Sean Lancaster was supposed to be the problem.
When I first imagined Reasonable Doubt, Sean was the man sitting on the wrong side of an interview-room table. Twenty-six years old. Former Marine. A history of fighting. A murder charge hanging over his head.
On paper, he looked guilty. And that was precisely the point. I wanted Casper, and eventually the reader, to meet Sean the same way the world meets him: with a list of facts that seem to tell you everything.
Then I wanted Sean to prove how little facts can tell you about a person.
The Man Everyone Thinks They Know
Sean arrives in Reasonable Doubt with a history. He has spent time in juvenile lockup. He joined the Marines to beat prison time. He came home with a Purple Heart and an injured knee. There have been bar fights and bad decisions and enough trouble attached to his name that when he is accused of murder, believing the accusation isn’t particularly difficult for the people around him.
That’s important, because I never wanted Sean to be the obviously innocent man who simply found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That would have been too easy. I wanted him to be complicated.
Sean has a temper. He can be defensive. He doesn’t always make the smartest choice when he feels cornered. And when someone expects the worst from him, sometimes he’d rather give them exactly what they’re looking for than let them see how much their judgment actually hurts. He has spent a long time learning how to survive being misunderstood. What he hasn’t learned is how to let someone understand him.
And then Casper walks into the room.
The Armor
One of the things I came to love most about Sean is the contradiction at the center of him. He’s tough because he’s had to be. But toughness isn’t the same thing as being unbreakable.
For much of his life, Sean has learned that vulnerability has a price. So he protects himself with anger, sarcasm, silence—whatever keeps another person from getting close enough to discover where the tender places are.
Casper doesn’t respond to any of it the way Sean expects. He doesn’t frighten easily. He doesn’t dismiss Sean because of his past. And, perhaps most unsettling of all, he pays attention. Casper sees him, not the defendant. Not the bartender with the record and the bad temper. He see Sean.
And I think that’s where their love story really begins. Not with attraction, although there’s certainly plenty of that. It begins with being seen.
More Than Innocent or Guilty
There’s an obvious question running through Reasonable Doubt: Did Sean Lancaster commit murder? But while I was writing, another question became much more interesting to me: What does Sean deserve if he is found not guilty?
Is innocence enough? Does he simply get to walk out of the courtroom and return to the life he had before? Or does he get to believe that his life can become something more?
That’s where Casper changes things. Casper’s job is to defend Sean against a murder charge. But somewhere along the way, he begins defending something Sean has almost stopped defending for himself, the possibility of a future. Sean knows how to fight for his life. Learning that he is allowed to want a life worth fighting for is much harder.
The Sean Beneath the Surface
When I picture Sean, I don’t think first about the handcuffs or the courtroom. I think about the smaller moments. The moments when the bravado slips. The way someone who expects to be abandoned reacts when another person doesn’t leave. The discomfort of being cared for when you’ve spent years convincing yourself you don’t need anyone. The terrifying realization that you suddenly have something to lose.
Those were the moments when Sean stopped being a character I was writing and became, in some strange way that writers will understand, Sean. I knew how he’d react before I consciously decided. I knew what would make him angry. I knew what would make him retreat. And I knew that beneath all that armor was a man who wanted something incredibly simple:, to be chosen. Not because someone felt sorry for him. Not because he needed saving. Just because he was Sean.
Why Casper Matters
Casper doesn’t rescue Sean. That’s an important distinction for me. Sean is perfectly capable of surviving without Casper. He’s been surviving for years. What Casper gives him is something different. He gives Sean a reason to stop merely surviving.
Their relationship isn’t powerful because one man fixes the other. It’s powerful because Casper sees the parts of Sean that Sean has spent years being ashamed of and doesn’t turn away.
And Sean does something equally important for Casper. He disrupts him. Casper’s carefully ordered life, his control, his certainty about where boundaries should lie, Sean walks straight through all of it.
Neither man leaves the relationship unchanged. That’s the love story I wanted. Not you saved me.
You saw me. And because you did, I finally saw myself differently too.
Finding Sean
Looking back, I think that’s why Sean became so important to me. His story asks us to consider how quickly we decide who someone is based on what we can see or perceive. But human beings are always more complicated than that. And sometimes the most important thing another person can give us isn’t forgiveness or rescue or even love. Sometimes it’s doubt. Doubt about all the terrible things we’ve come to believe about ourselves. Maybe that’s another meaning hiding inside the title Reasonable Doubt.
Sean Lancaster enters the story as a man everyone thinks they understand. I loved discovering how wrong they were. And I hope you did, too.
— Patty
