“Wedolove you,” said the host, leaning forward to look past Sam to Emily. “The outpouring on social media ever since we announced has beenastronomical. I hope you feel it.”
“I do,” Emily said. She nodded vigorously. Her ears were blazing red.
The host picked up the novel again. “And this book! Whoo! People! You practically need oven mitts to hold this, am I right? It haseverything. Sex. Murder.Literature. And heartbreak. Because even though it’s written as a novel... it’s a true story.”
The studio grew very quiet.
“Weallknew the major players in this book,” said the host. “We read Sam’s earlier wonderful novels. And we all knew William Corwyn.”
The light beam from the control box at the back of the studio shifted colors, and Sam knew that behind her, on the big screen, there was now the giant projection of William’s author photo, his face. She would not look.
“It wassucha shock to find out about William,” said the host. “That we had a serial murderer not only in the veryheartof the literary community but, for so many of us, next to our beds. And in our cars and on our walks and at the gym, on our earbuds. And in our minds and souls. Because that’s what authors and books do, isn’t it? They get inside us and theychangeus. So to find out that William’s books, which affected so many thousands of lives, were not his but belonged to women he had murdered—”
Somebody shouted something from the audience Sam could not hear. Her heart was thundering in her ears. Sweat rolled down her sides into her Spanx. She exhaled a long silent breath.
“It wasmind-blowingfor all of us who loved his work. Just unbelievable. I remember reading the news story and saying to myself, That cannotbe right. So I can only imagine what it was like for you, Sam.”
There was a pause, and Sam realized she was supposed to speak—they haddead air! Since William, performance was harder than it used to be. She glanced at the host, who gave her a you-can-do-it nod.
“It was shattering,” Sam said.
“Tellus,” said the host, “what it was like from the inside.”
“I was in love,” said Sam. She cleared her throat—it had not been quite right ever since the hot tub, her vocal cords roughened with scar tissue. “I was in love with William. How could you not be in love with William? He was the bad boy of literature. And bad boys make good stories.” There were appreciative chuckles from the audience, and Sam started to find her rhythm. “But really, it’s tough out there for us singletons. Those of you out there who are divorced, or have God forbid lost your person, you know what it’s like to be alone, like really alone, or on the apps, scrolling through all the guys with little heads and big fish. All you can think is, isanyone out there like me?” She felt rather than saw the nodding beyond the lights.
“And William was like you,” said the host.
“He was like me,” Sam confirmed. “Except for the serial killer part.”
The audience murmured. “What’s soastonishingto me,” said the host, “and so frightening, is that you really did not know. That nobody knew—except Emily, and we’ll dig into that a little later. But nobodyelse had a clue, not William’s editor, or his agent, or anybody in the industry—including me! I had him on this very show! For his novel, or rather Becky Bowman’s novel,You Never Said Goodbye. He sat on this very stage where you are right now, Sam! How couldnobodyknow?”
Sam shuddered, an involuntary ripple of flesh. “Well, the devil is charming,” she said, and there were sounds of recognition from the viewers at this. “And William wassocharming. He was master level at it. And seduction. And manipulation. And transposing other writers’ ideas into his own words.”
“Why?” said the host. “Why do you think he did it? That’s what we all want to know.”
“I’m not sure we ever really will,” said Sam. “I’ve spent hundreds of hours thinking about it, not just researching the book but lying awake at night, going over it in my head. From everything I’ve read, William was a malignant narcissist. He didn’t see other people as people but as commodities he needed. He said something like that about the women while he was—toward the end. That they were food. For his books. That he was like a vampire who could write but not come up with his own stories.”
“And this is the hallmark of a malignant narcissist.”
“One of them. I’ve interviewed several psychologists who specialize in this disorder and in sociopathy, trying to sync up what they said with what I knew of William personally. It’s safe to say he was a sociopath. And one doctor had a theory, which I think is true, that William didn’t remember murdering the women. He just skipped right over it in his own mind. William came from a terrible trauma background—he mentioned it only a few times to me, and his family is all gone now, so I couldn’t confirm it. But what he did tell me was horrific, and this doctor’s theory is that when something was truly traumatic, including when he caused it, William blanked it out.”
“Fascinating,” said the host. “Truly fascinating. And terrifying. And you never knew. Never knew you were living with a serial murderer.”
“No,” said Sam. “I knew—or sometimes I thought—things were a little hinky. You could ask my sponsor, who’s sitting out there somewherewith my codependency group, hi guys!, and she’d tell you that from the beginning I was questioning my own instincts. But that’s part of the problem. As I wrote in the book, I have my own trauma background, so I have a hard time knowing what to believe.”
“And that is really theheartof the book for me,” said the host. “Not the shock of finding out who William Corwyn really was. Or the murders of the writers, may they rest—and by the way, we’re offering all their novels reissued in their rightful names as a bundle,” and there was applause. The host turned back to Sam. “For me the heart of the book is really the codependency. Talk about that.”
“Sure. Technically, it means anyone who’s ever concentrated on another person’s life instead of their own—”
“—which is every woman here, am I right?” said the host. She made boxer’s fists in the air. “Isorelated to this. Putting aside your own perceptions, beliefs, needs, even your identity for another person.”
“Yes,” said Sam. “I thought I was done with it. I’d done so much work, in therapy and group. I’d left a marriage—to a great guy in recovery, hey, Hank!—to put my own needs first. And then I walked into the biggest wolf den of all.”
Her throat ached, and she looked at her hands, ringless now, in her lap.
“I remember thinking,” she said, “right before I met William, that I was so lonely I’d give up everything else in my life if only I could meet the right person. My career, my books, everything I’d built, I’d trade it away just like that. And I did. I left it for this shining dream he created, that he dangled in front of me like bait, that maybe we both believed in but that never really existed at all. I abandoned everything to be with him—including my very self. And I’m—” Her voice wavered. She touched her scratchy throat. “Still working to forgive myself for that.”
There was applause, and Sam tried to knuckle tears from the corners of her eyes without smearing her makeup. The host handed her a Kleenex.
