Cross the Line

Cross the Line - Prologue and Chapter 1

Prologue

Thursday, May 1, 2008. 10 a.m.

Grace stared at the trees through her apartment’s sliding glass door. The knot in her stomach was so tight she wanted to throw up.

She had to move away from the glass door, to act, but she couldn’t get her feet to move.

She raised her mug of tea to her lips and swallowed, trying to remove the lump in her throat. She looked down into her mug ... the tea was cold.

How long had she been standing there?

How long had she been avoiding ... 

Grace looked back out the sliding glass door, then a thought occurred to her. Interesting. She’d stood in this exact spot seven months ago, when she had her first realization that something in her life was off. It was insane to think that, back then, she’d had no idea how much her life would change. 

Grace looked at the clock. 10 a.m.

She closed her eyes, let herself feel her chest rise and fall with each deliberate breath.

 I can’t believe I’m going to do this.

 She opened her eyes, then looked down at her sweet dog. Emma’s tail wagged, heavily thumping against the floor.

Oh, God, this is going to be hard.

The hardest thing she’d ever do. But she had made her choice. Now she had to deal with the consequences, however unpleasant.

After all, it was for the best ... right? 

Grace walked to the kitchen sink and washed out the mug. She put it away in the cupboard, then dug out a treat for Emma. “Okay, baby girl,” Grace said, giving her the biscuit. “We have to go.”

She bent down and attached Emma’s leash. It was time to drive to his house and do what needed to be done.

Chapter 1

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 — Seven months earlier.

Grace held her mug of tea and stared out her apartment’s sliding glass door. She saw nothing in particular, but yet everything at once. She had that weird feeling of being one with the universe. She wanted to scream at that universe, make it tell her what was bothering her, demand an answer to why her days seemed tedious and unfulfilling.

Steam rose from her mug of tea and warmed her face. It was comforting. Things hadn’t been comforting in a while.

She’d thought the trip to Manhattan with her best friend Annie would’ve helped. It hadn’t. Oddly, the trip only seemed to reinforce that something was off. What was it? She’d had such a fabulous time in NYC. The drinking, dancing and shopping — everything felt so carefree.

Now, back home in Michigan, that joy seemed long gone. She was back to feeling off-kilter. 

She felt like she’d crossed some line.

Yet, there wasn’t a big commotion. No announcement. No notice in the mail. Like so many things in life, it just happened.

Grace thought of the Robert Frost poem she recently taped to her fridge about two roads dividing. The moral of the poem was that by taking a different, less-traveled path, a person would achieve what others would not — an interesting life. It was a harder road, but more fulfilling.

She wondered when she had lost the opportunity to go down that different path.

“If I don’t know what’s wrong,” Grace’s eyes locked onto the trees surrounding a small lake outside her back door, “then how can I fix it?”