Chapter 1
I was on my early-morning run along a gentle flowing canal. It was a bright sunny day, about eighty-two degrees already. It was going to be another hot summer day. However, the slight breeze through the trees, across the canal, and across my shirtless, sweaty body keeps the run bearable. No matter how hard I tried to deal with the events of three weeks ago and the emotional pain that has followed, nothing helped. Not physical punishment with my workouts or the large amounts of alcohol I’d been consuming. The events of that day continued to run like a movie over and over. The grief would not give me a respite for a second. So, I ran the canal route every day, looking for something that would explain why. Alex wanted to run the mountain trail route. I insisted we run the canal.
I
