Breanne had distracted herself on the terrifying drive by pulling out her Palm Pilot and opening her journal. There she had her life-her hopes, her dreams, her failures, everything. Her last entry, made on the plane: No more failures.
Ha! That was going to be tricky, as she tended to make bad decisions. Maybe she wasn't enough of a giver. Maybe she just took, took, took. Maybe concentrating on others more would somehow turn the tide for her. Yeah, that's what she'd do, she'd give back. Do favors. Perform public service. Try harder at work, where, granted, she slaved over the books for a large accounting firm, but with an attitude.
She knew being the baby of a large family allowed her to fly beneath the radar. Even with her older brothers looking over her shoulder, she'd sought out trouble like a moth to the proverbial flame, beginning back in elementary school, where her sharp tongue and naughty pranks had regularly gotten her into hot water. By middle school she'd switched from pranks to boys, having developed an early fascination.
Of course, her mother always put it more simply: Breanne was drawn to the wrong type-jobs, friends, it didn't matter. Even men. Especially men. Hence, being stood up at the altar-for the third time.
On second thought, chances were she needed more direction than "no failures," so she added: And especially,
That's when her driver had begun four-wheeling up a narrow private road lined by tall pines covered in so much snow they looked like two-hundred-foot ghosts, swaying in the wind. On either side of them was a dramatic drop as they rose in altitude with every mile. Hues of peach, pink, blue, and purple colored the sheer granite escarpment of the Sierras through the falling snow in the deepening dusk.