Cheater's Choice

De: Georgene Weiner

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

If chance prepares its own agenda, why ponder our choices? If what we know about fate is that it is fickle, why plan? And if luck is life's designated dealer, do we know if our deck has been shuffled or marked? These questions create the axis on which Cheater's Choice spins; the answers are found in the words of Anatole France who said that chance was "...the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign." On a dreary morning in March, 1989, a talented but frustrated graphic artist, Jan Brenner, boards her usual, early train to Boston. In what appears to be a chance encounter with a stranger, Carol Reeves, Jan believes she has found the answer to her six-year struggle with childlessness. Pregnant, unmarried, and feeling owed, Carol says she has found the alternative to an abortion. The two women strike a deal: Jan and her husband Mark may adopt the baby but they must agree to no communication with Carol for the duration of the pregnancy. Despite the strong objections from Mark and his parents, Jan decides to follow her mother Doris's advice: to "let life's melody compose itself." Doris, a once renowned concert pianist, has had to follow her own advice. To assuage the loss of her teenage runaway son, she befriends a neighbor's child and teaches him the joy of music as the heart hears it. Carol journeys to her home in Bloomington, Indiana, intent on settling old scores with her father, Hugh. She reopens deep wounds of her adolescence and is sucked into a storm of retribution, deceit and murder. Unable to extricate herself from the events swirling about her, Carol accepts what is implicit in the contract.