We have all experienced “tipping points” in our lives. Stacey Burns no doubt experienced one when she made the decision to divorce her husband. It surely was not a decision made lightly but with careful considerations of all the factors at work in her life at the time. There had to be a moment, an event or a combination of events that led to her tipping point, sending her life in a different direction. Her family and friends are aware of those factors. From my observation and interviews with those who knew her, she, like the narrator in Robert Frost’s famous poem, took the “road less traveled” instead of the well-worn path laid out in front of her. She never had the chance to see if it “made all the difference.”
My next book has a working title of “The Tipping Point.” That phrase is also the title of a chapter in Cracks in the Wall, my last novel. In both cases, characters arrive at a crucial time in their lives when a life-changing decision is required of them. Once the decision is made, there is no going back. It’s not like the famous Yogi Berra quote about coming to a fork in the road. “When I come to a fork in the road, I take it, ” he purportedly announced.
By now, you are wondering what the point of this post is. Well, it is simply this. I keep hoping for a tipping point to occur in the investigation into Stacey’s murder, sending the police directly to the doorstep of the killer. After such a long time, is that too much to ask? Such an event would make all the difference in the lives of the family and friends she left behind.
Duke
