Not only did first reader lnhammer turn out to have already suspected what I was just figuring out … but when I went through the manuscript to plant clues (so that this new realization wouldn’t, like, come out of nowhere), I found those clues were already there. In fact, the story pretty much out-and-out tells the reader, in not-so-subtle ways, this thing I’m just figuring out.
This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. Still, some days it’s hard to believe my subconscious can really be quite this clever. Some days, I think this writing thing must be magic, that’s all there is to it. 🙂