The Ones We Trust (23 page)

Acknowledgments

As always, enormous gratitude goes to my agent, Nikki Terpilowski, for taking a chance on me all those years ago, and for still believing in me now. To my editor, Rachel Burkot, for your keen eye and patience. Thank you for asking all the right questions and pushing me to be a better storyteller. To the entire publishing team at MIRA, from editing to design to sales and marketing, thank you for making this little writer’s dreams come true; I am beyond thrilled to call MIRA my home.

To my fabulous friends, all of you, but especially: Corey Prince and Nicole Wise Williams. Thank you for being so generous with your time and advice early on, and for cheering me on from the very first word. To Hannah Richardson, for sharing your knowledge of rowing, and pointing out ever so sweetly where I’d flubbed; maybe one day we’ll actually get to meet? To Lara Chapman, Koreen Myers (oh, those flowers!) and Alex Ratcliff. You girls are the very best sistahs I could ever ask for, and our writing retreats are the highlight of my year. To Elizabeth Baxendale, Christy Brown and Lisa Campagna, for the reads and laughs and always-support. I can’t imagine my life without you three in it. To the ladies of Altitude—Nancy Davis, Marquette Dreesch, Angelique Kilkelly, Jen Robinson, Amanda Sapra and Tracy Willoughby. Your friendship and support means the world. Huge, squishy love to all of you.

To the readers who make all of this possible. Thank you for all the emails, Tweets and Facebook messages, for your passion for books and your love of the written word. Because of you I want to write a better story every single time.

To the bookstores, bloggers, reviewers and book clubs that have supported my work. I am humbled and incredibly grateful.

To my parents, Diane and Bob Maleski, who never, not once, laughed when I said I might like to write a book, and my in-laws, Saskia and Frans Swaak, who have always treated me like one of their own.

And finally, to Ewoud, Evan and Isabella—this, all of it, is for you.

THE ONES
WE
TRUST

KIMBERLY BELLE

Reader’s Guide

Questions for Discussion

1. Abigail feels responsible for Chelsea’s suicide, so much so that she abandoned a successful career because of it. Can you relate to how Abigail allows guilt to drive her decisions? What other big decisions in the story does her guilt have a part in shaping?
   
2. What does the title,
   The Ones We Trust
   , mean to you? Discuss all the ways the characters had to learn to trust, not only others but also themselves.
   
3. As a journalist, Abigail believes that public enlightenment is the cornerstone of democracy, and that it is not just her job but her duty to seek and report the truth. Her father’s life and career, on the other hand, were built on a need-to-know basis. Whose viewpoint do you relate more to? Why? In the end, how did Abigail and Tom reconcile their beliefs with what happened?
   
4. Jean’s request sparks Abigail’s desire to write again, “something positive and good and important,” but her fear of making the same mistakes holds her back. Can you relate to wanting something that scares you? How do your own fears play a role in the choices you make in your life?
   
5. Abigail claims that “words, even when they’re carefully crafted, can be just as deadly as a bullet.” Do you agree?
   
6. What scenes or developments in the novel affected you most? Which character’s motivations and choices could you most relate to?
   
7. How does public perception of Gabe differ from how Abigail views him? What was your impression of Gabe? Did your perception of him change during the story?
   
8. Gabe is determined to discover the truth about who shot his brother, even lying and stealing in order to get it. Do you think his methods were justified? Can you relate to his steadfast belief that the truth would bring closure to his tragedy?
   
9. According to Jean, “Anger can be like a buoy. Sometimes it feels like the only thing holding your head above water, but you have to let go of it at some point. Otherwise, you’ll never make it back to shore.” Do you understand what she meant by this? And is letting go of anger ever that easy?
   
10. How do Abigail and Gabe change over the course of the novel? Which character changes the most, and which the least?
    

A Conversation with the Author

The Ones We Trust
is a story about whether the truth is enough to overcome betrayal, and how deep loyalty and trust run even in the closest of families. What was your inspiration for this story, and what did you learn from your own telling of it? What do you hope readers learn?

The inspiration for this story began with Abigail and her relationship with her father. I’m fascinated by people like Tom, people who do bad things for (in their mind, at least) good reasons, and I wanted to explore how far you can stretch the bonds of trust and loyalty with someone you love. When things are not as they seem, it’s incredibly easy to misjudge someone’s behavior, to assume the worst of them, to react inappropriately because you don’t understand. And even in the closest of relationships, trust is not a given, and we don’t give it infinitely. There’s a point where doubts start to surface, and we draw a line in the sand, where we can no longer justify what we are experiencing with the belief that the other person is behaving with good intentions.

But I also believe that trust is a two-way street. That’s one of the notions I wanted to express with this story, that sometimes in order to receive trust, we must be willing to make our own leap of faith and give it, too. Tom’s behavior was restricted by his loyalty to the army and the secrets he was protecting, but to me, that moment when he expressed regret for not giving Abigail the same thing he was demanding of her was so powerful. Gabe took a similar leap of faith when he invited Abigail to commemorate Zach’s death with him and his family. After everything he’d been through in the past year, after all the ways he’d been betrayed and traumatized, I never underestimated how difficult that was for him.

What were the challenges you faced writing a novel about a military family’s tragedy and an army cover-up? What did you want to say?

The military angle was for me the hardest part about writing this story. War doesn’t just take place on a battlefield, and our soldiers aren’t the only heroes. What about the parents who send off their sons and daughters, the spouses and siblings and children left waiting at home? They are just as heroic and courageous, their sacrifices different, maybe, but just as great as the men and women fighting on the front lines. Above all, I wanted to be respectful to all of them, not just the soldiers, but also the people who love them.

An inherent part of any war is tragedy. People die, and families lose loved ones, and those left behind have to find a way to pick up the pieces. Gabe is so desperate to know who shot his brother, and I think searching for answers, trying to piece together what took place in those last moments, is a very human response to losing someone. He sees it as the way to give closure to his family, and if the truth hadn’t been so horrible, he might not have been wrong.

But my overarching message was that things aren’t always what they seem. Gabe didn’t understand Abigail’s motivations at first, and Abigail didn’t understand her father’s. Tom looked like the bad guy for so much of the story, and it was only once she discovered the truth that she realized she’d misjudged him, that his reasons for setting the cover-up in motion were noble, especially in light of how Chris was trying to exploit Zach’s death.

How did your vision for the subplot, Maria Duncan’s sad but messy reality, come to light? Why did you decide to weave it in with Abigail’s story, and how did it play up the larger, overarching themes of the novel as a whole?

Maria began purely as part of Abigail’s backstory, but the deeper I dug into Abigail’s character, the more I realized how Abigail’s guilt really drove a lot of the choices and decisions she makes in the present story. I began to think about how I could make things harder for Abigail, since my job as author is to put my characters through the proverbial wringer. Weaving Maria’s story into Abigail’s meant she would be constantly reminded of all the mistakes she made the first time around. Guilt is such a powerful emotion, and much like Gabe and Ben with their anger, Abigail would have to find a way to let it go before she could move forward.

Which characters came to life more easily than others? How was your experience of writing Maria, a complicated and flawed individual?

For me, the biggest challenge of writing any story is taking the armature of the suspense plot—in this case, Abigail and Gabe’s search for the truth intertwined with Maria’s tragedy—and developing characters that are mine, that feel as if they’re real and not simply reacting to the plot points I create for them. I know I’m on the right path once they start talking in my head and telling me what happens next. Abigail and Gabe were the first to start, and the rest filled in from there.

I wrote many different versions of Maria, and I wrote a lot of her story from her point of view that didn’t make it into the book. Talk about a character talking in my head! Maria wouldn’t shut up. She kept trying to hijack my plot, and I had to keep beating her back, because
The Ones We Trust
is ultimately Abigail’s story. As tragic as Maria’s story was, the most interesting thing about it was how it intersected with Abigail’s.

How do you relate to Abigail? What does she do that you would never do?

The obvious answer is that we both love to tell stories, but my connection with Abigail goes much deeper than that. When Abigail goes after the truth, she clamps on like a pit bull and refuses to let go until she gets it. Like her, I am very disciplined and tend to be hyper-focused when I’m writing, and I have a hard time letting the story go to, oh, I don’t know...shower and put on real pants, for example.

But Abigail has a lot more pluck than I do in real life. She’s never timid in her interactions with Gabe and Jean, with Maria and Graciela, and she always speaks her mind. I’m not that open with people I don’t know, and it takes me longer to warm up to them. But it’s a quality I definitely admire and wish I had more of.

Why did you decide to set the book in our nation’s capital? What does the DC setting add to a story about a military family looking for truth and justice? Did you consider working in more political angles?

When I came up with the suspense plot, I needed a setting with a strong military presence, and DC was a good fit. It was also the perfect backdrop for what I wanted to say about truth, justice and doing the right thing under incredibly difficult circumstances. The city comes with its own set of assumptions about back-room politics and lust for power, and I liked the dichotomy it provided—between good and bad, between loyalty and betrayal, between idealism and dysfunction—for this story.

And no, I never considered any political angles. In fact, I stayed away from them intentionally. Politics is such a charged subject, and it has the tendency to take over any conversation, including fictional ones, and I didn’t want the Armstrongs’ story to be swallowed alive by a debate about military affairs or foreign policy. So, though there are a few references to politicians—it is Washington, DC, after all—I don’t attach political opinions or leanings to any of them on purpose.

Your previous novel is also a complicated family saga. Have you always been interested in family dramas? What about this genre is so appealing, do you think?

The stories of families, especially families in the midst of a major upheaval, have always pulled at me. I’m constantly interested in how family members respond to dark times, how they find forgiveness after a major betrayal, how they rebuild loyalty and trust. We talk a lot about unconditional love in families, and that is such a powerful emotion, yet are there really no constraints? I think for a lot of people, for a lot of families, there are limits to what is acceptable. Not every family comes out on the other side of a trauma intact, but strong families find a way to stick together, to forgive and move forward as a stronger unit. To me, the whys and hows of both scenarios are fascinating.

Do you let anyone read your early drafts, or do you prefer for no one to see a manuscript until it’s finished? That being said, can you tell us a little about your next book?

Writers are typically an insecure lot, and I’m no different. I don’t like anyone seeing anything less than my best work, so I keep my really early drafts between me and my computer hard drive. No one, not even my husband or mother, reads a scene until it’s, well, not perfect but at least polished enough that I’m pleased with where it’s going. The only exception to this is my critique partners, because their job is to highlight all my sucky words and tell me how to fix them.

And, yes! The story I’m working on currently is about Carly Rose Wilson and her mother, a country music legend who died at the height of her career. When new rumors about her mother surface, two people stand between Carly Rose and the truth—her father, a man who will lose everything if the press discovers his secret, and her Alzheimer’s-ridden grandmother. An encounter with her first love, Rex, introduces her to his young son, the one person who can still coax lucid moments from her grandmother. With their help, Carly Rose discovers unsettling truths not just about her mother, but about the people she has always trusted most—while Rex’s nearness resurrects memories and feelings she thought were long buried.