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Chapter One
Kenna
The downward spiral of my charmed life started with an innocent email on a Monday afternoon.
Dear Mrs. Cugly, Thank you for your recent holiday purchase. As always, twice yearly cleaning of all the jewelry purchased from Louis Lavigne is completely complimentary. We hope you enjoy your new bracelet.
It was a very nice email. Kind. Grammatically correct even. The only problem was that I hadn’t purchased a bracelet from the store where my wedding ring came from.
At first I figured it was just a mistake. They’d sent the email to the wrong customer. Then, when I couldn’t get the little voice in the back of my head to shut up about it, I left work early and headed straight for their flagship store in downtown San Francisco. How cliché would it be if I found out my husband of over a decade was cheating on me? I’d almost laughed when I got out of my car and headed for the double glass doors, shiny baubles winking at me from behind the thick windows of the store.
I’d played dumb and asked the sales person to show me how to use the clasp. Of course, I claimed to have forgotten the bracelet at home and could she demonstrate on a bracelet just like it? She did, producing a tennis bracelet lined with diamonds that looked as hard as the newly formed shell around my heart. There was no mistake.
I hadn’t purchased that bracelet and my husband had not gifted me with one at Christmas. I’d gotten a Kindle, which was wonderful and exactly what I wanted. Now I knew I should have asked for something a little higher up the price scale.
That truth bomb had led to an epic fight that night, which led to Justin slamming the door on his way out of our tenth-floor condo with a view of the San Francisco Bay. My husband, fraternity president and man voted most likely to become president one day, hadn’t come back all week. I could only guess he was staying with whomever was wearing that bracelet. I buried myself in work and copious amounts of coffee to keep myself going.
“Where the hell is my umbrella?” I muttered under my breath.
I couldn’t be late to work today. It was my big presentation. The one that I hoped would land me a managerial position in the publishing company I’d worked for straight out of college. Maybe one day the sign on the building would even say Morgan, Dudly, and Cugly once I made partner. I winced. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t add my name if I became a partner.
The living room looked like I got robbed and I still came up empty. I tried to blink my eyes but found I couldn’t. I’d been using so much Visine to keep the red eyes at bay from crying myself to sleep at night, I had no natural eye fluid left.
“Forget it,” I mumbled, grabbing my bag and rushing out the door. The weatherman had called for mostly sunny skies anyway, which was a rarity around here, even in late spring. My pasty-white Irish skin could use some sun exposure. Perhaps some vitamin D would help my mood.
I stumbled over the welcome mat, looking down to see a manilla envelope on the ground with my name on it. It now had a size-eight footprint on the top of it too. Dread hit me so hard I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I snatched it up and jammed it in my messenger bag, racing to the elevators and hoping to forget about it until a time when I could focus.
“Good morning, Liz.” I sailed into the office right on time and dumped my coat on my chair. I had my own office, though I shared a wall with the men’s restroom which was as awful as it sounded. Liz Davis, my best friend, shared the wall on the other side of my office. Her chair squeaked as she got up and stuck her head in my doorway.
“All ready for today?” Liz’s dark brown hair was tucked behind her ears. She’d worn a familiar blue blouse and black slacks to work today. “Wearing my blue to cheer you on. All those losers wearing red won’t know what hit them.”
Our office was highly competitive, a culture trait I admired and used to my advantage, spurring me on to reach for new heights in my career. Ashley, my work nemesis, was tall, blonde, and younger than me. She wore red to match her painted lips and used her body to get ahead whenever possible. I didn’t mind being beaten, but not because someone was cheating. Sadly, not everyone in the office felt the same way and decided to align themselves with her, represented by the red attire they wore.
Thankfully, management was usually pretty fair in their assessment of who made a better presentation. Ashley and I were split down the middle on accounts we’d landed. But now there was a managerial position open and I wanted it. Nine years I’d been here. Ashley only had three under her size-extra-small belt.
And I had a newfound hatred for cheaters of all kinds.
My eyes filled with fresh tears and Liz began to flap her hands in worry. I sucked in a deep breath and pushed all those feelings about my husband into a steel box and locked it away. Today was about me.
The phone on my desk rang and I snatched it up, hoping whomever was on the other end would provide the distraction I needed before I was due to give my presentation.
“Kenna Cugly.”
“Kenna, honey?”
“Mom?” I sank into my chair and Liz sat opposite of me, her face a reflection of what I was feeling. Mom never called me at the office.
“I tried calling your phone, but it kept going to voicemail.”
I winced. I’d turned it off last night after she’d called six times to check in on me. Telling her about Justin’s infidelities had opened up a can of worms. Mom wasn’t the fondest of the institution of marriage during the best of times, but now that a man had hurt her precious daughter? She’d gone into full-helicopter-parent mode, which felt smothering and bizarre.
“Sorry about that. What’s up?”
“I just can’t believe it,” she moaned.
I rolled my eyes at Liz. “Yeah, I know. Me neither. Never thought I’d see the day Justin would do something like that.”
There was a beat of silence. “Oh, yes, that too. But—Kenna, are you sitting down?”
