The Year My Life Went Haywire

Prologue

The car is turning down a long, winding road on the side of a cliff. There's a sunset in the distance; Hope Whitney smiles as she watches it. She's driving to the school to pick up her daughter, and this time she has a surprise for her. She just got a promotion at her job; a good one. She's going to be a salaried manager, and then maybe in about a year she can go up to a corporate position. It will bring in about twice as much money as she makes now.

The sun is bright as it sets. It disappears behind a cloud for a moment, and Hope grins happily. Finally, it seems like she might be able to start taking care of her daughter like she should have for years.

The sun comes back out from behind the cloud brighter than before. It temporarily blinds her, and she's grateful there's not a turn again until the sun goes away.

Several things happen in the moment or two that she has before the sun disappears again behind a cloud.

The first thing that happens, is that another car starts coming down the road, which is too winding and too thin to make the cars visible to each other.

The second thing is that the car speeds up as the teenager inside looks down to check a message on his phone.

And the third thing happens quicker than any of the others. Hope turns the corner at the same time as the teenager, who has veered onto the wrong side of the road, and the sun lets up just in time for her to swerve away from him, and right off of the side of the cliff.

The teenager swears as he screeches to a stop, his eyes wide and his heart thumping. He calls nine one one with shaking fingers and tries not to look down at what he knows will be wreckage of what used to be a beat up blue car from God knows what year, a young-ish woman inside, most likely dead, definitely bleeding.

Sirens wail as police, fire department, and ambulances arrive less than ten minutes later. They're greeted with a woman with greyed skin, her dark hair tangled and matted with blood where her head hit the windshield as the car flipped, the seat belt having torn right out of the car and providing no support for her. Her neck, they deduce, was broken on impact. She died immediately and painlessly.

Desiree Whitney, Hope's daughter, will eventually get a ride home with one of her friends, assuming that her mother is working late tonight and is unable to come get her. A police officer will come to her home later in the evening, after Hope's body has been identified via her driver's license, to come and bring her to the station, where a social worker will keep her for the remainder of the week.

Hope's estranged mother, Desiree's grandmother, will be discovered as Desiree's last living relative (the identity of her father being unknown, at least to her). Adeline Whitney, being one of the richest women in the eastern United States, will find it in her heart to send a butler to wait at the airport for the arrival of her granddaughter next Saturday.

And that is the start of what will be the craziest year of Desiree Whitney's life.