Samantha gathered up her coat, her purse, and the carry-on that contained what she referred to as her “life,” and made her way through the living room to the front door, where her bags waited for her. She shoved them one by one out into the hallway. The manager would have them in the garage waiting to be loaded into her BMW by the time she took the elevator to the garage. Then she would take them to her new condo a mile away in Alexandria, Virginia. The condo was a spacious, two-bedroom, two-bath, up-and-down condo that she’d furnished in two days’ time. It even had a fireplace, the main reason she’d bought the condo in the first place. The fireplace was part of her nesting home-and-hearth personality. The kitchen had new appliances and ample counter space. She could hardly wait to cook her first dinner and mess up the place. Best of all, she had an unlisted telephone number that she’d given out to only a select few, including her closest friend Sara, otherwise known as Slick, who was a super, glossy, high-fashion model, her employer, and, of course, the bank where she had her checking and savings accounts. In addition to those accounts, she had several CDs that she’d taken out with her modest inheritance from her grandmother years before and all the savings bonds she’d gotten as gifts during her lifetime. She was definitely solvent.

An hour later Sam was lugging her bags into her new home. The minute the bags were in her spacious living room, she locked the door and danced around the room, clapping her hands in glee. It was all hers. No one could cross the threshold unless she invited them in. All hers. She started to cry then because it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She was supposed to start her new life with her new husband, not alone in a condo just three weeks after her honeymoon.

She swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt as she looked at her watch through tear-filled eyes. She had one hour till her appointment with Douglas’s attorney. What that was all about, she had no clue. The call had come in yesterday, just an hour after she’d been served with divorce papers, inviting her to the offices of Prizzi, Prizzi, Prizzi, and Prizzi.

She thought about blowing off the Prizzi law firm but decided to keep the appointment so that when she returned to her new nest, her past would be just that, her past. Her lawyer could handle the divorce, and she would simply move on. She needed time to grieve, to cry and sob, to stomp her feet and get down and ugly. The honeymoon must have been some kind of test that she failed. How crazy was that?