Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

If she went over the story enough times, she could nearly convince herself that, in the end, he’d chosen to jump. Sloane stretched across the table and squeezed both Grace’s and Ardie’s hands, and Ardie felt a little sorry for men because they never got to hold hands with each other.

When I started writing the book, I believed Katherine alone killed Ames and went to jail for it when the cleaning staff turned her in. As I kept writing, I re-conceptualized the ending entirely. I considered everyone fresh. Who could have killed Ames? The only person I was certain didn’t kill Ames was Sloane. She confesses too much both to herself and others. If she did it, she would reveal it in the narrative. I even considered whether Ames might have actually killed himself. I didn’t believe that he would. I also tried the idea of not ever revealing who exactly killed Ames, but instead having the end play out through the “we” narrator and therefore the reader would know that a woman killed him but not which woman. My editor smartly pointed out how unsatisfying that would be to anyone who reached the end. So far no one has said to me: Gee, I wish I never know who did it! That’s fair. And I like where it ended up, with Ardie and Katherine working together. I very nearly left Grace not knowing that she wasn’t, in fact, responsible for Ames’s death, but in the end, I wanted a more hopeful, fresh start for Grace.