Elle was finally home for the evening, after a fun plotting the post launch life with her business partner, father. A years long project was wrapping up as she\u2019d spent the day doing the finishing touches on video edits that only she knew how to organize. The team had everything they need to make the rest happen. She splurged on a lemon drop martini for the evening, getting in creative mode for the tasks ahead for the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When she arrived home, her husband was still out at the community theater production of Mary Poppins and her daughter was out at a graduation party. She had one of her favorite gourmet cupcakes, from an earlier trip to the library closest to that bakery. Life was good, and predictable and all was well. Work was shaping up, plans were in place, discussions that evening were very inspired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At 9:52pm, an usual time in her boring, predictable life, she had a call from an unknown number. Because of the time, her gut said to answer it. Spammers don\u2019t tend to call that late?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That unknown caller would change her entire life in an instant (plus 6 hours of hell.) Everything she knew would become foreign. Her relationship to everything in house would be flipped and full of torment. The humdrum days she lived, with a little boredom but mostly gratitude, were over, forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How such a call, from an unknown number, could be that powerful, is something she knew happened in books, but never to someone like her. Life was pretty drama free with nobody in her life having addictions or playing dangerous sports. There was such a small family it wasn\u2019t even as if she had 30 plus cousins and nieces and nephews where she assumes calls of urgency are more frequent, to update everyone on some terrible news or maybe even thrilling news, like a new engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nope. That lemon drop martini and gourmet cupcake would be the last joyful moments in her simple, but sweet, typical Midwest, American life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Would she replay that day, wishing it were different? What about the day before? Could she have known? Is there something she could have done differently?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sweet, grateful answer is no. There were no regrets. There are no regrets. Only four lives, deeply intertwined, would become three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elle was finally home for the evening, after a fun plotting the post launch life with her business partner, father. A years long project was wrapping up as she\u2019d spent the day doing the finishing touches on video edits that … Continue reading