Elly in Bloom. Colleen Oakes

      Georgia, two years ago, daybreak.

      Early morning nauseated Elly.

      That was normal, at least.

      Her steering wheel smelled like spoiled milk and rotten freesia.

      Gross. That was not normal.

      Through the dirty windshield, she watched the creeping fingers of dawn overtaking the horizon. Bright rays approached her car slowly, blasted through the muddy glass, and turned her dark leather seats into blinding mirrors of light that hurt her swollen eyes.

      Elly hated the dawn: the insects chirping, the hazy mist. It turned her stomach. And for once, the thought of food was unappealing to her. She pressed her forehead against the pungent wheel and whimpered. It had only been one day—one crappy, stinking day since her whole life had melted down—and now she was in her car having a nervous breakdown. It was getting unbearably hot. The blazing Georgia sun peeked over the hackberry trees that held steady as a slight breeze tossed their leaves. Her eyes, stinging from the sun and from the hysterical tears she’d indulged the night before, welcomed the moisture. She had cried for twelve hours straight, drunk an entire bottle of wine, trashed a painting, and now she was here, sweating in her car.

      She was filled with something stronger than anger, something more pathetic than sadness. Elly exhaled, feeling the breath stutter out of her lungs, stretched thin after hours of grieving. She hated her sad little life, hated what she had become in this last day, hated the man who was her husband. Who was her husband. She gave a whimper. Hated she’d been forced to see everything she’d believed about her life was a lie.

      More than that, at the moment, she hated being hot. She was hot so often.

      With a sigh, she turned the key and the toy-sized engine of her Toyota Tercel roared to life. After a blast of scorching heat, crisp air puffed her face and dried the mixture of tears and sweat on her cheeks. With the heat retreating, she could think a little more clearly. She glanced at the bags in the backseat: one giant suitcase with orange and blue ribbons dangling from the handle, a couple of plastic bags stuffed with hair and makeup supplies, a cooler filled with apples and sandwiches—a stupid decision, now that she thought about it—and her lace wedding dress that lay crumpled in the corner. Elly pursed her lips and whipped around. She couldn’t think about that. Not now. She would find a therapist later to talk to about the dress.

      Elly glanced nervously at the clock. She knew what she should do. She should drive to her job. She should talk to her boss, Jeff, who constantly picked at his shirt near his stomach. She should call her best friend, Cassie, and talk her into skipping work. They would cry—no, she would cry—and talk about that moment, that horrible moment, again and again. The creak of stairs. A hand clutching white sheets. The moment when she’d found her husband staring at, enraptured by, embroiled with, another woman. Cassie and she would eat ice cream until she was too exhausted from emotion and dairy to move.

      Cassie would pretend to be amazed that he would cheat. She would insist that Elly storm back into the house and demand that he be the one to leave. Elly muffled a sob. Demand the house. Demand faithfulness. Demand love and bury what happened in a cemetery at the back of her mind, never speaking of it again.

      Yes, that sounded great … but that confrontation would require removing her head from the steering wheel, and her neck seemed unable to do so at the moment. She couldn’t move on from this moment. Not now, not ever.

      She heard a slam and jerked her head up. Her next-door neighbor, Jen, was taking her son to school. Jen, looking confused as to why Elly was sitting in her car, unmoving, waved enthusiastically. Elly rolled her eyes back in her head and lifted her hand weakly. Filled with self-pity, she loathed Jen, who was actually a nice person. Yes, act like nothing is wrong. Act like you didn’t hear me screaming and wailing like a banshee until the sun came up. Act like this is totally normal, sitting in my car at six in the morning, with a cooler full of roast beef and suicidal thoughts. Jen’s towheaded little boy climbed into the backseat, and she lovingly buckled him in.

      The tears Elly didn’t think she had left inside her snuck up so suddenly that she didn’t even have time to prepare. A wail, an unwomanly, unattractive wail, escaped from her lips and she wept with liberal abandon. Grief spread before her. Her perfect future, her imaginary child, a little boy who climbed happily into his car seat, was not here. That future was not in this house, the one she had built for that purpose. It was not with the man she had trusted to see her dreams through. It was not in the office where she’d worked for years, where she’d happily gossiped with friends about the love of her life. It wasn’t in the park where she’d envisioned pushing a baby stroller, her artistic husband at her side. Her life as she dreamed it imploded yesterday. The shards went flying inward, into her body, the moment she saw them together. That life was shattered before she realized what was happening to her.

      How was it that a love story so beautifully constructed, so perfectly executed, could be so flawed, so breakable? How, with a single act, could two years of marriage burn to the ground, leaving only flecks of ash behind?

      Her future as she’d imagined it was gone forever. It could not be fixed.

      He had not chosen her.

      She would later exaggerate, telling people it was inner strength or her great faith that propelled her forward into the unknown. She had no such strength, no such faith. What she had was the desperation of having nothing ahead of her and the total decimation of a dream behind her. Elly closed her eyes and banged her skull against the headrest. She saw them again, his face elated with joy, his green eyes flashing up at the woman on top of him, a bead of sweat running down her naked spine. The mane of red hair.

      Tears threatened to fall again.

      Push it down.

      With that thought, she made the decision, turned the key, her heart still shattering into sharp, jagged pieces. Elly shifted the now-trembling car into first gear and turned around on her cul-de-sac. She propelled the car onto the road that led out of her perfect neighborhood, turned northwest, and headed for the freeway. She found her favorite station and cranked up the radio, not wanting to hear the whispering voices in her head. And then she drove, and drove, and drove. With the sounds of easy-listening music mingling with her wrenching sobs, Elly drove until the sun set in front of her.

      She refused to look back.

      Chapter One

      Clayton, Missouri, present day, well past daybreak, this time at a civilized

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