An online novel by Gillette Edmunds

It was a trap and Barbara knew it. Now her mother had her and her children where she wanted them all along. Dependent. Totally helpless. But she would take advantage of it. She would win out in the end. She had thought it all through on the plane. She would use her mother for a few weeks and then, when the divorce was filed, she would get all Chuck’s money by threatening to expose him in court, call the newspapers even, and ruin his career.

“There’s one thing,” Barbara said. “I don’t have any money. Chuck has my credit cards and there’s not much in my account at home. We were going to pay all the bills after we got back.”

“You will need to give your lawyer money right away,” Mrs. Nichols said. “Otherwise you will not get good representation. I learned that from your father.”

The next morning, Mrs. Nichols gave Barbara a check for an attorney and arranged her travel and moving expenses. Barbara flew to Cleveland and took a taxi home. There was no indication Chuck had been there. She called a divorce lawyer, a classmate from law school. Since he could only see her right away, she drove her Mercedes station wagon towards downtown.

Cleveland looked strange. There was foliage everywhere and yet all the trees were somehow stunted. She had never noticed this before. The leaves, even in full foliage, did not round out the trees. Every tree seemed to have ragged edges, unfinished growth. Winter was so long, and bitter cold, and summer so short, never full baked as it had been in Rome. The trees that could survive did, but none escaped the damages of the seasons.

From the freeway, she turned into the dark, soot stained towers of downtown. She wandered toward her lawyer’s office, twice turning into one-way streets the wrong way and having to turn around.