Laughing Through My Tears

Marga, Marga, Margo. Life’s been tough for Margarita Ustariz Hunter. Her career is floundering even after an attempt to reinvent herself. She’s gone from a marginally successful finance exec to remotely gainful personal chef. She’s divorced and bitter at the ripe age of thirty four. The one good thing in her life Sam, her toddler, has become her crutch to keeping away anything that could help pull her out of her funk. Muddling through life with maroon colored glasses on, she’s filling the empty void of pain and loneliness with two radically different men.

Camilo is the red hot Colombiano with the questionable monetary source and the full on bedroom skills. They have one world rocking dalliance, but she keeps it at arms bay after. Mark is the All-American good guy who knows how to touch all of the right buttons on Margo. Margo is enjoying their attention and the superficial way they are all skimming along until each of them throws her a curve ball.

As her love life heats up so does her cooking. Battling the demons in her mind that refuse to let her just be happy, suddenly strange things start happening to Margo. A client chokes on falafel balls. Another one drowns. As things progress, the strange occurrences take a turn away from the dark side and Margo’s new found power seems to have some good hidden within it as well.

With every new and stranger event, the men in her life turn up the heat on their demands of her. Not happy for the few scraps of her time that she is willing to give them she finds herself having to choose between them. In doing so, she has to accept the love they want to offer, but it doesn’t come easy for Margo. Margo has spent a lifetime convincing herself that she doesn’t deserve these good things and so she’s pretty sure she is going to pull out the goggles and light up the blow torch for some flambé, eventually. It’s her way after all. Yet, every time she tries, she reconsiders and lets love grow another inch.

Still Margo has perfected the art of self destruction. As her world careens out of the controlled orbit of anger and bitterness she has been keeping it in things start to become a little clearer to Margo. She realizes this love that she can’t seem to stop and won’t admit she wants is rooted much deeper in her heart than expected.

It takes one more lesson about the gift of love for her to dig deep into her soul and see the changes needed in her life must come from within. It’s a pretty good life with a second shot at love. She knows it. She may have forgotten it for awhile, and she might even like the drama she’s whirling around in her glass, but she knows what she’s throwing away. There are some gifts you just don’t sniff at and love is at the top of that list. She realizes that happiness will only come in finally accepting how much she deserves it and how good she has it. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time Marga gets over herself and starts laughing through her tears.