THe Edge of Grace

Christa Allen’s Excerpt of The Edge of Grace ….

The last two words I said to my brother David that Saturday were "oh" and "no," and not in the same sentence—though they should have been.

On an otherwise ordinary, cartoon-filled morning, my son Ben sat at the kitchen table spiraling a limp bacon slice around his finger. His last ditch effort to forestall doing his chores. I was having a domestic bonding experience with the vacuum cleaner. My last ditch effort to forestall the house being over- taken by microscopic bugs, dead skin, and petrified crumbs. I’d just summoned the courage to attempt a pre-emptive strike on the intruders under the sofa cushions when the phone rang.

I walked into the kitchen, gave Ben the "don’t you dare touch that phone with your greasy bacon hands" stare, and grabbed the handset.

It was David. "I wanted you to hear this from me," he said. An all-too familiar sensation—that breath-sucking, plum- meting roller-coaster feeling—I’m thinking he’s been fired, in a car wreck, diagnosed with cancer, six months to live, but,

no, it wasn’t as simple as that.

He told me he was leaving in a few days for a vacation. With a man. Leaving with a man. Crossing state lines from Louisiana to Mexico to share sun, sand, and sheets with a per- son of the same sex.

My universe shifted.

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