Chapter 2

She'd sat there like a lump as he laid out their life, the life they'd shared, as seen through his eyes. There was no mention of the double shifts and extra jobs she'd done to put him through medical school. There was no recall of the blood, sweat, and tears she'd put into their relationship.

It was as though the years together, the shared dreams, the late-night plans for their future as they ate Ramen noodles out of Cool Whip containers had all disappeared into thin air.

Where had he been, this stranger that spoke in hushed tones to his lawyer each time the judge asked a question? Had he not been right there with her throughout those years of hardship and turmoil? When she'd been the one shouldering the burden? Where was the man who'd been so full of gratitude and praise for her? The one who'd promised her the world one day?

Instead, he'd stomped all over her heart and destroyed her self-esteem with his claims that she had done nothing really to contribute to what he had become. To hear him tell it, he had singlehandedly done it all on his own. While she was little more than a nuisance, he now found himself saddled with.

It didn't seem real. This could not be the same person, not her Paul. Not the boy who'd become a man in her arms as even she'd grown into womanhood in his.

She'd spent those days in the courtroom in a deep fog of disbelief and fear. There was a cloud hanging over her then, something that seemed to be trying to cushion her mind from what was really going on. Some days that cloud felt more like it was going to strangle her.

When she did let her mind process what was going on around her, it was always too much. Until she'd tried to disappear into her own reality in her mind, it had become too much to hear any more, to sift through what was real and what was not, from this person who now seemed to have lived in a completely different home to the one they'd shared.

She'd been so hurt and disillusioned by the blatant lies that even then, she'd tried to convince herself that it was the attorney putting him up to it. There was no way he could really feel those things let alone say them. She'd sat there in that courtroom in the last days, as the embers from the ashes of her life died out, hoping against hope that the boy she loved would come to his senses. That he'd take one look at her, sitting there so broken, and remember all that they had meant to each other.

It never happened. The stranger in front of her was a far cry from the kindhearted young boy she'd given her innocence to those many years ago. When she was young and stupid and full of dreams for the future, had he known then that he would one day destroy her? What did he see when he looked back on those days? What were his memories like? Were they anything like her own?

In the end, because she hadn't been able to afford a hotshot attorney the way Paul had, she'd lost everything. When she'd sought an ounce of compassion from him, for what she knew was to become of her life once it was all over, he'd looked at her with such hate and unbridled rage that it was hard for her to comprehend.

Why? What had she done that he would turn her out onto the street with literally nothing more than the clothes on her back? And to make matters worse, after the dust had settled, he'd tried to take even those. It was as if he was trying to eliminate her very existence and the memory of their life together completely.

By then, she'd given up caring anyway. Her heart had frozen inside her as she went from disbelief to wondering if he was suffering some kind of mental break. It was hard for her to accept even then that he was no longer the boy she knew. She'd run the gamut of every emotion known to man in those few weeks it had taken them to destroy her. Ten years disintegrated in a matter of seconds, and in the end, she had nothing to show for her sacrifice.

She'd pretty much lost all faith in the human race after that. If Paul, the man she'd loved since childhood, the man she'd hung all her future joys on, had turned on her so viciously, what else was there to say, really? How could she possibly ever trust again?

Her mind went to the other player in this farce. The one she'd learned about only after the divorce was final, the reason for the change in the husband she'd adored. Where she no longer felt anything but a cold numbness where Paul was concerned, Jenny was a whole other story. The anger and hate that the other woman invoked was not to be borne.

For the first time in her life, she contemplated murder. She'd always heard the question, why blame the woman and not the man? She blamed them both, but there was a special reserve for the succubus who had brought about her downfall.

When she thought of the deceit, she went from feelings of rage to self-loathing at her own stupidity. It wasn't that she was letting Paul off lightly. He, she could hardly stand to think about anymore, when she wasn't pining after him, that is. But Jenny's betrayal cut just as deep.

She'd pretended all these years to be her friend. She was the one who was always there, harping on the fact that her best friend worked herself like a dog to put a man through school. Something she claimed she would never do because men were pigs, and she swore that one day Paul would trade Kerry in for a better model.

Who knew the whole time she'd been plotting her take over of Kerry's life? She'd slept with her husband in her bed. She wasn't sure anymore whose betrayal cut deeper.

She'd never been given the opportunity to face down the other woman, to get some kind of explanation. As if anything that lying bitch said would've made a difference. But still, it would've been good to have some answers. She needed that.

Instead, every time she'd tried, Paul had stood between them. Imagine her own husband, the man she'd trusted, the man she'd given her body to for ten years, protecting another woman from her. That had been one of the harshest blows to her already shattered ego.

She'd spent many a day and night curled up in a ball, racking her brain for any signs that she'd missed along the way. By then, she'd been a lump of misery, nothing made sense, and the whole world had gone dark. She'd endured spurts of anger mixed with depression until eventually, depression won.

Those were the darkest days. When her mind would hardly work, and she couldn't hold a thought for more than two seconds. She'd thrown up more than a drunk on a seven-day binge, and madness was nipping at her heels. She was convinced that there wasn't a therapist anywhere in the world who could fix what ailed her.