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honestly, she was cried out. Exhaustion permeated her bones. She was tired of fighting. Tired of pretending. Tired of trying to convince herself there was such a thing as happily-ever-after.
    It was a myth.
    Selina stared up at the ceiling textured with arty swirls. Forty-five years old, almost single and starting all over again. How had this happened? Once upon a time she’d loved Michael with an emotion so strong and fierce and true it scared her. Where had that foolish, lovesick girl gone?
    It was a rhetorical question. She knew the answer.
    The first tiny piece of doubt had taken root on her own wedding day when she’d discovered that her new husband had spent the night before their wedding with another woman. Her flaw had been that she’d loved him so much she’d chosen to believe his story that nothing had happened. That he’d gone out with his high school sweetheart, Vivian Cole, for old time’s sake and nothing more.
    God, she’d been such an idiot.
    Selina closed her eyes. The swirly ceiling patterns were making her dizzy. Purposefully, she pushed away thoughts of Michael and the failure of her marriage. Her time had come and gone. This was about Rachael. What was she going to do about her daughter?
    She wished she could hold Rachael in her arms and tell her not to grieve too hard over losing Trace. Tell her she’d been lucky to dodge a bullet. But she knew none of that would comfort her. As much as she might want to protect her daughter, she knew this was ultimately something she had to work out for herself.
    And that thought left Selina feeling lonelier than ever.
    Her stomach grumbled and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything since the morning before. Food might be the last thing on her mind, but the hunger pains were annoying.
    She reached for the telephone to call room service, but simply didn’t have the energy to punch the button. Slumping back against the pillow, she pondered her next move.
    Where did she go from here?
    She’d been born and raised in Valentine. She was a small-town girl with roots that stretched across the Texas-Mexico border. She was simple, earthy. She’d liked gardening and raising her babies and cooking hearty comfort foods and taking care of Michael.
    Scratch that last part.
    Michael was no longer her concern.
    And her kids were grown. No one to cook for anymore.
    A sudden, frightening realization took hold of Selina. She didn’t know who she was, now that she was no longer the mother of young children or the wife of one of Valentine’s most prominent and wealthiest citizens. She had no purpose.
    It was a horrifying feeling, this sense of uselessness.
    A tiny terrified part of her whispered,
Go back to Michael, tell him you made a mistake. Tell him you forgive him for Vivian.
    But that would be so easy to do. She’d been tamping it down, denying her feelings, denying the truth of twenty-seven years. She simply couldn’t do it any longer.
    So these were her choices? Continue to live a lie or fade away into old age all alone?
    No!
    Another part of her, a stronger part of her, the part of her she’d hidden away the day she married Michael, protested. Enough was enough. She would find a way out of this. She was only forty-five. There was still time left to decide who she was going to be for the rest of her life.
    She was on the verge of something monumental. She could feel it. The only thing holding her back right now was Rachael. Once she knew where her daughter was, that she was safe and going to be okay, then Selina could let go.
    Until then, her daughter was her main concern.
    After that, all bets were off.
    The thought made her feel better.
Deal with Rachael first, pick up the pieces of my life second.
It sounded like a plan. Selina liked plans.
    There was a knock at the door.
    Startled, Selina sat up in bed. “Who is it?” she called out.
    “Room Service.”
    “I didn’t order room service.”
    “This is room 321.”
    “Yes, but I didn’t order room