The Gift

If any of you have written fiction before then you might understand how authors get involved with their characters. I certainly got involved with mine. The main characters in Endings evolved as I wrote and many times I have said that at least a few of them were amalgams of the wonderful people I know. Biographical or fictional, they become people and they begin to react to their pretend surroundings with predictable behavior, behavior that is unique to them. Regan doesn’t act like Leslie and Leslie doesn’t act like Doc Hawley. It was a really cool thing to be part of the evolution of this cast.

Over the course of writing Endings I became attached to those people, like they were friends or family members. Sometimes I cried when sad things happened to them. I laughed. I got nervous. And when the end of Endings came along, I was conflicted. It was tempting to drag that story on and on, but it was time. To end. And I miss them. I miss Leslie’s tenacious hold on to her past. I miss good ol’ Doc Hawley and his medical practice. I miss Regan. Period.

So today when I discovered my mystery gift, I was so psyched because I realized that someone else…a reader, missed them too. I read a time travel novel several years ago. I love time travel books and discovering each author’s way of getting their characters back and forth in time. In this particular one, “Time and Again” by Jack Finney, if you set up your environment to look and feel like the time to which you want to travel, it could be so. It’s a lovely story and I recommend it, but the point is that to me and maybe to the mystery gift giver, the items in the gift brought us closer to Endings as a reality.

When I saw the gift bag sitting on my desk I sifted through its contents: a bottle of A&W root beer, a bag of baby carrots and some yogurt. There was also a card addressed to “Leslie.” I didn’t get the connection and assumed someone in my office had accidentally put it on my desk and it was meant for someone else. I fired off an email to my secretary and asked her to try to find the intended recipient. She promptly replied that someone had delivered it to me but she didn’t know who it was. I returned to the bag with renewed interest.
And then it hit me. The significance of those items hit me and I tore into the sealed envelope addressed to “Leslie.” My Dr. Leslie Cohen. It was a letter to Leslie from Regan! And there was no hint whatsoever regarding who might have sent the gift. It was a gift from Regan to Leslie. And for an instant it seemed like the real thing. And I pictured Regan writing the note. And I visualized the items in their fictional places. It was a magical moment.

I have sent out an email, asking that the mystery gift giver turn themselves in or be turned in for a reward (a free signed copy of Endings of course) so for now no hints on the content of the letter. That is how they will identify themselves. And also no hint regarding the significance of the root beer, carrots and yogurt. You’ll have to read Endings for that.