Chapter 1

      It was three weeks since the horrendous rain. Andy’s truck was still sitting in the now-dry parking lot because she didn’t have the money to have it towed anywhere. He didn’t have towing or truck replacement on his insurance. In fact, he had skimped wherever he could to save money. As far as she was concerned, the finance company could come and take the damn thing. She wasn’t paying another red cent on that monster Andy loved and adored. She’d written him the day the rain stopped, but of course there was no response, something she found not only strange but even weird considering how Andy loved the Ram 2500.

      He hadn’t even acknowledged the e-mail that said she was filing for divorce.

      Bella parked her Honda Civic, which was several spaces away from her two-year-old Nissan Sentra, in the same parking space she’d been issued when she had rented the apartment. The Nissan had been brand-spanking-new when she bought it. By the time the claims adjuster had finished his work, she had enough to buy the Civic with only a $66-a-month car payment. The Civic was also better on gas. The seventy-eight–year-old woman who had sold it to her swore that the 20,000-mile reading on the odometer was true and accurate, and the reason she was selling it was because she was going to move into an assisted living village and didn’t need a car. Bella had bought it on the spot and never regretted it for a second.

      Bella stepped out of the elevator and made her way down the hall to her apartment. She didn’t run these days the way she had before. Before as in, before hiring Mitchell Jones. She played with the three apartment keys in her hand before she inserted the dead-bolt key into the lock.

      Bella tossed the mail on the little bistro table in the kitchen without looking at it. What was the point? Bills, bills, bills. She could look at them anytime. Her theory was that if she opened them, she had to pay them. If she ignored them, then they didn’t exist until she was ready to open and pay them.

      Just the other day, she’d separated the mail into two piles. Her pile was on the left and Andy’s was on the right. When she moved next week, her plan was to leave Andy’s mail right where it was. Let the new tenant forward it or take it back to the post office. She grimaced when she saw the bill from Mitchell Jones in the stack of mail she’d carried in. It bothered her that she owed him money, but he’d said he would work with her and take whatever she could pay over time as she got paid. To date, she had paid him the munificent sum of $60.

      Next week.

      Everything was next week, when she was moving into a smaller one-bedroom apartment in the next complex down the road. She’d start her new part-time job next week. She was going to be a cashier four hours a night, six nights a week at a health-food store, earning $15 an hour plus a forty percent discount on anything she wanted to buy. It was time to start eating healthy and living a healthier lifestyle. Maybe she would meet some nice people and start to get a life for herself. She wished she could get the four years she’d devoted to Andy back, but that was impossible. The best years of her young life. How foolish she’d been to be so devoted to Andy that she took nothing in return but a ring on her finger and a pile of bills. Then again, she’d fallen in love.

      Right now, right this minute, she was convinced the marriage hadn’t stood a chance from the get-go. Maybe if Andy was a nine-to-five, work-at-Home-Depot kind of guy, it might have stood a chance.

      Bella warned herself to turn off that kind of thinking by telling herself that you can’t unring the bell. When she’d told her boss and some of the people that she worked with at the small graphic design company that she was filing for divorce, they had started to distance themselves from her, asking her how could she do that when Andy was fighting for his country, and calling her a spoiled brat for thinking only of herself and not what Andy was going through. It was cruel and inhuman what she was doing, they said. When she ran crying to Mitchell Jones to tell him, he’d just looked at her and lowered his eyes. It was clear he was of the same opinion as her employer and her coworkers, but lawyer that he was, he wasn’t going to say anything. And besides, she was his client, and it was not his place to judge. She’d come to him seeking help, and he was providing said help. End of his story. That very night, she had a dozen résumés updated and ready to mail. So far, she had only one scheduled interview on the horizon.

      Bella poured herself a glass of wine. No more running to the computer the moment she was inside. Those days were long gone. She kicked off her shoes, made her way to the sofa, and flopped down. She turned on the six o’clock news and settled down to find out what had gone on in the world while she labored all day at work.

      An update on the road repairs from the hellacious rain of three weeks ago. Two United States soldiers wounded in Syria. Two senators and one congressman suddenly on the hot seat for fooling around with young pages and hotly denying the allegations while their colleagues were urging them to step down. In the next ninety days, a chain of Midwestern supermarkets would be shutting down after ninety-nine years of serving their communities.

      Bella turned off the television and curled her legs up and under her as she stared off into space, her thoughts scattered. She realized she was crying when her vision started to blur. How had it come to this? How? Last week, she had gone way out of her way to contact one of the military wives of one of Andy’s best friends. In the course of the conversation, she’d asked how she dealt with not hearing from her husband on a regular basis.

      Evelyn Morris looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head and asked what she was talking about because James e-mailed at least three times a week. She even said they had FaceTimed at least once every two weeks. Bella explained, and the woman had looked at her with such pity that Bella thought she was going to get sick. Then she blurted out that she’d just filed for divorce the previous week. Evelyn gave her another pitiful look and simply walked away, but she did call over her shoulder, “You’re not someone I want to admit I know.”

      Bella hadn’t cried then. She was too numb to cry. But now the tears came.