Fifty pairs of eyes snapped toward my table.
Whispers, sharp as dry reeds rubbing together in a winter wind, fluttered through the crowd.
I sat alone at Table Nine, my hands folded calmly over a sweating glass of iced lemonade, my posture straight as an artillery ramrod beneath my tailored navy-blue silk blouse and matching trousers.
My name is Audrey Bennett.
I was thirty-six years old, an independent forensic title auditor, and Preston Holloway and I had been divorced for almost four years.
I had not wanted to set foot inside this county today. Four years ago, when our marriage collapsed into an agonizing abyss of failed clinical trials and endless hormonal injections, Preston had walked into our five-million-dollar Myers Park colonial with a moving truck, his corporate attorneys, and a cold demand for an immediate quiet-title severance.
The only reason I had driven forty-five minutes down from Lake Norman this afternoon was his sixty-four-year-old mother, Cynthia Holloway.
