Chapter One
"You never should have gone out with him in the first
place," Lael Weaver Gastone told her thirty-year-old
daughter, Rhonda. "You should have figured out from the
very beginning that a guy like that would be trouble, and
you certainly shouldn't have married.him."
Holding her hands in her lap, Rhonda Norton examined her
tender fingertips. She was so on edge that she had chewed
the nails off all the way down to the quick. "How was I
supposed to know that?" she asked, trying her best not to
cry.
Lael looked up from the thumbnail sketch she was working
on. The bar of pastel stopped scratching on the rough
surface of the Sabertooth paper.
"Oh, for God's sake, Rhonda. How dumb can you be?" Lael
demanded. "If a married professor starts dating an
unmarried undergraduate, you can pretty well figure the
man's a jackass. And so's the girl for that matter."
Rhonda Weaver Norton's cheeks reddened with anger. The
tears retreated. "Thanks, Mom," she said. "I always know I
can count on you for sympathy."
"You can always count on me for a straight answer," Lael
corrected. "Now tell me, why exactly are you here?"
Rhonda looked around the spacious, well-lit studio her
stepfather, Jean Paul Gastone, had built as a place for
his lovely new wife to pursue her artistic endeavors.
Rhonda interpreted that cluttered but isolated work space
as an act of self-serving generosity on Jean Paul's part.
Lael had always been messy. If nothing else, the physical
separation of the studio from the main house would help
keep most of that mess localized. That way the main house -
- a breathtakingly cantilevered mountaintop mansion --
could continue to look picture-perfect, as if the
photographers from House Beautiful or Architectural Digest
were due at any moment.
The place where Lael and Jean Paul lived now was a far cry
from the way Rhonda and her mother had lived when Rhonda
was a child. She and the free-spirited, starving artist
Lael Weaver had lived a nomadic existence that took them
from place to place, from drafty furnished rooms to
countless roach-infested apartments. This million-dollar-
plus architectural wonder was perched on a steep hillside
overlooking one of Sedona, Arizona's, most photographed
red-rocked cliffs. The fourteen-foot floor-to-ceiling
windows offered a clear and unobstructed view.
All the furnishings in both the house and studio had been
tastefully chosen by someone with an eye for beauty.
Rhonda didn't have to look at any of the labels to know
that all the assembled pieces were name brand, as were the
clothes on her mother's back. That was far different from
the past as well. Rhonda had spent her school years living
with the daily humiliation of wearing the secondhand
clothing her mother had bought at thrift stores and
rummage sales. She had endured the steady taunts from
other children who somehow knew she ate the free lunches
offered at school. And she recalled all too well how
embarrassed she had been every time her mother sent her to
the grocery store with a fistful of food stamps instead of
money.
Lael's life had taken a definite turn for the better. In
the last few years, her oddball pastels had finally
started to sell. She had met Jean Paul Gastone at a
gallery opening when he had stopped by to say how much he
admired her work. Now they were married -- seemingly
happily -- and living a gracious and beautiful life
together. Rhonda couldn't help envying the idea of her
mother living happily ever after. Too bad things hadn't
worked out nearly that well for Lael's daughter.
In the course of a long, lingering silence, Lael returned
to her sketch. With nothing more to say, Rhonda once more
examined the room. She realized with a start that her
mother's studio -- that one room, not counting either the
private bath or the convenient kitchenette that had been
built off to one side -- was larger than her entire studio
apartment.
She had moved into that god-awful, low-life complex only
two days earlier. Already she hated it. But she had come
face-to-face with stark economic reality. Rhonda Norton
was a newly separated, unemployed woman, with no recent
work history and only marginally salable skills. Her
university work was sixteen credits shy of a bachelor's
degree with a major in American history, a curriculum that
didn't have much going for it in the world of business. As
a consequence, that tiny upstairs apartment facing
directly into the afternoon sun was all she could afford.
In fact, it was more than she could afford.
"Well?" Lael prompted impatiently, dragging Rhonda back to
the present and to the real issue at hand. She dropped her
eyes once more. "I'm afraid," she said softly."Afraid of
what?"
Rhonda dreaded saying the words aloud, especially since
she didn't think her mother had ever been afraid of
anything in her whole life. As far as Rhonda was
concerned, Lael had always seemed as brave and daring as
the brilliant greens, blues, and reds she was swiftly
daubing onto the paper.
"Afraid of what?" Lael asked again
"'Of him," Rhonda answered. "Of Dean. He threatened me. He
told me that if I went through with the divorce, he'd see
me in hell before he'd pay me a single dime of alimony or
give me a property settlement.""Oh, hell," Lael said.
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