The Death I Never Got to Finish

What’s your favorite scene your editor asked you to cut?

OK, who of us has NOT been looking forward this question? We finally get to pull out that stuff we always wanted to show. I tend to write in a skeletal form and add layers, so my edits are more of “add more” than the “delete more” variety.

But in the first version of A Trace of Smoke I wanted the murder victim to have a voice. I wanted us to know him and love him on his own terms so we could understand what Hannah lost when she lost her brother. So, I had him talking from beyond the grave. Sadly, I could never make it work. My writing group never got it, and the first question my future agent asked was, “If I agree to represent you, would you be willing to consider removing the dead brother’s voice from the manuscript?”

I said I was and I did and by and large I managed to work all the facts and feelings into the novel. I had, however, let him narrate his own death and there was no way I could do that the same way from anyone else’s point of view.

Here it is, slightly edited so it doesn’t have any spoilers:

It happened here. I feel it. He came from shadows. My murderer.

At first I felt no fear. We walked toward the factory through cold night air. Two hours later there would have been workers, but not yet that day. Light glinted off wet cobblestones. Reflected off his set and angry face.

I was still glowing. I told him about love. That it comes once a lifetime. We can’t escape it when it does. It transfigures the world. I hadn’t expected to find it, hadn’t believed in it, but it had found me. Love was suddenly simple and true. R loved me like that. And that is how I loved W.

Walking with the murderer, I knew. It wasn’t about getting old and weak. It was about trust and openness. I never opened up to a man before. I had never trusted the way that R trusted me. But I did trust W like that. And it made all the difference. I held out my hands to him, beseeching him to understand.

He only said, “I heard you.”

He hit me once, right in the chest. I almost laughed. Such a crazy place to hit someone. Metal clattered against stone. The knife, dropped.

I fell. Muddy water seeped into my dress. Could I scrub it out? Not water. Blood. Puddling around me. Nothing would ever be clean again.

The bastard stared at me. He folded his arms across his chest. He squatted down to watch me die. How could he hate me so?

I stared into his eyes while gray lightened the sky. I got colder and colder. I shivered, too proud to speak. I thought of W and our one night. How I screwed around too long before figuring out that I loved him. I did not want to lose him so soon after finding him. I thought of you and Anton. Your lives going on just the same. And I felt alone on the wet ground.

He just watched. The last sound I heard was my chattering teeth.

He never made a sound.

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