Where am I going with all of this? What is going to happen to this family? How is it going to end?
These are questions I have been asking myself for the past year, and I was fairly conflicted, until about four months ago.
I began to see where I needed to go with this story and my only issue was how to get there.
There was an aspect to this story that I never covered and it always sat in the back of my mind. I love the characters of Tommy and Brittany, and I hope that’s obvious, but to me, they are sometimes too perfect, too clean.
What I mean is, they both have dealt with horrific trauma, but they seemed to get through it really well. It’s not that I want them to fall apart, but I always wondered what it would take for one of them to snap. Nobody handles everything as well as Tommy and a person can’t go through what Brittany has and just be okay.
The issues that have faced this family have almost always come from outside forces, but it was time for them to face the fact that sometimes, we all reach our limit.
Tommy isn’t made of stone. I adore his strength and his courage and his tenderness, but he loves his wife with every fiber of his being and being unable to stop the constant struggle she is facing just breaks more of him each day. He has been able to handle it up until now and with Naomi becoming so sick, he just couldn’t take it.
He said something any one of us could have said. I hope everyone understood where he was coming from. I think he deserves some slack. The problem is, Brittany was falling into her own pit of self doubt.
One of Brittany’s worst fears was that her demons would be too much for her husband. She always believed, on some level, that it would have to be. After she heard Tommy on the roof, something inside of her broke and the chain of events that led to the end of book 17 was like a tidal wave of horrors.
Josh took her and Jack.
Josh shot them.
Josh made her operate.
I like to say that Brittany’s worst fear is her life is too much for Tommy, but truthfully, her fear of infecting someone with HIV is the most paralyzing. What Josh did by forcing her to operate made her confront her fears in the most awful of ways.
Save her friend and risk infecting him or watch him die.
Operating on Jack sent Brittany into a downward spiral. She was unable to focus on the good in her life because the terror of the possibility of Jack being sick just paralyzed her.
Nobody could reach her.
This was the story I wanted to tell.
She has to find a way to come to terms with everything she has experienced. She is not Barbara or Brittany. She is both. One doesn’t cease to exist because she wants it to be. There must be a merging or an ending.
Brittany started this journey for me and I need to bring her story to an end.
It might not be the way we all want, or how we hoped, but I feel it will be true to who she is and how I have written her.
Tommy and Brittany’s story is at the heart of this series and book 18 will not disappoint.
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More tomorrow!
And soon- a preview.
Questions? Let me know 🙂
I have been questioning the reality of Tommy and Brittany ever since I became involved in how you write this series. I was finding myself thinking that in real life these two could not continue avoiding their background. I felt it would be way too complicated to ignore. And when Naomi entered the mix I had more concerns. Emotionally I can see how you are struggling to end this series. But, in truth they are the most complex couple. And their background would have to come to a boiling point.