No Way Out

by Fern Michaels

Colleen was a second-grade schoolteacher at the local grammar school. Colleen had recently separated from her abusive husband, Mitchel.

He occasionally worried that if anything happened to him while he was inside, there would be no way out. Not easily.

He recalled a quote often attributed to Mark Twain but in reality Jackson Brown, Jr. said it:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines! Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Even though he didn’t fully understand the word “anxiety,” he knew what fear was. His father had never beaten him, but Jackson was not sure when the day would come that he would.

There was only one thing that could change his situation. Finding her. But until then, for him, there was no way out.

He thought about it. A lot of “ifs,” to be sure, but he had gotten himself out of bad situations several times before when he thought there was no way out.

“Sorry, pal, but there’s just no way out.”