Chapter 1: Deep In The Valley

     It was inevitable. Peter saw it coming, but that did not soften the blow.

     The dim candlelight danced between him and Jean, casting restless shadows across the table—mirroring the unease between them. The restaurant hummed with quiet conversations, yet their corner booth felt like another world, drenched in silence, thick and suffocating.

     "I just think… maybe we’re at different places in life," Jean finally said, her voice careful, each word measured like steppingstones across fragile ground. She toyed with the edge of her napkin, her fingers trembling slightly—though she never met his eyes.

     Peter exhaled slowly, nodding—more for her sake than his own. "I agree."

     He wanted to argue, wanted to plead for just one more chance, but her words had already settled deep into his bones. She was right. He worked three jobs, barely scraped by, lived in a state of endless exhaustion. Who could blame her for wanting something lighter, less burdened?

     "I get it," he said, forcing a ghost of a smile. "I hope you find what you’re looking for."

The bills in the bill holder were the last of his ride-share earnings—money spent betting on hope, just like the lottery ticket folded into his wallet. He pressed his hand lightly over Jean’s before pulling away, signaling a final goodbye, the weight in his chest pressing heavier as he stood.

     He walked out.

     The night swallowed him whole the moment he stepped outside. The cold crept into his skin, into his breath, into the spaces Jean had left empty. As he walked home, every step felt like trudging through a future already closing in on him.

     His apartment greeted him with dim flickering streetlights, stacks of overdue bills, and the ever-present weight of uncertainty.

     He barely sat down before he found himself staring at his phone, fingers hovering over his mother’s number. He dialed her, as if instinctively requiring a mother’s comfort in a reverted state of childhood abadonment.

     When she answered, her voice was slow, thick with fatigue and something heavier—resonanting with chronic defeat. 

     “Peter, my son?” she murmured, uncertainty laced into the syllables.  

     “Hey, Mom,” he said, forcing warmth into his tone. “Just checking in. How are you?”   

     She sighed. A familiar sound. A defeated sound, all too familiar to Peter. There was no comfort expected. 

     “I am… fine. Just need a little help if you can spare it.”   

     His jaw tightened, eyes shutting briefly against the inevitable. It sounded like a broken record. She always needed help—money for rent, for groceries, for the next bottle of whiskey. The battle she fought had been lost long ago, and yet here they were.  

     Peter stared at his wallet, at the crumpled bills inside—the ones he could not afford to lose. The ones he would not keep. 

     “I’ll see what I can do,” he whispered. The words tasted bitter, like the ghost of a promise he could not break, even when he should. “I love you, Mom. I always will.”

     “I love you, too, Peter.”

     After the call, his phone buzzed again—a message from his sister, Sarah. She had been texting him nonstop, trying to talk him into church, into salvation, into believing again.  

     "You need to let go of the past, Peter," her texts always said. "You need healing."

     Peter’s fingers hovered over the reply button. She meant well, but her words felt like a prescription for a wound she did not understand. He wanted to believe her—wanted to trust that there was something waiting for him beyond the grind, beyond the grief…over the loss of his wife and two children in a motor vehicle accident six months ago.

     But tonight, the emptiness was too loud, too insistent.

     He let the phone slip from his grasp, landing beside the lottery ticket tucked into his wallet—the fragile hope he clung to, the dream he had not yet abandoned. His librarian certification was still just out of reach, stretching endlessly ahead of him like a mirage. And yet, as flawed, and relentless as life was, it had not taken his hope. He had not given up on it. And maybe that was enough.

     The night dragged on as it always did into the next day. He rushed to one of his three jobs, seemingly caught in a wheel without end. 

     He was still moving.

To Be Continued