Her belief in the happily-ever-after with the man-with-a-pension-plan had taken a severe bruising from Martha and Michael’s split, but she wasn’t going to admit this.Eliza had expected to arrive at Martha and Michael’s that Monday morning and be guided and helped. She’d expected them to be pleased with her adult decision to move out of a dead-end relationship and find someone who wanted a couple of kids and an endowment policy. She’d even thought that they would introduce her to some of Michael’s friends at the golf club. She was looking forward to being mopped up into their happy family environment, which she’d so often admired. She’d wanted to read the kids stories in the warm orange light of their bedrooms, bedrooms packed with toys and dreams. She’d been looking forward to doing her share of playschool and swimming-class car runs. She’d wanted to join the dinner parties, she might even have been eating chioca, for God’s sake. But this scene of domestic bliss had disappeared.Vanished.Gone.If she felt cheated, God alone must know what Martha was feeling.Instead of being the recipient of mugs of hot chocolate and platefuls of oatmeal cookies, Eliza found herself in the eye of a confusing, complicated marital storm.
