two are going to have a very productive month together and you might as well start it in style.”

After ending the phone call I was both excited and jittery, like I’d just agreed to experimental surgery. Of course, I was desperately in need of money, but I was in need of a shake-up, as well. This was a free trip. And even if I wasn’t able to help Marco finish his next inevitable bestseller, maybe I’d find some inspiration for myself.

It was four in the afternoon, dark outside already, and I poured myself three fingers of Old Overholt. I opened up my laptop, quickly checked emails, then did a Google search on Marco Tavares. I already knew plenty about him, as I said—he was a co-client at Linda’s agency, and he’d been signed almost exactly a year before I had. We both wrote mysteries, although Marco’s first two books were contemporary thrillers set among the working-class Portuguese community in Provincetown, while mine were historical noir. As far as I could tell, Marco’s early novels— Halfway to the Bottom of the Sea and Gaff Hook—had sold about as well as my Adam Noone series. So it had been a shock when, three years ago, it was clear that The Girl at the Door was being positioned by Marco’s publisher as the next big book. Before it even came out, it was everywhere, a book-club pick for a national morning show, a feature in Entertainment Weekly. It was an instant New York Times bestseller in its first week and was number one in its second. The film rights sold for low seven figures.

I had gotten the book from my local library, loath to spend any money on it. It wasn’t just the title that annoyed me, with its obvious attempt to pull in the ever-increasing audience that apparently only read thrillers that had the word girl in the title. It was also the fact that Marco Tavares was now being marketed as M. A. Tavares in a thinly veiled attempt to distance this book from his first two and to trick readers into thinking Marco might be a female author, a tried-and-true marketing strategy.

The book itself was not half bad, although I wasn’t sure it deserved the huge amount of praise it had been given. Like Marco’s previous novels, it was set in Provincetown, but instead of working-class fishermen, it involved a wealthy family with a summer house. The novel was narrated by the wife, and the book begins with a young woman appearing at the door (the girl of the title) and claiming to be the long-lost daughter of the family, even though the couple have no memory of having a missing daughter. It was a pacey short read, and like everyone else, I had been sucker punched by the big reveal in the final chapter, one of those jaw-dropping twists that was so audacious it made up for any minor lapses in the logical chain of events.

Around the time of publication, Marco had been interviewed for a lengthy feature in the Boston Globe. I had read it when it first came out, but perused it again now, paying closer attention this time to the personal details of Marco’s life. He’d grown up in Provincetown with a younger sister, raised primarily by their grandmother after the death of their mother from a drug overdose. At the time of the interview, he was back on the Cape, newly married to an artist named Maeve Finch.

I googled his wife, pulling up a website, a review of a group show, and a slew of images, mostly of her work, large oil paintings, primarily portraits, that bordered on the surreal. There was a picture of Maeve standing in front of one of her works in a gallery, a glass of wine in her hand. She had pale red hair cut into a bob, one side longer than the other, heavy eyebrows, a small mouth. She wore a green dress, fairly low-cut, and the skin of her frail-looking chest was shiny and white. What was most striking about her were the blue eyes, pale and almost iridescent. On the website it noted that Maeve, once a denizen of Brooklyn, now resided exclusively on Cape Cod.

I shut my laptop and considered taking myself out for a second drink and maybe even dinner, just to escape my basement apartment. It was tiny and smelled of mothballs, although there were two short egress windows at street level that let in some light during the daytime hours. I’d filled the built-in bookshelf that ran along the far wall with my collection of vintage mysteries and I went to the shelf now, with a second bourbon in hand, and cast an eye over the spines, only a little remorseful that I’d spent most of the money I’d made from my two published novels on first editions. Over the past year I’d had to sell a few of them to pay my rent, plus I’d given some of the lesser-priced items to friends as birthday presents. Since I was going to Grey Gables, the house in Truro, for Christmas, I thought it would be wise to show up with presents for everyone. Maeve was an artist, so I selected the Doubleday hardcover of Ripley Under Ground, with the Rothko-esque cover. I didn’t know anything about either the sister or the grandmother, so I decided to select two Christmas mysteries. I picked the Crime Club edition of Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh with its lovely bright-red cover, then passed over my first edition of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (far too rare) and settled on The Corpse in the Snowman by Nicholas Blake—not my favorite of the Nigel Strangeways stories, but it did have another great cover.

That left Marco, and I didn’t have to think too long about which book to pick for him. It was a rather pristine first edition of The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier, a little pricey, but I’d already spent the money.

I wrapped the four books in old newspaper, then placed them on a chair in my bedroom, and thought about what else I should pack for my visit.

*

It was snowing in Boston, clustered flakes that drifted on the air and melted on the roads, when the limousine pulled up to my curb. The driver helped me put my two large suitcases in the trunk, and then I settled into the backseat for the three-hour drive to Truro. The plan was to deposit me at Grey Gables at just around 5 p.m. “Eggnog hour,” Maeve had called it in an email, Linda having connected us a few days earlier. Despite my nervousness I dozed in the limo as it worked its way from 93 to 3, and then over the Sagamore Bridge and onto the Cape, where I woke up, gazing out the window at the stunted, shrublike trees along Route 6. It wasn’t until we’d passed through a second rotary that I spotted water, a picturesque inlet with a boarded-up lobster shack perched along its edge. The views opened up as we headed north along the outermost Cape. Pretty soon I saw the snowcapped dunes, still visible in the early dusk, like undulating waves frozen into sand, and for a moment I felt the impermanence of the land we were driving along. The Cape was nothing more than a spit of sand, a brief geological event that would one day be swallowed up by the sea.

The driver flicked his blinker on, turning onto a narrow side road. We twisted along an incline, surrounded on either side by sand and scrub pine. As we plateaued, I could see Cape Cod Bay, lifeless and gray in the moonlight. The driver turned left onto a crushed-shell driveway and the house appeared, gray-shingled with white trim and two chimneys. The sloped roof held several dormer windows, and on one end of the house was a wing that appeared octagonal. There were single white lights in all the windows, a wreath made from mussel shells on the front door. On the far side of the circular driveway was a detached two-car garage with a second floor above it. The driver helped me get my suitcases to the front steps, then, shivering, hurried back to his limo and reversed out of the crushed-shell driveway.

Before I could knock, the door was flung open and a flood of warm, pine-scented air met me, along with a girl in a cream-colored sweater and green plaid pants. “You must be the cavalry,” she said, and held out her hand. I took it, realizing she wasn’t a girl but a small adult woman. She had short, spiky dark hair, a flat forehead, and a sharp chin. Her hand felt tiny in mine, like a dead sparrow. “I’m Cat, Marco’s sister. You’re Nicholas, right?”

As she gave her name an actual cat appeared at her ankle, calico, but mostly white. The cat gazed disparagingly at the weather outside. “What’s her name?” I said, crouching to say hello.

“Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Marco named her. Are you coming in?”

Once my luggage had been left in the vestibule Cat led me to a very large central room, overly warm, and lit, it seemed, only by Christmas lights—not just the multicolored ones on the enormous tree, but strings of lights along the mantel of the fireplace and along the tops of the multiple bookshelves that lined the near wall. The room was split into two sections; one side was a circle of upholstered furniture around a stone fireplace, the other a dining area with a long wooden table decorated with a red-and-green runner, lit candles, and a centerpiece made of pine boughs. There was a pair of French doors that led to the back of the house, and near the dining table there was a circular alcove with a seating area and what looked like one of those tables with a built-in backgammon board. Even the alcove had lights strung along its three windows. Cat must have seen the way I was looking around the room, and said, “Every night is Christmas Eve here for a while.” She made a pose, one arm above her head, the other out to her side, and dipped her knees, then she spread her fingers and pointed out her sweater, which was beaded along the neckline and down each side in reds and greens. “My favorite time of the year.”

And then Maeve entered the room, through swinging doors near the dining-room table, and let out a shriek when she saw me. “It’s the cavalry,” she said, echoing Cat, and I realized that this was what they must have been calling me all along. She came over and gave me a hug. Her pulled-back hair smelled of turpentine.

“How was your ride? Linda got you a limousine, didn’t she? Shows how desperate she is. We’re just so glad to see you. Marco will be, as well.” She punctuated this string of words with short bursts of laughter.

“Is he here?” I said.

Maeve turned her head, as though looking for him, and said, “He’s out drinking with his high-school friends. We weren’t invited so we’re having our own party here. Cat can show you to your room and get you settled and then it’s cocktail hour. Sound good?”

I followed Cat up a bifurcated staircase that led directly from the large central room to the second-floor landing. Cat pointed to the left, and said, “East wing,” then pointed to the right, and said, “but you’re on the west side.” I followed her to the octagonal section of the house, an addition that felt as though it had been constructed sometime in the 1970s. A long hallway was lined with unframed oil paintings and I asked Cat if they were Maeve’s. “Her discards,” she said.

The third door on the right from the top of the stairs was my room, and Cat opened it and let me in. “Ta-da,” she said. I stepped inside as Cat departed. There was shag carpeting that smelled like ancient cigarettes, but there was also a mid-century writing desk, complete with a Smith Corona typewriter and a stack of paper, plus a sleigh bed that looked comfortable, and I had a view across the water to downtown Provincetown, with its impressive stone monument illuminated for Christmas. I unpacked carefully, taking my time, while the radiator hissed and clanked. I changed my shirt and brushed my teeth and reached the bottom of the stairs just as Maeve was passing by.

“We’re drinking eggnog, like I said in my email, but that doesn’t mean you have to.” I hadn’t properly registered her when I first came in, maybe because of nerves, and now I saw she was wearing a Christmas cocktail dress, bright red with thin lines of white and green, but over that she had on an old black cardigan, pilly and paint-splattered and too large for her.

“I’ll have an eggnog,” I said, not wanting to start off on the wrong foot. Clearly, this was a house that took Christmas seriously.

She went and got my drink, and I wandered over to the fireplace, where Cat was sitting next to another diminutive woman, much older than her. They were both dwarfed by the corduroy couch, in danger of being swallowed.

“This is my grandmother,” Cat said.

I bent down and reached out my hand and the old woman took it, her grip surprisingly strong as she looked up at me through milky eyes. “What can I get for you?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Maeve is getting me a drink. What can I get you?”

“She’s fine,” said Cat, who was holding an eggnog. I took the seat opposite them, an upholstered chair that had been shredded by Brigid, who suddenly jumped up and into my lap, making it clear I was in her space.

There was music playing, although I couldn’t see any speakers. It was jazz but with a melody I recognized as being somewhat Christmas-related. It took me a moment to get it, but it was the song “Silver and Gold” from the Rudolph Christmas special that had haunted me as a child. To this day I have dreams of being chased through empty white spaces by the abominable snowman.

Maeve came back with my drink as the song switched to a jazz rendition of “White Christmas.” She shooed the cat off my lap and handed me a glass of eggnog sprinkled with nutmeg. I held it up and said, “To Marco’s next book.”

“Oh God, no,” Maeve said. “Let’s not toast to that. To our new friend, Nicholas Child.”

We all toasted, and the fire crackled, a log settling, and I had one of those moments that happen periodically in my life, when the circumstances around me seem so implausible that they feel staged, unreal. As I’ve mentioned, I was an orphan, shuttled from foster home to foster home, and made keenly aware, like all unloved children, of the outsized importance of the Christmas season. But enough about that. This may be a Christmas story, but it is not Charles Dickens.

“You’re kind of a day early,” Maeve said, shaking me out of my memories. “We have a full house for the next few days, but everyone else is coming tomorrow.”

“Who’s going to be here?” I said.

“Our friends Ben and Eve are coming from New York. She’s a writer too. Eve Margolis. Have you heard of her?”

I had actually, but not so much from her writing as from my research into the life of Marco Tavares, where I’d seen some photographs of him and her together, many years ago, that seemed to imply they were a couple.

“She writes short stories?” I said.

“That’s right. She’s one of Marco’s best friends. The jury is still out on her husband Ben, but we’ll get to know him soon, I suppose.”

“Who else?”

“James Beers is coming. He’s a new friend, and it’s a very strange story … how we met him, I mean.”

I looked over at Cat, who was putting her empty glass down on a side table and curling up into a ball on the couch, her head on her grandmother’s lap. “I didn’t know he was coming,” she said to Maeve.

“I invited him. I didn’t tell you, Cat, I guess. Long story short, Nick, is that we met James Beers because he accused Marco of stealing his idea for Girl at the Door. They were in a writer’s workshop together, years ago, and James wrote a story that he says was clearly the inspiration for Marco’s book.”

“Did he go public?” I said, knowing he probably hadn’t, since I’d have heard about it.

“No, but he came to us. This was a year ago. Marco says he doesn’t remember James’s story, even though James says he read it aloud in a class they were in together.”

“Did you read it?”

“The story? I did. If I’m honest, it seems pretty clear Marco stole it from him, whether he meant to or not. Don’t quote me on that, by the way. But it was all there. The setup and the ending. The details were completely different, and the writing style, of course, but he took the story, beat for beat. He took that twist.”

“But Marco says he doesn’t remember it?”

“That’s what he says,” Maeve said.

“But Marco remembers everything,” Cat said, from her curled-up position on the couch.

“Does he?” Maeve said, as though it had never occurred to her.

“He used to, anyway. Growing up. He could name every student in his class from kindergarten through senior year of high school. It’s like a photographic memory.”

“I guess so,” Maeve said. “He definitely remembers all of our fights. Word for word.”

“Maybe that’s what makes him such a great writer,” I said, which caused Cat to bolt upright like she was an actual cat and a bird had just flown into the room.

“You think he’s a great writer?” she said.

“I’ve read all his books. I do. He’s a very good writer. And, obviously, his sales …”

“Cat is not impressed with her brother,” Maeve said.

“I’m impressed he bought this house and that I get to live in it,” she said.

“The house The Girl at the Door built,” Maeve said. “Well, it didn’t build it, but it definitely bought it.”

“That’s because people have no taste,” Cat said. “Even people who read books.”

I looked at the grandmother, to see what she made of this conversation, but she didn’t seem to be registering it. She was sitting completely still in a dark dress, her thinning gray hair cut short. Her eyes were on the ceiling, and she was humming along with the music.

“So, what happened?” I said.

“With James?”

“Yes.”

Maeve took a sip of her eggnog, then wiped her lip. “Like I said, he came to us first. We sorted it out.”

There was a finality to the way she said those words, but I was interested. “Did you pay him off?” I said.

“Honestly, I think James just wanted to be acknowledged by us, that this had happened. Marco convinced him it wasn’t intentional, and then charmed him, the way he does. He’s now a friend. Well, he’s either a friend, or he’s an enemy playing the long game.” She raised her eyebrows.

“Is he still a writer?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Maeve said. “He isn’t, really. He’s an accountant who took an adult ed class in short story writing and wrote this one piece. It’s terrible except for the idea of it. If he had real ambitions to be a writer, then I suppose he would have sued for plagiarism.”

“You lucked out,” I said.

“He’s a good guy, you’ll like him.”

“And he’s coming for all of Christmas too?”

“No, no. Just for a few days, same as Eve and Ben. You’re the only one staying through.”

“What about Billy?” Cat said.

“Oh, yeah, Billy Sousa, that’s Marco’s best friend from high school. He’ll probably be staying here. We pretty much keep a room for him at all times.”

Cat got off the sofa and stretched, exposing her pale midriff. “Is it time to eat?” she said.

“I hope you like fish,” Maeve said, rising as well, and looking at me.

I lied and told her I did. Cat said, “Remember, every night is Christmas Eve around here until it’s actually Christmas, and that means fish for dinner. Vovó, you hungry?”

Her grandmother answered by putting her hand on the arm of the sofa and slowly getting to her feet. I got up myself and went to her side, offering my own arm to help her. She took it, saying, “Oh, thank you, Marco.”

“It’s Nicholas,” Maeve and Cat both said at the same time.

“Oh, thank you, Nicholas,” she said, looking up at me and smiling.

“What should I call you?” I said.

Maeve said “Louisa” just as the older woman said “Mrs. Tavares.”

“Okay, Mrs. Tavares,” I said. “Lead the way.”

We collected our food in a large galley-style kitchen. There was salad, bread, and a pot of fish soup in a tomato-based broth, and after a discussion between Maeve and Cat it was decided that we should eat at the kitchen table. Mrs. Tavares quickly began to clear it, faster than I’d seen her move before. Maeve put a bottle of wine on the table plus four stemless glasses, and for a time we all ate in silence.

“Look out for bones,” Maeve warned me, as I was pulling one out of my mouth.

“What’s for the big dinner party tomorrow night?” I said.

“Oh, do you cook?” Maeve said.

“No, actually, I don’t, but I can help, of course.”

“Marco wants that fish pie you make,” Cat said to Maeve.

“Yes, he told me. I’m ignoring him for now and hoping he forgets about it.”

Something brushed against my ankle and I was startled until I realized it was the cat. I managed to feed her some of the unidentifiable fish from the soup without anyone seeming to notice. Cat and Maeve continued to talk about meal-planning the next few days, and I felt myself slipping into the background, as though I’d been sitting at this place at this table with these people for years. Whatever novelty I had brought to the house had already disappeared. I was fine with that, preferring anonymity to too much attention, and when Mrs. Tavares tried to clear the table after dessert and Maeve and Cat stopped her, I offered to clean up instead.

While I was washing the dishes, the window above the sink clouded over with steam and I stared at my reflection, wondering how much I did resemble Marco, or whether Mrs. Tavares assumed any man in the house was her grandson. Marco, in both my memory and from recent pictures I’d seen, was undeniably handsome. Dark, thick hair, high cheekbones, white teeth. I have all my hair but know that my features are completely bland and unmemorable. Even at the height of my limited literary success I would arrive at book events and people I’d met before would introduce themselves to me as though it were the first time.

When the kitchen was clean I found myself lingering there instead of returning to the living room. I searched through cabinets and the refrigerator more out of curiosity than hunger. I spotted a pint of cheap scotch hidden behind several boxes of cereal and one of those plastic gallon bottles of vodka under the sink next to the cleaning supplies. As I pushed through the kitchen doors to return to the party, I heard the front door crash open, feet stomping in the vestibule. I sped up so that I’d be with Maeve and Cat and Mrs. Tavares when Marco entered the living room and not standing awkwardly on the other side.

As I approached the women, Maeve said, “The quiet part of the evening is over.”

Marco came into the living room, trailed by another man with thick black hair and deep-set eyes. They were dressed alike, in dark jeans and puffy jackets that glistened with melting snowflakes. “Buona sera!” Marco said loudly into the room.

Maeve got up and passed by me to greet the newcomers. She gave Marco a hug which seemed to surprise him, but I could tell she was whispering something into his ear. I assumed it was a reminder of who I was and why I was here.

I stepped forward to say hello, and Marco, unzipping his coat, said, “Hey, Nicholas, it’s been a long time.”

“Nice to see you again,” I said.

He introduced me to his friend Billy, who stared at me for too long, swaying, then said, a little threateningly, “I know you, don’t I?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Billy’s drunk,” Marco said, and slung an arm over his friend’s shoulder, putting him in a headlock. “Go to bed, Billy.”

Marco let go of his friend and took off his jacket. Billy cast his eyes to the stairway, and Maeve said, “I’ll show you to your room, Billy, come with me.”

“You’ll meet him properly tomorrow, Nicholas. He’s not so bad.”

Cat, from her position on the sofa, laughed out loud. Mrs. Tavares turned to her, alarm in her eyes, and said, “Catherine, please.”

Marco bounded over and kissed his grandmother on the cheek, then said to the room in general, “Is the party over? Or does everyone want one more drink? I know I do. Nicholas, I know you do as well.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Whisky, then. The good stuff. I’ll be right back.”

I went and sat on the chair I’d occupied before dinner. The fire was dying out and the room was cooler than it had been before. “My brother is very pompous when he drinks,” Cat said, and the words sounded familiar to me, although I couldn’t place them.

Maeve was coming back down the stairs and I realized that this large room we were all inhabiting felt like the setting for a play, complete with a stairwell that took the actors in and out of the action.

“He collapsed on the bed in his clothes,” Maeve announced to all of us. “I put a plastic trash thingy next to him in case he throws up. Remind me to check on him again.”

“Poor Billy,” Cat said.

“Why do you say that?” Maeve said.

“Because he’s Marco’s best friend.”

“Yes, exactly,” Maeve said, laughing. Then she looked at me and said, “I feel so bad for him, I’ve basically given him a room in this house.”

Marco came back into the room holding a tray with a bottle of whisky and four tumblers on it. He placed it down on the coffee table, and said, “Eighteen-year-old Jura, Nicholas. I don’t know about you, but the day I got published was the day that I told myself no more cheap whisky.”

By my count, that was the fourth time that Marco had called me by my name, and I was starting to get unnerved. Either he was trying to put me in my place or else he was reminding himself of my name so he wouldn’t forget it. But I said, “Thank you, Marco. When I first got published, I started buying the Kellogg’s Raisin Bran instead of the generic.”

He laughed theatrically and squeezed my shoulder. “No, no, no, I know what you’re saying. Jesus, that first advance Linda got me just barely paid my credit card balance.”

He poured out four whiskies and handed them around to everyone but his grandmother. Maeve, without saying anything, poured half her drink into mine. “To Nicholas,” Marco said, raising his glass. “Chin-chin.”

“We already toasted to Nicholas,” Maeve said, “while you were out getting Billy smashed.”

Marco frowned. “Yeah, poor Billy. We ran into Sophia at the Old Colony. It did not go well. Nicholas, Sophia is Billy’s ex and he’s still hung up on her.”

Maeve and Marco and Cat gossiped some more about all the people Marco had run into on his daylong bar crawl. I leaned back with my whisky and sipped it, telling myself that if I’d written a book as popular as Marco’s last book had been, I might be buying this very same whisky for myself.

“We’re boring you,” Maeve said, just to me, while Marco was updating Cat about someone they both knew.

“I was just thinking the opposite,” I said. “It’s kind of pleasant to sit here and listen to you all talk. I’m very happy.”

“He’s a writer, like me,” Marco said. “He’s eavesdropping and you’re all going to wind up in his next book.”

“I used to think writers were good listeners,” Maeve said, “and then I met my husband. Seriously, Nicholas, feel free to abandon ship at any time.”

“Like I said, I’m happy.”

“Well, you’re being very nice about it. Marco will stay up and keep drinking until there’s no one else left in the room, so be prepared for that.”

“What was that?” Marco said, turning from Cat.

“I said how you won’t go to bed until everyone else has gone to bed.”

“That’s the old me, Maeve. The new me has a book to write and I will be going to bed as soon as I finish this next drink. Cambiero la mia via.”

He poured himself another scotch and Cat said, “Please stop speaking Italian. You sound ridiculous.”

“Mi dispiace, Caterina. But you’ll be speaking it soon enough. Nicholas, my wife and sister and grandmother don’t accept it yet, but we are all going to move to a villa in Italy and live la dolce vita.”

Cat stood up. “That’s my cue to leave.”

Marco took two big steps and gave his sister a hug, then turned quickly back to me. He said, “Nicholas, tomorrow morning I’ll let you read this piece of crap I’ve written and then you can decide if there’s anything you can help me with. Honestly, I think the patient is dead on the table but Linda was so excited with this idea I figured—”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Maeve said. “Poor Nicholas is tired.”

Marco looked at me, for signs of my fatigue, I suppose, and a flicker of something passed behind his eyes. I watched him think about saying something then decide against it. Instead, he faked a yawn and said, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Sounds good to me.”

*

I was wide awake when I was finally alone in my bedroom, my teeth brushed, the door shut. The loud radiator had turned the room into a sauna and I looked for a control switch, finally resorting to opening my window. I sat on the edge of the bed as the cold air rushed in like water through a broken hull. I could smell the brine of the ocean and something else, as well, which I finally identified as cigarette smoke. I turned my bedside lamp off and peered out the window. Marco was below, on the back patio, smoking, so close to me that I could have gotten his attention by whispering. I pulled the heavy curtains across the open window, turned my lamp back on, and got under the covers. I opened up Trent’s Last Case to the page I was on but only stared at the words, not reading them. I thought back on the evening I’d just had, and all the new people in my life. Certain lines were ringing in my head, including when Cat had told me that her brother was pompous when he drinks. I remembered what it had reminded me of, a line from Brideshead Revisited. Sebastian says it about his teddy bear. Grey Gables Revisited, I said to myself, and imagined an older version of myself returning to this house, now covered in knotweed and beach plum bushes. It’s a problem I have, seeing myself in stories that end unhappily.

*

At just past dawn I woke up thirsty and shivering with cold. Pulling the curtains aside and shutting the window, I looked out at a colorless world, with no delineation between the bay and the sky. Since I’d arrived after dark the previous night, I hadn’t realized just how close the ocean was. I got dressed for a walk and went downstairs, moving quietly, not wanting to wake anyone. I opened the French doors and stepped out onto the patio, the air stinging my nostrils. I pulled my scarf tighter around my neck and zipped up my jacket.

Just past the edge of the patio was a short, weathered boardwalk that led over a sweep of dune to the beach. I walked against the wind, spotting what looked like a seal bobbing in the placid water. But when I was halfway to the waterline, I saw Maeve emerge from the water in a green one-piece bathing suit. She walked calmly to a towel puddled on the sand, picked it up, and wrapped it around her. “Wow,” I said, when I reached her. Her face was mottled red from the cold water.

“I do it every morning, but, I won’t lie, it’s getting harder by the day. You should join me sometime.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“You brought your suit?”

“Yes, like you told me to in your email.”

“Oh, yeah, right. By the way, only swimming on New Year’s Day when everyone else jumps in the ocean doesn’t count. That’s amateur hour.”

She was walking back toward the house and I walked with her, starting to shiver from the cold as though I’d been the one who’d just emerged from the water. “I’m pretty okay with amateur status,” I said.

“Well, the invite is open. You clearly get up early.”

“I wanted to see the ocean in the daylight. I might go back to bed.”

I didn’t end up going back to bed, but I did go to my bedroom for a while, lying on top of the nubby duvet cover, thinking about things. The house was quiet except for the distant sounds of water moving through pipes and I thought of Maeve taking a shower to warm up from her early-morning swim. After an hour I went in search of breakfast. At the bottom of the stairs, I was turning to head to the kitchen when I noticed Mrs. Tavares, dressed as she’d been the day before, wiping down the long dining-room table with what looked like an embroidered handkerchief. “Good morning,” I said, and she stopped what she was doing.

“I know you,” she said.

“We met yesterday. My name’s Nicholas.”

“How long are you here for?” she said. There was the trace of an ironic smile on her face and for a moment I could picture her as a young woman.

“I’m here through Christmas.”

Her mouth moved but she didn’t immediately say anything.

“How long are you here for?” I said automatically, then worried it sounded as though I was teasing her.

“I just work here,” she said, and went back to wiping down the table.

In the kitchen I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, where a manuscript, or about sixty pages of a manuscript, had been left. The Impostor by M. A. Tavares. There was a yellow sticky note attached that read, “For Nicholas.” The coffeepot was three-quarters full, and it seemed clear that Marco and Cat hadn’t been downstairs yet. Suddenly I wanted to be alone with Marco’s pages. I took an orange from a bowl of fruit, plus my coffee and the manuscript, and returned to my room. I sat at the desk and read the pages, visited only by Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who scratched at my closed door and then decided not to come in.

The first chapter was an outlier, all in italics, and, sequentially, it took place at a different time from the other chapters, presumably later on. It was recounted in the first person, by a woman hiding in a basement while someone searches the house above her. The chapter ends with the basement door being opened, a wedge of light breaking into the darkness.

I was unimpressed. It was a teaser chapter, a way to open the book with action, and a technique that seemed more and more common these days. It was, in fact, the way that I had currently configured the novel I was working on myself. But it wasn’t just the contrivance which, to me, seemed very generic, it was also the writing. Marco’s first two novels were loaded with style, almost to a fault, but they were both undeniably the product of a writer with a solid voice. And while that style was toned down in The Girl at the Door, it was such a beautifully executed book, especially in its plotting, that the lack of a signature voice was fine. But there was something cookie-cutter about this new book somehow, especially the opening chapter.

The remaining chapters were overly melodramatic but also, conversely, somewhat personal. Maybe that was because I felt as though I recognized elements of Maeve in the main female character of the story, Madeline Santos, a successful artist living in Providence who specialized in collages, immense canvases composed of pieces cut from thrift-store paintings. At the beginning of the story another female artist shows up at her door out of the blue, saying how she is a collagist, too, and a huge fan, and wondering if maybe they could collaborate. This part of the book was very unbelievable; unless the woman showing up at the door was going to turn out to be a figment of Madeline’s imagination, it just didn’t read as real. And the other artist, an Italian named Lucia Barbieri, was very flat as currently written. And way too sexualized. Madeline, who has a boyfriend, constantly notices Lucia’s body, remarking twice in the space of three pages how Lucia never wears bras and she can see her nipples through her sheer blouses.

Madeline, who is the narrator of the story, realizes that Lucia’s collages are much better than her own and she begins to fantasize about killing Lucia and stealing them. To that end she insinuates herself into Lucia’s life to determine if she can get away with it. They become more and more emotionally entwined, almost romantically. Right around the time that Madeline decides that she can’t go through with it, that she can’t murder her friend, Lucia dies in a car accident. That was where the book stood as I finished the pages.

One of my biggest problems with what I’d read, and one that would be easy to bring up with Marco, was that the book was written in the present tense. That was a personal choice, I knew, but I thought the book would read much better in the past tense (I honestly think there is no reason for any book to be written in the present tense, and definitely not first-person present tense). Other than that, the major problem was that the relationship between the two women seemed utterly false, their dialogue wooden, their sexual attraction exploitative instead of earned. I thought the opening chapter should be scrapped, or at least put aside, and that the two women should meet in a more logical way. Maybe they would share a gallery show or meet at a party. I decided to make these suggestions to Marco when we eventually talked about his work.

Lunchtime was approaching, and I could hear voices in the house. Before leaving my room, I sent Linda Barkin a one-word text that I hoped would make her happy: Salvageable.

*

At four that afternoon I finally got a chance to let Marco know what I thought about the first five chapters of his book. We were sitting at the Governor Bradford, the third bar we’d been to in Provincetown since lunch. We’d all, including a very hungover Billy Sousa, had leftover soup from the night before and then Maeve had given me a tour of the whole house, including her studio above the garage. She’d shown me the paintings that she was currently working on; one was a rather haunting oil of Marco.

Then we’d walked over the scrubby dunes to the beach, pounded by icy winds coming off the whitecapped ocean, and I tried to picture the summer season, beachgoers in and out of the water, but I couldn’t.

Back in the house Marco and Cat and Mrs. Tavares had been spread out in the living room—Cat reading a magazine, Marco on his phone—and I decided that it was a perfect opportunity to present them with their gifts. I went upstairs and got the four books, then brought them back down and handed them around, the two Christmas mysteries for Cat and Mrs. Tavares, Ripley Underground for Maeve, and The Scapegoat for Marco.

“This wasn’t necessary,” Maeve said.

“I am a houseguest, and it is Christmastime.”

“I haven’t heard of this one,” Marco said.

“You’ll like it. It’s basically The Prince and the Pauper but a dark, mystery version. I actually like it more than Rebecca.”

“What’s it about?” Maeve said.

“Your book or Marco’s?”

“What’s The Scapegoat about?”

“An Englishman goes to France and meets his perfect doppelgänger, at a café. And this Frenchman, this lookalike, wants out of his life so the Englishman takes over.”

“Like an impostor,” Maeve said.

“Sort of. I hadn’t read Marco’s pages when I picked this book for him, but yes, there are some similarities.”

Marco was looking at the cover, which depicted a man on the balcony of a large house, waving down to another man on the lawn, the sky a dark nighttime blue. I loved that particular cover as much as I loved the book. “Thanks, man,” he said. “And speaking of The Impostor …”

“I read some pages this morning,” I said.

He grinned at me through gritted teeth. “Jesus, I apologize. Don’t say anything yet. I need a few drinks before I hear what you have to say.” And then he suggested, to all of us, a tour of Provincetown.

“You mean a bar-crawl,” Maeve said. “No thanks.”

Cat turned down the offer as well, and Billy had gone back to bed, so it was just the two of us who drove in Marco’s blue Scirocco to downtown Provincetown, parking near an enormous Christmas tree constructed of lobster traps and topped with a crown of lights and Christmas balls. “It used to be dead around here in the winter,” Marco said, “just writers and drug addicts, but it’s all changing now.”

We walked for a while, Marco pointing out his favorite bars and restaurants, the lit-up monument he’d once tried to climb in a drunken fit, the ramshackle house where he’d lost his virginity to the much older wife of a fisherman who was out to sea. All his stories sounded rehearsed and barely believable, but I acted impressed, already nervous about my position in his house over the next two weeks and not wanting to ruffle his feathers before we even began the conversation about his book.

So it wasn’t until our third bar, and our fourth beer, that I said, “About The Impostor—good title, by the way—have you written more, or just those chapters I read this morning?”

He pushed back in the wooden chair he was sitting on so that it tipped onto two legs, and said, “No, I’ve written the whole thing about ten times. Those first five chapters are the only things I feel decent about, and by decent, I mean they don’t make me want to put a bullet in my head.”

“They’re more than decent,” I said. “The way Linda spoke about it, I was expecting a disaster.”

“Why? What did she say?” He tipped forward in his chair and the beer in his hand slopped a little over the rim of the mug.

“She was just reporting what you said about it. That you’re unhappy, but that you’re also determined to turn it in.”

“The deadline is next month, and I meet my fucking deadlines. Are you one of those writers that turn books in years after they’re due?”

He seemed genuinely angry and I told him that I wasn’t, which happened to be the truth. But I also said that since Girl at the Door had done so well, why not make them wait a little bit?

“My dad was a boat-maker, and let me tell you, if someone asked for a boat by January then he delivered it. Or else none of us would eat. You get that, don’t you?” While delivering this proclamation, he pointed his finger at me, then tapped it on the table in front of us, a gesture that seemed overly theatrical and vaguely threatening.

“I do,” I said. “So, let’s get this book done by next month. I can help you.”

He took a deep breath, was quiet for a moment, then said, “Prendiamone un altro, real drinks this time, and then you tell me what needs to be done to save this thing.”

I watched him go to the bar. The place was beginning to fill up with an odd assortment of locals who all seemed to know one another, a few middle-aged tourists, and even a lone drag queen, her Lucille Ball wig on the bar next to her margarita. With my head angled toward the bar I felt rather than saw someone sit down at our table. I turned to see a woman, heavily pierced, heavily tattooed, smiling at me. “We’ll see if he notices I’m here when he comes back,” she said, and maybe I imagined it but there seemed to be smoke or vapor coming from her mouth while she spoke.

Marco returned, put my whisky in front of me, and sat back down on his chair. “Hi, Sophia,” he said. He took a sip from his drink then slid it over to her.

“No Billy today?”

“He’s licking his wounds.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“This is a fellow writer. Nicholas Child. Here for the holidays.”

I offered my hand across the table and she held it while saying, “Nicholas, I’ve just got to pull this asshole away from you for a few minutes for some business. You don’t mind, do you?”

I told her I didn’t, hoping she would stop holding my hand. Eventually she did, and the two went down the back hall and out of sight. The jukebox switched from a Donna Summer song to “Dead Flowers” by the Stones. I sipped my drink and watched as the bar filled up more, struck with a not-unfamiliar feeling that at any moment the music would stop and the lights would come up and all the patrons would turn and stare at me, wondering how I’d been let in. “Dead Flowers” ended and “Miss You” began when Marco returned alone. I could smell cigarette smoke on him, and there was a trace of blood-red lipstick on the side of his mouth. “This fucking town,” was all he said, pinching his nostrils.

“All okay?” I said.

“Oh yeah. Now, tell me about my book.”

When we got back to the house in Truro, there was an additional car in the driveway, an enormous white SUV. It was darker than it had been the night before, and snowing again, in flakes that clung to the hedges at the front of the house.

We entered to the sound of Christmas carols and the smell of something baking. There were new jackets hanging on the pegs in the vestibule, a few still dripping, and it was clear that guests had just arrived. “Are you ready for this?” Marco said.

“Ready for what, exactly?” I said.

“God knows. But there will be some drama. There always is with my wife. You haven’t learned that about her yet?” He made it sound like I’d been staying with them for a week and not just twenty-four hours, and his words were slurry from our boozy afternoon. I’d managed to get away with sipping at my whisky while he’d ordered two more for himself.

“Nice of you two to show up.” This was Maeve, who had come in from the living room to the hallway, holding one of those copper mugs people drink mules from, and wearing an apron over a green dress. Standing with her was a woman I hadn’t met yet, but whom I recognized as Eve Margolis, the friend visiting from New York. Eve hurried over to Marco and gave him a big hug. While they talked, Maeve said to me, “How bad is he?”

“Bad?”

“Drunk, I mean.”

“Neither of us is particularly sober,” I said.

“Thank you, Nicholas,” Maeve said, and took my arm as we followed Marco and Eve into the living room, just as Dean Martin was beginning to sing “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.”

“Thank you for what?”

“For being here.”

I scanned the room, lit up with Christmas lights as it had been the night before. Cat was tending to the fire, and there were two men I hadn’t met standing near the tree, studying the ornaments. Maeve walked me over to them and introduced us. Ben Strickland, Eve’s husband, shook my hand like we’d just settled an important deal. He had wide shoulders and a square jaw and wore a fleece vest that marked him immediately as someone from the city who worked in either money or tech. The other man was James Beers, the writer who’d accused Marco of stealing his idea. He was larger than I’d thought he’d be, thin and with long limbs, and even though he looked strong, it was clear from his awkward posture that he had no athletic skills. His black jeans didn’t fit right, his glasses were thick, and his hand, as I shook it, felt limp and damp. I was surprised when he said, “I read your books, man, and thought they were really great.”

“Oh,” I said, flummoxed as I always was when someone owned up to reading something I’d written. “Thank you.”

“James,” Maeve said, putting a hand on his arm, “can you help me make some drinks in the kitchen?”

“Of course,” he said, grinning as though he’d just won an award.

Maeve held up her copper mug. “I’m making cranberry mules tonight, but it’s only a suggestion and not a requirement. What can we get you two?”

Ben and I both said we’d love a mule, and Maeve and James made their way to the kitchen doors. In that brief interaction I felt as though I understood why James Beers, with his awkward gait, his ill-fitting clothes, his general air of social ineptitude, had decided not to go public with his accusations. There was something about Maeve and Marco, their house, and their lifestyle, that made you want to be part of it. James had been invited in, and in exchange had given up his claim that he’d devised the plot of The Girl at the Door. And it wasn’t just that. As I watched him walk side by side with Maeve, I knew he was in love with her, or maybe it was just lust. Either way, it amounted to the same thing. He’d keep quiet for a sliver of a chance with Maeve Finch.

Ben and I made small talk while waiting for our drinks. Turned out he worked in finance and technology, as some sort of angel investor in Manhattan. When the conversation turned to writing, he said, “I don’t know how you do it. Fortunately, I have an assistant who writes all my emails for me.”

As we talked, I watched his small, ratlike eyes keep track of his wife on the other side of the room, still enmeshed in a one-on-one with Marco. They were standing close together, Eve with her hand on Marco’s shoulder and a wide grin on her face. Whatever Marco was saying seemed to be both interesting and funny.

Maeve and James returned with our mules. I sipped from my icy cold mug and, tasting mostly vodka, reminded myself to nurse this drink for at least an hour. It was important for so many reasons to stay relatively sober through the course of the night. Maeve departed to go back to the kitchen and for a longish ten seconds, Ben, James, and I stood in silence. Ben still had his eyes on his wife, and James was looking at the tree. “Some interesting ornaments on here,” he said.

We turned to look at the tree together. It was a huge assortment of ornaments, mostly traditional glass balls that caught the light from the strings, but there was a devilish figure I recognized as Krampus and a humorous ornament of the twin girls from The Shining. We also found a small chainsaw ornament, and a dagger with fake blood on its tip.

“Marco’s contributions, I suspect,” I said.

“Have you seen his office?”

“I haven’t.”

“He’s got a wall of weapons. He told me they’re almost exclusively props from films, but they look pretty real to me.”

“What films?” I said.

“One of them is the lead pipe used in the movie Clue.”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“That’s what he claims but it doesn’t feel like a movie prop, it feels like a real lead pipe. And he has a prop gun from a film called The Beast Must Die, and a straight razor from Dressed to Kill.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“I don’t not believe him,” James said, “but, I mean, how would you know?”

“Exactly,” interjected Ben. I was surprised he’d been listening.

“When did you all get in?” I said, to change the subject.

“Ben and Eve picked me up in Fall River on their drive from New York,” James said. “I don’t have a car right now.”

I felt a surge of empathy for James’s carless life, being in the same spot myself. “Is that where you live,” I said, “in Fall River?”

“For now,” he said, and left it at that.

I was thinking of telling the two men that I was going to go say hi to Cat and her grandmother when Marco and Eve began to work their way to us, walking with their arms around each other. I felt Ben stiffen up next to me at the sight, and I wondered if Eve was clueless that she was upsetting her husband, or whether she was doing it on purpose.

“Hey, Ben,” Marco said, theatrically loud, and Eve mouthed the words He’s drunk at all of us.

“Hi, Marco,” both Ben and James said at the same time.

Marco looked at me and said, dismissively, “Eve, this is the man who’s been hired to fix my book, believe it or not.” I was taken aback, not so much by the nastiness of the comment but because thirty minutes earlier Marco had seemed pretty happy that I was going to help him.

I shook Eve’s hand, said, “It’s true. I’m the hired help.”

“When you’re done with Marco’s book, please help me write my next story. I’m blocked.” Her laugh after she said this was like something out of community theatre, loud and fake-sounding.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

She slid her arm from Marco’s shoulders and stood up straighter. She had long brown hair with blond highlights and was wearing a simple black dress with a plunging neckline. Her necklace was composed of pale blue and green glass beads and looked expensive. “I’m going to go help Maeve serve dinner before someone falls over,” she said, and took off.

Aware that the four men at the party were all standing around doing nothing, I told them I was going to help as well, and made my way to the kitchen, where I found Maeve making a salad in an enormous wooden bowl, and Eve peering into the oven.

“Can I help?” I said.

“When it rains, it pours,” Maeve said. “No, I’m good right now. In fifteen minutes, the fish pie is coming out of the oven and then you can help me bring food out to the table. Oh, one thing you can do is pick a couple of bottles of white wine from downstairs in the cellar. There’s a fridge at the bottom of the stairs. You can’t miss it.”

I opened the door to the cellar and found the light switch on the wall. A single bulb hanging from its cord illuminated the stairs. I had a well-founded fear of cellars that I had mostly overcome in my adult years. Still, as I descended the steps, I imagined the door slamming shut behind me, closing me in. There was another light switch down below that flooded the cellar in light. The cellar was unfinished, just a poured-concrete floor and stone walls. There was old furniture covered with sheets, plus stacks of boxes, some damp and sagging. Immediately to my right, though, was a wall lined with shelving that held about fifty wine bottles, and tucked below was a hip-high refrigerator with a glass door. I opened it up and pulled out several bottles of the white wine. I had no idea which one to pick, although I recognized the word Sancerre on two of the bottles as something that indicated expensiveness, so I grabbed those.

I brought the bottles to Maeve, who thanked me, and then wandered back out to the living room, happy to see that the guests had moved into seated positions around the fireplace. But instead of joining them, I decided to go upstairs and change my sweater from the old fisherman’s turtleneck I’d been wearing to a collared shirt and my green Harris tweed. On the way to my room I passed Marco’s office, its door open; Maeve had pointed it out to me during our tour, but we hadn’t gone inside. I stepped in now, curious to see the weapons on the wall. James had not been exaggerating. The near wall was dedicated to weaponry, mounted around a framed movie poster of Tough Guys Don’t Dance. It seemed an odd choice, this mocked film, but then I remembered it had been filmed in Provincetown. I perused the weapons. There were several knives, a large straight razor (the supposed Dressed to Kill prop), a few guns, some of which looked like props, and a vintage revolver that looked real to me.

I thought I heard footsteps coming up the stairs so turned to leave the office. On my way out I saw that along the far wall of the room was an old leather couch that had been made up with sheets and a blanket and a white pillow. On a side table was a half-full glass of water, a bottle of pills, and a Chuck Palahniuk novel. I slipped out of the office then walked to my own bedroom, thinking it was interesting that Marco wasn’t sleeping in the master bedroom with Maeve. Maybe it was a rift, or maybe it was simply what he needed to do in order to finish his book. Either way, it wasn’t really my business. I changed into my shirt and jacket and returned to the party.

*

After we’d finally all sat down around the dining-room table, Marco made a toast. There were nine of us in total, although the table could easily fit twice as many so we occupied only one end. Marco was at the head, and I was sitting to his immediate left. On my side of the table was James Beers, next to me, then Cat and Mrs. Tavares. On the other side of the table, directly across from me and on Marco’s right, was Eve Margolis, then Maeve and Billy Sousa, then Ben Strickland, looking displeased that he was at the end of the table, next to a still-hungover Billy and across from a silent Mrs. Tavares. The wine had been poured and Marco stood up to make a toast.

“Saluti! To the specter at the feast. May you reveal yourself before midnight.”

James laughed, and Maeve said, “Seriously, Marco,” but we all toasted. After he’d sat back down Maeve raised her glass again and said, “Merry Christmas, everyone, and thank you for being here. Now, let’s eat.”

As the serving platters were passed around, James leaned toward me and said, “Do you see what I see?”

“‘A star, a star, dancing in the night’?” I said.

It took him a moment, then he laughed and said, “No, I meant, does this look the same to you as it does to me, that we’re inside of a murder mystery?”

I had already had that thought, of course, but I often have that thought, being inclined to see murder mysteries in every social gathering I’m invited to. But this was different, and James was right. Besides the clichéd trappings of a seaside mansion in wintertime, and an office wall dripping with murder weapons, there were also the guests. James might now be a friend to Marco and Maeve, but he’d come to them as an enemy with an accusation of plagiarism. Eve was an old girlfriend of Marco’s who’d arrived with a jealous husband. I supposed I could be counted among the possible specters as a writer whose fortunes had dipped while Marco had become rich and famous. Maeve, of course, was the wife, marking her as most likely to murder her husband. Cat did not seem to be a fan of her brother, and Billy, well, I wasn’t so sure about Billy yet. He’d skipped the cocktail hour, I noticed, and had shown up for dinner looking bedraggled, with greasy hair and a less-than-clean-looking shirt. But he was Marco’s high-school friend, and Maeve had told me that he was currently unemployed. I wondered how he felt about his very successful friend.

“Yes,” I said to James. “It does feel exactly like we’re in a murder mystery. Almost like a play.”

“Yes, one big set. So, who do you think the victim will be?” James giggled—I don’t quite know how else to describe it— and his question made me realize that I’d already assigned the role of corpse to Marco, who seemed obviously destined for murder-mystery victimhood. But before I had a chance to say that to James, I jumped, startled by Brigid O’Shaughnessy pressing up against my leg under the table. She clearly remembered who had given her the fish the previous night.

The conversation around the table turned to writing, Eve telling a story about a festival she’d recently been invited to, and how she’d been put on a panel to talk about sexual identity as it related to plot. I kept my eye on Ben, her husband, all the way down at the dud end of the table, glowering toward his wife. Maeve must have caught me looking back and forth between the two and gave me a knowing smile.

“Any festivals this year?” Marco was saying, and it took me a moment to realize that he was addressing me.

“No,” I said. “How about you?”

“Milan Noir,” he said, then told us, using his sporadic Italian, about how he was the special guest.

“And you want to move to Italy?” I said, then caught Maeve out of the corner of my eye making a slashing motion at her neck.

“Esattamente,” he said. “My family is opposed, but they don’t know how much better life in Italy is. You know what I’m talking about, though, Nicholas. You’re a man of the world.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said.

“Let’s change the subject,” Maeve said, and Cat added, loudly, “Sì, sì!”

Marco did keep monologuing throughout the meal, although not about Italy. He stepped out twice to smoke a cigarette, Eve joining him the second time while her husband silently kept an eye on them. This was after the fish pie and salad had been decimated, and everyone was just drinking more wine. Mrs. Tavares had gotten up to clear the table, and then she’d been steered to bed by Cat, who returned after twenty minutes. By this time the Christmas music had been replaced by a very loud Gang of Four album and the table was littered with empty wine bottles and a full bottle of vintage port that Marco was insisting we all drink. Marco and Eve were deep in a conversation together, heads almost touching, their words inaudible to anyone but them. James and I were talking with Maeve across the table about movies, and Cat and Billy were laughing about something. It was only Ben Strickland, who’d been quiet throughout the dinner party, who was left out. All of a sudden, although, truthfully, it had been coming all night, he pushed back his chair and stood up. “Fuck this shit!” he yelled at Eve, or maybe it was to all of us. “I’m going up to bed.” He pointed at his wife. “If you’re not up there with me in five minutes, consider our marriage over.”

Maeve laughed awkwardly as we all watched him head up the stairs.

“Oh my God,” Marco said, smiling a little when he’d gone. “What the …”

“Sorry about that,” Eve said, her eyes gone big.

“I think you should wait exactly five minutes and thirty seconds to go up and check on him.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Marco,” Maeve said.

Eve stood. “I’m going to go up. Sorry again, everyone. Maybe we shouldn’t have come at all.”

She followed her husband up the stairs. Offstage, I said to myself.

“What just happened?” Billy said, and I think it was the first time all night he’d spoken to the whole table. I also think he genuinely had no idea what had just occurred.

“It’s your fault, Billy,” Marco said.

“Wait, is it? What’d I do?”

Maeve said, “No, it’s not your fault, Billy. It’s Marco’s fault.”

“Takes two to tango,” Marco said.

“Okay, everyone,” Maeve said. “I think maybe we should all call it a night.”

I helped Maeve clean the dishes in the kitchen. At one point James came in silently and was swaying, one hand on the kitchen table, looking at us. Maeve turned and said, “Hi, James. How are you?”

“I think I’m a little drunk,” he said. His color looked bad and there were drops of sweat along his hairline.

“Okay,” Maeve said.

“I’ll bring him up to his bed, if you want,” I said.

“Could you?” Maeve said. “That would be great.”

“Actually …” James said, and he blinked rapidly, looking for the next word. “Maeve, can we talk?”

“Let’s talk in the morning, James, okay?” She stared at him intently, then said, “Nicholas is going to bring you up to your bed.”

“Okay,” he said, the lower half of his mouth gone slack. I walked him upstairs, trying to remember the point at which he’d gotten so drunk. In all honestly, I’d forgotten about him during dinner, despite the fact that he was sitting directly next to me. His bedroom, it turned out, was in the same wing as mine, three doors down from Marco’s office, on the opposite side of the hall. I thought of bringing him to the bathroom first, but he seemed ready to pass out, so we went to his made-up bed. “I’ll leave you here,” I said.

“Do you think she hates me, Nicholas?” he said.

“I don’t think anyone hates you.”

“You’re a kind man. But does she love me?”

“Go to sleep, okay?” I said.

He closed his eyes, and I waited for a moment, making sure he would fall asleep. When his breathing became more regular, I shifted his body onto the side. There was a bottle of Klonopin on his bedside table, along with two books—a hardcover copy of The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley on top of a plain green hardcover with nothing on its spine, which made me think it was a blank book, probably James’s journal.

When I got back downstairs to the living room Maeve was leaving the kitchen and stopped to ask me how James was. I told her he was passed out. The room was mostly dark, the only illumination coming from the Christmas tree casting spangles of light across the shadow-filled room. I thought Maeve and I were the only ones still up, but then I saw that Marco and Billy were sitting across from each other in the alcove. “Good night,” Maeve said, squeezing my arm. I thought she’d go and say good night to her husband as well, but she didn’t.

I was going to go up to bed myself when Marco called me over to join him and Billy on the leather-padded bench, which wrapped around a circular table embossed with a backgammon board. “Join us,” he said, and slid down so I’d have room to sit. There was enough moonlight coming through the windows for me to see that Billy looked both tired and angry, although it was possible that he always looked that way. “Nicholas,” Marco said. “How was your night?”

“Good,” I said. “Just a little bit of drama.”

“What, that bullshit from Ben what’s-his-name? That was nothing. Just a bunch of writers getting together. What would you expect?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Hey, did you know that Billy here is also a writer? He’s amazing. Even before I’d ever thought about putting pen to paper, he’d written … what was it? … like, seven complete novels.”

“Wow,” I said, refraining from asking any of the natural follow-up questions. Like had he been published, or what kind of books did he write. Billy just smiled at Marco and shook his head.

“He did let me steal one of his titles. You wrote a book called Gaff Hook, didn’t you?”

“It was a story,” he said. “And I made you pay me for that title, you remember?” He wasn’t as drunk as he had been the night before, but he was overenunciating his words.

Marco turned to me. “I took him out to all his favorite bars. Probably cost me about forty bucks in cheap beer.”

“Best night of my life,” Billy said.

“I’m so sorry for you, man.”

Then they were both chuckling, and Marco said, to me, “Nicholas, do you have a best friend from first grade? Basically a loser who’s just going to hang around you for the rest of your life no matter what you say to him?”

I told him I didn’t, and Billy, still chuckling, slid out his side of the circular bench, and stood stiffly, swaying a little. “I can see where this one is going,” he said to Marco, “so I’m calling it a night, asshole.”

“Yeah, go sleep for free in my house and I’ll even feed you a free breakfast tomorrow.”

Billy stood silently for a moment, his eyes on Marco, and then he clenched his fists and leaned across the table toward Marco, and for a moment I thought he was actually going to strike him. Billy’s jaw was clenched, and some drool ran down his chin and dropped onto the felt of the backgammon table. “Jesus,” Marco said, drawing it out. “Go to bed.” He laughed as Billy made his way to the stairwell.

“Is he okay?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s just Billy, although, who knows, maybe one of these days he’ll really snap and try to stick me with his knife.”

“Does he have a knife?” I said.

“Yeah, he’s one of those emasculated men who feel better if they have a buck-knife in their pocket. He’s not like us, Nicholas.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that, so said, “I should go to bed as well.”

“Bunch of lightweights tonight. At least have a cigarette.”

I agreed to step outside with him, and we talked some more, a smattering of stars visible above the empty black of Cape Cod Bay. When we came back in, Marco said he was going to have one more drink and look at the tree. I left him in the living room and climbed the stairs. After brushing my teeth, I stood outside the door to my bedroom, the house feeling as though it were creaking a little under the weight of all us guests. And I could hear the faint sound of voices raised in anger. I assumed it was Ben and Eve arguing in their bedroom, a few doors down from mine. There were no other sounds. I opened the door and entered my room.

*

It was Maeve who discovered the clothes on the patio the next morning. I was up already, at just past dawn, and found that a pot of coffee had been made. I assumed it was Maeve who’d gotten up and made it before her morning dip. I filled a mug and was going to bring it outside with me, walk down to the beach, and see if Maeve was out there swimming in the cold water. But before I got to the French doors, they crashed open and Maeve came in, her skin bright red, wrapped in a towel.

“Have you seen James?” she said.

“No, why?”

“Are those his clothes out here?” She swung the door open and indicated by turning her head where I was supposed to look. There was a pile of clothes on one of the wooden Adirondack chairs on the patio. I went over to them. Black jeans and a maroon shirt, two paisley socks, and on top of the clothes a pair of glasses. “Definitely his,” I said. “Why would—”

“I’m going to go check his room,” Maeve said, and took off. I came back into the house, shut the door behind me, and waited. It was Brigid O’Shaughnessy who came down the stairs first; she looked at me with her green eyes and meowed loudly. And then Maeve was coming back with Cat, dressed in oversized pajamas, beside her.

“Is he there?” I said.

Maeve was shaking her head. Cat, who looked like she’d just woken up, said, “Maybe he’s just swimming.”

“I was swimming,” Maeve said. “I think I would have seen him.”

“Were there footprints on the beach?” I said.

“I didn’t notice. I didn’t even notice his clothes until I was coming back up.”

“I’ll go check,” I said, and went to the vestibule to grab my jacket. When I came back through the living room, Cat was saying, “Should we wake people up?”

“Let’s look through the rest of the house first, just to make sure he’s not somewhere else, but, yes, we’re going to have to wake people up.”

I went outside, placing a hand on James’s clothes to see how cold they were. Then I took the path to the beach. It was brighter than it had been the day before—a hard blue sky, the sun a pale disc hovering above the horizon line. The tide was extremely high, and I studied the shifting sand of the shortened beach for prints. I could make out what looked to be Maeve’s footprints as she came out of the ocean, but the sand was more compact closer to the dunes, and I didn’t see any other obvious prints. I stared out at the bay sparkling coldly in the sun.

Back inside I went into the kitchen and found Cat coming up from the cellar. She seemed to see the question in my eyes and said, “Maeve told me to look everywhere so I’m looking everywhere.”

“Did you check the cars?” I said.

“He doesn’t have one. He got a ride here with Marco’s girlfriend and her husband.”

“That’s right,” I said, “but he could have taken someone else’s car and left.”

Cat nodded slowly, agreeing with me. “I wouldn’t blame him after last night’s party.”

“Blame him for what?” I said.

“For fleeing in the middle of the night. Or even for drowning himself.”

I must have made a face, because Cat said, “That was a joke. I hope. You’re dressed, maybe you can go check the cars.”

But I didn’t get a chance to check them because I met Maeve in the living room as I was heading outside again. Her skin, so pink just a few minutes earlier, was drained of color. “I went to wake up Marco,” she said. “He’s dead, I think.”

My chest constricted and all I could think to say was, “Why do you think that?”

“I didn’t check his pulse,” Maeve said, “but there’s … a lot of blood.” I realized all of a sudden that Cat was by my side.

“Call 911,” I said to Maeve, watching as Cat was already heading to the stairs. I didn’t really want to go with her but felt compelled. We reached Marco’s office at the same time—the door was still open. He was lying on his couch, under a beige blanket. Like Maeve before us, neither of us went to check if he was breathing. His face was an unnatural shade of gray, the blanket soaked through with dark blood that had puddled on the floor, spreading almost halfway across the small office. At the edge of the blood was the straight razor I’d seen the night before. I forced myself to take another look at Marco, and could make out a deep, precise wound below his jawline, almost surgical in appearance.

“I always thought I’d feel it,” Cat said. “When he died, I mean.” I turned to look at her. She was in shock, of course. “But I didn’t feel a thing.”

*

It was four hours later when they found James Beers’s body. He’d floated pretty far down the beach, washing up on a sandbar near Corn Hill. He was naked except for boxer shorts, and sometimes I wonder what he looked like after spending those hours in the frigid water, but I’d rather not know. I already have to contend with the image of Marco drained of all his blood.

When we heard about James’s body being found, we were all together in the living room, sitting around the unlit fireplace. We’d been gathered like suspects in the play that I’d supposed we’d all been in from the beginning. I was on the largest sofa, between Maeve and Cat. Across from us was Billy Sousa, sitting on the edge of an upholstered chair, his bloodshot eyes darting around the room like he’d been caged. Ben and Eve were on the smaller sofa, Eve lying down, her head in Ben’s lap. He was stroking her hair, and I imagined that the fight they’d had the night before must now seem like something in the distant past. Someone had turned the Christmas lights back on, probably Maeve, out of habit. And on the coffee table someone had put out a plate of pastries that remained untouched.

We were questioned collectively by a local police detective named Soares, an older man with thick dark hair and a worried look, who seemed as shocked as all of us about what had happened in the course of the night. Then a state police detective arrived; about half the age of Detective Soares, she was in plain clothes as well, a dark blazer over gray dress pants. Unlike her counterpart she seemed at home in the crime scene, as though this were a regular Wednesday at her job. Her name was Detective Hedges, and she pulled a chair over from the dining-room table and sat and asked us questions, working very hard to nail down specific times when everyone had gone to bed.

“We’d like to talk with each of you separately as well, and we’d like to record those interviews.” She looked around at all of us, wondering if anyone would object, and when no one did, she turned to Maeve and said, “Is there a room we could use?”

The police began their interrogation with Maeve, while the rest of us sat in silence by the fireplace. At one point I went outside to the patio and called Linda, not surprised when she picked up instantly.

“Marco’s dead,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she said casually, maybe assuming I was speaking metaphorically.

“He’s actually dead. Someone killed him last night.”

She stopped chewing whatever it was she had been chewing and said, “Darling, are you okay?”

“I think so. The police are here now.”

“How’s Maeve?”

“In shock.”

“Of course she is. Do they know …”

“I don’t think they know anything yet.” One of the officers was watching me through the glass, and I wondered if I’d broken some rule by stepping outside and using my phone. “Linda, I should probably go.”

“Of course you should. Keep me informed, and look, I know enough about these things to know that if the police start asking questions that you don’t like the sound of, you’re going to need a lawyer. I’m not saying anything, just that … you know what I’m saying. And not a lawyer from wherever you are on the Cape. Call me here, I know some names.”

“Thanks, Linda,” I said.

“Send love to Maeve.”

I was the second to last brought into the downstairs den, a room I’d visited when I’d toured the house but one I hadn’t been in since. Maeve had called it “the den,” maybe because there was a television in there, and one of those sectional sofas that ran along two walls. There was a pinball machine in the corner opposite the television. I’d seen it during the tour, of course, but only now did I notice the theme. Elvira and the Party Monsters, it was called. I wondered if it had come with the house or if Marco and Maeve had bought it. One of the walls was covered with built-in bookshelves, and I cast my eyes over them as we entered.

Detective Hedges, accompanied by a uniformed police officer who controlled a recording device on the coffee table, directed me to a leather club chair, then sat opposite me on what looked like one of the kitchen chairs. Next to the recorder I saw the copy of The Scapegoat that I’d gifted to Marco. She must have seen me looking at it.

“That was a book you gave to Marco Tavares, correct?” she said.

“How did you know that?”

“I think it was Catherine Tavares. She said you brought gifts for everyone in the household.”

“I did.”

“Was there a reason you gave that particular book to him?”

“Just that I thought he’d like it. He’s a fellow mystery writer.”

“Okay,” the detective said, and wrote something down in the spiral-bound notebook that was on her lap. I felt as though she was waiting for me to say more, and I purposefully kept quiet.

“Now, the way I understand it,” she said, at last, “is that you are here as part of a professional, financial relationship between yourself and the deceased.”

“I was asked by my agent to help Marco complete his book.”

“You were hired, though, right?”

“I’m being paid, yes.”

She wrote some more in her notebook. “Is this common practice with writers?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, there are professional ghostwriters, but that wasn’t my role, exactly. Marco was having trouble with his book but I’m not here to write it for him.”

“You could write it for him now, couldn’t you?” I must have smiled, because she added, “Is that funny?”

“Sorry, not really. I think you’re suggesting that I might have killed Marco so I could take over writing his book. It doesn’t really work that way.”

“I’m not suggesting anything, Mr. Child. Just wondering. I do know that the book you gave him is about two men who switch lives.”

“You’ve read The Scapegoat?”

It was the first time I’d seen Detective Hedges smile— at least, her mouth smiled. “I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and I’ve heard of The Scapegoat. There was a movie, with Alec Guinness. I was an English major in college until I decided to study something that might get me actual employment. But I still read, quite a bit. Lots of detective novels, even though they usually get it wrong. I read The Girl at the Door, of course.”

“I think everyone read that book.”

“Just about,” she said, looking at her notebook. “So that’s enough about your choice of gifts, I think. How are you feeling right now?”

“A little bit in shock,” I said.

“I’d imagine. Before I ask you specific questions, can you just tell me why you’re here and everything you remember from last night? Pretend you’re telling me a story. You’re a writer too.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Perfect,” you said. “Then tell it to me like you’re telling a story.”

Was the list of names at the beginning a little too much? Thing is, I read a lot of old mystery novels, and that is how they usually begin, a nice convenient list of suspects so that the reader has a guide if he gets confused along the way.

That list was the first thing I typed on the Smith Corona in my guest room after speaking with you, Detective Hedges. You told me to tell you everything like I was telling a story, and I did my best, I tried, but I have never been good at talking. It just doesn’t come naturally to me. So I wrote it out for you. For me too. Writing has always been a way of ordering my thoughts.

You looked quite confused, Detective, when I handed you those typewritten pages the morning after the bodies of Marco and James were discovered. What was it you said? Oh yes. You said, “Is this your typed confession?”

“No,” I said. “It’s the story of what happened. That’s what you want to hear, right?”

“Okay,” you said. I thought you were about to smile at me again, but no, you just nodded slowly and took the pages with you.

And now I am typing again, this time a second version of the events that led to the deaths of Marco Tavares and James Beers. I’m writing this second version because it’s become clear that you suspect Maeve Finch of orchestrating, wittingly or unwittingly, what happened after the dinner party. These pages are just my way of providing more information. I won’t repeat what I’ve already told you. Also, and this is important, I want to insist that nothing in that first version was a lie. Yes, there were omissions, and if you are the type of person who believes that omissions are lies, then I suppose I’ve lied. Anyway, here we go. Take two.

*

This is a Christmas story, but it doesn’t begin at Christmas.

It begins ten years ago, when I was accepted to the Naskeag Colony in the Blue Hill region of Maine for a four-week residency. I was twenty-five years old and working as a caretaker on a tiny island in the Penobscot Bay. In return for a nominal salary, and the use of one of the island’s five bare-bones 1930s cottages, I was tasked with piloting the Godfrey pontoon boat back and forth to Rockland to pick up and return the island’s summer guests, all members of a large family who primarily spent the remainder of their year in Minnesota. I was also in charge of basic maintenance, which meant priming the pump that supplied a meager amount of water to the five cottages, making sure there was enough propane to heat the stoves, and clearing brush from the paths between the properties.

I was alone a lot, which didn’t bother me, because I also had plenty of free time to write. It was there on the island that I wrote the first story starring Adam Noone, my detective who is under the illusion that he is already dead. It was that story that got me the residency at Naskeag for the month of October. In retrospect, I was the last writer who needed a residency. My cottage on Orcutt Island was the perfect solitary place to write. I had no need to escape family or the city or a job that took all my time. But I suppose I applied because I wanted to see if my story was good enough to justify a spot, plus I was looking for friends, thinking, back then (mistakenly), that other writers might be appropriate for that role.

The Naskeag Colony was an old farmhouse set a mile inland from the coast. Its previous owner, a woman named Alice Nightingale, had left both the property and a substantial amount of money to establish a residency program specifically for writers with no publishing credits to their name. There was a caretaker who cooked three meals a day and cleaned the small bedrooms, each outfitted with a single bed and a child-sized desk to write at. There were four of these rooms, three on the second floor, and one in the attic, and so there were four writers there for the month of October: myself; a woman my age from Boston named Johanna Abt; a recent graduate from the University of Maine named, I think, Calum Oates; and Marco Tavares.

We had been there for only three nights when Calum, who had yet to talk to anyone, was heard moaning and muttering in his attic room one morning. Then he packed his bags and went straight to his car and left the premises. We never saw him again.

I think the sudden departure of Calum Oates was what turned Marco and Johanna and me into fast friends. We spent the day he left analyzing what might have happened, then that evening telling one another about our own lives over Alice Nightingale’s chicken potpie. Johanna had been born to a German father and an American mother, an army officer stationed in Berlin, and she had spent her early years moving back and forth between Germany and Connecticut. She was working on a historical novel, a book about the romance between a German soldier and an American nurse in World War I. I didn’t think her book was particularly good, and it was never published as far as I knew, but I fell into a kind of love with Johanna during that time in Maine. It wasn’t the first time I’d had those feelings, but it was the hardest I’d fallen, an infatuation that rendered me almost mute. She knew, of course—how could she not have known?—and treated me kindly while not exactly encouraging me. And Marco knew, as well. We’d take walks together in the afternoon and talk about it, or rather he would talk about it, in rambling speeches, telling me about all his own successful seductions and mapping out my strategy for winning over Johanna.

I mostly revered Marco during that residency. As someone who had never found conversation easy, I was amazed by how he always had something to say, and by his confidence that people would find what he said interesting, or funny. In the evenings we were a trio, drinking the burgundy that came in those gallon-sized bottles. Johanna and I mostly listened to Marco tell stories, tall tales from his time growing up in Provincetown. Those nights would end with the three of us stumbling up to our separate rooms, where we’d sleep with the windows flung open, the unseasonably warm October air moving through the house. It never occurred to me that Johanna and I might begin a romance during the residency. But I did fantasize that something might happen when it was over. I had told both her and Marco about my caretaker job on Orcutt Island and how I would probably stay through November and into December, until the water had to be turned off. They had both declared their intention to visit, but in my fantasies it was only Johanna who came to the island.

It was the last night of the residency when everything went wrong. Marco went out and bought us a bottle of whisky instead of our usual wine. He told us we needed to celebrate our last night together. He told us many things that night, how we were all going to be famous authors one day, and our biographies would talk about our time spent together at Naskeag. It was cold that night, the coldest it had been that month, and I remember going to my room to change my clothes, returning to find that Marco had moved closer to Johanna, that he had a hand on her leg. As the evening went on, and we all got drunker, I could sense a continuing change in the atmosphere, Marco focusing more and more on Johanna, ignoring me. I began to feel unwell, the room spinning, and when I got to my room on the second floor I dozed for a while, still in my clothes, on top of the bedsheets. I was startled awake after what was either twenty minutes or two hours—shivering with cold, my head pounding. I left my room to go to the bathroom and that was when I heard them, Johanna and Marco, in Johanna’s room. Not human sounds, not words or moans, just the steady, rhythmic sound of Johanna’s squeaky bed. I was sick in the bathroom, then remained there for some time, curled on the tile floor, wondering if it were possible to die from betrayal, hoping, actually, that my heart might just quit there in the bathroom. But it didn’t, and at some point in the night I made it back to my bedroom, where I stayed until noon the next day.

Johanna left early the next morning without saying goodbye, but Marco knocked on my door several times. I told him I was still sleeping. But the last time he came to the door, he opened it and stood above me while I lay on the bed, my eyes no doubt puffy and red from a sleepless night. “Hey, buddy,” he said. “You weren’t going to do it, so I did. What else can I say?” He shrugged and left my room.

Those were the exact words he used, and the last words he said to me. Until we met again at his house in Truro.

After Naskeag I went back to Orcutt Island. I was so despondent I considered staying there over the winter months, without running water or electricity. Instead, I accepted a job in Blue Hill, Maine, as the winter caretaker of a summer home. I have felt alone my entire life, not necessarily in a bad way, but the year after the residency was the loneliest I’d been since I was young. And during that year, Marco and Johanna and the month at the residency took up an outsize portion of my thoughts. I found myself going over it again and again. Had there been something between Marco and Johanna the whole time? And if there hadn’t been, then what had happened that last night? I’d drunk a lot but not so much that the room should be spinning. I began to think it was possible that Marco had put something in my drink, and, if so, had he put something in Johanna’s drink as well? Had she been raped? For a time, I believed that that was the case, and I would fruitlessly search the internet for any sign of Johanna Abt, for a way to get in touch with her, but she had disappeared. There was no social media, no LinkedIn page, no published pieces, no local news stories. In the end, I let my memories of her go. I did, however, continue to think about Marco, sometimes planning my revenge, sometimes just hoping that I would search his name and find an obituary page.

So it was a major shock to me when, about five years later, I got an email from an agent named Linda Barkin, out of the blue, telling me that she’d read one of my Adam Noone stories online and was interested in representing me. In that same email, she said that she was currently also representing Marco Tavares and was aware we were both former residents at the Naskeag Colony. I must have read that email fifty times when it first arrived, awed that an actual agent was interested in my writing, and equally awed that Marco had resurfaced in my life. I responded to Linda by sending an outline for my first Adam Noone mystery, the one that would eventually be published under the name Dark at Its Rising. I didn’t mention Marco, or our time together at Naskeag, and we never talked about him until that lunch in Manhattan this past fall.

On that first night here in Truro, when Marco came in late at night with Billy in tow, I was curious how he would greet me. I even wondered if he’d pretend we’d never met, ignore that month we’d spent together a decade before. As it turned out, he treated me as someone he knew, but not that well. It was the same the next day, when we went out for afternoon drinks in Provincetown. I had already decided I wasn’t going to bring up Naskeag, or Johanna, that I would wait and see if Marco mentioned them first. But he never did. He acted as though nothing had ever come between us. The worst part was that I found myself falling back into the pattern of our relationship from Naskeag—Marco doing all the talking, showing off, while I was the passive sidekick, asking him questions, laughing at his stupid jokes, letting him decide what to drink next and where. And then there was that telling interlude when Sophia, Billy’s ex-wife, showed up and the two of them disappeared for ten minutes. They’d done drugs, of course, either in the bathroom or out back in the parking lot behind the bar, and maybe they’d even had sex. At the very least, they’d kissed. I wasn’t surprised that he was cheating on Maeve, and I wasn’t even surprised that he was hooking up with his best friend’s ex-wife. That was who Marco was.

When we got back to the house, the party was in full swing. I’d been plagued by a feeling of unreality ever since arriving the day before, but now that feeling was overwhelming. It wasn’t just the sense that we were all in some kind of play, it was the feeling that we’d each been picked for very specific reasons. Clearly, James Beers felt the same as I did, pointing out that we were existing in the realm of a mystery novel. The weapons had even been supplied, a whole array of them on Marco’s office wall. But I was far more interested in all the suspects in the room, because I was one of them too. I wanted Marco to die. For ten years I had questioned my own memories of that month, wondering if I’d misread the situation, if there actually had been a budding romance between Marco and Johanna that led to their sleeping together that final night. But less than twenty-four hours in Marco’s presence now had disabused me of that notion. He had taken advantage of her, most likely against her will. And not only that, but he had done it to put me in my place.

After the dinner party, and after I watched Marco humiliate his best friend Billy and send him away, it was just the two of us. Marco suggested we go outside and smoke a cigarette. I followed him through the French doors out into the frigid night, wind bending the twisted pines at the edge of the dune. We each lit cigarettes. It had been a decade since I’d had one and I immediately regretted it. It brought me back to Naskeag. Marco was already a smoker then, and I remember that Johanna and I had both started smoking as well. Something about those nights drinking cheap red wine and talking about books demanded that we all take up smoking. The taste of tobacco in my throat that night made the world start to spin again, just as it had ten years ago. I said to Marco, “Have you heard from Johanna?”

He turned and looked at me, furrowing his brow. “That was her name,” he finally said, triumphantly. “It’s been driving me crazy for years. Johanna something German, right? No. Where is she? Are you two friends? If I remember you had a bit of a crush on her, right?”

“It was Johanna Abt,” I said.

“Jesus, the memory on you. That was good times, wasn’t it?”

I flicked my cigarette away into the night and told Marco that I needed to get to sleep. He followed me back through the French doors. “Come on, man,” he said. “One more drink by the fire. We can toast to Johanna.”

“Good night, Marco,” I said, and headed to my room.

So that night there were at least five people sleeping in that house who had a motive for killing Marco. Myself, of course, because of what had happened between Marco and Johanna. Billy, despite being Marco’s best friend, had clearly been treated abysmally by him for many years. Eve’s husband, Ben, had been forced to spend the evening watching his wife and her ex-boyfriend flirt in front of everyone. James Beers had had his original idea plagiarized by Marco, who had made millions off of it. And then there was the person who brought us all there. Maeve. She’d befriended James and brought him into the fold of Marco’s circle of friends and family. She’d given Billy his own room in the house to keep him close. I don’t know if she’d been the one who invited Eve and Ben, but she may have been. And then she had brought me to Truro for the holidays in order to help Marco write. Had she engineered a situation in which one of us would almost certainly take advantage of the opportunity to kill him? And if that was the case, then James Beers had risen to the bait, slitting Marco’s throat, and then, either because he’d planned it or because he was suddenly filled with guilt, drowning himself in Cape Cod Bay.

After I was questioned by you, Detective Hedges, in that strange downstairs den, you asked me if I had met Marco before arriving here. I told you that we had met at a residency ten years earlier and that I didn’t know him well. I don’t think that was a lie, although I’ll admit I was purposefully misleading you. Thing is, I didn’t know him well. I thought I did, but it wasn’t until that last morning at the residency that he finally revealed himself to me for what he really was.

This is my revised story, and I’m sorry that all these details weren’t included in the first version. I had a very strong motive to kill Marco. I hated him. I know that you think my motive to murder Marco was so that I could take his place, finish his book, make a lot of money, maybe even marry Maeve myself. But why would I even think that might happen? No, the best chance I had to make some real money was to help Marco write another bestselling novel. There was no reason for me to want him gone before I’d received my second payment. Besides, just because I write about murderers, doesn’t make me one. I came to Truro because I was offered a job.

I do believe that Maeve probably hated Marco as well, and that she might have actually surrounded him with potential murderers. But she couldn’t have known for sure that inviting people who hated her husband to a boozy party would lead to his death. How could she have? No, she just hosted a party full of people who had reason to kill her husband. Is that a crime?

*

It was midafternoon before Marco’s body was finally taken out from his office and loaded into a mortuary van. I watched from one of the unused guest rooms on the east-facing side of the house. The driveway was packed with vehicles, and the body, wrapped in a black plastic bag, had to be wheeled down the crushed-shell driveway to the van. I saw one intrepid journalist standing in the dunes, training a telephoto lens on the scene. It wasn’t currently snowing, but the sky felt low and swollen.

We had been told to stay at the house, or at least in the area, until further notice. Ben and Eve were the most upset by this, Ben arguing that his wife was traumatized and they needed to get back to New York. I thought you were quite smooth, Detective Hedges, when you handed them a card for a local inn and said that you’d already checked and the inn had vacancies. Billy wasn’t going anywhere. He’d seemed shell-shocked all morning, and then we’d all heard him sobbing in the downstairs den when he was being interviewed by you. Plus, he had an outburst in the afternoon, beer in hand, talking about how Marco was the best friend anyone could have ever had, and saying that if James Beers hadn’t taken his own life, he would have been obligated to do it for him. I remember thinking Billy was going through every stage of grief in fast motion.

Cat, on the other hand, had shown no real emotion, not even when I’d been standing next to her earlier in the morning, when Maeve told us Marco was dead. She spent most of the day with her grandmother, who cried twice when told that Marco was dead, but toward dusk, I heard her asking if he’d gone away again, or if he’d be there for dinner.

“No, Vovó, he’s dead. He’s not coming back.”

I thought the grandmother would cry again, but she looked at Cat and said, “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“No,” Cat said. “I’ll be with you here always.”

We had leftovers for dinner that night, eating at the kitchen table. Cat and I cleaned up, her washing and me drying, and afterward we sat back down at the table and finished the dregs of the wine.

“What are you typing?” she said.

I was confused for a moment, then realized that she had heard me typing in my room that afternoon.

“Oh, sorry about that. Is it distracting?”

“No, I was just curious.”

“The detective, when she questioned me, told me to tell the story of what had happened here. I did my best, but I’m not always good at talking.”

“And you’re good at writing,” Cat said. Her skin was damp with steam from having washed the dishes.

“I don’t know about that. But I’m better at it than talking. So I’m writing down everything I know. I’ll finish tonight and give it to Detective Hedges tomorrow.”

“She said the same thing to me.”

“What?”

“She told me to talk about what happened the past couple of days like I was telling a story. But the thing is, when does a story start? Do you know what I mean?”

“I do,” I said. “It’s something I think about all the time, as a writer. When does the story start?”

“You know what I think?” Cat said. “I think this story starts when Marco first came into this world, the day he was born. He was destined to be killed by someone.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he was Marco. I suppose I loved him, he was family, but I certainly didn’t like him. No one who knew him well really liked him. Maybe Billy, but he’s an idiot.”

“So, your brother always had the same personality.”

“Everyone always has the same personality,” Cat said, pausing to glance at her watch before starting again. “He wasn’t one hundred percent bad, I suppose. He bought this house, for Vovó really. Do you know the story?”

“Of this house, no.”

“You know that our grandmother basically raised us.”

I nodded.

“She was a house cleaner. Here, at this house. It was a summer place owned by this shitty family from New York, the Macreadys. She was their house cleaner and when we were little she’d have to bring us here in the summer while she worked. I guess the Macreadys were not the worst, because they let Vovó bring her grandkids with her to work. The Macreadys had three girls, all a little older than we were and, except for the youngest, all pretty much monsters. So, when Marco made all that crazy money from Girl at the Door, he bought this place. It had been on the market for a year, probably because it’s going to tumble into the sea someday. But he bought it and moved Vovó and me in here. It’s a spite house, I suppose.”

“Is that why your grandmother—”

“Is always trying to clean it? Yeah. An unfortunate side effect.”

“Well,” I said, after a moment of silence. “I’m sorry he’s gone.”

“You don’t have to pretend,” Cat said. “We know what he did to you.”

“What do you mean?” I said, the skin on my neck and arms tightening.

“You came up in conversation—I don’t know when this was—maybe this past summer when Marco was desperately trying to write his next book. You met him at a writer’s retreat, didn’t you?”

“A residency. In Maine. Ten years ago.”

“Okay, it’s coming back. He said you had a typewriter and you’d be typing all day long while he sat there writing three sentences and it drove him crazy.”

“I don’t remember that, or I don’t remember him ever saying anything about it.”

“And then he told us how you were madly in love with this girl at the retreat, but you were too tongue-tied and nervous to do anything about it. He said he fucked her the last night just to … I don’t know, just to stick the knife in, I suppose.”

“He told you that?”

“He told Maeve and me. That was the thing about Marco. Not only was he a terrible person, he also liked to brag about the terrible things he’d done. I don’t think he ever felt remorse in his life for anything.”

That night, back in my guest room, I typed for hours, finishing my assignment. I worried that I was annoying other people in the house, but Ben and Eve had relocated to the inn as you’d suggested. The other two people who had been sleeping in my wing of the house were James and Marco, both dead now. So I was alone, typing up my story, just like I’m doing now. Typing up this second version.

One last thing before I finish this up. I got up early again the next morning, curious if Maeve would be swimming. I wasn’t surprised when I stepped out onto the back patio, the sky hazy but bright, and found her in her thick robe, sipping coffee, staring out to the bay.

“Are you going in?” I said.

“I will, eventually. Do you know that I’m scared of cold water? Every time I step into the surf I think I won’t be able to do it. But then I let go of my fear and submerge myself and I always feel new afterward. You want to come with me?”

“Swimming?” I said.

“Yeah, swimming. With me.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Really?” She turned to me. Her eyes were bright but tired-looking. I wondered if she’d slept at all.

“Give me a moment, okay?” I said.

“Sure,” she said. I sipped at my coffee and she turned away from me to look out toward the ocean. “They think I planned it,” she said. “The police. They think I invited people who had motives to kill my husband.”

“Didn’t you?” I said. I was thinking about what I’d learned from Cat, how I might have been invited because of my own feelings toward Marco.

She turned to me again, an unreadable smile on her lips, and shrugged.

“It’s not a crime,” I said.

“No, I suppose it isn’t. Go get your suit. Let’s swim.”

I hope that additional information was helpful to you. Just writing it was helpful to me. Cathartic, almost.

You seemed a little annoyed when I handed you another sheath of papers, telling you that I’d left out some details the first time around. But by then it was the third day since the murder and that night you were preparing to hold the press conference in which you’d announce that preliminary evidence suggested that Marco Tavares had been murdered in his sleep by James Beers, who then took his own life by drowning. It was the only logical solution.

Case closed, right?

And that brings me to version number three of the story. The last one. I promise.

*

This is a Christmas story. One that starts at Christmastime.

I met Maeve Finch when I was seventeen years old. I was in a new foster home that year, and I was a senior at a new high school. This was in an old factory town called Tohickon, in Pennsylvania, a place that I will never return to as long as I live. The sun must have shone in Tohickon at some point in time but all I remember are gray skies and freezing rain and sad shingled houses. My foster family, the Finches, were benign for the most part; Mr. Finch was only looking to fill his spare rooms and collect the monthly checks, while Mrs. Finch was looking to save souls. This was my seventh foster placement, and I was determined to make sure that it would be my last.

The reason I had been exiled to Tohickon was that I’d been suspended from a high school in Deer’s Run my junior year, and that had led to my being removed from my previous placement. It had been my fault, the suspension. I’d been placed in an advanced language arts class as a junior at Deer’s Run, English being my best subject by far. We’d read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and our assignment had been to write our own ghost story. I turned in a story called “Dead Leaves” about a teenage boy who dresses up in a dog suit for Halloween and goes on a killing spree, targeting all the adults in his life who have let him down. I should have known that the story was going to get me into trouble, but, honestly, I was proud of the writing. I might not have been suspended if I hadn’t stupidly included the actual name of a gym teacher from the Deer’s Run school system. I was interrogated nonstop, it seemed, for two days—first by several local police officers, then a detective from a special unit, then two separate child psychiatrists, then my caseworker from the state, and finally my English teacher, Mr. Beddoes. I barely remember any of these interrogations, but I do remember something that Mr. Beddoes said: “Nicholas, I can’t say I enjoyed your story, but that was because of the subject matter. The truth is, it was brilliantly written. It would have warranted an A if I had graded it, or maybe an A minus, since you didn’t follow the assignment.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“It wasn’t a ghost story, was it?”

“It was, though,” I said. “He’s already dead, that kid, or will be soon. He’s pretty much already a ghost.”

And that was the birth, or at least the spark, of Adam Noone, the character who eventually got me both an agent and a book deal.

After being relocated thirty miles away to Tohickon, I was determined to keep my head down and graduate from high school. The Finches had been apprised of my history. Mrs. Finch pulled me aside on the day I arrived and told me that I was arriving at her house at strike two, and if I showed one sign of disrespect to her or anyone in the house, I would be gone. And then she sang a song to me—it must have been a hymn—and the lyrics were about trusting and obeying. She made eye contact with me the whole time she sang, and it was probably the longest four minutes of my life. While she was singing, her husband walked by on his way from the kitchen to the television room. He had a noticeable limp and was holding a can of birch beer and a bag of corn chips. I would learn that he was always drinking birch beer, always eating some snack food from a bag, and almost always watching television. I was shown to my room and introduced to another foster-care kid, much younger than me, named Danny Manso. We were both on the bottom floor of the Finches’ ranch house; they’d hung one of those plastic accordion room dividers down the center of their musty basement and called it two spare bedrooms.

Like I said, I was determined to get through the year, attain my degree, and become a liberated adult. I barely spoke while I lived at the Finches’, and neither did Danny, at least not at first. Mrs. Finch would sing to us, frequently, and it was clear that Danny was her favorite, partly because he would sing along with her sometimes. The Finches had a daughter named Maeve, who was away at college. They never talked about her, but there was an array of photographs along the fireplace mantel that proved her existence. She had red hair like Mrs. Finch and her father’s blue eyes. The pictures on the mantelpiece told a story, how she had somehow transformed from an awkward, bug-eyed girl with braces into the kind of radiant beauty that seems otherworldly. It made me think of larvae and butterflies.

Mrs. Finch caught me looking at the photographs once and said, “She won’t be home for Thanksgiving, no surprise there, but she’ll be back for Christmas. You’ll meet her.”

Maeve arrived during a snowstorm. Mrs. Finch was one of those women who like to put up all the Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, so the house had been decked out since then, the Christmas tree already sagging on one side and dropping dry needles. Danny and I had helped put the ornaments on the tree, and I’d been tasked with going to every front-facing window in the house and taping down a fake plastic candle, an old-fashioned one with a plug. That was the first time I’d seen Maeve’s room. It was so different from the rest of the house that it was like stepping into another dimension. The walls were plastered with pieces of artwork; some were prints, but most seemed to have been cut out of art books, then taped up on the wall in overlapping patterns. I was an expert on the teenager bedroom, having cycled through so many different homes, and Maeve’s walls were more remarkable for what they didn’t have than for what they did. No pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio, no high-school ribbons, no collages of Maeve and her high-school friends in the shape of a heart. I recognized a few of the artists on Maeve’s wall, including a Frida Kahlo self-portrait and a painting of elephants on long skinny legs by Salvador Dalí. But a lot of the art seemed to come from the Renaissance—portraits of women holding stoats or ermines, or else violent biblical imagery, beheadings and lurid crucifixions. I wondered how often Mrs. Finch came into this room, or maybe she didn’t come in at all and that was why she’d tasked me with the job of placing the Christmas candles in all the windows.

After I’d taped down the candle with Scotch tape and found an outlet, I wanted to stay longer and look at all the art, but my heart had started to race, so I left the room, shutting the door behind me.

Maeve arrived, as I said, during a snowstorm, the day before Christmas Eve. I was alone in what Mrs. Finch called the “formal living room,” where the tree stood, and had been sitting in a high-backed chair that was angled so that you could keep an eye on the window. Even though there was a school copy of The Scarlet Letter open in my lap, I wasn’t reading. I’d been awaiting Maeve’s arrival. It was just past nine when a station wagon pulled up to the curb—she’d shared a ride with another student from Kokosing College—and she emerged into the green-and-red light emanating from the crèche that Danny and I had assembled in the front yard. I watched her stand still for a moment after the station wagon had driven off, holding one of those old-fashioned plaid suitcases without the wheels, and just looking at the house. Then I heard Mrs. Finch loudly exclaim “She’s here!” and run down the hallway to open the front door.

After we’d been introduced, Maeve went up to her room, promising to come back down soon and have cookies and milk with her mother. Danny and I retreated to our basement, where I lay on my bed, looking at my book and thinking about the fact that Maeve would soon be sleeping in the same house I was in.

The following day—Christmas Eve—Maeve left after breakfast to meet two of her friends from high school. This was reported to me by a very breathless and excited Danny, who was being taken to the mall by Mr. and Mrs. Finch that afternoon to buy Christmas presents.

“Should I get something for Maeve, do you think?” Like me, Danny had arrived at this house in the fall and had just met the Finches’ daughter for the first time.

“Sure,” I said. “She likes art. Get her an art book.”

I had turned down the trip to the mall for multiple reasons, but mostly because I had already bought Christmas presents for the family from a used bookstore that had managed to survive in downtown Tohickon. I’d gotten a sports-statistics book for Mr. Finch, a book of inspirational poems for Mrs. Finch, and a Calvin and Hobbes collection for Danny. And even though I hadn’t met her yet, I did get a book for Maeve, a biography of Lee Krasner that looked brand new.

I was alone in the house when Maeve returned in the middle of the afternoon, the snow from the previous day now changed to a steady rain, threatening to become ice overnight. She came through the door as I was walking from the kitchen back to the formal living room, to my reading spot near the tree.

Maeve was dressed in a long tweed coat in a dark check, but she was wearing a bright-red woolen hat with a pom-pom on top of it. She was stomping her heavy black boots on the front-door mat, the hallway now filled with cold, wet air.

“Do I smell like pot?” Maeve said to me, as though we’d been living together our whole lives.

I took a step toward her and sniffed the air. “A little bit,” I said.

“Oh well, who cares? It’s not like either of my parents know what it smells like.”

I didn’t quite know how to respond, so I nodded and continued on my way to the living room. I thought that Maeve would head straight up to her room, but she took off her coat and followed me, slumping down on the red velvet love seat that both Danny and I had been told was off-limits.

“You’re Nicholas Child, right?” Maeve said.

I nodded again.

“I heard all about you today. You have a reputation, you know.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, you didn’t know that? Everyone at Tohickon High thinks you’re going to go on a rampage and kill the whole school. Because of that story you wrote.”

I must have turned pale, because Maeve laughed, then said, “I’m sorry. You really didn’t know?”

“I haven’t made any friends at high school. I just want to graduate.”

“Trust me, I get it,” Maeve said. “My plan after graduating was to leave this town and never ever return. I’m only here now because of my mother, and how much she cares about Christmas, but if it wasn’t for her …”

“Kids at school know about why I’m here?” I said. She looked as though she’d already forgotten what we’d been talking about, and I wanted to hear more. It seemed important to know what was being said about me.

“Well, this was from my friend Callie, so take it with an enormous grain of salt, but she heard that you were kicked out of your last school because you’d written up some kind of manifesto for how you were going to kill all the teachers.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s not exactly true.”

“Yeah, I figured it was an exaggeration.”

I told her about the story assignment, and what I’d written, and how it was really just fiction, and I didn’t mean any of it.

“You must have meant it a little,” she said, swinging her body toward me and adjusting a pillow to get more comfortable.

I thought about that for a while, long enough for Maeve to snap her fingers and say, “You still there, Nick?”

I didn’t tell her that no one calls me Nick, but I did say, “Yeah, there was a part of me in what I wrote, but it wasn’t the real me, of course. I wouldn’t go on a killing rampage, but I can imagine the thoughts of someone who would go on a killing rampage. Does that make sense?”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” she said, and laughed again. I didn’t think it was I who made her laugh so much as herself, but regardless, it felt like a revelation that someone like Maeve seemed to be enjoying my company.

“It was just a story,” I said. “There’s a difference between writing about violence and being violent.”

“All I know is that you must be a good writer,” Maeve said, “if what you wrote got you sent all the way to Tohickon.”

“I don’t know if I thought of it that way.”

“Can you show it to me?”

“The story? No. I don’t have it anymore.”

“Not even on a computer somewhere?”

“No, I wrote it on a typewriter. It’s how I like to write.”

Maeve was nodding. “That’s cool. I hate computers too. One of my art teachers at college is telling me I should learn to be a graphic designer but all I really want to do is paint.”

I didn’t say anything immediately, and Maeve put her hands on her knees, looked around the room, and I knew she was going to get up and leave. “What’s college like?” I said.

“Better than here,” she said, and got up anyway. “I’m going to go change my clothes before my mom and dad get back. All I can smell is the pot on me.”

“Okay,” I said, and watched her leave. I remember thinking that I had somehow failed a test, that she wouldn’t talk to me again, at least not alone like we just had.

But that night, when the five of us were getting ready to sit down for dinner, Maeve came to my side and said, “I’m sitting next to you, Nick, if you’re not sick of me yet.”

Mr. Finch sat at the head of the table and said grace while we all held hands. Maeve squeezed mine two quick times while he was talking about the blessings of families and I wondered if she was trying to send me some sort of message. After grace, Mrs. Finch got up to go get the food from the kitchen. Danny helped while Maeve talked to her dad about the Eagles. I was quiet, reminding myself, as I had in the past, that I should really learn some basic facts about televised sports, just so I could participate in small talk.

Mrs. Finch returned with a large platter that had five small roast chickens on it, something called Cornish hens. I found it kind of ghoulish, the idea that we each had a whole cooked bird to ourselves. I told myself it was something I could say to Maeve later on if I got a chance.

Dinner was fine, with Mrs. Finch doing most of the talking, although she had to keep getting up in order to flip the Bing Crosby record she was playing. I picked at my bird and tried to think of conversation, but it was Christmastime, and I was in a stranger’s house, as I’d been every Christmas of my life, and there was nothing really to say. After we’d finished dinner and were eating peppermint sundaes, Mrs. Finch said aloud to the table, “Who’s coming with me to the service tonight?”

I was prepared for her to ask. Danny went with her every Sunday to church, but so far, I had turned her down, and I certainly had no intention of attending a Christmas Eve service. She hadn’t pushed too hard, but I knew she was disappointed.

“I’ll pass,” Maeve said. “I’m going to Callie’s house.”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Mrs. Finch said.

“Sorry, Mom. We’ve talked about this.”

“But Maeve, you’re only here for—”

Maeve held up a hand and stopped her from continuing. I watched as Mrs. Finch stood up slowly from the table, her empty bowl in her hands, her face pulsing, almost, and flushed with red. Something clenched in the pit of my stomach even before she threw the bowl into the near wall. I expected it to shatter into pieces, but it bounced off the wall and spun to the carpeted floor, covering Mr. Finch with a fine mist of melted ice cream. He stood up as Mrs. Finch began to cry, and the two of them left the room. It all happened in the space of about thirty seconds.

Maeve was shaking her head. She looked at me and said, “Now you know why I don’t come back here.”

Maeve left, and Danny and I cleaned up as best we could. It was eerily silent in the house, but just as we were finishing, I heard the television turn on, and then Mrs. Finch appeared, her make-up reapplied, and told us we should go to bed early, since the sooner we fell asleep the sooner it would be Christmas. I almost told her then that I would go to the Christmas Eve service with her, but I couldn’t. I assumed Mrs. Finch knew my story, the story of my origin, I mean, although she’d never mentioned it to me. There was a reason I was called Nicholas Child. When I was just two years old I’d been found sitting on the outside steps of a Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut, wrapped in a blanket, on Christmas Eve. One of the parishioners had sneaked outside to smoke a cigarette and found me. I don’t remember any of this, of course, but I’ve been given the details by a host of former foster families; maybe they were reminding me in the hope that I would live up to the story of my origin, a miracle child discovered at Christmastime. I’d even been shown a newspaper clipping once, of the minister of the church holding me near the altar. It was members of that church who named me Nicholas Child. They also declared that if no one came forward to claim me, my birthday would be Christmas Day, although that is something I have never celebrated. Sometimes I wonder if that story and my silly Christmas name made it worse for me in the foster system. I was a mostly joyless child, not particularly miraculous or loving. And personally, I have always thought that being abandoned at Christmastime is really no different from being abandoned at any other time of the year.

*

I thought the following day would be terrible, but it turned out to be okay. Breakfast was nice and then we all went into the formal living room and opened our presents. I was glad that I had purchased gifts for everyone— even though they were used books—since Mrs. Finch had overdone it for Danny and me, with five or six wildly age-inappropriate presents for each of us, including packages of underwear and socks. The Finches gave Maeve a disposable camera, a rice cooker, and a Christmas sweater with Snoopy on the front. She gave them an oil painting of the two of them that I thought was pretty remarkable. From a distance it was realistic-looking, but up close it was composed of thick paint that looked like it had been applied with a palette knife.

“It’s from that picture I took at the lake last year,” Maeve said.

“I don’t know why you didn’t pick one of us smiling,” Mrs. Finch said, and for a brief moment I thought she was going to break down again, but instead she got up and crossed the room to hug Maeve—the only time I saw them touch each other that week.

After lunch we all, except for Mr. Finch, went for a walk through the neighborhood. It was unseasonably warm for December and even though it was Christmas Day the decorations on the lawns looked tired already, as though they’d been out too long. Danny, a little sugared-up from the French-toast breakfast, was explaining a superhero movie to Mrs. Finch, and Maeve slowed down to walk next to me. “Do you know why my mom fosters so many kids?”

“I guess I thought it was because she’s religious.”

Maeve was quiet for a moment, thinking about it. “That’s what she tells herself, I think, but, really, it’s because of me. I’m her only child, and I don’t make her feel loved. I never did. So she’s looking for it from anywhere else.”

“But you must love her,” I said. “She’s your mother.”

She was quiet for a moment again, then said, “I don’t think I’ve ever really loved anyone. I don’t think I’m capable of it.”

I must have said something to this, maybe something like a “Hmm,” and Maeve laughed, saying, “Sorry, I’m not trying to unload on you. We can change the subject.”

“No, no,” I said, wanting to hear more. “Maybe you haven’t felt love because you haven’t met the right person yet.”

“But that’s not the way it works, is it? I met my mom and dad when I was a baby and that’s supposed to be the first love we all feel, right?” As soon as she said it, I sensed that she remembered my particular story, and instantly added, “Sorry. I know …”

“That’s okay. People forget all the time. I don’t think I really feel love either. I’m not sure I have, anyway. When I look at people, I just see flawed machines.”

“Is that why you wrote about killing them?”

“Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t sure that was true.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with you? Something missing?”

“I do,” I said.

“Me too. I’ve known it my whole life. Even when I was a little kid. I remember my mom trying to get me to like dolls and stuffed animals, but I felt nothing. I kept it a secret for a long time, pretending that I felt things, but I’ve never really fooled my mother. She’s smarter than she lets on.”

“I pretend too,” I said. “But I thought that everyone did that.”

Maeve laughed. “Yeah, I used to think that too. But no, lots of people don’t pretend. Look at Danny right now. He’s actually excited to be with my mother. He’s willingly holding her hand.”

They were about ten yards ahead of us, Danny walking right next to Mrs. Finch, his hand in hers. They were approaching a cul-de-sac and turned around so that they were facing us. “What are you two talking about?” Mrs. Finch said.

“Nick was saying how much he loves being here.”

I wasn’t sure Mrs. Finch believed her daughter, but she beamed anyway, and then all four of us walked back together, talking about what movie we would watch later that night.

*

Maeve and I spoke in private only one more time before she returned to college. It was just before she was going to go over to one of her high-school friends’ houses for New Year’s Eve. She came down to the basement while Danny was upstairs. I was on my bed, still reading The Scarlet Letter, and Maeve, standing on the bottom step of the stairs, called out, “Nick, can I come in?”

“Sure,” I said, sliding back on my bed so that I was sitting up.

“Jesus,” Maeve said, walking into my side of the basement. “I can’t believe my mom gets away with calling this two bedrooms.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said.

“I came down to ask you if you wanted to come along tonight. It’s a New Year’s Eve party and I realized you’d probably know some of the kids there.”

“I’m good,” I said.

“That’s what I thought you’d say, but I wanted to ask. What are you going to do tonight?”

“You’re looking at it,” I said. “Pretty much what I do every night. It’s not like I’m a fan of New Year’s Eve.”

“No, me neither,” Maeve said, and flopped down cross-legged at the end of my bed like we’d known each other for years. I think it was right then that I knew for certain Maeve had no romantic or sexual interest in me, that she wasn’t even concerned that sitting on my bed would lead me on in any way.

“Then why are you going?” I said.

“It beats the alternative. Besides, there’ll be drama. There always is on New Year’s Eve. Tears will be shed by at least two of my friends.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh definitely. Maybe I’m interested in other people’s emotions because I don’t really understand them. Got any resolutions for next year?”

“Every year I have the same resolution,” I said. “Keep my head down and survive. How about you?”

“Hmm,” she said, stretching one leg out so that it almost touched me. “I’ve never really had a boyfriend, and I thought I might give it a try. See what all the fuss is about.”

“Do you have any candidates in mind?”

“A couple. One who’s needy and one who might be cruel. Like I’ve told you, I don’t really have any feelings for anybody, so I’m not sure it matters so much who I pick. The cruel one would be less work, I think.”

“What’s your ideal relationship?” I said.

“Interesting you should ask, Nick,” Maeve said, and I could tell she was having fun talking with me. “This is one of those subjects that I’ve actually given lots of thought. I’m not talking about who I’m going date in college, but for the future. My plan is to meet a really rich man who is also loathsome, then I could marry him, divorce him, and spend the rest of my life spending his money.”

“Or you could kill him,” I said.

“Ha. Yes, actually, that’s my real plan. I mean, he’d have to be really loathsome, someone that absolutely nobody would miss. Then killing him would be the best because I’d have all his money to spend.”

“Well, I’ll keep my eye out,” I said.

“Don’t find him too soon, though,” she said. “Not until I’m about thirty-five years old.”

“Okay. How rich do you want him to be?”

“He doesn’t have to be filthy rich, but I would like to collect art. I’m talking Cindy Sherman prints, not Renoirs.”

“I don’t know what any of that means, but it doesn’t matter. I’m on the case.”

“Nick, I love you,” she said, grabbing hold of my stockinged foot. “I can tell you anything. Also, I believe you really will call me in fifteen years.”

“Oh, I will,” I said.

The next day, New Year’s Day, Maeve left. Somehow, she had convinced her parents that the dorms were opening back up already, but she had secretly told me that she was going to stay with a college friend in Ohio until school started again. Mr. Finch drove her to the train station and Mrs. Finch watched them leave through the warped glass that ran alongside the front door, while singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” which, as a writer of fiction, strikes me as way too unbelievable, but really, that’s what she was singing.

*

I didn’t speak to Maeve Finch for fifteen years, but I never really stopped thinking about her. Then, right around the time when it became clear to me that Marco’s next book was being positioned by his publisher to be a breakout, it occurred to me that the most loathsome man I knew was about to be rich. I knew that Maeve was working at a gallery in New York City, and that she had her own website with some of her paintings on it. She had a work email listed on the gallery site, plus a personal one on her own artist page. I wrote to her personal email, telling her that I’d found her perfect husband. I fully expected her to respond that she had no recollection of who I was, and even if she did remember me, that she would have no recollection of what I was talking about. But five minutes after I sent the email (composed and recomposed over the course of about a week) she wrote me back.

Nick Child! I think of you all the time! Where are you and what are you doing? Did you survive an entire year in Tohickon? And I can’t believe you remembered my confession about my future husband. Do you really have a suggestion? I’m sick of being poor.

I didn’t really believe she thought of me all the time, because if she’d googled me she’d have discovered that I’d published two novels, but still, I was amazed that she even remembered who I was. I’m not sure I would have ever sent the email, except that the gallery she worked at had a sister gallery in Provincetown, and I realized that she might actually move in the same circles as Marco Tavares.

I wrote her back and gave her my phone number, telling her that maybe we should have an actual conversation, and she called right away.

“I can’t believe you remembered my plan to marry and murder a rich husband,” she said after we’d briefly told each other about our lives.

“It’s all I think about,” I said. “I’ve been on the lookout ever since.”

She laughed and it felt like we’d just picked up the conversation from fifteen years ago. “Give me a name,” she said.

“He’s a writer and his next book is going to be a big hit. There’s a film deal in place, although I only know that because we share an agent and she told me. And I spent a month with him at a residency. He’s a bad person.”

“You still haven’t told me his name.”

“Marco Tavares. He lives in Provincetown.”

After that phone call I told myself that I would probably never speak to Maeve again. I also assumed that she wouldn’t actually take any action in pursuing Marco, that she had moved on from that rich-husband fantasy, despite her words. So I was truly shocked when, a year later, I saw, via an announcement in the Times, that Marco and Maeve were engaged to be married.

*

The next time that Maeve and I spoke actual words was when I walked into the house in Truro on December seventeenth, there to help her husband finish his book. “It’s the cavalry!” she yelled from across the room, and pulled me into a tight hug. Then into my ear she whispered two thrilling words: “You came.”

But the next morning, when we met after her cold-water swim, we only made small talk, and it occurred to me that maybe Maeve was happily married to Marco, and she had no interest in being reminded of our previous conversations. After lunch, she gave me a long tour of the property, ending at her studio above the garage. Brigid O’Shaughnessy had gone on the tour with us, following from room to room, and it was almost as though the presence of the cat kept our conversation formal. But when we entered Maeve’s studio, sans cat, Maeve hugged me again, longer this time. “Nick, it really is good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too,” I said. “And I can’t believe you actually married him.”

I’d had that phrase in my head ever since I arrived at Grey Gables, ready to speak it to Maeve, but I honestly had no idea how she would react. For all I knew she would pretend that we had never spoken of Marco before. But she didn’t do that. She smirked, an expression I remembered from that time we spent together at Christmas, and said, “Someone had to do it, I suppose.”

“Do you …”

“Do I actually love him? God, no. Did you think I might?”

“I just wanted to make sure.”

“Remember when you told me on the phone that he was a rich asshole, aka my perfect match?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Well, I took it seriously. I got a month-long transfer to the Provincetown studio and met him at the first party I went to. People warned me off, telling me what a jerk he was, but it all fell into place. I got him to fall in love with me. And then I told him that unless we got married right away, I would leave him, and somehow it worked. He is filthy rich, you know. You should see the royalty checks that come in. And honestly, he’s never around because he has some stupid artistic notion that he can only write in Italy. There are truly no redeeming qualities, except I quite like Cat and I do love living in this house.”

“So, you’re going to stay married to him?” I said.

“Did I say that? You haven’t said anything about my studio, by the way.”

It was a large space with a slanted roof that had three rectangular skylights. One wall was filled with an enormous window that looked out over the dunes. The other walls were decorated with either Maeve’s artwork or prints and originals by other artists. I walked over to a painting that was clearly Marco, wearing a suit and standing on a monochrome beach. In one hand he held a bloodied heart and in the other was a fountain pen. “Did you have any feelings for him at all?” I said.

“Is that what you get from the painting?”

“I suppose so. It’s romantic, in a way.”

“It is, actually. I painted this right before he proposed to me. I think I knew it would appeal to his vanity.”

“And here’s one of you,” I said, moving over to what was clearly a self-portrait, although Maeve had given herself pale-blue hair and bright-red eyes, and she was half-submerged in water the color of tin.

“I don’t like the idea of that painting anymore,” she said. “Although I like the feeling of it.”

“You mean the idea of switching your hair color and your eye color?”

“Yes, it’s a little too cute, but when I was thirteen and trying to figure out what was wrong with me, why I wasn’t like other people, I came up with this theory that it was because I was a genetic rarity. I have two recessive traits, and that was what made me someone who was unable to love.”

“Did you research it?”

“Oh, to see if other people with red hair and blue eyes were also freaks like me? No, I didn’t. I guess down deep I knew it wasn’t connected, and even if it was, it wouldn’t have made me feel better. No, you were the one who did that, actually, that Christmas in Tohickon.”

“I didn’t realize I made you feel better.”

“You did. I was able to talk about myself, to recognize that you might understand. It was a huge moment for me.”

“It was for me as well,” I said.

“I never really knew that. I was surprised to get that email from you. I figured that you’d moved on, just like you did from my parents.”

“Are you still in contact with them?”

“Well, I’m in contact, but I don’t see them that much. They are both well, both in the same house, both still fostering, occasionally, but not all the time.”

“What did I seem like, then?” I said. Maeve smiled, thinking about it. My heart went still for a moment. That question was something I thought about all the time because, honestly, I didn’t know. I still don’t know.

“I expected a monster, of course, because, well, my mom had warned me about you.”

“Warned you?”

“Well, no, but she said you were a little strange. This self-conscious kid who stares at people and never smiles. ‘He’s a good boy, though,’ she said. That’s what she always said every time she brought some maladjusted teenager into our house. My mom sees the best in people, I suppose. Of course, she was right about you. Danny—do you remember him?—he was her favorite, and he’s a mess now, keeps showing up at my parents’ house begging for drug money. And look at you—a published author.”

“I don’t keep in touch with them.”

“I figured. I’d have heard if you did. Do you keep in touch with anyone?”

“Foster families? No. I dream about them, though, mostly about the ones who were mean to me. Not your parents, though. They were strange, maybe, but they weren’t unkind.”

“Do you still think about revenge?”

“Did I tell you that back then?”

“You didn’t need to. I mean, I heard about that story you wrote, and I could feel your anger. I saw you.”

“Is that why you invited me here?”

She laughed, and touched my arm, and said, in the same way that she’d said it before, “I love you, Nick.”

*

That night, the night of the murder, I know that I must have slept, but mostly I lay in bed, listening to the house, thinking about how I’d arrived at this moment in time. I thought about my “birth” on that cold step in front of a warm church on Christmas Eve. How many times have I been told that whoever left me there did it for a good reason, did it to give me a better chance at life? They picked a church, they’d say, knowing I would be taken care of, but that’s not what I’ve felt all my life. Whoever left me could have put me up for adoption, and if that were somehow impossible, why didn’t they open the door to the church and leave me inside, where it was safer and warmer? Instead, they left me on the step, and if that one parishioner hadn’t come outside to smoke a cigarette, it’s possible I would have frozen to death or simply wandered away. And that is how my whole life has felt, like I’m outside in the cold, while the rest of the world has gathered together in the warmth of a home, or a church, or some other group of which I will never be a part.

These were my thoughts the night Marco died, and I remember them getting mixed up in my dreams—or were they nightmares?—flashes to what Marco had done to Johanna at Naskeag Colony, images of the ice-cold ocean brimming with dark fish right below the surface, a large ornate door swinging shut, all set to the rhythmic sound of James Beers’s snoring. And I remember hearing footsteps, soft as a cat’s, coming down the hallway, and wondering if they were coming for me, if Maeve was maybe sneaking her way to my room the way she would sometimes come down to my room all those years ago in Tohickon to curl up next to me and tell me how terrible her friends were, how much she hated her mother. Or was that all a dream as well?

I rose the next morning to a new world, one in which Marco would never wake up again, and James Beers had not returned from his swim.

There was a period of time after we discovered Marco’s body in its puddle of blood, but before the police arrived, when Maeve, probably in a state of shock, went to make coffee, and Cat went to wake up her grandmother, and I was alone. I went up to James Beers’s room, the door left open by Maeve, and stepped inside. It was only hours since I’d last been in there, putting a drunken James to bed while he asked me if Maeve loved him. I went to the bedside table, thought of stealing the bottle of Klonopin for myself, decided against it, but took both of the books stacked there— the Crumley novel and what looked like James’s journal. I brought them back to my room and opened up the journal, which was three-quarters filled with tiny, immaculate handwriting. Most pages were titled “Story Ideas,” but I did stumble upon a long section about Maeve and read enough to know that it was best for her that the police didn’t find it. I took the dust jacket from The Last Good Kiss—the one with the illustration of lips hovering above a bar—and put it on the journal, then I brought both books down to the living room, sliding the journal with its deceptive cover onto a shelf of hardcover mysteries, in between Ross MacDonald’s The Blue Hammer and Kingsley Amis’s Colonel Sun. It looked as though it had always been there. Then I took the Crumley book, without its dust jacket, and slid it onto a shelf of very vintage-looking books, most without dust jackets themselves. I remember thinking how easy it is to find hiding places in houses that have lots of books.

In the end, I don’t know if the discovery of James Beers’s journal would have changed the outcome of the investigation. While everyone in the house had a motive for killing Marco Tavares, there was only one person who took his own life the morning after the crime. I certainly know that Detective Hedges would have loved to pin some of the blame onto Maeve Finch, but at the end of the day, there was no evidence to suggest that what James did, both to Marco and then to himself, was aided by any outside force. The whole crime made me think of The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne. I’d bought that book at a mystery bookstore in Beacon Hill called Old Devils years ago—it had been on a “Staff Favorites” bookshelf—and I remembered it mostly for its clever premise. The murderer doesn’t just bump off the person he wants to kill but he also makes the prime suspect disappear, providing both a murder and a likely murderer (one who can’t be interviewed) for the police. I wondered if something similar had happened here at Grey Gables.

*

It is Christmastime again, one year later. I don’t know exactly to whom I am writing this. Detective Hedges, as I’ve said, has already solved the crime. The world believes that James Beers murdered Marco Tavares out of revenge for a purloined story, that he cut his throat using a straight razor taken from Marco’s office wall, and that he then drowned himself in the icy waters of the bay. There will be people who think otherwise (there are always people who think otherwise), and there will be true-crime documentaries, and countless books, and maybe a movie version. Linda tells me that even though the book I am writing might not be the first out of the gate, it will be the definitive book on the subject, because I was there when it happened. I have tentatively called this non-fiction account The Specter at the Feast. Linda has already secured an advance from a new publisher that makes my previous advances look like a teenager’s allowance.

Even though I’ve rented a new apartment in Boston, I am staying in Truro through Christmas. Maeve and I have stayed in touch, speaking on the phone at least once a week, since the investigation was closed in January. I didn’t know how she would react when I told her about the book I was working on, but she only laughed and said, “You and everyone else, Nick. At least this one will be written by someone I like.” In September, at the end of a long conversation, she said, “Why don’t you come visit, here in Truro?”

“I’d like that,” I said.

“And not a short visit, either. Come and stay a while. Work on the book. Last Christmas was terrible, of course, but before it all happened, it was nice to have you here with us. It just felt right.”

So I arrived in October and I haven’t left. I am in the same guest room with its shag carpeting and its view of the bay. I am typing this at the same Smith Corona on which I wrote version one and version two of this story. Brigid O’Shaughnessy visits while I type, and even sleeps with me most nights, on the end of my bed. She wakes me up early in the morning by purring into my ear.

Cat is still living here at Grey Gables, as is Mrs. Tavares. I don’t really know if Marco’s sister ever truly grieved for him. She must have a little, because he was family, but she’s never shown any outward grief, at least that I’ve seen. I’ve learned more about her, asking her once what she does for work, or hopes to do for work. She said, counting on her fingers, “I wanted to be a veterinarian, then a doctor, then a chef, then a diplomat, and I even started school for some of those. But it didn’t take, so now I’m a poet that never leaves her house.” She also likes to tell me that I’m the last new friend she’ll ever make. She calls me Nicky, the first person to ever call me that, and she has let me read some of her poems, which are both funny and dark.

Maeve calls me Nick, Cat calls me Nicky, and Mrs. Tavares, for the most part, calls me Marco, still. I corrected her for a while, but now I don’t bother. If my presence means her grandson is still alive in her mind, then it’s okay with me. I do try to be extra nice to her because of my elevated status.

As I said, it is Christmas again. A new tree is in the living room, and there is a fire in the fireplace. I think that this final version of what happened a year ago will be fed into that fireplace as soon as it is done. I’ll wait for everyone else to go to sleep and I will pour myself some of Marco’s expensive scotch, and I will throw these pages onto the embers. It’s the beauty of typewritten pages— once they are burned, they are gone forever.

Maeve has introduced me to swimming in Cape Cod Bay. We get up at dawn (I am aided in this matter by Brigid, my alarm clock) and together we walk down to the lead-gray ocean, throwing icy saltiness at us, and we strip ourselves of clothes and dive under the waves. Every morning I believe the cold will kill me, but it never does. Afterward, we walk slowly back up the rotting boardwalk over the dunes to the warm house. A house full of women, the first house I’ve felt truly welcome in.

One night, about a week ago, I stayed up after everyone else had gone to bed, and went to the bookshelf, finding the spine for The Last Good Kiss. A part of me didn’t really believe that I’d open up the book to find James Beers’s journal, that maybe I’d imagined it all. But I did find the journal, hiding there in plain sight all along. I brought it with me to the sofa and began to read, leaving the dust jacket on. As I said before, the majority of the entries were titled “Story Ideas” and that is what they were, plots for books and movies; most had a fairly clever twist, although many were quite outrageous. And these ideas were all written like pitches. I’ll give you an example of one in the early pages (James never put a date on his entries):

Title: SAME CRIME, NEXT YEAR

Genre: Play? Movie?

Synopsis: Satori Makepeace meets Ariel Coburn at an annual gaming convention, and the two begin an affair. They are both married, both writers of gaming dialogue, and they agree to meet every year at a different convention and continue their romance.

We chart them through the years, yes, it’s like the 1975 play SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR by Bernard Slade except that Satori and Ariel are both stone-cold fucking killers! Each year during their romantic weekend they plan a perfect murder that one of them enacts. How does it end? I don’t know yet, but there will be a twist!!!!

Reading through these entries, I could see that James Beers was a writer who loved coming up with ideas more than actually fleshing them out. That tracked with what I’d heard from Maeve about the story James had written that became the basis of Marco’s The Girl at the Door. I flipped through the pages. There were endless concepts, and some were good, and it did occur to me that all these plots were now up for grabs.

In between story ideas there were entries titled with women’s names, which seemed to be about whomever he was currently fixated on (usually from afar). Early on, all these entries were about a woman named Maggie, who was apparently a barista at the coffee shop where James went every morning. Mostly they were descriptions of what she was wearing (“Iron and Wine T-shirt with very short sleeves so that I could see the ENTIRE owl tattoo for the first time!”) or their brief conversations (“She asked me what my book was, and I held it up, wishing it was something cooler than the new Dan Brown!”). It wasn’t until about halfway through the book that there was the first mention of Maeve Finch, which read, “Maeve is so beautiful I wonder if she is truly only human and not part demon or faerie. I will tread carefully but if she is my demise then so be it!” There were so many entries about Maeve that I started just scanning through them. Even still, it was about two in the morning when I got to a story idea titled “THE PARTY GUESTS.”

Mary French has come up with the perfect plan to murder her philandering husband, Mark Travis. She will host a dinner party, all the guests invited to stay overnight, and everyone at the party will have a motive for killing Mark. Who will these people be? It doesn’t matter, since Mark has made so many enemies in his life. There will be an ex-girlfriend, of course, one who hates him. There will be a man he cheated out of business, maybe an old friend with a grudge.

There will be two murders in one night. Mary’s lover will kill Mark and then Mary will kill someone else (the patsy) and make it look like a suicide, in order to also frame him for the murder. The lover and Mary will alibi each other by admitting that they spent the entire night together, making passionate love. They get away with it.

This wasn’t the last entry, but it was close to the last one. I read it twice, wondering when James had written it, if it came after a conversation with Maeve or before one. I assumed that he was the lover in his screenplay idea, but who was the patsy? Regardless, it implicated Maeve and for that reason alone I was glad that I’d hidden the journal. Not that it was genuine evidence, just a fantasy by a wannabe writer in love with someone else’s wife. I put the book back where it came from.

*

We swam the next morning, Maeve and I—more like a dip, with a steady push of wind coming in off the surface of the bay, but when we emerged from the water the sun was shining brightly, and after we put our clothes back on, we sat on a blanket, Maeve pouring us each a cup of coffee from the thermos she had brought.

“James Beers kept a journal,” I said.

“I knew that. I looked for it the morning he went missing, and it was gone.”

“I took it,” I said.

“Did you read it?”

“I did. Last night. Not all of it, but some. His journal was pretty much all story ideas. For books and for screenplays.”

“Anything good?”

“I don’t know about that, but one of his ideas was basically what happened last year. Well, pretty close.”

“You mean what happened to Marco?”

“Yes. It’s called ‘The Party Guests.’ It’s about a married couple and the wife wants to kill her obnoxious husband.”

“Go on,” Maeve said.

“And the wife has a lover. I assumed that was James Beers.”

“I’m sure it was in his story, but it wasn’t in real life, trust me.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Tell me about it, the story.”

“Okay,” I said. “So the plan to murder the husband, in this story, is to host a dinner party and invite a slew of people who want the husband dead. And that night the lover will kill the husband, and the wife will kill another guest—James calls him the patsy in his synopsis—and make it look like a suicide. The police will think this patsy did the killing and then killed himself. Meanwhile, the wife and her lover will claim that they spent the night together, if they end up needing an alibi.”

“And you’re wondering if you were supposed to be this patsy?” Maeve said, looking out at the bay.

“It crossed my mind,” I said.

Maeve turned and reached up with her hand, now in a woolen glove, pressing it against my cheek. It was a gesture I’d seen in movies before, but I’d never experienced it, myself. “You know I trust you,” she said.

“I think so.”

“And I think you trust me too. Or that you did. Anyway, I’ll tell you everything. You’re the only person in my life I can say that to.”

I waited and she brought her hand down, turned to look at the bay again, and said, “As you know, James Beers was going to go public with his accusation about Marco stealing his book. I don’t really know why he came to me first, but he did, sending me an email.”

“I know why he came to you. He looked you up online and decided that getting your attention was worth more to him than the lawsuit.”

“Well, for whatever reason, he came to me, and I talked him out of it. We met in person, and I offered him money, of course, which he took, but I quickly realized that what he really wanted was a friend. So I became that for him. And as friends, I confided in him that I hated my husband, that I’d only married him for his money. I suppose I knew that James was falling for me, and that hearing how much I hated Marco would make him hopeful. But as you know, I was also telling him the truth. And not long after he announced to me that he had a great idea for killing Marco and getting away with it. I think he was half joking, or pretending to joke, but I told him I thought we should do it.”

“Killing Marco and then making it look like the murderer had killed himself.”

“No, that was my eventual idea. James’s original idea was that I should have a party and invite only people who hated Marco. He said that someone was bound to kill him, and if no one else did, he could do it and there would be too many suspects, so the police wouldn’t figure it out. It was all stupid, of course, like a terrible episode of Murder, She Wrote, but I did realize that having the party James had suggested could be part of my plan to get rid of Marco for good.

“So we planned it. Yes, we’d have the party so that there would be several people in the house with motives to kill Marco. But James would be the one to do it.”

“And then what?” I said. “You’d kill someone else to make it look like they’d done the killing?”

“That’s what I told James, yes.”

“And that was going to be me?”

“James thought it was you. That’s what I told him. But, and here is where you have to trust me, it was never going to be you.”

“So who was it going to be?”

“It was always going to be James. That was my plan. I knew how to do it and, in a convenient way, he’d even given me a moral reason. He was actually going to be guilty, a murderer, himself.”

“You had planned to drown him?”

“Yes. James had stayed at our house before, and he’d gone on several of my early-morning swims with me. I would just need to convince him to swim with me the morning after he’d killed Marco. I made it part of the plan. That would be our alibi. We’d been together all night and gone swimming in the morning. Someone else would find Marco, and someone else would find you. I told James that you were going to die from an overdose, that I had it all worked out. He really was pretty stupid. I mean, it’s a miracle he came up with that clever twist in Girl at the Door, really.”

“How did you drown him?”

“Like I said, I’d been swimming with him many times. He was not a good swimmer, and definitely not a cold-water swimmer. Twice I’d had to help him back to shore. But he always stayed in as long as I did, maybe out of some macho need. So that morning, after the party, I got up at dawn like I always did. I went and checked on Marco first. You saw him yourself. It was not a pretty sight. Then I woke up James. He was genuinely completely hungover. I told him we needed to go for our swim and he followed me out. Maybe he was still drunk, I don’t know, but he seemed in a daze. Do you want to hear all this?”

She had turned to look at me, so I nodded.

“We walked into the ocean. He was shivering already, just from having taken off his clothes, and then I began to swim, as far out as I could stand, and he was right behind me. He never even asked for help. He just slipped below the water, although I could tell from his eyes that he knew he was going to die.”

“What did you feel?”

“I felt a kind of pity, I suppose, but you know who I am. I didn’t feel any guilt. I don’t feel guilt. Still, there was that moment, when I was swimming back to shore, when I realized that I was now a murderer. A real murderer, not just someone who thought about it.”

“But weren’t you a murderer already?”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Didn’t you murder Marco in his office?” I said. “I mean, I put James to bed and he was completely drunk. I’ve known all along that there was no way he got up in the middle of the night and killed Marco. He wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

“No, I agree,” Maeve said. “But I didn’t kill Marco. I thought you did.”

*

It is Christmas Day. All the women of this house are asleep, including Brigid O’Shaughnessy, her front paws folded under her chin on the edge of my bed. The radiator sighs, and I have the window cracked like I always do, briny air whistling into the room. But other than that there is only silence, although “What Child Is This?” is stuck in my head, the Bing Crosby version of course. After finishing up here I’ll bring these pages downstairs and burn them in the fireplace. I feel a little sad about it, about letting these words turn to ash, but they were only ever meant for me. Sometimes it helps if I tell myself the whole story.

I believed it when Maeve told me she hadn’t killed Marco. I don’t think she can really lie to me, although maybe I’m fooling myself. And I was able to convince her that it wasn’t me. I told her about that night, how I lay awake and listened to the sounds of the house, and how maybe I heard light footsteps coming down our hallway in the middle of the night.

“James’s plan actually fucking worked,” Maeve said, and smiled, her blue eyes shining in the early-morning sun.

“So who killed him?” I said.

“Probably Billy. I mean, poor guy … he was tortured by Marco his whole life.”

My mind went back a year to seeing Marco’s body on the couch, that single precise wound in his neck, all his blood drained away, and I just couldn’t picture Billy, drunk in the middle of the night, selecting the straight razor from the wall of weapons. No, Billy would have picked the lead pipe. “Maybe we’ll just never know who did it,” I said.

“Maybe.”

Before we left the beach that morning, Maeve and I agreed to never talk again about the events of one year ago. I did ask her, as we crested the dune, if I was outstaying my welcome at Grey Gables, and she laughed, the way she always laughs when I ask her a serious question. “God, no,” she said. “You’re like a ghost. Even if we made you leave, you’d still be here.”

Back inside I found the copy of The Scapegoat that I’d gifted to Marco a year ago. Just like in that story, I have somehow found a way to replace Marco, to step into his life. Maybe I could stay here forever, write books, help pay the upkeep on the house. Sometimes I even let myself believe that Maeve will want me as something more than just a houseguest, but I don’t really believe that will happen. Besides, I am reminded every time we go into the bay together that she seems impervious to the cold and the deep, and that the men who follow her do not necessarily meet happy ends.

Because today is Christmas Day our dinner was prime rib, a pleasant change from all the fish we’ve been eating. It was five o’clock by the time we all sat down at the table, Maeve and Cat and Mrs. Tavares and me, Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas album playing, the lights in the cavernous living room dimmed so that the tree seemed extra bright, as did the candles on our table. I had chosen the wine from the cellar and poured everyone a glass. Maeve, at the head of the table, stood and made a toast. “To Marco,” she said, a smile on her lips.

“Saluti! Buon Natale!” Cat said, and we all laughed, even Mrs. Tavares, who probably didn’t understand the joke.

I sat in the glow of my new makeshift family and felt I understood Christmas a little bit better than I had before. Its familiar smells, its songs, its catalogue of ghosts, are all just a way of letting you know where you are in your life. It took a few coincidences, a few bad bumps in the road along the way, but I have found my Christmas family at last. The night is cold, but tomorrow I will be woken by the purring of a cat as dawn arrives. It is Christmas Day, my birthday, and for now, at least, I am invited to the party.

Maeve asked who wanted to carve the prime rib. I was about to volunteer, but Cat was already standing up and sliding the large platter (far too much meat for the four of us) in front of her. “‘And he, himself … the Grinch … carved the roast beast,’” she quoted. Mrs. Tavares, seated next to me, leaned in to speak in my ear. I thought she was going to ask me what we were all laughing about but instead she said, “Look at Cat with that knife. She was almost a doctor, you know.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” I said, and turned to look.

Cat was sharpening the carving knife, then she sliced off a first portion and lowered it onto the platter, where it lay, glistening in the candlelight, an expertly carved piece of perfectly rare meat.

Acknowledgments

Angus Cargill, Emily Dansky, Caspian Dennis, Danielle Dieterich, Daphne du Maurier, the Galleranis (for all those invites to the other Cape), Theodor Geisel, Joel Gotler, Kaitlin Harri, Jennifer Hart, Ira Levin, Libby Marshall, Norman Mailer, Tara McEvoy, Josh Smith, Nat Sobel, Virginia Stanley, Liate Stehlik, Xa Shaw Stewart, Keith Stillman, Grace Vainisi, Sandy Violette, Kate Ward, Judith Weber, Jessica Williams, Phoebe Williams, and Charlene Sawyer.

Also by Peter Swanson

kill your darlings

the christmas guest

the kind worth saving

nine lives

every vow you break

rules for perfect murders

before she knew him

all the beautiful lies

her every fear

the kind worth killing

the girl with a clock for a heart

Copyright

First published in 2026
by Faber & Faber Ltd
The Bindery, 51 Hatton Garden
London EC1N 8HN

Typeset by Faber & Faber Ltd
Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

All rights reserved
© Peter Swanson, 2026

Interior illustrations: house © Alamy;
blood, snow, footprints, trees © Shutterstock

The right of Peter Swanson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously

A CIP record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–0–571–39400–5
eISBN 978–0–571–39402–9