Meghan

Quick Facts

A central protagonist whose murder opens Ask For Andrea, Meghan is the third victim of serial predator James Carson. First appearance: Chapter 1. Her remains in the Oquirrh Mountains become the key to the case pursued by Detective Domanska. After death, she forges a supernatural sisterhood with Brecia Collier and Skye. Distinctive image: a coral shoe, “spun gold” hair, and a signature deep pink lipstick.

Who They Are

Meghan is a hopeful, clear-eyed young woman whose ordinary search for love collides with predation. Killed and abandoned in the Oquirrh Mountains, her spirit endures months of isolation beside a single coral shoe, transforming helplessness into watchful purpose. The discovery of her body propels the investigation that will unmask her killer and draws her into an afterlife coalition with other victims—turning private grief into collective power. Even as a ghost, she maintains agency: choosing her appearance, guarding her remains, and choosing when to act.

Personality & Traits

Beneath her romantic optimism is a realist who plans, adapts, and protects others—even after death. Meghan’s emotional clarity becomes a tool: she learns what she can control and refuses to surrender the rest.

• Pragmatic yet hopeful: Online dating has tempered her expectations, so she meets “Jimmy” with “expectations in check” (Chapter 1)—but she allows herself to be delighted when he seems genuine. This openness makes her tragedy sharper and her afterlife hope more courageous.
• Resilient and determined: Alone in the mountains, she keeps vigil by her coral shoe for months (Chapter 10). The choice to wait is agency, not passivity: a strategy to be found and to be named.
• Resourceful under constraint: She discovers she can channel strong emotion to influence animals, driving off coyotes and scavengers from her remains (Chapter 4). Her spectral “learning curve” reframes haunting as protection.
• Empathetic and loving: Memories of family—especially Bubbie Rosie—anchor her; when she meets Brecia and Skye, she instantly shares pain, memory, and purpose, embodying the theme of Afterlife and Sisterhood.
• Self-definition through image: She refuses to be frozen in the clothes of her death, shifting into “sweats and my John Lennon t-shirt” (Chapter 10). The choice signals ownership of her story, not the killer’s.

Character Journey

Meghan’s arc moves from isolated victimhood to chosen, communal power. In life, she reaches for connection; in death, she wakes to violence and disorientation (Chapter 1), then to a new kind of fear: not of harm, but of being forgotten (Chapter 4). She tests the boundaries of her ghosthood—guarding her body, shaping her appearance, searching memory for solace—until she commits to a simple, radical act: wait by the coral shoe so she will be found (Chapter 10). Contact with Bubbie Rosie reframes death as a continuum with choices (Chapter 16). Once discovered, she shadows the investigation, aligning her will with a living ally. Meeting Brecia and Skye confirms that her suffering is part of a pattern and that solidarity can be a weapon. The arc completes when she uses her voice—literally—to help save others, transforming her death into prevention and her grief into strategy.

Key Relationships

• James Carson: To Meghan, he initially appears as “the needle in a deep haystack” (Chapter 1), a rare good match. That illusion collapses into betrayal and brutality, and he becomes the fixed point of her post-mortem purpose—making him answerable within the theme of Vengeance and Post-Mortem Justice.
• Brecia Collier and Skye: Meeting them ends Meghan’s isolation and reveals a shared language of memory and power (Chapter 35). She is stunned to learn Brecia witnessed her murder in spirit; their bond is immediate, and together they amplify their abilities and their resolve.
• Detective Domanska: Meghan becomes the detective’s silent partner, nudging with “hunches” and aligning herself with Domanska’s relentless, procedural courage (Chapter 28). The relationship bridges worlds: Meghan grants urgency and insight; Domanska grants the machinery of justice.
• Bubbie Rosie: An anchor of love who meets Meghan within memory (Chapter 16), Bubbie offers comfort and a choice: move on or remain. Their connection reframes death as relationship rather than erasure.

Defining Moments

Meghan’s story turns on choices made in the face of constraint—what she can do when so much is taken.

• The murder (Chapter 1): Awakening as she’s strangled with her own scarf, she runs without understanding she’s dead. Why it matters: the scene establishes the novel’s moral center—Meghan’s consciousness and will—separate from her killer’s violence.
• Claiming the coral shoe (Chapter 10): She discovers a shoe near the road and makes it her lighthouse. Why it matters: it converts a discarded object into a strategy for being found; hope becomes logistics.
• Learning to guard her body (Chapter 4): She uses fear and fury to drive away scavengers. Why it matters: haunting becomes caretaking—a refusal to let her killer erase her.
• Speaking with Bubbie Rosie (Chapter 16): Memory opens into dialogue with the afterlife. Why it matters: the scene grants agency within limbo; staying is a choice tied to love and justice.
• Being found (Chapter 19): A hiker’s photo leads to a ranger and then Domanska, formally launching the case. Why it matters: her vigil works; the living are finally brought into alignment with her need to be seen.
• Meeting the sisterhood (Chapter 35): At Boise PD, she learns she was never truly alone. Why it matters: isolation reorganizes into coalition; their shared memories become a tactical resource.
• The cabin escape (Chapter 46): She helps April Carson and her daughters by shrieking in the killer’s ear, sending him the wrong way and buying time to call police. Why it matters: Meghan’s death protects the living; her voice now saves what his tried to silence.

Symbols & Motifs

Meghan’s coral shoe condenses her resolve: a bright, ordinary object turned signal flare, proof she will not vanish. “Drifting” into memories marks love as a technology of the afterlife—how she learns, chooses, and connects. The Oquirrh Mountains shift from terror to vigil, a purgatory transformed by patience and purpose. Her clothing choices in death—exchanging the outfit of violence for a John Lennon t-shirt—quietly reclaim her body and narrative.

Essential Quotes

The needle, I’d called him when I told Sharesa about our upcoming date. As in, the needle in a deep haystack of bachelors on the MatchStrike app: divorced dads with kids, complicated custody agreements, and cringey gym-bathroom selfies.
— Chapter 1

This line captures Meghan’s blend of discernment and optimism. She knows the landscape and still hopes for rarity—making the later betrayal emotionally devastating and thematically potent.

I thought about the sign in the bathroom at Gracie’s. Ask for Andrea.
Andrea couldn’t help me now. No one could.
— Chapter 1

The safety script fails her in real time, exposing the gap between communal warnings and private peril. The novel then follows Meghan as she constructs a new kind of help from beyond—solidarity among the dead and influence upon the living.

It wasn’t that I was afraid something bad would happen to me. The worst thing had already happened. Fear felt different than it had while I was alive. My heartbeat didn’t speed up. My breath didn’t speed up. I just felt the terror of being alone, of being lost, of being dead, in every part of me that was left.
— Chapter 4

Meghan distinguishes mortal fear from the dread of erasure. The passage reframes the stakes of the afterlife: not pain, but invisibility—and motivates her vigil to be found.

“I can hear you, Bubbelah. I’ve been waiting for you.”
— Chapter 16

Bubbie Rosie’s greeting transforms memory into reunion. It affirms that love survives violence and offers Meghan a choice that restores dignity amid limbo.

I stared at her in disbelief. She flinched at my gaze, as if I might be gearing up to scream at her. Instead, without really thinking about it, I brushed past Kittleson—who was still yammering on about something that didn’t sound very important at all—and leaned in to give her a hug.
— Chapter 35

Meghan’s instinct is connection, not accusation. The hug shifts the tone from isolation to sisterhood, modeling the emotional intelligence that powers their collective fight.