BETTER THAN ZERO

Natasha was tired. Tired of a lot of things. Things were going to change. They had to. The determined set of her jaw confirmed it. She couldn't possibly have known there would be a whole new direction her life would go in. A direction that would leave her every day, well-worn path to "in the box thinking" unrecognizably out of sight. She took bereavement leave from B.F.D. Spending her days going to Earl Stroh's gun shop over on Archway Drive where she bought the Glock. Three, four times a week she made the ten minute, five mile subway ride. Fired off her anger and frustrations in the basement range under the store. Old plaid shirt, holey-kneed blue jeans and ratty sneakers. She'd run five or six ten round clips through the paper target fifteen yards away. She got better. She got good. Good enough after a few months to keep the pattern in a five inch circle center mass. It was her way of dealing with it. Getting out the frustration she felt inside at being cheated into living a life alone.