The Fifteen Minute Novel is an attempt to take a single prompt and use the last sentence written each day as a start for the next day. This year I had several prompts circling around a similar story, so I have combined them. However, the story starts the same way each day, with the last line from the day before and a timer set for fifteen minutes. The hope is to end up with a complete, if very rough draft by the end of the year. Some stories are better than others, but I always learn a whole lot about my own writing when I do this so for me it is not only a nice way to work out a story, but it is a tool for helping my writing get better. And so, we continue this story for 2024 with…
Day 227: By the end of the weekend Sophie had the patterns for the dress made and had checked her phone for messages from the police more times than she could count.
By the end of the weekend Sophie had the patterns for the dress made and had checked her phone for messages from the police more times than she could count. There had been no notification. She checked in with Kevin and told him that she would definitely need a ride Monday morning. With that settled she did her best to forget about things and get ready for the upcoming work week. Monday morning, Sophie woke up early and went down to the gym. As usual, Kevin was walking in at the same time.
“Morning,” he said. “Car still not back?” he asked.
“Nope,” she told him. “I’ll have to call the detective at lunch time to see when I am getting it back.”
“Detective?” he said. “I thought you dropped it off at the mechanics?”
“I started at the mechanics and then the police got involved,” Sophie told him. She explained while they both warmed up. By the time she finished they were both warmed up and in a place where talking became less. He shook his head and they both concentrated on pushing themselves through their morning work out. He had clearly been thinking about it as he worked out as once they both reached the cool down stage he returned to the subject.
“What kind of enemies do you have?” Kevin asked.
Sophie shook her head. She knew that Kevin knew Kristen from school and had not mentioned her. “None that I knew of. Until this year when work went haywire I was pretty much invisible.”
Kevin waved away the comment. “I saw you,” he said. He frowned. “You don’t think it could be Kristen?” he asked.
Sophie was relieved he brought her up first. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I wouldn’t think so. I would have thought that she was off dealing with the repercussions of setting the Havers parking lot on fire.”
Kevin let out a dry chuckle and shook his head. “You didn’t hear?”
Sophie shook her head. “As soon as she was out of my life I stopped paying attention to her.”
“Oh,” he said. “Normally I’d say smart to stay out of it, but in this case I don’t know what to say. Her layer, or the family lawyer I should say, got Havers to settle and not press charges. She had to pay a fine and agree to anger management therapy.”
Sophie stared at him as her treadmill slowed down helping her to cool off. “They paid a fine and she had to do anger management classes?” Sophie repeated. Kevin nodded.
Sophie looked away. She hadn’t much thought about it but assumed there would be more consequences.
‘The family didn’t want their name dragged through the courts,” Kevin added as Sophie thought about it. “The family name is part of the company. Bad for business.”
“I guess,” Sophie thought. “And I suppose if Havers didn’t want to press charges then it would just be damages.” She shook her head and her treadmill rolled to a stop, her cool down completed. It didn’t seem right.
‘Although,’ Sophie thought as she left the gym to go back to her apartment. ‘If she didn’t have any real consequences it might explain why she might escalate to tampering with my car.’ Sophie assumed that the no doubt large fee was not paid by Kristen personally. As she walked upstairs she wondered how Kristen’s husband was taking the situation. ‘Maybe he is helping her,’ she thought.
When Kristen had car trouble a year before she professed to knowing nothing about cars.
Ten til Midnight 