Chapter 24: ConfrontationThat evening, with rain still pouring outside, the occasional lightshow of lightning occurring overhead, and the sounds of banging and booming taking place on the lake house’s rooftop, we sat across from each other in the bleak sitting-room, drinking lemon-flavored cocktails. Again, I was working on The Next Fall’s manuscript and Tacoma read a novel on his cell phone called The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel that I recommended. I don’t think he was really reading, though. Instead, I believed he scanned over the words or paragraphs or sentences of his e-book, wasting time and drifting, his mind elsewhere. In all honesty, I believed that if it hadn’t been raining that evening, he would have been down by the pool, swimming. But since the weather prevented him, w
