On Wednesday, Vanity Fair published a profile of Augusta Britt, a woman the author calls the “secret muse” of the novelist Cormac McCarthy, who died last year. According to Britt, McCarthy was 42 when they met in 1976; she was 16, a runaway fleeing an abusive childhood. She tells Vanity Fair’s Vincenzo Barney that McCarthy ferried her across the border to Mexico, forged her birth certificate, and began a sexual affair with her. Britt is adamant that their relationship was consensual: “It all felt right. It felt good … I loved him. He was my safety.” But McCarthy also used her experiences in his novels, she alleges, conjuring and then killing off characters based on her. “I was surprised it didn’t feel romantic to be written about,” she says. “I felt kind of violated.”