I dream of houses. Every night I wander through the gray. My mind racing ahead, penciling in the hallways and rooms as I enter. When I’m awake, my memory is nearly flawless. When I am dreaming, I forget what I have laid down, and the floor plans shift and change like a funhouse. I lose things. I set a box on a table, and when I return, the room no longer exists. Nothing gets done, and we never have coffee. I’m always moving in, but I never live anywhere. I’m a realtor’s daughter. My childhood daydreams were built around creating my life inside other people’s houses. People I would never meet. Picking out rooms I would never sleep in. Houses I would never live in. A life I would never know. As I fall asleep, I try to choose my houses. I plot a new life like a child sets up a dollhouse. Adding new pieces while desperately trying not to knock down what is already standing. We live in the tiny cottage I rented with my son and his family a few years ago in Seward, Alaska...
A DEEPER WAY ACROSS At forty-nine, my children were grown. My twenty‑year relationship was a failure. All I had was a string of unfinished aspirations and a bookshelf of what ifs. I had no career and no future. Daily life was unbearably painful. I wanted more than just to be out of the crowded city and our crumbling house—I wanted a permanent escape from life—but for my children’s sake, it had to look like an accident. When, in a Hail Mary to save our relationship, we moved to a remote cabin in Northern Utah, the landscape offered a solution: an avalanche. But making it up the mountain in deep snow wasn’t going to be easy. I was depressed, living in chronic pain, out of shape, and dangerously overweight. To make my death look accidental, I would need to be in the best shape of my life. I had six months to become someone capable of climbing that mountain or miss the winter window. A DEEPER WAY ACROSS is the true story of how the resolve to end it all, and the support from a ...