She was sitting at her laptop reading a short story.
It was her habit to sit at her screen around the same time in the evenings. Reading short stories posted on a blog was just one of her regular activities. The story was titled ‘The Key’, and began with the opening line ‘It was a bitterly cold wind that swept down the street, and stamping his feet didn’t help’. She read it to the end; first she smiled, then she frowned. After a short pause, she left the blog site and went in search of Donald’s latest tweet.
A few days later, the reader was visiting the writer. After being there a while, she said, “I read your latest story.”
“Oh! Yes, did you like it?”
“Well, I did, but…”
The writer smiled. “Go on.”
“OK. This woman, the wife, she knew about the key, I get that, but how would she know that they were planning to elope? And how could she know where and when they planned to meet?”
He grimaced, “I have to leave some things for the reader to work out for themselves. I can’t be expected to do all the work.”
“You can’t?”
“No. Not really. For instance, in this case there are a number of ways the wife could have found out.”
“A number of ways, you say.”
“Well, to be honest, several dozen, but you’d need to have the persona of a fiction writer to dream that many up.”
“So, she found out by accident?”
“Not necessarily. She already knew basically what was going on, so she would have found a way; maybe email, messages, phone or basic eavesdropping. Maybe all of these. She was obviously resourceful, she would have found a way to monitor him. Remember, she could have got a lot more detailed information from the girlfriend when she visited.”
“Yes, the girlfriend, of course we only assume that she didn’t survive; absolutely no information about that.”
The writer frowned heavily, “Naturally, I do know what happened the day the wife visited the girlfriend, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh! Why not?”
“It… it was horrible!”