WEBVTT

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Hey, y'all, there's a new
podcast I want you to check out.

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Let me tell you a little bit
about it. Dan and Nancy reside in

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the peaceful suburbs just outside of Portland, where they're living out their golden years.

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And though they met later on in
life, their marriage spans over two

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decades and it's seen as a pillar
of the community. It's a love story

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pulled right off the shelf. Now
Nancy, she's a struggling romance novelist.

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She likes to write about betrayals,
sex, and even murder. Dan he's

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a chef and a culinary instructor,
and he likes forging through the woods for

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fresh mushrooms and growing edible flowers.
But when Dan is shockingly found dead in

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his classroom, Nancy's once simple life
is turned upside down because as the investigation

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unfolds, Nancy finds herself at the
center of a murder case that could be

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ripped from the pages of her novels. Listen to Happily Never After Dan and

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Nancy, a story about what happens
when the line blurs between fiction and reality.

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You can listen early and ad free
on Wondery Plus. Now I'm going

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to play a clip from Happily Never
After Dan and Nancy. You can follow

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Happily Never After Dan and Nancy on
the Wondery app or wherever you get your

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podcasts. There is a link provided
in the description. It will take you

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directly to this podcast. Nicole Herman
was lounging on a beach in Croatia with

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a perfect view of the ocean.
It looks a lot like Oregon, with

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the exception that the water is like
turquoise. It was nice and sunny,

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exactly how Nicole pictured her honeymoon.
Nicole's new husband got up to take a

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swim, but she didn't join him. She was in the middle of a

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novel. The man on the book
cover had a square jaw and a come

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hitherstare All day, Nicole had just
been waiting to get back to him.

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He sat on the floor and gestured
for her to sit between his legs.

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He showed her how every gun worked, then loaded and unloaded each of them.

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Are you showing me this so I
can kill my husband? Travis spoke

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slowly, choosing each word with care. Maybe in the beginning you met Sunday

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to him, but now you're just
another loose end. You will know a

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hundred ways to kill you and make
it look like an accident. She pressed

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her forehead against his and closed her
eyes. Don't like you. I'd rather

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you were a knuckle dragging me under
thal unless I'm dead and this is over

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leaving, But I do plan to
use your body until I leave scandalous.

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I was probably reading anywhere from one
hundred and fifty to three hundred pages a

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day. Nicole had been laid out
on the beach for hours reading. She

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was already on book number two in
the Wrong Never Felt So Right series,

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and she was determined to get through
all five books by the end of her

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trip. Every book was more or
less the same burly former Navy seal comes

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to the rescue a beautiful young woman
on the run from her dangerous husband.

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It was an odd choice of reading
for a honeymoon, but away from the

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beaches of Croatia. Back home in
Portland, Oregon, Nicole was a deputy

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district attorney. Those are things as
a prosecutor that you somehow want to get

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ahead of and in front of,
And for months she and her team had

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been trying to solve a murder,
but progress had been slow. Direct evidence

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kept eluding them. As the pressure
mounted, Nicole and her team had turned

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to an unlikely lead, a series
of romance novels written by the dead man's

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wife. It was a little bit
meta in terms of what we were dealing

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with. Her books were packed with
details borrowed from their own lives as a

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local Portland chef and a romance novelist, details that the Das had no other

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way to get their hands on.
So now Nicole was doing homework on her

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honeymoon. I wasn't so sure there
would truly be anything, but it was

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sort of in the back of my
mind. What if something similar to this

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has played out in one of her
novels and it's all written right there for

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us to find. More shirts were
going to be unbuttoned, More dresses we're

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going to get unzipped, and every
new chapter, every new scene, could

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potentially be the one to crack the
murder case that was waiting for her back

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home once again, listen to Happily
Never After Dan and Nancy Early in adfree

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on Wondery Plus, Join Wondery Plus
in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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There is a link provided in the
description. It will take you directly

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to this podcast