MLB Manning

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 ...

  Chapter 1 (July 2016, A.L. Faucher) People die. Skylar Marie Faucher died on a Friday. That’s the first lie of many that I’ll tell you. In my defense, Friday is the day listed on her death certificate. It is also the most unlikely of days for her death to have occurred because that was the day her landlord, prompted by complaints of an odor, found Skylar’s naked body sprawled across the bathroom floor.  Considering the size of the bathroom, perhaps 'sprawled' was too generous a word. Her one-room apartment was on the top floor of an old Victorian house, dissected into seven small apartments. Each one was little more than a human storage locker.    No, Skylar didn’t die on a Friday. Time had passed. Her blood had cooled. Skylar’s olive-toned skin had turned purple.  Purple is a hard color to take seriously, but you will not find this particular shade in a box of crayons. It is death purple, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.  Eventually, the pre...