This was not a good week for working on my fiction-writing project.  I spent the week madly prepping for our session at NAIS in Boston, not writing about Frank and Alice and the other characters, whom I will introduce soon.  Luckily, I have other parts already written. This part of the story is back in the pool in Florida, later in this scene that I wrote before.  In this part, Frank tells Alice some things about Norah, Alice's birthmother. Things that Alice isn't quite ready to hear.

Okay. It's #NovelSnip:

Alice’s breath came heavily, her fingers tingling as she loosely gripped the side of the pool.  She kept her eyes focused on the gutter.  “What?” she breathed.

“She sent letters to us, telling us what she was doing and asking about you.”

“She did?”  Lights emanated from the clubhouse, just beyond the deep end where Alice and Frank dangled from the side of the pool.  Alice blinked to orient herself, integrating this new, debilitating information.

“I wrote her back,” Frank continued.

“What did you tell her?”

“Your hobbies, how you were doing in school.”  Alice could feel Frank’s eyes travel her face, but she kept her head down, her breath mingling with the water.  “But like I said,” Frank continued, “we haven’t gotten one now for a couple of years.  So, I think she’s moved on.”

“Okay...” said Alice.

“So you can stop worrying about that.”

“Okay,” Alice repeated.  She dredged breaths from her chest as Frank hoisted himself out of the water above her, planting his knee heavily on the concrete edge and straightening up.  He turned and offered her a hand.  “I got it,” she said, raising her feet to the wall and pushing off on her back.

That's #NovelSnip.  Phew.  I'm at the point now where I feel like I need to map out the whole story.  I might Google about how to do that.  Someone's got to know.