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up that crap?” She ran inside the house and immediately ripped down the offensive curtains that the mistress had hung.
    She’d also had the kitchen repainted…bright blue. In fact, everything inside the kitchen was different. New kitchen set. Pictures on the wall. Everything. Even the salt and pepper shakers.
    “This is my goddamn house. How dare that bitch come in here, changing my fucking décor?” Gianna’s mother, once dignified and soft spoken, went on a wild rampage. She broke powder blue dishes, and then hurled a microwave and ceramic canisters against the kitchen walls.
    After her mother finished demolishing the kitchen, she tore through the living room.
    Frantic, Gianna ran behind her, pleading for her mother to try to calm down. Thankfully, the living room was unsullied by any of the mistress’s decorative touches, but her mother wasn’t satisfied.
    She sped to the master bedroom and began tearing the linen off the bed. Shrieking, spewing profanity so vile Gianna couldn’t believe her ears.
    “Stop it, Mommy. Please stop. We came here to relax and have a good time.”
    “How can I have a good time, Gigi? Your father has allowed that home wrecker to mark her territory…he’s allowed her to piss all over the place.”
    Gianna grimaced. “Ew. That’s nasty. He wouldn’t let her do anything like that.”
    “That’s an expression, Gigi. Listen, honey… Your father is no saint. It’s time you got that through your head. Together, he and his whore have fucked up over sixteen years of a good and stable marriage. It’s so goddamned humiliating.”
    Gianna cringed. It was out of character for her mother to curse.
    “I’m not sleeping in this bed. I can smell her in here.”
    Gianna looked at her mother curiously, and then sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything.” Maybe her father was right. Maybe her mother was becoming mentally imbalanced.
    “He slept in our bed with that motherfucking whore—”
    Gianna gasped. She wished her mother would stop using gutter language. Hearing her mother speak so harshly was traumatizing.
    “I swear to God, I can smell her. Her stench is in the mattress… it’s in the walls.” Her mother shook her head furiously. “I can’t do it. I can’t sleep in here.”
    Sobbing a mournful sound, her mother collapsed to the floor. Gianna joined her, soothing her as best she could. “You can sleep in my room. Okay, Mommy?” Providing comfort to an adult… her mother nonetheless…felt foreign and very awkward.
    “Where’s my purse? Did I leave it in the truck?”
    “It’s in the kitchen.”
    Happy to do something helpful, Gianna trotted to the war-torn kitchen and retrieved her mother’s purse from beneath the wreckage. Inside the purse was an assortment of medication, prescribed when she’d first found out about her husband’s illicit affair. The dosages had been increased after he’d demanded a divorce.

    With her mother sleeping peacefully in Gianna’s bedroom, Gianna changed from her jeans and T-shirt to a super short and very tight skirt that she’d purchased from Forever 21. A brand-new pair of four-inch wedge sandals completed her hot, naughty look. Her best friend, Taylor, had bought a matching outfit.
    Her mother would be conked out for the rest of the afternoon and throughout the night. There was nothing to do in this quietbeach town, but she’d heard there was lots of fun in Atlantic City.
    After a forty-minute bus ride, Gianna arrived in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Her girlfriend, Taylor, was staying at Bally’s with her parents and was supposed to slip out and meet Gianna on the boardwalk after her parents started their gambling marathon.
    Phone calls to Taylor’s cell went straight to voice mail. Taylor was a no-show, which should have made Gianna check the bus schedule and get on the first thing smoking.
    Fascinated by the bright lights of Atlantic City and dreading having to hear more of her mother’s ravings, she moseyed along the