You know, I think that would be wonderful for the reader too. A slightly new story, no need to remember the details of what happened in the last episode, but I remember enough that I know these two characters pretty well, the tension between them is solid, the new revelations about Lenna are very interesting, and that horrible story about the fatal mauling!
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I came within an eyelash of witnessing just such a mauling (of a cat), and the almost-memory is as vivid in my mind as if the cat had not escaped at the last moment. Also in real life, our Nebraska cousin, the bachelor farmer, has a dog that pees on the neighbor's truck tires. And they have made it very clear the dog is not welcome to leave his scented graffiti there. "Culpability" might be the next prompt I will use - those who fail to keep their pet constrained are culpable, no matter what the punishment someone inflicts on a beloved pet who was given more freedom than it deserved.(Even so: "The punishment doesn't fit the crime" is my daily lament for things I say and do, not just what others suffer. How do other people get a free pass to be an ass, while I get crucified for the most trivial and above all un-intended offenses....)
I'm debating whether to delete the comment above, or edit the freewrite.
The point is this: Lenna was not angry or outraged, but sad. Just plain sad, and sorry, that people can carry so much hatred around and do harm with such a sense of being justified (entitled). The mauling of the dog was a "character arc," shall we say (and this is all backstory), the kind of arc @bex said was lacking in my novel "Ironwolf." Lenna didn't turn bitter or angry; she turned sad, and disappointed in the human race. So she may have moved to the city, as Rory says, but not for long. And I should rewrite the closing line too. But who is reading these comment boxes, and who cares? Right? Right???
You have too much talent, @owasco, and too little time, for digging into the drama behind the drama. Ultimately, nobody else need ever know what or who inspired Houdini or Marlin. For now, it's just me "thinking out loud" and feeling free to do so, because listeners lurk in the shadows, perhaps hoping to lull me into a false sense of security, but I know they're listening and judging, and it doesn't change me or who I am. Have I just stopped caring? Did I achieve
apathyer "detachment" at last?I understood Lenna to not be angry or outraged after witnessing her dog's horrible death, although I expected her to be from what I already knew of her ("Lenna must have wanted to shoot her" I also thought), and came to love her when she asked for forgiveness for the brutes. What a beautiful soul!
I have no idea why you want to delete or edit any of this.It's a great installment to the story, loose ends and all. And I really love the idea that you can leave loose unwoven ends between the stories - we spend too much time trying to make sense of things, when really there are a whole lot of unwoven bits in life. It seems natural to me to write this way. And as I said, takes pressure off the reader too. More fluid.
This episode could be my most favorite of this series so far. It's very moving, humbling, kind, and just.
You're amazing! you're the kind of reader a literary writer dreams of - more insightful and astute than the mass-market book fans. Lenna did start out feisty, a fighter ("the little tart", as in sassy) - but she's all heart. And after years of witnessing human cruelty, she's weary, and rather than fight, she wants to retreat into her hermitude and just pray for people and tend to her animals (my mom's cousin with her menagerie of strays and rescues is one of the role models for Lenna, but ironically the real-life cousin is very anti-Catholic, so I fipped that one). It's Rory who got sent into some anger management program or mental institution--DeLorean is still trying to pry it out of him or puzzle it out herself. Thank you so much for your close attention to this sprawling little story