She was being paid to make sure he failed to write a good novel. She’d be more in the spirit of the deal she’d made with his father if she didn’t help him, if she made sure he wrote something that seemed childish and juvenile, that would never in a million years be published anywhere. All she really had to do was make a good show of it. Mr. Jennings wanted his son to fail.

But Steven looked so eager. He wanted to learn so badly. Maybe it was the spirit of the job to make him ...