Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,10
story first appeared, would include a collection of short stories featuring Troubleshooters series characters, knowing that sooner or later I’d have to get my butt into the chair in front of my computer and start writing.
But Frank O’Leary wouldn’t stop haunting me. I couldn’t not write his story. The man just wouldn’t leave me alone.
It’s going to sound for a second as if I’m completely changing the subject, but I’m not. See, a few years ago, my editor went to France on vacation and visited the site of the most famous D-Day ever—the WWII Allied invasion of the beach at Normandy. She brought photos back with her, and I was struck by the rows and rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David that marked the graves of the American servicemen who fell in that deadly battle. They stretch out, in a field there in France, as far as the eye can see.
Each one of those markers is a life lost. Each one of those markers signifies a family and friends who mourned the loss of a loved one—a son, a brother, a buddy, a husband—forever gone. It was hard for me not to well up with tears as I looked at those photographs. It’s been more than sixty years since those courageous men died, but I am still grateful and awed and devastated by their sacrifice.
Body counts are part of war. But numbers are cold and hard to comprehend. What does it mean, 9,387—the number of Americans buried so many years ago, in that cemetery in France?
9,387 Americans who never came home. 9,387 lives that did not continue.
9,387 Rosies.
Frankly, I don’t know what makes me more sad—thinking that each and every one of the brave men and woman who have died serving this country had their own Rosie, who grieves for them, or thinking that they hadn’t lived long enough to find their Rosie yet.
So I sat down and wrote “When Frank Met Rosie” because, since we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, there have been many thousands more Franks and Rosies. As of July 2012, as I update this piece, the number of servicemen and -women who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq is 6,527. That number may have grown by the time you read these words. 6,527 should not just be a number that makes us shake our head in remorse as we go about our daily lives. Those 6,527 are people who loved and were loved. They are—each and every one of them—stories cut tragically short.
Frank really wanted me to write his story—the good part. The part that happened before he lay dying in helo pilot Teri Howe’s arms on that hotel lobby floor. Before he knew that that fortune-teller was right—that he was going to break Rosie’s heart.
The most important part of Frank’s story was that he didn’t wait.
He ran—at full speed—into a relationship with a terrific woman who saw him clearly and loved him for who he was. Thank goodness for that because, even though he didn’t know it, the blind palm reader hit the nail on the head—he was almost out of time.
Life is way too short, and Frank and Rosie embraced it—and each other—completely.
Since I’ve written his story, Frank O’Leary doesn’t haunt me as much anymore. Oh, he’ll pop in from time to time—he wants me to write a major lottery win for Rosie. And he’s starting to nudge me to introduce her as a character in the main series of books. He’s getting tired of her being so lonely. He also hopes that you enjoyed reading about the start of the very best part of his too-short life.
WHEN ALYSSA AND SAM MET THE DENTIST
Autumn 2003
This story takes place after Gone Too Far and before Flashpoint.
Sam was hovering.
He’d already made up a multitude of excuses to come into the bathroom while Alyssa was in the shower, and now, while she brushed her teeth, he lurked just outside the door.
She’d scared him tonight.
They took turns when out on assignment. Tonight, Sam had been on lookout, hiding on the hillside, watching for headlights that would announce an approaching car, as Alyssa jimmied the cheap lock on the door to Steve Hathaway’s ramshackle cabin.
The place had been deserted. In fact, this entire part of the county was deserted—they were at least forty miles west of the booming metropolis of New Hope, in northern New Hampshire, population 473 at the height of ski season.
Getting inside that cabin undetected had been laughably easy.