LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 4

      MAGGIE SORRELL AWAKENED with a start. Reaching out, she turned on the bedside lamp and looked at the alarm clock. It was three-thirty.

      Groaning to herself, she doused the light, slid down under the covers and attempted to go back to sleep. But her mind raced when she began to think about the living room and library of the house in Roxbury she was redecorating for a client. Fabric patterns, carpet swatches, paint colours and wood finishes swirled around in her head.

      She finally gave up trying to envision a scheme. Jake Cantrell kept intruding into her thoughts. There was something about him that was appealing, very engaging, and of course he was stunning looking. But he doesn’t know it, not really, she thought again, as she had a few hours ago. And then remembering the sadness she had detected in his light green eyes, she wondered what had gone awry in his life.

      Obviously someone had hurt Jake Cantrell and very badly. She recognized that look only too well. The shell-shocked look she called it.

      A woman did him in, Maggie thought, still focusing on Jake. She sighed to herself. Women. Men. What they did to each other in the name of love was diabolical. It bordered on the criminal. She ought to know, it had been done to her.

      Mike Sorrell had destroyed her just as surely as if he had stuck a knife in her. But then he’d been killing her soul for years, hadn’t he?

      The big upheaval had happened two years ago, but the memory of it was still there. Although most of the pain had receded, there were moments when it came rushing back, took her by surprise with its intensity. She tried to squash the bad memories but they seemed determined to linger.

      I’ll be forty-four next month, she thought. Forty-four. It didn’t seem possible. Time had rushed by with the speed of light. Where had all the years gone? Well, she knew the answer to that. Mike Sorrell had devoured them. She had devoted most of her life to Michael William Sorrell, attorney-at-law by profession, and to their twins, Hannah and Peter, college students both, soon to be twenty-one years old.

      The three of them were gone from her life and she had learned to live without them. But it still pained her when she thought of the twins. They had sided with their father, even though she had done nothing wrong. He was the guilty party. But then he was Mr Money Bags and that apparently carried weight with them.

      How terrible it was to know your children were greedy, avaricious and selfish, when you’d tried so hard to bring them up right, to instil proper values in them. But there it was. They had proved to her that she had failed with them.

      In taking his side they had destroyed something fundamental deep within her. She had borne them, brought them up, looked after them when they were sick. She had always been there for them and guided them all of their lives. What they had done to her was rotten, in her opinion. They had flung all that caring back in her face. Flung her love for them back at her, as if it were meaningless.

      In a sense, their cold-hearted defection had stunned her more than Mike’s ugly betrayal of her. He’d dumped her when she was nearly forty-two for a younger woman, a woman of twenty-seven who was a lawyer in another Chicago law firm.

      But I survived, Maggie reminded herself, thanks mainly to Samantha. And myself, of course.

      It was Samantha who had reached out to her two years ago, that awful day in May, the day of her birthday when she had finally admitted to herself that she would be spending it alone.

      Hannah and Peter were both attending Northwestern, but were far too busy with their own lives to make time for their mother’s birthday celebration. And their father had left that morning on a business trip without wishing her a happy birthday. Apparently he hadn’t even remembered it.

      That May morning, sitting alone in the kitchen of their apartment on Lake Shore Drive, she had felt totally, completely alone. And without her husband and children she was. Her parents were dead and she had been an only child. That special morning she had felt something else – abandoned, cast aside, of no use to anyone anymore. Even now, so long after, she was unable to pinpoint her exact feelings, but she had been disturbed, she knew that.

      When the phone had rung and she had answered, had heard Samantha singing ‘Happy birthday’, she had burst into tears. Between sobs she had explained that she was spending her birthday alone because the kids didn’t have time for her and Mike had gone away on a business trip.

      ‘Pack a bag, get out to O’Hare and take a plane to New York! Immediately!’ Samantha had exclaimed. ‘I’ll book us into the Carlyle. I have some pull there, I can usually get rooms. I’m taking you out on the town tonight. Somewhere posh and smart. So pack your fanciest gear.’

      When she had tried to protest, Samantha had said, ‘I’m not listening to your excuses. And I won’t take no for an answer. There’s a plane leaving every hour on the hour. Just get on one and get yourself to New York. Pronto, pronto, pronto, honey. I’ll meet you at the hotel.’

      True to her word, Samantha had been there when she arrived, full of warmth and love, sympathy and support. They had enjoyed their two days together in Manhattan, doing a little shopping and eating at nice restaurants. A Broadway play and a trip to the Metropolitan Museum had been mandatory;

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