In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(105)
Gloria nodded her understanding.
“I think you and your husband are handling this situation correctly,” Tracy said. “I think the person with the right to decide what is best for Elle is Elle, when that day comes. Until then, the file will remain open, and unsolved.”
Gloria again dabbed her eyes with the tissue. “It’s admirable,” she said. “That you would come all this way just to find out that Elle is all right.”
“My husband wasn’t so diplomatic when I told him I needed to take a trip to Chengdu.”
“Is he here with you?”
“He’s at home, with our daughter.”
Gloria smiled. “So, you know why I did what I did.”
“I know.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“About a year. I’ve only been here a day and I already miss her.”
“Then I’d say your daughter is very lucky to have a mother who loves her so much. She will grow up to be a wonderful woman.”
Tracy smiled. “And I would say that Elle is lucky to have an aunt and an uncle who love her so much, and that she, too, now has the chance to grow up to be a wonderful woman. I hope everything works out for the best, for all of you.”
Tracy grabbed her purse and prepared to leave.
“Can you stay for dinner?” Gloria asked. “My husband will be home soon, and my parents. And I’m sure Elle would love to speak English with someone.”
Tracy smiled. “I’d like that,” she said. “Very much. Let me tell Bruce Wayne I’m going to be a couple more hours.”
“Bruce Wayne? You mean like the Batman?”
Tracy smiled. “He seems to think so. And it really isn’t my place to say he’s not.”
She left the table and walked outside, feeling as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She couldn’t save them all.
Maybe she didn’t have to.
But there was nothing wrong with trying.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wrote much of this novel while sheltering in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Every morning I would go online and check the numbers of infected and dying here in my home state of Washington. The first few weeks were especially scary as my son was traveling in Southeast Asia, and the in-state outbreak occurred in a nursing home just a few miles from my house. Like many, I initially compared the pandemic to the flu. I was wrong. We got my son home through Australia, my daughter came home from school, the world shut down, and we hunkered down for the long months. I learned to do Zoom book clubs, Zoom workout classes, and to make other video appearances. With time to reflect, I realized I had been born of a generation that had never suffered through the difficult times many Americans experienced during the First and Second World Wars and the Depression, and I am too young to have fully understood and appreciated the impact of the Korean and Vietnam wars on the young in our society.
I spoke to an older friend one afternoon, checking in to make sure he was okay, and I told him I felt bad for the young, to have had their lives disrupted. I told him of my nieces and nephews who would not get to celebrate their college and high school graduations. I told my friend about my nephew who was valedictorian of his high school class and would not get to give his speech or go to his senior prom, or finish out the school year with the classmates he started high school with four years ago. I told him of my son, living at home, rather than with friends as he embarked on a new career.
My friend said to me, “This has been a couple of months. Think of the people who went to Vietnam for an entire year, or who lived in Europe during World War II and suffered for a decade.”
He was right, of course. Perspective, however, often only comes with age.
I bring this up because many authors I spoke to during these difficult months have asked whether I will include COVID-19 in my novels. I have chosen not to. During the shelterin-place months, I received numerous emails from readers thanking me for the chance to escape their homes and the difficulties and loneliness they were enduring. This, I believe, is the primary purpose of a novel, to entertain a reader in the comfort of his or her home. To spur his or her imagination, make him or her tense or cry tears of joy or sadness. The really good novels can make us all reflect on our own lives, and all we have experienced, the good times and the not-so-good times.
So you will not find a reference to COVID-19 in In Her Tracks. Whether I put it in future novels will depend on the subject matter. As with the pandemic, time will tell. In the interim, I hope you are all surviving, and that this pandemic has not been too painful for you or those you love. I hope that life will return to normal, and we can all see and be with one another again at writers’ and readers’ conferences and at bookstores.
As with all the novels in the Tracy Crosswhite series, I simply could not write this one without the help of Jennifer Southworth, Seattle Police Department, Violent Crimes Section. Jennifer has been invaluable helping me to formulate interesting ideas and with the daily police routine, as well as the specific tasks undertaken in the pursuit of a perpetrator of a crime.
My thanks also to Kathy Decker, former search-and-rescue coordinator of the King County Sheriff’s Office and a well-known sign-cutter and man-tracker. Kathy has assisted me with multiple novels, and I’m fortunate to have access to her wealth of knowledge. She kindly took the time to review and help me with the tracking in this book.