It had been three years since Ethan Stanton had tapped on the keys on his laptop but on that cold day in April he decided to get back to what he loved the most, writing. As he sat staring at the blank canvas on the screen he was consumed with the memories that led to his journalistic sabbatical. He remembered the news he had received while on assignment in Afghanistan informing him of his wife's sudden and mysterious death. He would later learn that there were no signs of a break in or struggle when the police had found her lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. No weapons were found either but they determined that she died from a single blow to the back of the head by a blunt object.
Upon hearing this news Ethan had left for his home in Montana immediately. After the funeral he was determined to find out what had happened to his wife. The police had no leads and no suspects so he started asking around. He started by questioning friend's and acquaintances but no one could imagine why someone would want to hurt his Samantha. Then he tried to go undercover with the local drug dealers and in so doing developed a nasty meth habit and learned nothing of what happened to his wife. Later, he went into rehab for meth only to replace the habit with alcohol and in the end no where closer to finding his wife's killer.
After three years of torment he put the bottle down and typed, not knowing what might come of it. But in no time he had five pages written about his wife and their life together. He wrote of how they met in a creative writing class at the University of Montana and how they were instantly in love. They had planned on traveling the world, he as a journalist and she as a novelist. After that they would settle down and have children but they had only gotten as far as the traveling and writing part of the dream. She had published her first book not long after they were married and he had written noteworthy articles on the brutality of war in the Middle East. That was all over now.
The only light in the dank, dark apartment shone on his tears as he finished writing about his previous life and as he reached for the bottle of whiskey he began to drink until the screen was a blurry haze of white light. He passed out on the keyboard as tears and drool dripped into the keys and soon the room was completely black.
A bright beam of light peered in through a crack in the curtain and landed on Ethan's face and slowly he opened his eyes. He spent the morning reading over what he had written and out of instinct made corrections. 'There might be something here,' he thought and closed the laptop. He stood up and for the first time discovered the hovel his despair had created and was ashamed. He imagined his wife standing in the room, her beauty in stark contrast to the trash and filth that defined the room now. He walked to door and opened it. A consuming light engulfed him for a moment but when his eyes adjusted he looked out at the beauty of the open Montana landscape that surrounded him and with a sense of hope he walked out into the light.
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