What would you do if you saw your husband kissing your
sister? Really kissing her with his hands in all the wrong places?
In my new mystery, Murder in The Buff, Molly Darter handled
that scenario by throwing everything that wasn’t nailed down at her husband.
She kicked him out of their home. She quit speaking to her sister.
She knew what she saw. Her eyes didn’t lie. Worse, her
husband looked guilty. He tried to talk to her about it but she couldn’t stand
to be around him. Every time she saw him that kiss of betrayal flashed in her
head again.
Molly and Hadley’s marriage is a rich vein of conflict in
this mystery. It echoes the theme of broken relationships that come into play
in the murder plot. Love and murder – it just doesn’t get any better than that
in my mind.
I write about people who make mistakes because I’m curious
about human behavior. Love can be very messy.
Some people honor their romantic commitments. Some people
cheat. Some cheaters fall apart when they get caught. (What were they thinking?)
In real life, these things never end well. Arguments get nastier. Lines get
drawn in the sand. Hurt pride rears its ugly head. Outsiders take sides. No one
can back down.
This type of emotional conflict is great fuel for a story,
plus as an author, I get to create the ending I want. That’s the beauty of
fiction.
But I’m curious as to how you might handle a situation like
this in real life or in the pages of a book. Would you go all ballistic? Would
you withdraw and cry out your hurt all alone? Would you get even? Would you
listen to what your spouse had to say?
Would your answer have been different twenty years ago?
What would you do?
Maggie Toussaint
Puzzling her way through life
