Here’s irony for you.
Sutton, in the grips of a sudden creative urge, flipped off the television before the story of the lovers’ murders finished playing, and so missed what would have been a very important moment in her life.
The story France24 followed with, rare for a European television station, was about the sudden disappearance of an American woman. A writer. Normally this foreign news wouldn’t be worthy of coverage, but the woman was the wife of a celebrated and much-loved author who was very, very popular in France. Not only did his book sell well in French-speaking territories, but he’d once written the scripts for a hugely popular television show that was still in syndication.
She missed the headline: Author’s Wife Missing.
She missed the delicious broadcast innuendo that followed: author is suspect in wife’s disappearance.
She missed the fabulously replayable footage of her gorgeous husband standing in the middle of the street in front of their house, pale and wild, screaming at the reporters while rain hammered him and made his thick hair plaster to his head.
She missed the still shot of him flipping the bird as he entered the house.
She missed the subsequent footage of a towheaded blonde cop entering her sanctum.
She missed the interviews given by her best friends, the people she hadn’t trusted with the truth of what was happening in her world.
She missed it all.
If she hadn’t missed it, what would have happened differently? Would she have realized she was truly loved? That she’d caused worry and concern throughout a community, and now, the world? Would she have packed her things and gotten on a plane immediately?
If only she had. If only she had.