Torie hadn’t counted on the whole universe being against her when she woke up that morning. She had hoped for a quiet day in which she could get some work done on her book and then maybe do a little gardening. It wasn’t meant to be. She had rolled out of bed and jumped when she stepped on what she thought was her cat’s tail. It wasn’t. It turned out to be the tie for her fuzzy robe. She had banged her knee into her nightstand when she jumped, and so she spent her first half hour awake cleaning up blood and bandaging her knee.

Hoping some coffee would help, she started the machine, not noticing the pot wasn’t all the way under the basket. A few minutes later, when she should have been filling her cup, she was instead, cleaning up coffee grounds and water from the counter and mopping the floor while hopping around favoring her wounded knee.

Torie decided she needed to push the reset button on her day, so she ditched her plans to write and garden and decided instead to go fishing in her pond. She had just stepped off her porch when the lightning bolt hit.

Karen Hydock