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of Fin’s infidelity didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had at the start of this, but what did hurt was the idea that now Lacey was sleeping in Maxine’s California King, eating her freshly flown-in lobster, and didn’t have a single care in the world, while Maxine and Connor lived near impoverishment.
    And all because she was a total fuckwit.
    Yet none of the outrageous luxuries or lack thereof mattered much anymore. They were all like a hazy dream. What mattered was survival. Something she had no clue how to go about, but strived for every waking moment anyway.
    “Yeahhhh—big of him to offer his son a place to live. Connor’s a smart boy. Too smart for his own good sometimes. He knows what Fin’s doing to you by hiding all of his money, and swindling you out of his millions. Like that jackass would miss a couple million, never mind a couple hundred bucks. He had some kinda gall, leaving you a buck ninety-nine in your joint accounts and canceling all those credit cards just before you found out about that Jezebel. He knew damned well what he was doing, and he didn’t leave you any ammunition to fight back. Finley didn’t get where he is by not knowing how to protect himself.”
    Maxine’s nod was a tired one. That much was true. The very second Finley got wind of the fact that she’d found out about Lacey, he’d cleaned out their joint accounts and canceled their credit cards, leaving her with just one with an eight-thousand-dollar limit to pay a lawyer who did nothing but collect a twenty-five-hundred-dollar retainer, ignore her pleading phone calls, and stall.
    Fin knew once she’d wrapped her head around his infidelity, she’d freak. But he’d made sure her freak was nothing more than a whimper, and it was all perfectly legal. That he’d planned this so diabolically behind her back made it that much harder to swallow.
    “Connor knows you can’t afford a real lawyer, and that’s why you’re where you are—because that creepy shyster who has a basement office doesn’t know his arse from his Mr. Peabody. If you would just let me dip into the till, we could get you a real lawyer—”
    Maxine’s hand was instantly in the air, palm forward. “ No , Mom. No more money. I have the lawyer I have because my credit card could only afford so much before it broke. I don’t even care about the money anymore. I just want out. Do you have any idea how much it’d cost to hire someone capable of handling Fin’s lawyers? A whole lot more than even you have. And if I didn’t get anything out of his tight ass so I could pay you back—then we’d really be screwed. So forget it. And before you get crazy, I have a confession to make. I discovered something today on the ride back from my interview. I’m where I am because I didn’t do anything to stop myself from getting here. I can’t totally blame Fin for this mess. I think it’s time for me to take some responsibility for this shitwreck.”
    That was the ugly truth of it. Not only had she trusted her lesser half blindly, but she’d listened to Fin’s SAHM bullshit about staying home with Connor and raising him the way a mother should, being party planner and all-round entertainer of the millennium. She should have insisted he let her go to school when the longing had hit her. But Fin had liked her at his disposal—until he’d disposed of her. Not that she’d pushed to go back to school. Pushing Fin was akin to walks along eggshell-lined streets. You had to take those strolls very carefully.
    Seeing Campbell Barker today had reminded her that somewhere between graduation and this very second, she hadn’t just lost twenty years of marriage, money, and some stupid-ass weekly trips to the day spa, she’d lost her cubes. Her opinion. Her desires. Max , as Campbell had called her, couldn’t have been talked out of anything she wanted way back when. In fact, that was how she’d ended up married to Finley to begin with.
    Her mother’s smile was bitter.