Chapter Nine
When I got home from the dog park, I sat down to write.
You’ve heard that before.
But listen to this: I wrote.
It’s one of those minor miracles that makes you want to sing and dance around the room.
Except your brain is too deeply immersed in the story for singing and dancing.
Eventually, I placated that urge by humming and spinning a couple times when I broke to feed Gracie, Murphy, and me.
I might have skipped me, but Gracie and Murphy vetoed meal-skipping.
Pouring kibble into bowls for an appreciative and eager audience can lubricate the brain.
That’s how I broke through one logjam with this main character, Alex. She needed a window into her past in order to give her a future.
She wasn’t alone.
That need also had factored in my telling Teague the biggest secret of my past.
He had to know that for us to move forward.
I needed him to know that for us to move forward.
Oh.
I froze with a dog food bowl in each hand, halfway bent over.
That didn’t last long under the weight of the dogs’ stares — Gracie’s indignant and Murphy’s pleading.
I delivered the bowls, gave the word to release them to eat, then slowly straightened.
Needing to know the past to move forward . . .
I needed to know about Teague’s past, his secrets — at least the ones about why he’d changed his life so drastically.
He’d had clues about my past to put together, using his investigative abilities to learn about my secret before I shared it. I didn’t have such clues about his past.
. . . Did I?
I didn’t have an immediate answer to that.
But at least now, I had the question, to put at the back of my mind and let it simmer.
What was at the front of my mind was the story I was calling Alex in Search.
I went upstairs and kept writing.