Chapter 1

Kerry laid across her lonely bed feeling listless and sorry for herself. That's the way it has been for the past three months or so. No matter how much she told herself that today was the day she was going to get up and get moving, she just could never find the energy to do much more than pick her head up off her pillow.

Today, she didn't even have it in her for that. Why bother? What was the point? She had nothing to live for, or if she did, she couldn't think of it in that moment of melancholy. She fought back unwanted tears as she rolled over to look at the opposite wall. It was the same every morning when she opened her eyes first thing. The debilitating and almost crippling pain that seemed to grow stronger with each new day.

She never imagined that a person could feel such despair and still survive. She hadn't seriously contemplated taking her own life, but there were moments when she wondered what pain was worse than the one she now suffered that led so many down that road. She didn't even want to imagine.

As her eyes drooped in misery, she gave in to the ennui that had been nipping at her heels for longer than she cared to remember.

She sniffled and curled into herself in sorrow as she asked herself how long she would feel like this, so alone, so completely broken. But there were no answers, only a deep void of nothing. A black hole that waited to suck her in if she let it.

She'd stopped answering the phone when she had one before her ex cut it off. Or even listening for the doorbell when the few friends she'd had left even bothered checking in. That had been a long time now. They'd long since given up. The thought only added to her pain and misery.

At twenty-eight, she felt as though her life was at an end. She'd been gutted and left for dead, and all that was left was this hollow, empty shell. Where had it all gone? How had it gone so wrong? More importantly, was she ever going to get out from under this, or was this her end?

She had no more tears left to shed, and that was the truth. The only emotion she knew these days was hurt. There was a little bit of confusion mixed in there somewhere, but since there was no hope of her ever getting answers as to why her life had been turned so horribly upside down, that was probably going to stay with her for a long, long time.

Rolling over, she pressed her face into the pillow, no longer willing to look at the bare brick walls that surrounded her. Her mind flashed to her once beautiful home. The home that she'd loved and had put so much time and effort into. The home that her ex-husband now shared with her ex-best friend and their child.

The scream started in the dark recesses of her mind but never made it past her lips. Pain. That's all she knew anymore, a deep, gut-wrenching pain that seeped through her very pores. The anger, like extended talons, struggled to fight its way through the depression that shrouded her mind, but there was no hope for it. It was just all too awful.

When she made a mad dash for the bathroom to throw up, she figured she still had some feeling left after all. With her sweaty brow resting against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl, she let the tears come. Looks like that well hadn't dried up after all.

The sound was harsh and ugly in the confined space of the musty little room. If it were possible to release your pain through tears, then she would've been healed by now. Heaven knows she'd cried enough for three lifetimes.

But, this felt different as she got to her hands and knees. The pain was like a weight pressing down on her, forcing her into the cold hard floor, draining what strength she had left. Despair, she knew that's what it was but had no way to stop it.

She clawed at the floor as she tried to escape her own misery. The pain was like a live thing in her gut as she cried her heart out there on the cold stone floor. Her life of the past year ran like a movie reel behind her tightly closed eyes, no matter how hard she tried to keep the memories at bay.

Would there ever come a time when those memories would fade? Will the pain ever subside? Or will she carry this burden for the rest of her life? The thought was almost too much to bear.

The divorce had been one of the worse experiences of her life. She'd had to sit there in a room with total strangers while the man she'd loved since high school had explained why he didn't think she deserved any part of what he'd built over the years of their life together. He'd talked about her as if she were a complete stranger as if she were just a passing fancy that he had grown tired of and now couldn't wait to be rid of.

Overnight, he'd become someone she didn't recognize, and she'd been so blindsided by the change that she hadn't had time to get her bearings. Talk about a blitz attack. She'd been left reeling. Still was, in fact. Maybe if she'd known? Had had some type of warning? She couldn't see how that could've made a difference.

The betrayal had been almost crippling. The things he'd said.... Who was this person, this stranger that spoke about her so callously? Where was the sweet boy she'd loved with all her heart and in whom she'd placed all her hopes and dreams?

Instead, she'd seen a man who had lost all feeling for her, and she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. What had she done that had caused the man she'd once believed loved her more than anything else in this world to change so drastically towards her?

What horrible thing did he imagine? And when did it start? How could she not have known that this was in him all those years when she'd been spinning dreams of happily ever after in her head? She'd done so much, given her all.

Now instead of the love and support she'd been expecting now that the sacrifices she'd made were over, she was faced with ridicule and cold indifference from the man who was supposed to love her. Had she not seen it with her own eyes, she would've believed it to be a hoax, some sick twisted joke at her expense.

But this was no hoax. She'd gone to bed one night believing one thing about her life, her future - so much hope. Only to be rudely awakened in the new light of day with the hard cold truth. She'd been replaced when she hadn't even known there'd been an opening where she once stood.

But the worse, the worse was the court battles. Where their life's drama was played out before strangers, it was like having your guts ripped out and hung out to dry. To hear the things she'd taken such pride in doing denigrated to nothing. To hear someone whom she'd trusted, and slept next to for so many years, speak of her in such negative dispassionate terms. Except for the pain, it would've been like watching a movie in three-D.