This Has To Stop: Prologue

Prologue





My name is Jeff Browne, and I suffer a broken heart. As dramatic as it sounds, it’s true. Isn’t it ironic that love, something that everyone craves in their lives at one time or another, can also be the destroyer of everything? Love can destroy careers. Ambitions. Lives. And to all those who say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, I say a heartfelt BULLSHIT. Loving and losing creates pain in the soul; pain that a person who never loved would never feel at all.
I’m just a regular guy. I work for a living; I’m a police officer in this shitspot of a town. I own my own home; a nice little Cape Cod off Willow Street, two bedrooms, full bath, and a killer kitchen. I have a dog, Ralph, and two cats, Homer and Marge. And, as the regular guy that I am, I loved once. I loved with the strength of a thousand men. I loved someone so pure, so fiery and passionate, that it damn near killed me. That’s excusable. But I loved someone so innocent, so untouchable, it damn near killed her, and for that, I’ll never forgive myself.




My name is Sara Goodall, and I come from a broken family.
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God, that just sounds so melodramatic, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth. My father was an angry alcoholic. Always on the wrong side of the law. Actually, that’s how this whole mess started, but I’ll get there eventually. Anyway, my wreck of a father took off when I was a freshman in High School. That really wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t had two younger siblings. Kirk was 7, and the poor kid’s heart was broken when Daddy told us he was leaving and wasn’t coming back. Cecily was 1. She probably wont even remember the man. That’s probably for the best.
After Daddy left, I couldn’t picture Mom ever getting happier. Even a blind man would know how much she had suffered under his addiction, and when he finally left, she rejoiced. It didn’t last long. Being a single mother of three and working only a part-time, minimum wage job, money is definitely tight. Especially when we’ve never received a child support payment. Especially now, four years after the fact. The poor dear looks so much older than her 37 years.
Despite the hardships, I think I’ve turned out ok. Sure, I don’t get to go out much (after The Incident, I’m lucky I’m allowed out of the house at all!), but I have a paying job, a ‘certified pre-owned’ vehicle that actually runs on a good day, and a government check on the way to pay for my college classes. So, for the most part, things are pretty good. Of course, some days are better than others. Some mornings, I wake up screaming and crying and sweating. Some mornings, I wake up thinking I’m still in that damn closet, fighting for breath and consciousness. Some mornings, I wake up thinking I can still feel their hands on me…
But enough about that. It’s no use to start at the end and tell the tale backwards, but in order to start at the beginning, we have to rewind just a little bit. Back to the beginning of my senior year. I was seventeen years old…