“Nonsense,” Darcy said. Yet the moment Amy had said those words—He’s cheating on you—her body was telling her to pay attention for once, to listen. Her heart knew the truth before her mind caught on to the situation. The blood in her veins congealed into ice. In that moment, she had felt weirdly detached from her own life, as though entering a different reality. “You shouldn’t be looking at your dad’s email,” she scolded. Classic nagging stepmom, as ineffective as a barkless Chihuahua.

“Neither should you,” Amy shot back. Then the girl had burst into tears and collapsed, sobbing, into Darcy’s lap.

And that, Darcy had realized, had been the first undeniable sign of her failing marriage—not the drafts folder, which of course completely confirmed Amy’s accusation, but the fact that, months earlier, Darcy herself had begun monitoring Huntley’s messages.

He was both careless and unsophisticated about computers. She hadn’t been looking for anything specific. Just...looking. For answers. For the reason she couldn’t feel the love from him anymore. For the reason he had emotionally left the building, like a traveler checking out of a motel he never planned to return to.

It was said that there are no winners in a divorce, but Darcy discovered that wasn’t true in her case. She had lost a husband, a family, a way of life. She had lost half her assets, her home and her belief in her own judgment when it came to men. Huntley had lost, too; the fling with his ex had flamed out, and these days, as far as she knew, he was alone. But there were winners—the crafty Amy and her brother, Orion. They had not wanted a stepmother, and now she was gone, vanished from their lives.

And here was a surprise. She missed them. She had managed to stop loving Huntley. That was easy enough, crushing her feelings for someone who had crushed her heart with the most intimate of betrayals. She couldn’t simply turn off her feelings for the kids, though. When she’d married Huntley, they were eight and ten, filling her with joy. Five years later, they were teenagers, challenging her at every turn. Yet even at their most manipulative and obnoxious, they were children to whom she had given herself entirely. Even now she couldn’t stop remembering how it felt to be a family, swept up in the busy days of their lives together. Knowing she couldn’t see them, could never hold or touch them again was a special kind of hell.