It was after one in the morning and, once again, the other side of her huge, lonely bed was empty. She wondered what his excuse would be this time, because she’d heard them all before. Unless he’d died, there was nothing else he could use. Sighing, she reached for the lamp on her night table and turned on the light. Her bladder is what had woken her, and even though she didn’t feel like making the short walk to her master bathroom, she stopped stalling and went. She sat there a couple moments after she was done, her mind wandering. She thought back to when the times were somewhat good with her and Maxwell, and how he used to at least pretend he loved her. She knew she had twisted his arm and given him more than a subtle nudge to marry her—it was more like a shove, because she knew she was perfect him. She had molded him into the man he was. And after all her hard work and sacrifices, he had the nerve to have another woman. He had the audacity to have a low-class whore on the other side of town.
