“We all are.”
“No, Sunny,” he said. “What I’m saying is, I’ve been worried about her for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
He cleared his throat. “When was the last time you were around Melanie Joan for an extended period of time?”
I thought about it. “She hired me when she had that stalker situation,” I said.
“Which stalker?”
“Well, both, actually,” I said. “But I was talking about the most recent one.”
“That was around the same time they were shootingGirl and Not a Godfor Netflix,” he said.
“Right.”
“She hadn’t started writing her memoir.”
“If she had, she didn’t mention it.”
“No, she hadn’t,” he said. “I know this. She didn’t start writing it until two years ago. She wrote it in three sleepless months. It was an agonizing process, for her and for me.”
“Okay,” I said. I was starting to get a little frustrated. “Is there a point here?”
Evan grasped his hands together. Two clenched fists inhis lap, the knuckles pressing against his skin. “Writing that memoir…Reliving the abuse she suffered with John Melvin in such a concentrated way,” he said. “I think it loosened something in her brain.”
I squinted at him. “What?”
“I think it made her…emotional.”
I staved off the inevitable eye roll. “You don’t think Melanie Joan Hall was emotional before? Seriously?”
“Not like this,” he said. “She’s become reckless lately. Drinking more. Flying off the handle all the time. She harangued the copyeditor onStronger Aloneto the point where the poor woman had to take a weeklong mental health break.”
The eye roll could be contained no longer. “The book meant a lot to her,” I said. “If she were a man, you’d probably be calling her a tortured genius.”
Evan leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve been Melanie Joan’s editor for going on twenty-five years, Sunny,” he said. “I’ve always been her biggest supporter. But I have to tell you…She’s become more and more erratic since writing that book. You saw that comment she posted on Book Babe’s review. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined her even thinking those things.”
I grimaced. He had me there. “It was the water pill talking,” I said. “It doesn’t mix with alcohol and she had a few too many tequilas.”
Evan sighed. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve seen her drunk plenty of times. And when I first heard that a nasty comment she posted and deleted was making the rounds and that Greg wasfurious about it, I was sure he was overreacting. He didn’t know her the way I did. It was just Melanie Joan being Melanie Joan.”
I nodded. “Right. That’s what it—”
“But then I saw it in its entirety,” he said. “The way it was worded. I almost thought that it was some kind of joke. That someone had…had hacked her or something, because the Melanie Joan I know would not say those things about another woman.”
“She wouldn’t,” I said. “It was the pill and booze. She doesn’t even remember writing it.”
“Well,” he said, “what does that say about her?”
“What are you getting at, Evan?”
“Look, nobody wants Melanie Joan to go to jail,” he said. “I don’t want her to have killed Leila Donnelly. But at this point, I honestly don’t know what she’s capable of. Especially if, as you just said, she’s been experiencing blackouts.”
I stared at him.This was what he’d come here to tell me?
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
