Boston model Christine McMurray knows the fiery car crash she survives is career-ending. She knows it before she sees the slash on her face and the burn scars on her body, even before she tries to walk on her damaged leg. She hears the truth in her beauty-obsessed father’s discussion of reconstructive surgery and her fiancé’s excuses for avoiding hospital visits. After a lengthy hospitalization and convalescence, Christine’s physical scars have begun to heal but emotionally she is still fragile. She seeks respite at photographer Anders Larsson’s Montana ranch, where the raw beauty and sweeping landscape rekindles her desire to paint. In time, she buys land with the intention of building a home and artist studio. While the house is being constructed, she returns to Boston and Cape Cod to pack up her old life. There she meets and mentors a young burn victim, renews a high school friendship and has an encounter with her ex-fi ancé that jeopardizes her return to Montana. Christine regresses more than once during her journey to find new meaning in her life, but eventually discovers her inner compass points outward and west. A Light in the Heart is a complex, inspirational story of living through pain and loss to find purpose and love.
Sold about 100+. Just beginning to market.
Cape Cod, January 20
THE ACCIDENT
It’s hot; cramped. Legs trapped. Arm pinned. Pain beats at my body. Voices enter, leave.
Acrid smell burns nose, eyes.
Flames tease fingertips.
Try to scream; no sound.
Voices return, screech like pebbles tossed against glass.
A tinkling sound,
Falling glass carves away beauty, ear to chin.
Flashes of light. Flashbulbs? Turn; smile.
Can’t move.
More flashes. Ghosts with cameras dance by my cocoon, suck away the air. Where’d it go?
To Donna?
I try to turn.
Where is she?
Voices scream at me to hang on.
Don’t want to.
I reach for death.
Metal tears at my cocoon then life pores in through an opening. Thick brown hands appear out of grey clouds.
Voices shriek, “Miller, get away. Fire.”
Miller?
A grunt then refusal from the man with bronzed hands. Through darkened firelight fingers become graceful, palms turn upward toward paradise —urgency beckons.
Go away.
A voice reaches my conscious, unconscious mind, “Grab my hand. Now.”
Need to rest.
“C’mon let’s get you out; this thing’s ready to blow.”
Rough hands grab shoulders, pulling limb from socket. It hurts. I resist. He pulls harder.
Consciousness and clarity rage against euphoria and eternity—each fighting the other.
Which will win? Life? Death?
Only fate and this man named Miller know for sure.
