Prologue

      It’s a strange moment when you suddenly realize you can’t take it anymore. It at this particular moment for Faith Benedetti was thirteen years of accumulated slights, outright deceptions, insults, and the list went on into infinity. She had tried to forgive, to let them go, but she hadn’t forgotten a single one of them. At this moment, they flashed through her mind, like a reel of a film. She could see every frame clearly, yet they were flashing by so fast, she couldn’t focus on any specific instance.

      Faith stood in silent shock, staring into her open garage. She was looking at the results of all her efforts and work of the past year. Her work had been reduced to a mountain of rubbish. Her entire creative spirit, her very soul, had been trashed. Sculptures that hadn’t been fired yet were shattered; framed watercolors were lying under broken glass. Her paintings! Dear God! Wet unfinished pieces lay smeared and ruined. One of her best efforts had a broken frame speared through it. Her work was destroyed, broken! Destroyed! Destroyed!

      She felt something break inside her. Something vital had snapped, and she went numb. She couldn’t think. She could only stare at the pile and watch as a part of it tumbled to the concrete floor. A tube of red paint was squashed, and as she watched the crimson red spread across the garage floor. She knew at that moment it symbolized her life’s blood. Her spirit broke.

      She didn’t hear the truck pulling in behind her. Didn’t see the look on her husband’s face when he stepped behind her.

      “My God!” Ales exclaimed. “Honey, I’m so sorry.” He tried to wrap his arm around her, but she shrugged from his embrace and away from him.

      “I had no idea she’d do something like this,” Ales exclaimed.

      Faith walked away from his words. They had argued earlier, and he’d ignored her—again. This time it was different. This was the last time. She entered her home through the kitchen door.

      Cybil Benedetti, Ales’ mother, turned in a wheelchair. She was a scrawny woman, thin, her skin was wrinkled and too darkly tanned. Her insistence at sunning herself every summer had given her complexion the texture of leather. She looked older than her age of sixty-seven. “It’s about time you got here to help me!”

      Faith ignored her and kept walking. She went to the bedroom she’d shared with Ales for the last seven years. She was vaguely aware of her husband and her mother-in-law’s voices raised in anger. She went to her closet and removed a suitcase. She was already packed for a trip she’d canceled less than an hour before. She wheeled the piece of luggage across the room and slung a carryall bag across her shoulder.

      Ales was in her way, and she moved around him. She had only one thought running through her mind. Get out! Escape!

      Ales raised his hands in a helpless gesture. He was a good-looking man. His Italian ancestry had bestowed him with dark hair, and milk-chocolate-colored eyes. If he stretched a bit, he made the six-foot mark. He ran at least four times a week, although, with his work schedule, it was difficult