Author's Statement

This represents new territory for me in two specific ways: first, the compression—I've never written anything under 10,000 words that attempted to maintain the recursive, digressive quality of my typical prose while also generating the kind of propulsive, plot-driven momentum that thrillers require. The constraint forced me to weaponize my usual tendency toward obsessive detail and parenthetical anxiety, making them serve suspense rather than undermine it. Second, and perhaps more significantly: I let the plot resolve. I resisted my usual impulse to withhold, to leave things ambiguous, to privilege uncertainty over closure. Karen's revelation lands clearly, unambiguously. The ending—Terry taking the phone—is a choice he makes, not a gesture toward the ineffable. For a writer who's spent his career suggesting that clean resolutions are aesthetically and philosophically dishonest, this felt genuinely dangerous. Which is to say: it felt like the right kind of wrong.