Acknowledgments Thank you to all of you who have written me with feedback on my previous submissions. A big thank you each to Ripley and JumbledMind for being my capable counselors in this new endeavor. Their thoughtful contributions have certainly made everything about this story better. Preface I was about to start tinkering with the next part of Alex a...
Time is supposed to heal everything, but two long and agonizing months had passed since everything had happened and I was still struggling to adjust to life without Jason and Natalie. Fortunately for Jason, the district attorney reversed course and offered him a very lenient plea deal that he accepted as long as he testified against Marcie and turned over...
This story is a product of a frenzied 5-day writing spree. When I first looked at the 40000-something word monster I'd created, I decided to leave it be for a while, and completely forgot about it. Many moons later, I found it by accident while looking for some documents and thought "It'd be a massive waste if I wrote all this for nothing." So I came to the...
--Preface-- Once again, thank you all for your feedback and comments -- they are what motivate me to keep writing! This one took a while to get across the finish line, so thank you for your patience (and encouragement!). This story has been percolating in my head for a while, and when I heard Paul Simon's Graceland on the radio one day, the lyrics helped m...
2013 Two to tango Part 1 Chapter 1 "Damn weather!" Jeanine grumbled as she made her way through the lunch hour crowd in the sweltering heat. What had possessed her to accept her friend's invitation for lunch when she could have sent her assistant to pick up a salad at the snack bar on the ground floor of her building and eaten at her desk in the comfort o...
1949 -- In the beginning Prologue Julia Monroe leans her forehead against the window of the railroad car, her mind barely registering the scenery streaming by. As a young teenager, on her way home from the boarding school, she was fascinated by it, imagining all sorts of wonderful stories set on fantastical worlds. This time, Julia is thinking of a very di...
Part 1 Prologue For as far as she could remember, long hours on the road had always been soothing to Stéphanie. She used to find peace of mind in the endless miles, as a passenger with her trucker dad, then as a driver. Even as a child, the road was her own form of meditation. She could see her father's concentration and tried to imitate it. Eyes roaming...