In the dream, she was struggling to get free, just like she had that night. The police had come into their house at that point, yelling at Blaine to let her go, and he was screaming in her ear.

“I’ll make you sorry. You’ll never have another moment’s peace as long as you live!”

Her heart was pounding when she heard a voice from her childhood.

Wake up! Wake up, Mary Cathleen! Wake up now!

She gasped, then sat up straight in bed and turned on the lamp. The hundred-watt bulb put a whole new light on the moment, helping pull her out of the dream, but she couldn’t deny what she’d heard. That was her mother’s voice, and she hadn’t heard it in more than eight years.

“Oh, Mama, you’re still on my side, even from the grave.” She glanced at the clock.

It was twenty minutes to four, and going back to sleep after that wasn’t happening, so she turned on the television, plumped up her pillows, and began scanning the available movies. She didn’t much care what it was. Anything to get her mind off her ex would suffice.

She was thinking about going to the kitchen for something to snack on when she saw actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s face flash on the screen, and she stopped and upped the volume. He was one of her favorites, and being tall, dark, and handsome was the antithesis of Blaine Wagner’s stocky build and blonde hair.

“That actor is one pretty man. I don’t care what this movie is about. I can mute the whole thing and just sit and look at him. That should get my ex-husband’s face out of my head.”

But she didn’t mute it after all and wound up watching almost two hours of the movie. It wasn’t a happily-ever-after movie, but she didn’t live in a happily-ever-after world, and she was fine with that.

Cathy ran to the kitchen during a commercial and made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then brought it and a glass of milk back to bed.

By the time the movie was over, the memory of the dream had mostly passed and morning was imminent. She turned off the television and took her dirty dishes back to the kitchen, started a pot of coffee to brewing, then headed back to her room to get dressed.

A short while later she was in the kitchen having coffee, contemplating her day of doing little to nothing here in Blessings, and remembering her old life in Vegas.

* * *

The divorce had taken six months to finalize, ending with a lump sum payment of thirty million dollars to her bank account. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it. He was a billionaire…a fourth generation Wagner—a name famous in Nevada. In early days, it was silver mines, and during the past fifty something years, it had become casinos.

After the divorce was final, she thought that would be the end of it. But she’d been wrong, and it was what he did on the courthouse steps as they were leaving that scared her.