First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
- Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
- Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
- Finally… reveal the book
Lines
Betty
It’s funny, even when you know something’s coming, it can still take you by surprise. I’ve known for months this letter would arrive, but I still can’t bring myself to open it. Peeling back the glued flap of the familiar pink envelope feels like pulling the lever of a floodgate that will set free the tears I’ve been holding in. Instead I just step onto my porch, hold it to my heart as I settle into my rocking chair. The sun is on its way down now, and as it paints the sky in all manner of reds and pinks, I listen to the gaggle of people moving around my kitchen. What a family I’ve built over these last ten years. I have more kids to my name than I ever imagined, and their kids all call me Grammy, yet almost none of them are my blood. That’s the lesson of my life; family is who you decide to love, not necessarily who you’re related to. Another lesson of my life: you can get a second chance at love even when the first one was perfect in its own way. Burying my husband years ago, after he was killed in the line of duty, nearly broke me. But my daughter, Jules, and I have rebuilt what was destroyed, and with my second husband, Clay, I’ve found a way to go on. He’s made my dreams of owning a restaurant a reality. It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about Stan; it simply means I love him enough to move on with my life.
And The Book Is…
Alex
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