***

The car drifted close to the curb in the neighborhood adjacent to her own. Tara grabbed the wheel to correct her path but weaved across the yellow line and into a well-manicured lawn with a small brick wall outlining the perimeter of the property.

SMASH!

The car was only going twenty-ish miles per hour, and Tara was almost invincible because of the numbing effects of the contents of the flask in her hand. She was mostly unscathed from the impact to the bricks. She collected her thoughts and essentials, her keys and purse, and motioned toward the door handle to make a quick getaway before anyone noticed her intoxication.

As Tara was about to exit the car, she remembered the Glock. She grabbed the gun from the console, slipped it into her clutch purse, and hurried through the streets to her house.

Her hands shook as she opened the front door, and to her relief, no one seemed to be home. Tara put the clutch down and ran to the basement guest room to change and collect her thoughts.

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~

There was a line of people outside Tara’s office waiting to talk to her, and she had nowhere to hide behind the glass that separated her from the employees that worked on her floor. Tara often pretended to have conversations on her cell phone when she had no one to call, just to avoid interactions with anyone wishing to receive her attention.

Her lunch was especially large today, and her anger less muted.

“Don’t you people have anything better to do than stalk me?” Tara shouted while lobbing her phone at the door.

“Email, people!” She made it very clear she would not be taking any in-person visits today, and the line dissipated.

The day came and went, liquid lunch and all. Tara waited until everyone else went home before venturing out of her office, as she always did. She hadn’t always been like this. Tara used to command the attention of anyone in her proximity and welcomed collaboration. Now, employees turned over so many times that most people never knew the real Tara, only the recluse alcoholic in the glass-enclosed corner office.

Tara, no longer able to muster the empathy needed to care what anyone else thought, lived her life on her own. She was her own family, her own coworker, her own existence. The family unit she began with her husband, almost twenty-years ago, dissolved with her desires to fight to keep it together.