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Sadie cried, running down the steps toward the car. "You can't do this, Jack!"
    "Oh, yes I can," Jack said under his breath, coming down the steps, but he stopped at the bottom. Sadie tried to get the tow-truck driver to stop, but the repo man was immune to her pleas, and then her curses.
    Jack saw the SUV with Nia in it turning around the cul-de-sac. Her pretty eyes were wide at the events taking place out front of his house. He nodded to her and her gaze turned down to her lap.
    Well, he hadn't expected a victory smile. This wasn't a victory for any of them. Maybe it was a bit of get-even, and it soothed his sense of justice a little. The Mustang was too expensive and flashy for a housewife, and Sadie kept forgetting to make the payments. Just like last month, when he'd arrived home after nine in the evening and there'd been no Sadie home and no damn power in the house either. She'd supposedly forgotten to pay the power bill—or, as he’d begun to suspect, she was spending the bill money on other things.
    "Jack, you can't do this! A judge will throw the book at you," Sadie yelled, stalking toward him. "I'll get the house over this, Jack! You idiot!"
    Oh, man. He clenched his fist, with a twitch in his forearm muscle. It wanted to rise and punch ... He'd been going to tell her the repossession had little to do with him, except for the fact he was allowing it to go back to the dealer. Her non-payments were what got her car repossessed, but after her last comment, he decided to just let her believe it was him.
    "We will see about that," he said, trying to control his tone. "I hope in the end this was all worth it to you, Sadie. Six years of marriage, broken ... gone. Just because you couldn't keep your panties on."
    "Oh!" Sadie screeched, looking as though she might launch her body at him. Cooper caught her by the waist.
    "I've got a car!" Cooper yelled. "We need to get away from these fucking cameras." He practically lifted Sadie's feet off the ground, dragging her toward his car, while Sadie threw the divorce papers on the ground. Cooper continued to yell at the TV crew. "I'm not giving permission for my face to be shown on your crappy TV show!"

Chapter Three
    O n one count Nia was grateful, and on the other she was very perturbed. Half of the producers, hosts, and camera crew took her to her car and made certain she got home, while asking if she wanted them to wait for her husband to show up. She was grateful they seemed to want to stay and protect her from that event, but they also hounded her for another hour for footage about "how she felt."
    "God!" Nia slammed her front door. "I thought they'd never leave."
    She swiped at the tears on her cheeks. They'd torn things out of her she'd rather not have revealed. Especially on TV. But the male host, Bob, had assured her they'd make her look good on the final show. "We always side with the victim," he'd told her.
    Nia leaned back against her front door. "Is that what I am? A victim?"
    She hauled herself and her purse over to the entry table where she and Dan put things like their keys when they first came home. That was so normal, so regular. It was so together. But they weren't together anymore. She tossed her heavy rattan-quilted purse onto the table, then her keys followed as she wondered what she was going to do. Where should she start? What was Dan going to do?
    Nia turned toward the front door. "He'll come home. Eventually."
    When he did, she would demand he leave the house, but she knew Dan, and she knew getting him to leave wasn't going to be easy. Dan wasn't exactly chivalrous, like being the one to leave because he'd done such a horrible thing. It wasn't his style. Then she remembered something bad—Dan had inherited the house from his aunt and Nia wasn't absolutely certain her name was on the title along with her husband's.
    "But we're married," she argued. Surely that meant the house was as much hers as it was his?
    Somewhere in her erratic thinking, she kept