0 - Prologue

2008, Lisa picks up a pen . . .

Aug 30, 2024

Things That Can’t Be Broken is a novel presented as a live draft, one chapter every week.

Nine-year-old Dani makes a fervent promise that there will always be horses in her life, so when she finds out her next-door neighbor won a scholarship to an exclusive horsemanship program, she vows to win one too. But she never gets the chance.

It all begins with a simple pen and paper.

Lisa Cartwright

August 17, 2008

Las Vegas, Nevada

Lisa lay shuddering and bruised, with remnants of an old song repeating over and over in her aching head. It was an oddity Tim played for her all those years ago, in those last days before he stopped coming by to visit altogether. Now it was stuck between her ears, a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve. She couldn’t even remember the name of the singer or the song.

It started with Hansel and Gretel, old and grumpy, drinking together, but that wasn’t the part she felt so compelled to remember. It was the last lines of the song that haunted her, something about an angel trying to help. She could hear the singer in her mind, but she couldn’t quite piece together all the words.1

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History is an angel
(Being blown backwards?) into the future
History is a pile of debris
(something)
And the angel wants to go back
(something something)
To repair the things that have been broken,
But there is a storm
(something about paradise)
(something else)
This storm,
This storm is called progress.

Why was her brain so intent on remembering the words of that song right now? What was so urgent? The doctor told her she needed to rest, that she had to rest not only her body but her mind, to help the concussion heal. He had said the exact words, “Try not to think about anything important.”

Impossible of course.

She wrung her hands before her chest, imagining the act of childhood prayers, and then covered her face with them. No comfort. Between her fingers, she spied the pen and pad on the bedside table. The nurse had been so kind to bring them for her. She pulled the wheeled table to herself painfully, grasping the legal pad and ballpoint pen like a life raft. The flood of words that splashed against the inner walls of her aching skull began to leak, little by little, onto the paper, slowly easing the pressure.

On August 16, 1978, I gave birth to a perfect six-and-a-half-pound baby girl with smooth olive skin, silky dark hair, and a radiant little soul. Her father was glowing with pride from the moment he scooped her gently from my arms. Tim Cartwright and I were best friends since we were twelve, but he and I were never closer than that moment when we smiled into each other’s eyes and shared the indescribable weight and joy of the parenthood we suddenly faced together.

We named her Dani for Tim’s good father, Daniel, and gave her my middle name, Marie, which would have pleased my absent mother. But Dani never belonged to us completely. She was a restless spirit from the start with an unstoppable passion for life — and for horses. Tim often said she was stubborn as a bow and arrow, hard to pull back and impossible to stop once aimed and flying.

I hear the phantom metallic squeak and slam of the screen door between my ears at all hours of every day since that last time she ran through it. Yesterday was her thirtieth birthday, though she never saw her tenth.

Life didn’t just go on without her. It shattered like an explosion, leaving behind the debris of our disintegrated lives and suffocated dreams. There is nothing so vast as the space a child leaves. But now I know you’re out there, Dani, and here with me, you and your promises.

Where have you flown my little bow and arrow? Wherever it is, there are sure to be horses.

Lisa lay the pen down on the pad, and stared at the nothing she saw through the dark hospital window, while her mind began to clear. A tear dropped unacknowledged from her chin. She would write it all down, everything that happened, how it was before, and how it all unraveled, for her, for Tim, and for the others. If it took her the rest of her life, she would find them again, those who lost their way along with her daughter. She would get it down, make sense of it somehow. Dani would be with her, leading her in ink on paper, and Lisa would follow. Anywhere.