Her phone rang and she checked the screen.

Not a friend (did she have any true friends? It was something she often wondered), but Rita, Cliff’s personal assistant and his lover for the past six months.

Joanna didn’t want to talk to Rita. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She knew from painful experience that anything she said would find its way into the media and be used to construct an image of her as a pathetic creature, worthy of pity. Whatever Cliff did, she somehow became the story. And no matter how much she told herself that it didn’t matter because they didn’t matter, and that the woman they wrote about wasn’t really her, she still found it distressing. Not only the intrusion and the inaccuracies, and there were many of those, but the constant reminder of her biggest mistake—not leaving him sooner.

She’d stayed ridiculously loyal to him for two decades, and yes, she regretted it now. He’d made her extravagant promises and told her she was the best thing in his life and that this time things were going to be different, and naively she’d believed him. And she hadn’t just done it once. She’d done it repeatedly. She’d thought, This time he means it and things will be different, but things never were different and he hadn’t meant it. And now she felt stupid for believing he’d ever change, and that the things he said would ever be anything other than empty words spoken to induce her to stay, but she’d so badly wanted to believe him because the alternative was to accept that under the charm and the warmth Cliff Whitman was a cheat and a liar, and that she’d stayed with him far too long.

She’d finally left him, but the news stories never went away, which meant that even though she’d finally divorced him she still sometimes felt as if they were together. Her mistake was an anchor that held her fast. Whatever she did in the future, she’d be dragging her past with Cliff along with her.

She rejected the call, muted the sound on the TV, but continued to stare at the words scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

Celebrity chef Cliff Whitman killed in car accident.

Dead at the scene.

Well, damn.

She’d spent the last year wanting to kill him herself and she didn’t know whether to feel elated or cheated. After everything he’d done, everything he’d put her through, it seemed unfair of the universe to have deprived her of the chance to play at least a small part in his demise.