An excerpt from "No Outlet"
originally published in Midwest Literary Magazine (July 2011)
copyright 2011 Eva Glynn Stephens
As soon as she turned onto the winding roads of her past, Sarah felt the stress of the day begin to fade slowly away, and some of the tension that had tightened her temples and pulled her shoulders into tight knots began to dissipate. As she started the slow, curving seven-mile journey to her family’s summer house, which she always thought of affectionately as home, nestled deep within the lush woods of the southern Ohio river banks, Sarah thought she might be able to forget everything--the terrible fight she’d had with Shane, the unexpected loss of her job, the newest rejection letter from a New York lit agent who didn‘t feel that her manuscript held much merit--at least for the weekend. Life would resume on Monday morning, but for now, on this perfect, starry, summer night, over a hundred miles away from the disappointments that had plagued her as of late, this would be her reality.
Dark had fallen, and the crooked lanes, surrounded on either side by woods that stretched for miles, that snaked their way along the old ridge were laden with deep shadows. Sarah’s car, a small and sensible older-model two-door sedan, purchased on a part-time secretary and fledgling writer’s salary, trundled along at an unhurried pace, the headlights cutting through the deep forest gloom. Here and there she glimpsed patches of indigo night-sky and the edge of a full, white-hot moon through the canopies of the ancient oaks, elms, maples, and redbuds that grew rampant in the otherworldly, country setting. But even as dark as the night was, without the aid of streetlights and neon signs to light her paths, Sarah knew she could find her way home. She knew the area, so comfortable and familiar, well, and had been spending weekends at the ancestral retreat since she was a child. Further up the ridge, she would come to the old Christmas tree farm, long since abandoned and overgrown with weeds, and then she would pass the
Shillings place, which had stood empty since the mid-nineties, but for now, there was nothing but the woods and the things that resided there.
Sarah began to relax even more and rolled down her window. A light, cool breeze, scented with the pungent aroma of pine and the sweet perfume of wild honeysuckle that grew of its own volition along the ridge, wafted through the car, ruffling her long, sandy-blonde hair. Sarah took a big breath of the cleansing country air, and that’s when she saw the headlights in her rearview mirror.
