Talk to me about how you developed the Hughes family and their history.

So the initial idea I had for a story was for Neal to meet a woman and fall for her and then later find out that she was Hughes' daughter. Hughes would not like this, but they would already be in love, so he would have to accept Neal as, eventually, a son-in-law. I could never get that story off the ground, so I started to come up with other story ideas that involved Hughes because I really wanted to write something where Hughes and Neal had to forge a friendship.

I love to read/watch stories about kidnapped children who are returned home after many years, so I started working that angle. I knew I wanted to use a medical event – some form of transplant – and I knew that I wanted it to be Hughes' daughter that needed the transplant. I liked the idea of Neal and Emma being twins, and it gave the story more emotional weight – that these twins were torn apart, that the Hughes family had one twin but had lost the other, that Emma would feel like she was missing something her entire life and maybe Neal would feel that way too.

The Deep End of the Ocean was a movie that I really liked for the subject matter, and I'd also read the book on which it was based – highly recommend the book! The mother in that story had withdrawn from her family emotionally, and I wanted to explore that to a bit of a lesser degree with Cathy. She was still there for the kids, but she had to deal with Daniel's disappearance in her own ways.

Also, the older brother in that movie/book had a lot of guilt about losing his younger brother, and I also wanted to explore that with Michael. I wanted him to be a strong but wounded adult. And I thought it would be a nice little irony if he were also a Marshal and knew a little about Neal. There's some nature vs nurture arguments there that one could make with them that I rather enjoy. Would Neal have still become a criminal if he had grown up as Daniel Hughes? Would Michael still be a Marshal if he had been kidnapped instead?