This Is Not Over Part 36

"I figured," I say faintly.

"I think either you and Thad were both p.a.w.ns in some master chess game that Larry was playing, or he was just a really, really mean drunk who couldn't remember anything in the morning."

I'm angry for what Larry's done to me, yes, but more than that, I'm sad. For the relations.h.i.+p Thad and I might have had without interference, and what Thad could have been without the burden of being turned against his own mother.

"I'm sure you made mistakes, but a lot of it's not your fault," Dawn says. "That deck was stacked. I wanted to tell you that."

"Thank you," I say. "It's good to hear." Larry has never told me that, I realize. Thad would never.

How did Larry get his drinking past me all these years? Because during the residency, I knew. My instincts told me, unequivocally, even as I tried to tamp them down. Maybe after the residency I learned to turn them off completely. It was in my genes, after all, a family trait I'd inherited from my mother.

I remember being a little girl and trying to shake my father awake. I remember my fright, and the smell of him high in my nostrils. Running downstairs, I told my mother we needed to call 911, and she said, without turning away from the counter she was scrubbing, "He needs sleep. And he needs you to forget, and to never mention this again. Love gives a wide berth."

Translation: You don't shake people awake; you learn to sleepwalk.

I'm awake now.

The doctor comes out and he looks from Dawn to me and back again, questioningly. "She can stay," I say. "She can hear."

We're in this together, after all.

"Thad's alive," the doctor tells us. Now, for the bad news (or what he clearly thinks is the bad news): there's brain damage; Thad is like a five-year-old who'll need to relearn everything.

He might not remember that he loved meth. He might think he loves me. The two of us could start over together, far away from Larry's influence.

I'm going to have another chance, a clean slate, a fresh start. I'll be free of all the old expectations, all the lies, all the enc.u.mbrances of convention. No more social graces. No more husband. It'll be the real me, and the real Thad, in a grand do-over.

This time, I'll do it better. This time, I'll get it right.

Perhaps all of this was the universe's way of telling me I was meant to be a single mother.

"Where there's life," I tell Dawn, "there's hope." She nods, like she gets me completely.

Thad needs this second chance more than anyone, and however it's come about, it's here now.

This is not over, not at all.

P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

About the author.

Meet Holly Brown.

About the book.

Reading Group Discussion Questions The Story Behind the Book Q&A with Holly Brown.

About the author.

Meet Holly Brown.

HOLLY BROWN lives with her husband and toddler daughter in the San Francis...o...b..y Area, where she's a practicing marriage and family therapist. Her blog, Bonding Time, is featured on PsychCentral.com.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

About the book.

Reading Group Discussion Questions.

1.Dawn and Miranda initially come into contact through an Airbnb/VRBO-type rental. Do you think they would have had the same fiery outcome if they'd connected by other means, or is there something about the intimacy of a home rental that predisposed them to what followed?

2.The women escalate in their outrage with each other. Did you find one of them to be more reasonable-and more sympathetic-in her outrage, given either the provocation or the circ.u.mstances of their lives?

3.Miranda is struggling with a drug-addicted son. Is this a situation that you related to? Is it generalizable to other types of issues with children, in that a child's issues can become consuming for a parent and the parent can lose perspective along the way?

4.Both women want desperately to be validated, for the other woman to just say, "You're right and I'm wrong." Why do you think that is so important to each of them? Have you ever experienced a similar need for validation, with either a stranger, a friend, or a loved one?

5.Miranda and Dawn have misperceptions about each other. Specifically, each imagines the other's life to have what hers lacks: Miranda envies Dawn's youth and beauty and that Dawn is just starting out with her handsome, adoring husband; Dawn envies Miranda's money, stability, and certainty, a.s.suming these bring peace of mind. How do these misperceptions fuel their interactions?

6.How does social media play into people's misperceptions of one another?

7.What did you think of their marriages and their husbands? Were you surprised by what's revealed about each as the novel progresses?

8.Is Thad a p.a.w.n, a victim, or a villain? Or is he something else entirely?

9.The book begins with the image of stained sheets-which is particularly enraging for Dawn, as it reflects her fear that the damage that's been done to her is irreparable and she can never be clean again, no matter what she does. For Miranda, given her son's addiction, the idea of "coming clean" has a different meaning. What does it mean to you? What do you believe about human potential?

10.The women come together in the end, under unusual circ.u.mstances. Does that feel satisfying for you as a reader? If not, what had you hoped would happen? Share your alternate ending.

The Story Behind the Book.

THE IDEA for my third novel found me close to home. Well, close to someone else's home.

While it's not unusual for strangers to offend one another, sometimes the irritation lingers just a little longer than you'd expect. That's how I felt after I stayed in a rental in a coastal California town and, a week later, received an e-mail from the owner accusing me of leaving soiled sheets. To be more specific, I was told that I'd left a "child-sized gray stain." My toddler daughter wasn't filthy, and I wasn't blind, so I became convinced the owner was scamming my security deposit.

We went back and forth a number of times, a thrust-and-parry between two people who were each convinced of their own correctness. I found myself almost looking forward to the owner's next e-mail so that I'd have another opportunity to refute her, and I had the distinct impression she was doing the same with me. She wanted me to know she was a pillar of her community, and I wanted her to know that my child wasn't made of ash. She told me never to stay at one of her rentals again, and I responded, "Gladly." Ultimately, I left a review on the rental website that was as much about her as it was about her property; she left a reb.u.t.tal; and we went on with our lives.

But if I'm honest with myself, there was something in me that welcomed our exchanges, that liked feeling self-righteous toward a stranger. It allowed me to vent and to purge, to displace other daily frustrations onto a target. She served a psychological purpose for me, as I must have for her. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been vying for the last word.

The novelist in me thought, What if we'd kept going? What if we had painful histories and present truths that we wanted to avoid at all costs, even if it led to a slow-motion, head-on collision? So my "host" and I became Miranda and Dawn.

The Airbnb/HomeAway/VRBO world intrigues me, because there's a certain psychology embedded within it. When we choose to stay in someone else's home rather than a hotel, we're making an emotional as well as a financial decision. Being surrounded by someone else's taste (and in some cases, their actual possessions) impacts the kind of trip we intend to have. It might mean we want to feel like locals rather than tourists. Or it might mean we want to play an adult version of pretend. We want to feel how the other half lives, just for a little while.

In Dawn's case, she scrolled through many properties looking for just the right one, seeking a certain luxury that was very distinct from her real life. She wants to escape and to inhabit someone else's life, kind of like playing dress-up. On the other hand, Miranda's motivation is purely mercenary. She likes that people appreciate the house, but really, she needs the income for a reason that becomes clear as the novel unfolds. So there's a certain conflict set up right from the start that fuels the rest of the book. Dawn wants what (she thinks) Miranda has; Miranda just wants Dawn's money.

But that begins to change. While Dawn dreams of the happiness that she imagines is derived from financial security, Miranda becomes envious of Dawn's youth and beauty. Miranda yearns for a do-over, while Dawn desires to arrive at a higher station than the one she was born into. Then they Google each other, and that adds more fuel to the fire. Online footprints can easily feed misperceptions. On social media, people curate themselves for the world, creating a persona to show to others. It can be something of a double life. Unfortunately for Miranda and Dawn, they're a little too convincing.

As a writer, I tend to be inspired by contemporary events and phenomena. With my first novel, Don't Try to Find Me, I was intrigued by a real-life story about how a parent's use of social media helped find a runaway daughter. In A Necessary End, I was compelled by all the maddening hoops that people have to jump through in order to adopt a newborn. I like to take an emotionally charged situation and then imagine the people within it. I build the kindling, psychologically and dynamically speaking, and then I light the match. For This Is Not Over, I loved combining the aspirational psychology of Getaway.com with the personal psychologies of these two women who seem very different at the outset but grow more alike as the book progresses. Or perhaps they were alike all along; they just had to strip away the trappings.

Since I'm a practicing marriage and family therapist as well as a writer, I take my psychological fiction very seriously. I know I have to raise the stakes, since it is suspense after all, but it's important for the plot twists to derive from who these characters are. That's how it'll feel credible and real. I want readers to consider what they'd do if they were presented with a series of choices always escalating in complexity. The fatal flaws of the characters consistently push them closer to an edge they never saw coming but that feels inevitable to the reader. And who among us is without flaws? Who doesn't occasionally need a vacation from their real lives? Who doesn't, every now and again, want what they can't have?.

Q&A with Holly Brown.

Where did the idea of two women squabbling over an Airbnb-esque vacation rental property initially come from?

From my own vacation gone wrong, of course! (I'm only partially kidding.) I did stay in a rental with my family and was subsequently accused of leaving a "child-sized gray stain" on the sheets. I felt pretty offended, since my daughter was two at the time and being bathed regularly. The "host" and I went back and forth a few times, each of us increasingly aggravated with the other's failure to see her point of view. Then she kept part of my security deposit, I left a nasty review, and that was the end of that. Until, that is, I had the idea about what kind of women would keep going, past the point of no return.

How did your profession as a marriage and family therapist influence the characters' home and family life?

While I don't provide substance abuse treatment to those who are addicted, I do work with their families. I counsel around enabling and codependency issues, and how to hold boundaries. There's no way a parent can truly prepare for that most extreme scenario: having to cut off a child. It's very much like cutting off a limb. You feel the phantom pain always. So I didn't base Miranda on any specific client, but my professional immersion in the experience of family members was very much with me when I created her.

As for Dawn, she's the victim of childhood trauma that has shaped the way she relates to other people and the man she's chosen for her husband. She sees the world through a certain lens because of what she's been through. That's something I often see in my clinical work. As a therapist, my job is to supportively help correct the distortions. As a writer, my job is to create drama. Same knowledge base, very different objectives!

A recurring theme in the book is the notion that the two main characters, Miranda and Dawn, each believe the other to be living a life very different from her actual one. How does this idea relate to our cultural aspirations, and how is it exacerbated by social media?

I think staying in a VRBO or an Airbnb rental is often about wanting to feel like a local and not a tourist; it relates to the cultural ideal of authenticity. But paradoxically, it's also about trying on someone else's neighborhood, trying on their life. It's a very intimate thing to stay in another person's home, surrounded by their taste if not their actual possessions, and we form all kinds of impressions.

Dawn browsed all the listings and then chose to stay in Miranda's home. She wanted to live like Miranda for a long weekend. On the other hand, Miranda never really chose Dawn.

Their status imbalance quickly comes to the forefront once they start sparring. Then they look at each other's social media, and-surprise, surprise-it seems to confirm their biases about one another. So often, we find what we're looking for because we create it in our own minds. We turn our own perceived deficits into someone else's strengths.

Social media perpetuates this. People are curating the reality they want to present, and if you forget this, you can really wind up feeling inferior. I have a number of clients who've benefited from the intervention of just getting off every social media site so that they're not constantly interfacing with the supposed perfection of other people's lives. Then they can just focus on improving their own reality.

A lot of the exchanges between Miranda and Dawn are via e-mail and text. In this day and age, what are the risks and consequences of communicating behind a screen instead of face to face?

Face to face, we have to deal-in real time-with the consequences of our actions. We say something hurtful, we see someone flinch. Witnessing another person's reactions creates a layer of civility. It's at the heart of etiquette.

It's also at the heart of empathy. Humans are wired to empathize based on facial expressions and vocal cadences. We see that someone is sad or about to cry, or we hear a choked-back sob, and it'll inspire compa.s.sion. Or we can tell that someone is sincere when we might have thought they were false if we'd had only the written word, devoid of nuance.

Think of Internet trolls and cyberbullies. They don't have to see their victims, and it leads to a very dangerous sort of liberation, to an aggression that's unchecked by empathy.

If Miranda and Dawn had met earlier in the book, if they'd actually met, they could have defused the situation with relative ease. The events of this novel could happen only because of the dehumanizing channels by which the women communicate.

There are a lot of "little" details that both Miranda and Dawn don't tell their husbands that eventually s...o...b..ll into major events within the book. Why would you say the women are so reluctant to communicate honestly with their husbands? Do you think this reflects a trend in marriages today?

I wouldn't say all women are reluctant to communicate honestly with their husbands, but telling the whole truth is as fraught now as it's ever been. When we share absolutely everything, we risk hurting or alienating our partner; we risk exposing ourselves, maybe the parts we feel are undesirable. While we may have more honest marriages now than in the past (or at least there's a lot more talk about intimacy than ever before), I think the fundamental insecurities and vulnerabilities are the same as always. The impulse to withhold a small detail or tell a white lie is just part of human nature. We all want to be loved, and once we are, we don't want to risk losing that love by exposing ourselves, especially when we can just rationalize our omissions. One thing I know for sure from therapy is that people have an infinite capacity for justification.

In the book, Miranda has a drug-addicted son, and a lot of her actions and decisions are influenced by this fact. In your opinion, what are some healthy ways to support but not encourage someone who may be struggling with similar issues?

If someone you love has truly committed to their recovery and taken the crucial steps to remain sober, then the best way to support that person is with acceptance and patience. It's going to take a long time to learn a new, chemical-free way of being in the world. There may be relapses. But it's about commitment to the process. You need to let them know you believe they can stay clean and that it's worth doing, and insist that they continue to engage in that process.

However, if the person you love refuses to get help, or seems to be manipulating you (as is the case with Miranda's son), it's important to stand firm on what you know to be true. Confront in a supportive way. Hold your ground. Enabling is about going against your gut instincts and supporting the addiction by pretending to believe the lies and/or providing practical and financial support. I tell clients to think of it this way: you hate the addiction; why enable it to flourish?

You've written two books prior to This Is Not Over. What did you learn from writing those two that helped shape this one?

With each book, I come up with the idea for a situation, and then I figure out what type of people would inhabit that situation. I think: What characteristics, personality traits, and psychologies will propel the narrative forward? That's because it's really important to me that all the plot twists feel like they derive organically from who the characters are, when placed inside a pressure cooker. My job as a writer is to turn up the heat.

While my method was the same for This Is Not Over as for the other books, I feel like it flows more with each effort. I could visualize the characters with a lot of clarity right from the start. I always had the image of Miranda and Dawn playing this game of chicken, poised for a head-on collision that I could see coming but they couldn't.

What's next for you, writing-wise?.

I enjoy writing a hybrid of women's fiction and domestic suspense. I have a true interest in the psychological underpinnings of everyday life, because often, there's a lot there that's combustible. There's a lot of kindling waiting for a match.

With my next novel, I don't want to give too much away yet. Let's say I'm broadening the canvas. My first three novels were fairly different from one another in terms of plot, but they had in common that they were about just a few people and their loved ones. It was a fairly intimate setting. This time, I'm going to have a much bigger cast, and a lot of red herrings. It's a whodunit. And a who-keeps-on-doing-it and what-will-they-do-next.

Sorry to keep you in suspense! (Or maybe I'm not.).

ALSO BY HOLLY BROWN.

A Necessary End.

Don't Try to Find Me.