THE BREAKING

EXCERPT FROM THE MANUSCRIPT

Fission had occurred in my life.  It wasn’t one I had foreseen, and the path was not of my choosing.  I could not go back but I could choose how I lived the future.  I could deal with the grief and remorse and guilt, and I could become stronger and smarter.

My grandma always said “Lexi, make lemonade out of lemons, as lemons are God’s blessings.”  It’s hard now, almost impossible, to make the lemonade with the lemons of my life.  As a little girl I was promised hope and assured that I could make my own decisions, sprinkle it with hard work, and everything would turn out grand.  Well, I’ve found this to be partially true; I’m free to make my own decisions, but once those decisions are made, I’m held to the consequences of those life choices and they are not all grand.  Very few are grand. 

I made the decision not long ago to accept a nice—and I use the term nice loosely—job promotion with all the perks a recent college graduate could ever dream of:  townhouse, car, travel, and cash in the bank.  But being a naïve twenty-four-year-old, I did not look too closely at the fine print conditions.

I’m now an agent for the United States government.  I’ve chosen the job title of agent because it just sounds better than sniper or assassin.