And back to work

The nice thing about whining is I get my melancholia and frustration out of my system and kick myself back into working. Which happened today, thanks to yesterday. I reworked a section of NWFO where Brendan is brutalized for dating a Cajun girl, in Houston, and realizes his uncle...well, if he wasn't part of the attack he knew it was planned and let it happen. Same for one of the girl's brothers and, possibly, her father.

Brendan had been thinking of asking her to marry him, eventually. Thing is, she's learning Russian because she wants to join the State Department. She sees that as her future. Her father points out that she loses any opportunity to be employed with them, if she marries him. So that night he breaks a date he had with her and a couple of friends to see Jaws, wanting to think about it, but winds up being jumped and seriously hurt.

Then as he's recuperating, the girl comes to visit and he learns she would never have agreed to marry him. She already has her life laid out, and while he was fun to be around he wasn't husband-material. So now he's not only physically damaged, he's emotionally hurt, and despite his own code of never telling on people, he lets her know her brother participated in his beating. That breaks it off, completely.

Then he makes plans to disappear from his family's life...and does.

I wound up adding about 500 words to the story and may do more to deepen it. But once again, despite everyone else trying to tell him what he should and should not do, Brendan goes his own way. I like that, in him.