My newest
novel, my fourth, is also the start of a new direction for me. My other series,
Someday Quilts, is a gentler, more innocent series. The kind of books I love
when I’m looking for an escape.
Missing
Persons isn’t an escape. Not really. My main character, Kate Conway, is a
freelance television producer who lies to get the story she needs for the true
crime show she produces. She’s human enough to feel bad about manipulating
people, but she has a mortgage to pay. Her about to be ex-husband, Frank, has
left her for another woman, a nicer woman, and Kate has wrapped herself in
sarcastic bitterness to get through it. And then Frank dies.
I really liked the idea of putting
a character in this situation. Let’s face it, when a relationship ends badly
there is a tendency on the part of friends, family and the break-ee, to see the
worst in the other person. Suddenly, everyone is telling you that he was never
good enough for you, or no one liked her. You focus on the bad stuff and feel
better because of it. But when someone dies, it’s just the opposite. In death,
people are perfect. They were special.. they were saints… the love you shared
was envied by everyone.
How fun for a writer to have a
character deeply invested in all that was bad about her husband when the
narrative suddenly shifts. The Frank that everyone said was a louse is now
remembered as the ideal husband. Kate is too smart and self-aware to leap from
one extreme to the other. She remembers the bad stuff, but she also remembers
the good. Realizing she may still love a man now permanently out of reach is
bad enough, but Kate has another problem. Frank’s girlfriend Vera, a helpful,
kind woman who only knows the good about Frank, wants to be friends. It’s
enough to put Kate nearly over the edge.
Kate becomes both suspect and
investigator of Frank’s death, and that’s just in her off hours. She has to
produce an exploitive crime TV show about Theresa Moretti, a seemingly innocent
22-year-old nursing student who disappeared the year before.
I realized after I wrote the first
draft that maybe what Kate is looking for - beyond an explanation for the death
of her husband and the disappearance of Theresa - is closure. Closure is, at
least as far as I can tell, that elusive, and probably non-existent, end to a
relationship in which both parties feel sad but complete. The questions are
answered, the anger is put to rest, and everyone goes on, wiser for having
known one another.
It sounds great. But do any of us
get to say goodbye in a way that really feels as though everything’s been said?
I don’t think I’ve ever really had that moment. No matter the reason, when
someone who used to be in our lives isn’t anymore, there are “what ifs”, there
are empty spaces. Maybe as time has gone by, the pain dulls and the loss feels
more bearable, but I wouldn’t call it closure. I’d call it getting on with
life.
Kate, in her jaded, sarcastic way,
just wants to do that. She wants to go back to a life of take-out Chinese and
watching re-runs on the couch. She wants to put her memories of Frank in a neat
little box, and keep them from hurting her anymore.
For her that means finding all the
answers she can, and living with the questions that will forever remained
unanswered. No one, least of all Kate, wants to be living through this mess,
but as a writer, it’s just the most wonderful place to be.
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