She was a good woman.  She helped anyone that needed her, usually before they had to ask.  She was active in her community.  She loved her children and those grandbabies were her heart.

In her thirties, she took in troubled teens.  There was a time that her two bedroom cottage house had a dorm set up in the basement for the 12 teen girls that she housed.  The second bedroom held the two boys that were there at the same time and one of her former teens had a baby that she was ill equipped to care for that slept in a crib next to her bed.

She attended church, minded her own business and was always there with a quiet shoulder to carry the burden you could no longer handle yourself.

She fell in love, for the second time, late in life.  He was her soul mate to her way of thinking.  He became the basis of her entire way of life.  She was willing to admit, when asked why she did some of the things that she did, that she wanted to be accepted in this place he called home, for his sake. 

The day came when she knew that the right thing for her, the right thing for him, was to make him leave.  He refused.  She packed.  She repacked.  She made her plans and she prepared for the split she knew would rip her apart.  That morning that she told him she would be gone, she got in her utility vehicle which was packed with everything she could take that was important to her.  Everything but him.  She started the engine, put it in gear and sat there.

How long she sat is anyones guess. 

He was participating in some illegal activities and when he asked her why she thought she had to leave him she explained that she just couldn't do it.  "I would lay down and die for you but I can't go to prison because you can't break a bad habit."  But she stayed, knowing, feeling the end drawing near.  After all, it was her house, not his.  (Any excuse would do.)

Then came that Friday night that he brought his daughter home and told her that the child would be staying with them that weekend.  She never stayed at their home, always at his mother's.  For good reason too.

It was an hour after she and the girl had gone to bed that the house seemed to explode as the drug task force raided the only real home she had ever really known. 

Later, he told everyone, including the police, "She wouldn't be in this but for me.  She isn't involved she just loved me too much."  But they would not listen.  The arresting officer replied, "The bitch is no saint you know!"

"A saint?  Perhaps not.  An angel?  Definitely, and she does not deserve this.  She did not earn it.  She was just here, asleep, in our bed, alone, like most nights." 

Her children cried.  Her grandchildren wailed.  They did not understand.  The love of her life screamed at the judge, "YOU WILL KILL HER IN THAT PLACE!  SHE ISN'T WELL!"  They took him away.  The last view she would ever have of the man she loved so much, being dragged backwards with his face twisted in anguish.

She was sentenced to five years.  She would serve 2.  Or, would have, had she survived.  Those that loved her.  All but the man she died for, attended her memorial just six months later.

Let me know what you think.  This is part of a synopsis for a new book.  I would appreciate your input.

Janet