Chapter 11

Abstract

It wasn’t the way that Brittany Smith had planned it. You don’t really set your sights on being a copyeditor when you’re ten years old. The same thing with the divorce. It just came out of the blue when Brittany, mother to Sam Smith, found out that her husband, a veteran cop, was having an affair with a younger woman in Anaheim. He denied ever having sex with her, but the receipts that Brittany found at home showed that he had bought his “acquaintance,” as he called her, some interesting items from a swanky Beverly Hills lingerie shop. Then there were the bills from the Plaza Luxury Suites in Rancho Mirage, with numerous room service charges where her husband was supposedly attending a police conference. Here was a man who had always told Brittany that room service was an extravagant expense on the few times when they had managed to sneak away for a romantic weekend. The sheer number of items for breakfast, lunch, and dinner suggested to Brittany that the two of them never left the room.