Reef Road by Deborah Goodrich Royce

Author:Deborah Goodrich Royce [Royce, Deborah Goodrich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637584972
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2022-10-17T12:32:36+00:00

38

A Writer’s Thoughts

Surprised?

You thought I made her up. You thought I was sitting all by my lonesome in my crappy apartment with my old dog and my old body and my endless obsessions with food and murder and arcane statistics and just making stuff up.

I’m afraid not.

Linda Alonso is Matt Huber’s daughter, born late in his life. What we used to call “a change of life” baby for Mr. and Mrs. Huber. She is the niece of the late Noelle Huber. She is not the product of my writer’s imagination. She is a product of the loins of the man who raped and killed his sister. Those same loins. That same family.

I don’t make anything up. What I do is, I embellish. You will come to see how I know what I know about Linda Alonso and about what she did. What I know for certain are the facts. What I have filled in is simply the color.

Here is a perfect example: How do I know exactly what Miguel Alonso said in his toast at his wedding to Linda Huber? Easy. I watched the wedding video on the Alonsos’ computer. How did I have access to that computer? Hold your horses, you’ll know soon enough.

On the other hand, how do I know that Linda’s father was longing to leave the wedding reception and go outside and hit a few golf balls? Well, that would be embellishment. I don’t actually know the man’s thoughts. But from what I do know about him and his devotion to the game of golf, I can fill in that little detail. It allows us to say, “Oh, I like golf, too.” Or, “I despise golf.” No matter which, we’ve got an association with the man. Golf.

Among other things.

At first, of course, Linda did not know that I watched her, kept tabs on her life, her husband, her children. It wasn’t a big deal in the early years. We lived in the same town. I knew her family history; I would even say it had something to do with me. At least it was of strong personal interest to me. So I observed. I found reasons to drive or bike down her street, reasons to notice her schedule—when she dropped off or picked up her children at school—reasons to be in her general vicinity.

I am sure you’ve done something like this yourself. Isn’t there someone you pay a little extra attention to? You like the way she cuts her hair, so you start frequenting the same salon. You can’t get over the new handbag she shows up with at lunch, so you buy one of your own. You are jealous of the vacation she takes so you organize to go there, too. And it is possible—probable—that this person is much less aware of your existence than you are of hers.

Enlarging the scope, isn’t there some celebrity you follow? A movie star, a singer, a royal? Maybe you Google Taylor Swift or Meghan Markle, check out what they’re wearing or where they’re eating.

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