Truth and Justice - Fern Michaels Page 0,2

she opened them, she had to pay them. If she ignored them, then they didn’t exist until she was ready to open and pay them.

Just the other day, she’d separated the mail into two piles. Her pile was on the left and Andy’s was on the right. When she moved next week, her plan was to leave Andy’s mail right where it was. Let the new tenant forward it or take it back to the post office. She grimaced when she saw the bill from Mitchell Jones in the stack of mail she’d carried in. It bothered her that she owed him money, but he’d said he would work with her and take whatever she could pay over time as she got paid. To date, she had paid him the munificent sum of $60.

Next week.

Everything was next week, when she was moving into a smaller one-bedroom apartment in the next complex down the road. She’d start her new part-time job next week. She was going to be a cashier four hours a night, six nights a week at a health-food store, earning $15 an hour plus a forty percent discount on anything she wanted to buy. It was time to start eating healthy and living a healthier lifestyle. Maybe she would meet some nice people and start to get a life for herself. She wished she could get the four years she’d devoted to Andy back, but that was impossible. The best years of her young life. How foolish she’d been to be so devoted to Andy that she took nothing in return but a ring on her finger and a pile of bills. Then again, she’d fallen in love.

Right now, right this minute, she was convinced the marriage hadn’t stood a chance from the get-go. Maybe if Andy was a nine-to-five, work-at-Home-Depot kind of guy, it might have stood a chance.

Bella warned herself to turn off that kind of thinking by telling herself that you can’t unring the bell. When she’d told her boss and some of the people that she worked with at the small graphic design company that she was filing for divorce, they had started to distance themselves from her, asking her how could she do that when Andy was fighting for his country, and calling her a spoiled brat for thinking only of herself and not what Andy was going through. It was cruel and inhuman what she was doing, they said. When she ran crying to Mitchell Jones to tell him, he’d just looked at her and lowered his eyes. It was clear he was of the same opinion as her employer and her coworkers, but lawyer that he was, he wasn’t going to say anything. And besides, she was his client, and it was not his place to judge. She’d come to him seeking help, and he was providing said help. End of his story. That very night, she had a dozen résumés updated and ready to mail. So far, she had only one scheduled interview on the horizon.

Bella poured herself a glass of wine. No more running to the computer the moment she was inside. Those days were long gone. She kicked off her shoes, made her way to the sofa, and flopped down. She turned on the six o’clock news and settled down to find out what had gone on in the world while she labored all day at work.

An update on the road repairs from the hellacious rain of three weeks ago. Two United States soldiers wounded in Syria. Two senators and one congressman suddenly on the hot seat for fooling around with young pages and hotly denying the allegations while their colleagues were urging them to step down. In the next ninety days, a chain of Midwestern supermarkets would be shutting down after ninety-nine years of serving their communities.

Bella turned off the television and curled her legs up and under her as she stared off into space, her thoughts scattered. She realized she was crying when her vision started to blur. How had it come to this? How? Last week, she had gone way out of her way to contact one of the military wives of one of Andy’s best friends. In the course of the conversation, she’d asked how she dealt with not hearing from her husband on a regular basis.

Evelyn Morris looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head and asked what she was talking about because James e-mailed at least three times a week. She