Drawn into Love (Fluke My Life 4)

Chapter 1

NEW FOUNDATION

COURTNEY

After a sip of wine, I pick up the packing tape and close up another box. Leaning back on my heels, I look around my almost-empty living room. Who would have thought that six years of someone’s life could fit into a few cardboard boxes? The proof is stacked up against the wall, waiting for the movers, who will be here in the morning. The house phone rings in the kitchen, causing me to sigh. Only two people call the house line: my former mother-in-law and my ex-husband. The voice mail kicks on, and I cringe as my ex-husband’s voice echoes through the quiet house.

“Courtney, it’s Tom. I spoke with Mom. She said that the movers are coming tomorrow morning. I was wondering if you’d like to get dinner tonight. We should talk before you leave. Call me back.”

A loud beep fills the air. When I look down, I notice that my nails are digging into my palms. Talk? It’s funny that he always wants to talk now. Whenever I tried to talk to him during the last two years of our marriage, he was always too busy, always telling me that we didn’t have anything to talk about, that everything was fine. But everything wasn’t fine, because I found out he was a cheating jerk who knocked up his secretary while I was going through fertility treatments in hope of giving us the family we had talked about for years. I unclench my fists and pick up my wineglass, gulping the rest down before heading to the kitchen.

Once there, I turn on the faucet and fill the glass as I look through the window above the sink. I used to love standing right here and daydreaming about the day I’d see my children playing in the yard. This house was full of those kinds of dreams—dreams that kept me going when nothing else would. When Tom and I bought this house, we were young and in love, excited about the future, excited about our future together. I was twenty-three when we met. I had just moved to Boston from Albany, and I’d started working as a paralegal for a law firm downtown, where he was a lawyer. I don’t really remember how we got together, but I do know what drew me to him. He had a big, close family—something I had always wanted. He also seemed to have compassion for others who were less fortunate, which was a rare quality in the men I knew back then. When we met, he seemed like everything I had been looking for: he was kind and stable and accepted everything about me. Growing up in the foster system, I never had a solid foundation or anyone to lean on when times were difficult. He gave me those things. Well, he gave them to me for a while, anyway.

“It’s time to build your own foundation,” I remind myself out loud as I shut off the water and head toward the living room to finish packing.

Tomorrow I start my new life. Tomorrow I will be moving out of this house and to New York City, where I have a job lined up at a law firm that specializes in divorce. It’s sad to say that the end of my own marriage helped to get me the job, but it did. I hadn’t planned on fighting him for anything after I found out about his affair, but once I found out that his mistress was pregnant I lost my mind. I wanted him to suffer in some way. I wanted him to feel what I felt when he took my dream from me. I had given up so much for him. When we decided to start trying for a family of our own, I stopped working. I gave up who I was and became the wife he wanted me to be. I took care of the house and the groceries, made dinner every night, and made sure I was always available to spend time—or have sex—with him. I don’t necessarily blame him for that. I wanted to be a good wife to him. I wanted to make him happy, to be someone he was proud to have on his arm. I wanted him to know how much I appreciated him, which is why what he did killed me a little bit.

I didn’t have any money of my own, and I knew I couldn’t use a local firm to handle my divorce since so many of the lawyers in Boston were friends of Tom’s. Then I happened upon a newspaper article about someone from my past: Abby Snider, a divorce attorney in New York City. I was three years older than she was, but we had been in the same group home. I looked after her as much as I could before she was adopted at age eleven by a well-off family in New York City. We lost contact after that, but she never forgot me—the same way I never forgot her. The story claimed that she was a righter of wrongs and a voice for the women she fought for. I needed a voice. I needed someone to fight for me, and Abby did. When I contacted her, she remembered me immediately and agreed to help me out.