Military Man's Second Chance

Almost three hours later, once she’d passed the Arlington city limits sign and taken the exit she needed, she pulled into a strip mall parking lot and called her parents’ house.“Sarah!” Bethany exclaimed and burst into tears. “Sarah, where are you? What’s going on?”“Mom, I just…,” Sarah took a breath to compose herself. “I had to get out of there. I had to.”“Why? What happened?”“I don’t want to talk about it, Mom, I really don’t. Just… let’s just say Tim is not who I thought he was, and leave it at that, okay? Please?”In the silence she could hear her mother sniffling, followed by, “If you want. But honey – where are you? We’re all worried sick!”“Is he there right now?” Sarah asked, her bruised and battered heart in her throat.“No. Tim and his folks left a while ago. I’m not sure what happened between you two, but he’s devastated, Sarah.”“He’s the last person in the world who should have the nerve to be surprised by this,” she snarled before she could stop herself.“Oh, honey.

One year later found Sarah Genard printing out her assignment to take with her to her next class. Sarah glanced at her watch and grimaced.Get a move on or you’re gonna be late, she chided herself.She hurriedly stuffed her homework, laptop and notebooks into her backpack and headed out the door for her Advanced Accounting class.As she walked, she felt grateful. Taking accelerated courses in her hometown’s high school had earned her college credits as well, and as a result her time spent on UTA’s campus began with Sarah having already met the core requirements. Now she had enough credits to reach junior status and was taking as many classes a semester as possible and working part-time at the campus bookstore.Her goal was to finish her bachelors’ degree in three years instead of the usual four, and the college fund Peggy Mitchell had set up for her only grandchild enabled Sarah to focus on school and not worry about how to pay for her education.The other blessing had been meeting Jo

“So how long have you been writing?” Sarah asked her new friend over lunch.“I’ve always been interested in it,” Karli replied as she dipped a French fry into her ketchup. “My degree’s in fashion merchandising, though. I did some hands-on stuff for a couple of places, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Then I stumbled across the writers’ group. Meeting them helped me realize I wanted to focus on writing about fashion. So, I finally worked up the courage and built a blog site about three weeks ago and got started. And I hit one hundred followers yesterday.”“That’s great! It will be in the thousands before you know it.”“Here’s hoping,” Karli smiled. “What about you?”“I’m an Accounting major,” Sarah revealed. “I like it, and I’m good at it. But it’s not my passion and it never will be. I’m getting that degree so I can pay the bills, but I long to be an author. That’s the dream.”“How much further do you have to go?”“If I maintain the pace I’ve been running, I should

“That was fun,” Sarah said with a smile when the group disbanded around two-thirty p.m. “And I loved the exercises we did. They really got my imagination flowing. I think I’m gonna keep going when I get home, get some more thoughts out of my head and into written form while they’re fresh.”“Yeah, those sprints really help me, too,” Karli chimed in. “I was really intimidated the first time I did writing sprints. Now, I look forward to them.”She pulled into Sarah’s complex and parked.“Hey. Want to come over and have lunch with us tomorrow? Evan’s going to put steaks and brats on the grill.”“Sounds good. What time?”“Come over whenever you’re ready. The food should be done around one.”***Tim sat quietly, one hand on Dack’s headstone, listening to the fountain and watching the sun moving lower in the western sky. He’d cried and talked for over four hours as he’d unburdened his soul to one of the best friends he had ever had.He told Dack about his future plans, and about the gaping h

The next morning Sarah absentmindedly pushed the cart down the cereal aisle.Cannot believe I forgot my freaking list, she grumbled to herself as she tried desperately to remember a single thing that had been written on the tiny dry-erase board hanging on her refrigerator.Oh, well. Keep circling, maybe I will see something that jogs my memory. But nothing did.She was almost to the end of the aisle when a completely unexpected memory came at her out of nowhere – her and Tim, smiling, walking closely together as they shared cart duty.Captain Crunch? she’d suggested.With berries, he chimed in, and she had nodded and put a box in their cart.We need to do this more, he’d announced.Come shopping? Well, yeah, otherwise the food runs out, she’d teased.Yeah, come shopping, but together. Everything is more fun with you, Sarah. Even trying to pick out cereal. I can’t wait for us to get a place together, and I wanna pick out cereal with you for the rest of our lives…“Are you all right, sw