Cookie Crumbles

Life experience fodder retold with a time influenced perspective and a “what if” hovering above the keyboard evolved into a manuscript only slightly resembling the original events.

Cookie Crumbles is the second of my four book beginnings. (I excel at book beginnings.) The middle stews as the end impatiently taps her foot.

I invite you to read my “in works” chick lit.

Chapter One

I wouldn’t have shot the boat if Frank hadn’t asked the English setter out to dinner.

Neighbors gathered on front steps watching the blazing Bass Master and puzzling out the cause. I glanced in the rear view mirror and floored the Acura.  The more curious who had ventured onto our driveway for a closer look dove into the bushes like extras in an action film.  My least favorite neighbor, Sally Wilson from across the street, spoke animatedly into a cell phone pointing at the fiery carnage and my retreating MDX.

My SUV fishtailed as I accelerated and took the corner in what felt like a two-wheeled cartoon turn. I hoped my speculating former neighbors figured out my motivation because I wasn’t entirely clear about it.

Mrs. Sheffield from next door would suspect “change of life” as the culprit.  Pushing fifty-five, she knew firsthand the havoc of hot flashes and sleep deprivation.  “That Cookie is over forty.  Not too early for perimenopause,” she might have said.

“Margaret Lamberti didn’t know what to do with her life now that Tommy’s off to college,” Connie Briggs might’ve confided to fellow soccer moms as she cheered her eight year old, Rachel, during scrimmage.  She’d assure herself that in ten years she’d be prepared to pack up her daughter for college.  At least more prepared than I had been for Tommy’s send off this fall.

Sally Wilson would report that a troubled marriage caused this desperate bid for attention.  Then she’d recount several witnessed incidents that supported her claim.

All the neighbors were somewhat right, Sally being the most right, which may be the reason I liked her least.

I glanced in the rear view mirror half expecting a line of police cars chasing me ala Belushi and Ackroyd’s “Blue’s Brothers.”  It wasn’t far fetched.  Discharging a firearm within city limits, blowing up a $50,000 plus boat, and attempting to run over the neighbors shattered several local ordinances as well as state and federal laws.

Since a lone yellow school bus flashed a stop sign for a morning pick up behind me and distant sirens homed in on my subdivision, I eased the speedometer within limit range and clung to the firmness of the one decision I had made – I wasn’t going back.