Friday Snippet, and a Valentine’s Gift for Writers

I know I haven’t posted a Friday Snippet in a long time. That’s because my top writing priority has been The Conscience of Abe’s Turn. So here’s a snippet from the upcoming (not posted yet) chapter of Abe’s Turn.

But first, I have a Valentine’s Gift for writers who are fans of Holly Lisle’s excellent writing resources. For only the month of February, anyone who has ever ordered any download from Holly Lisle’s online shop can subscribe for free to my (usually non-free) Writer’s Tips e-Newsletter. Click here to find out more about this one-month-only offer. And be sure to tell your friends who are writers about it, too. Spread the word, because in only 28 days, it’ll be over forever.

And now, the Friday Snippet I promised:

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Clyde was planning dinner when she heard a knock at the front door. She walked from the kitchen, through the hallway, and opened it, revealing Michael’s big, round, blue-flashlight eyes staring at her with a strange look on them.

“Hey, you,” she said sweetly. Then she considered for a moment. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Clyde said, and she showed him into the living room. “Is Ted alright?”

“Oh, yes,” Michael said comfortingly. “He’s just finishing up at the office. He suggested I ask you if you’d like to eat out tonight, the three of us at least.”

“Sure, I guess so,” she said. “I was just planning dinner, but I can always put that off until tomorrow night. Yeah, I think going out would be fun. Do you know if Mira has any plans?”

Clyde cringed as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She shouldn’t be asking Michael whether Mira has plans, because he wouldn’t know. And she didn’t even know how he might feel about the four of them going out together socially. They hadn’t gone out socially as a group in a long time. What’s more, Clyde knew how Michael felt about Mira, and she knew that Mira did not return his feelings. Michael acted as though it didn’t matter to him, and they had been able to keep their relationship professional. But to Clyde, the two had both seemed to be distant, for a long time now, as if they were just shells of their former selves.

Clyde missed Michael’s witty repartee, of which she saw much less. Somehow, he seemed too serious and businesslike to be Michael.

And Clyde missed connecting with Mira. Of course, that was as much Clyde’s fault as it was Mira’s. Clyde had already decided not to share her secret, not even with her closest friend. And the only person who knew her secret, Jane Mooney, seemed to be avoiding her calls. That worried Clyde in itself. But the thing that bothered her most was that she had no one to talk to about what she knew. And there was very little she could do to help. She couldn’t even tell her beloved, her husband, because she did not want to go to jail. All she could do was to gently suggest to him that he could use her “crazy theory,” which was consistent with the evidence, to bolster that seed of reasonable doubt in the minds of Damian Alvarez’s jurors.

So Clyde felt a void, a longing for old times, old friends. And that’s why when Michael mentioned eating out, Clyde thought of the four of them. And that’s why she asked whether Michael knew what Mira was up to. And that’s why Clyde cringed, because she feared that Michael would become hurt or upset.

Michael didn’t seem to notice, however. “I wouldn’t know,” he simply said. He seemed to be thinking about something else.

“Oh,” Clyde said, relieved. Then she cautiously proffered, “Do you mind if I give her a call?”

“Sure, go right ahead.” Then he came back to life. “Hey, we haven’t gone out for a long time. The last time we got together socially was, what? Thanksgiving?”

“That was social?” Clyde joked. “That was painful,” she said.

“The food was good!” Michael said.

“Oh that good food could have saved it.”

Michael sighed and looked at her tenderly. “Hey, don’t feel bad. It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in myself. I’m sorry.”

Clyde was genuinely surprised. “Wha– It wasn’t your fault. We were all upset about something.” Then she added, “The problem is that we weren’t talking about what we were upset about.” She hardly believed those words had come out of her mouth, and she didn’t really know why she had said them.

“Well, I think we talk just fine. But…”

Michael’s words trailed off mid-sentence. He seemed to be solving a deep problem in his mind. This was something Michael almost never did. Michael was always talking, always listening, always observing, always doing. He seemed to just know what he wanted to do, and he rarely planned anything, much less thought about it.

“What is it?” Clyde asked.

Michael thought for a moment longer, as if he were formulating his next words. This was very much unlike Michael.

“How did you know?” he said.

“How did I know… what?”

“How did you know that Baedes has a thing against Jay and Damian, because he thinks they’re the top dogs? And how did you know that he wants to take them down a notch? And how did you know that he was the one who orchestrated the trumped-up drug bust, with the sole purpose of damaging Damian’s reputation?”

For a moment, Clyde felt like she was talking to Ted, and not in a good way. Her mind immediately went into fight-or-flight mode. She didn’t even think about it. Danger, her mind thought. Must lie.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “That was just a crazy theory. Ted’s just playing lawyer games, that’s all.”

“You’re lying,” Michael said. “And this has nothing to do with Ted.”

“What’s your damage, Michael?” Clyde looked at him as though she thought he was crazy.

“Firstly, I can tell you’re lying, because I can see it in your eyes.”

“What, are you a mind-reader now?” Clyde retorted. “Have you been taking lessons from Mira?” She didn’t care now whether he was upset by her brusqueness. In fact, she would have preferred him to become upset, because maybe it would distract him and get him off the track he was on.

Michael ignored her. “Secondly, I overheard Beady-eyes himself discussing the matter with one of his ego-inflated minions.”

“Oh.” Clyde nodded.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t seem surprised that your ‘crazy theory’ is actually correct.” He used air quotes around the words “crazy theory.”

He continued. “See, now, I know the truth, and you know the truth. And that’s it. I haven’t told anyone about this, not even Ted. I know the truth, because I happened to be in the right place at the right time–and because Beady-eyes is an idiot… But that’s another subject altogether.

“What confuses me is, how did you know the truth, and before anyone else?”

Clyde squinted her eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t know. I just guessed. It was just a crazy guess, a crazy theory. A fluke. That’s all. It was just a fluke that I happened to be right. I can’t explain it. These things happen sometimes, you know?”

Michael paused a moment, and he nodded. “Okay. You don’t feel you can tell me. Must be something big. That’s okay.

“Maybe you don’t feel I can be trusted to keep your secret. That makes sense. Maybe no one can be trusted. But I’m keeping this under my hat, just the same.”

And then he added, “By the way, if I had known your crazy theory wasn’t just a crazy theory, I could’ve done something about it. So please keep sharing your crazy theories with me.”

Clyde just stared at him, not knowing what to think, not knowing how to feel, not knowing how to respond.

Her voice cracked as she said, “I’d better call Mira.”

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Other Friday Snippets

The way Friday Snippets works is that fiction authors can leave a link to their own snippet on others’ blog posts that are part of the meme. Many of the participating writers are using one of Mister Linky’s Autolink Widgets to streamline this process. See “Friday Snippets” at Holly Lisle’s blog for more information.