Before the Beginning (Currently on submission)

As Marnie is finally healing from a late-term miscarriage, she is thrown into a tailspin of emotional turmoil when she discovers her first love, Joe, is coming back into town. All the emotions she thought she suppressed the past fifteen years erupt, and she worries about the revelations from the past that might also surface.

Coupled with the fact that she’s struggling to get through her days with a distant husband (physically and emotionally), and two rambunctious sons, and her world is crumbling. She knows the first step to getting her life under control is to confront Joe, to find out why he disappeared on her. She also needs to share with him her own secrets from their past, so she can begin to live again. But will Marnie's need for closure and the secrets she keeps (and discovers) worth the pain it causes all those closest to her?

Told from Marnie’s perspective at age nineteen and at age thirty-five in alternating chapters, Before the Beginning is part love story, part coming-of-age, and it is also a story about a woman desperate for forgiveness. It’s a story for all women who have ever experienced the magnitude of first love, whether it was a lasting love, or a fleeting moment, because a first love, while it might not be the best love, is one none of us ever forgets.

The Other Only Child (work in progress)

Two sisters. A broken engagement. A new man. A secret that could tear them apart forever if one of the sisters discovers it.  

Chapter One

Jenna hooked her fingers through the crocheted blanket that had been at the bottom of her mother’s bed for as long as she could remember. As she always did when she was nervous, worried, preoccupied or consumed, she rubbed her index finger and thumb together in between the holes of the blanket until her fingers felt numb. Jenna remembered holding onto the blanket the year Courtney was born, she remembered when Courtney was a baby and had thrown up on the handmade blanket. There had been rainy summer mornings when she and Courtney had used the blanket to make forts in the living room, while Sesame Street played in the background and her mother made cinnamon pancakes on the stove. This very blanket had kept them warm on cool fall evenings while she and Court drank apple cider outside on the backyard deck.

She wondered why Courtney hadn’t swiped the blanket to take with her to college six weeks ago. Maybe it held too many memories? Probably it wasn’t hip enough for her dorm. Jenna moved her fingers along the silk ivory border of the blanket now, touching it to her cheek, wondering what memories the blanket had held for her mother.

Her mom. The reason she was here.  She knew she had to do this. It had been five months already. Enough time. Or maybe not, but it had to be done, and there was no one else to do it. The downstairs had already been emptied out, cleaned up of all the memories, swept away of mementoes and tokens. There had been an estate sale of most of the furniture, and Jenna had taken a few of the pieces she could use for her now tiny apartment, but the rest was sold and the money was split between she and Courtney. Jenna made sure most of it was put into Courtney’s account and hoped that what she did give her wasn’t all used up on partying at school.

Jenna looked around her mom’s room, which suddenly seemed like it belonged to an old woman’s, not the vibrant mother she knew. It was dusty and smelled stale, not like old-lady-moth-ball stale, but just not like her mother. Jenna wanted to remember what her mom smelled like, the live version of her, but was afraid to open the closet, because she knew she’d get a whiff of her perfume, Beautiful, and then it’d be all over, she’d lose it for sure, and she had a whole lot of work ahead of her. The dressers needed to be unloaded, stacks of papers in the closet needed to be sorted through, Jenna needed to unpack boxes upon boxes of unknown items that belonged to her mom. She was in no frame of mind to unearth the history of her mother.

She grabbed her cell phone and hit speed dial. After two rings, Courtney picked up.

“Hello?”

“Did I wake you?”

“Jenna, it’s ten o’clock in the morning, what do you think?”

Jenna really didn’t know how to answer, because after all, it was ten o’clock in the morning.

“Of COURSE you woke me up! It’s Saturday morning! And, it looks like you also woke up Sasha.”

“Sorry,” And then, “Sasha came to visit you for the weekend?”

“She’s here, so that would be a yes.”

“Well, I don’t want to keep you.”

No, I can talk. Let me take the phone in the hall,” Jenna said. “Just give me a minute.”

After a minute of rustling from Courtney’s end and a door slam, she was back on. “What’s going on?”

“I’m at Mom’s.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it’s just, kinda hard being here by myself. I keep having these flashbacks and …”

“Look Jen, I get it, I really do, but I told you I couldn’t be there. I’ve got a paper due, and …”

“No it’s fine, I guess I just needed someone to talk to.”

“Wait, why isn’t Darren there?”

“He’s busy today.”

“Well, yeah, me too. I told you I had a soc paper due.”

“Sorry I bothered you.”

“It’s alright. I’ll call you next week, okay?” Courtney said, “after I get my paper done.”

“Sure.”

“And don’t worry about it, you’ll get through it. It’s all just stuff anyway. It’s not Mom. Think of it as just junk. Imagine all the crap isn’t hers.”

But it is. It’s all hers. “Maybe.”

“Okay, then. Tell Sasha hi for me. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Jenna hung up the phone and felt the onslaught of tears coming. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the task that was ahead of her, without Darren, without Courtney. And the fact that Courtney was so disengaged about the whole process infuriated her. After all, it was her mother too. Just because Jenna was the oldest why did it mean Jenna had to deal with all the bullshit.

Despite it all, Jenna missed Courtney, and her pissy attitude. She missed Darren too. And most of all, she missed her mother.

Jenna sat on the bed and poked her fingers through the blanket over and over again, and let the tears come.