Don’t assume

His name isn’t really Dominic Snow.  Let’s get that out of the way first.  I just Googled that name a moment ago and up popped a nice nature photography site, and I don’t want anyone getting any ideas about the real Dominic Snow.  I guess I feel a sort of defense mechanism kick in when I speak of the fake Dominic Snow.  I don’t want people looking up his name, gathering cursory information and reading knee-jerk comments on forums and judging him.  And I’m not convinced he killed his wife, either, if you want to know the truth.  If you did know his real name, however, and did read some of those forum comments you might be quick to jump to other conclusions, as people seem to.  But I’ll get to that a little later.

After getting psyched up to begin the search for the boat, finally coming to the realization that Dominic was the only person who knew the name of the man who bought it, then discovering the fact that he was on trial for murder, my forward movement on the search faltered, and I had barely gotten started.  So much for there being little story to tell.  Did I really want to contact this guy?  He might be in a truly desperate state… and wouldn’t my request for information sit at the very bottom of his list of priorities, even if I could reach him?  The man was mired in an imbroglio that affected every aspect of his life - that currently was his life.  All I needed was a last name from him, and yet I hesitated.  For a year, in fact.  What was one more year after 20, after all?  I followed his trial, read his quotes, considered his argument - it was an accident, an awful underwater accident - and tried to remember as much as I could about this man who was in so much trouble.  I pushed away my aggravation at my mom for not knowing this basic information.  When I was finally ready to contact him, every phone number I could find was disconnected.  He had, understandably, retreated.  Ah, but email!  Good old safe, impersonal email.  He had owned a business, according to all the news stories, and I wrote to the business, assuming he wouldn’t be the one who wrote back.  I also wondered if anyone would take my request to reach him seriously, since he was obviously hounded regularly and probably only wanted to speak to close friends and family.  Luckily for me, both of those assumptions were wrong.