He opens his eyes.

The girl. The knife. The robe. It’s all still here.

He is Jerry Cutter. He is Henry Cutter. He is a crime writer. He is a criminal. He is the Breaking Man who killed his wife.

And this girl?

He gets up off the couch. The room tilts, not much but enough for him to reach out and grab the wall. Music is coming from somewhere in the house, something he doesn’t recognize. He peeks beyond the curtain to the outside world. It’s daylight out there.

His name is Jerry Grey. He is lost. He is confused. This may look real, it may feel real, but it is not. This is probably Suzan with a z. This is the book he wrote. He is inside the pages and soon somebody will save him.

When he moves, the girl’s eyes follow him until he’s south of her body. He picks up the robe and covers everything except her face. He crouches next to her and studies her features, this girl, this stranger, who is she?

Her cheek feels warm. She hasn’t been dead long, but she is dead—there’s no denying that—CPR isn’t going to help. The paramedics could be two seconds away and there’d be nothing they could do except stare at all the blood. Death is in her features, in the way she is looking at him, the way her face is sagging, the way she seems to be turning gray in front of him. She must be in her midtwenties, maybe even thirty. She smells like soap. He stands up. He looks around the lounge as though expecting to see an answer, maybe even somebody standing here who can tell him what is going on. He has never been here before, he’s sure of it.

Haven’t you? Henry asks, and he’s had conversations with Henry before. Not in the Before Days, back when things made sense, but the After Days, when the Alzheimer’s really began to take hold.

“Did I do this?”

What do you think?

Jerry looks down at his hands. He’s still holding the earrings. He tucks them into his pocket. “Is she from one of your books?”

Oh, so it’s my books now, is it?

“They’ve always been your books,” Jerry tells him. “So is she?”

He sits back down on the couch as Henry thinks about it. He wonders just how insane he really is. Dementia. Shooting his wife. Confessing to crimes and holding a two-sided conversation with himself. Who is more crazy—him or Henry?

I don’t think this is one of your books, Jerry. I’m sorry to be the voice of reason here, but it does all seem very—

“Real,” Jerry says. “I need to call the police.”

Oh you do, do you? And tell them what? For all you know you wandered away from the nursing home, you got lost and confused and you knocked on a random door and when nobody answered you came inside, and this is what you found. If you call the police, they will come here, they will arrest you, and that’ s the end of the story. Even if you didn’t do this, that’s the end of the story.

“So what do we do?”

We quit wasting time and get out of here.

He shakes his head. The girl, the wide open eyes, staring at him, studying him. Blaming him. “I have to call the police.”

You said that already. You’ll be in jail before you even know what hit you.

“I didn’t do this.”

I know. I believe you.

“Do you really?”

It could have been a deadbeat boyfriend, or a jealous BFF, or an overly friendly neighbor.

“It could have been anybody,” Jerry says. “So what do you suggest I do?”

You’re a crime writer, Jerry. If you get arrested, you can’t use those crime-writing skills to figure out what happened. You have to run.

“What does that mean?”

If this was a book, what would you do?

“Call the police.”

No. Pretend this isn’t real life.

“This is real life.”

Of course it is, but you’re missing my point. Are you deliberately being stupid?

Jerry closes his eyes. He can’t stand the dead girl looking at him any longer, but even with his eyes closed he can still feel her gaze. He opens them back up. He looks at the bloody knife on the floor before adjusting the robe to cover the woman’s face too. “What is your point?” he asks Henry.

Think of this as your book.

“Okay.”

And in the books when people should go to the police, what do they do instead?

“Anything but go to the police.”

Exactly.

“So what do you suggest I do then?”

Pour gas over everything and burn the place down then get the hell out.

Jerry shakes his head. “I’m not doing that.”

You should.

“No.”

Then wipe down everything you touched, including the wall where you steadied yourself a few minutes ago. Find the laundry and grab some bleach and pour it over her body. Take the knife and dump it a few miles from here. Make your way into town. I have an idea—make your way to the library. We’ll figure out the rest from there.

“The library?”

Libraries relax you. You used to spend a lot of time there after school, and you used to read book after book, wanting to grow up and be an author. It was those days, those library days, that shaped you into the man you became.

“Sick?”

An author, you idiot.

He walks into the dining room. The music gets louder, and he thinks it’s coming from the bedroom. There’s a clock on the wall. It’s seven fifty in the morning. He finds the laundry and goes through the cupboard and finds a half-gallon container of bleach that is just short of being full. He carries it into the lounge and looks at the dead woman. How can he pour bleach on somebody whose name he doesn’t know?

The same way you killed somebody whose name you don’t know.

“So I did kill her?”

It’s possible. But if you didn’t, then staying here is a mistake.

He heads back into the dining room, then into the hallway, and in the corner by the door is an A Place for Everything shelf that has keys and sunglasses and a handbag on top. He opens the handbag. Inside is a purse, and inside that is a driver’s license. Fiona Clark. Twenty-six years old—the same age as his daughter.

“My name is Jerry Grey and I’m a writer,” he says, putting the license back. “My name is Jerry Grey and none of this is real.”

But it is real. There’s a dead girl in the lounge to prove it.

W MINUS SEVEN

The wedding is one week away. There’s no chance of forgetting this, buddy, not with Sandra mentioning it every hour. The wedding has become this big, all-encompassing thing that always seems so close but never actually happens, and of course big, encompassing things often come with problems, the latest of which is with the flowers. Our florist is a very pretty woman by the name of Belinda Something Last Name, who reminds me a little of Sandra Something Last Name (just kidding there—Sandra has your last name, at least for now). Same winning smile, same bubbly personality. She’s like Sandra’s much younger sister, if Sandra had a much younger sister (does she?). Belinda has been around a few times now to meet with Sandra and Eva, and she’s always full of smiles, and she always asks how you are in a tone that makes you believe she really wants to know.

At the moment they’re stressing about the flowers. There’s been some weird insect outbreak and the sources Belinda uses have had large percentages of their crops ruined, the insects eating half of them and shitting on the rest. Belinda may have to order from somewhere further away, as all florists are, and that means they really need to lock in what flowers they want, as the original ones are hard to get now, creating a shortage on other types too, which means, of course, the prices are all going up. Your crush on Belinda waned a little at that point, but her sad smile at this tragic turn of events won you over. Then you got bored. Then you got thirsty. Then you excused yourself and went into your office. Then you snuck out the window so you wouldn’t set one of the alarms off and went for a walk, because you should be able to walk, shouldn’t you? And get some fresh air?