His single errand was swift. Eli had offered to leave her at a café or mall nearby, but she'd opted to tag along. It was fun. The chore consisted merely of checking on the color and quality of some stone for an upcoming project. The manager of the building supply company, an elderly and plump man with a charming way about him, was a hoot and spent most of his time attempting to coax smiles and laughs from Kate.

Their day went so quickly that they were back on the road not long after lunch, having spent over an hour lounging about a small downtown café. It was nothing but pleasant, and it gave Kate time to ponder the drive home and what she wanted to say.

"I'm not sure why I married Otto," she said after they got back on the road.

"You said that once before. You and I should start a club."

"Yeah," she sighed in reply.

Another few moments of silence followed, the first such time between them in which she felt even a hint of discomfort.

"That thing you said," she began, "about having gotten everything wrong about your ex. I never thought that when Otto and I were married, but ...." She took a breath, and then suddenly exclaimed, "I'm not a poor little rich girl."

"I never thought you were." The look on Eli's face as he glanced over was pure surprise.

She reached over and touched his shoulder. She knew how pathetic and desperate her words sounded as she'd said them.

"I needed to say that. This past six or seven months have been nothing but me feeling sorry for myself. I'm not broke. Otto didn't manage our money the way I'd hoped, but if I liquidate everything, I could walk away with a few million dollars." She glanced over to him again. "I know there are real people with real problems ... which is why I feel like such a creep. But I wanted something different from my life."

"Weren't you happy?"

"I thought I was, but ... but I don't know, now." She turned to look at him, suddenly full of words. "I didn't hate my childhood. There was always enough of everything, friends abounded, my folks were good to me, high school wasn't a disaster ... but ... when I left home, I had this need to leave it all behind. I don't know where it came from ... can't fully remember why I had to leave Kate Johnson in the taillights. But I did. There was this ambition in me, not just to be a successful actress, though that was consuming sometimes, but to build a new me, a better, prettier, funnier, classier me. I know that sounds silly."

"I'm the last one to judge," he said with a comforting smile.

"Ha! I didn't think of that. You built a new Eli, didn't you? You know, the whole time you were telling me about you and your mom, I couldn't help but relate to her. But there was something you said about your ex-wife, how she left ... what did you call it? ... a trail of 'burned bridges and ruined lives.'"

For the first time since she'd begun talking, tears sprang to her eyes and she found speech difficult. She continued, knowing Eli had seen her that way before but still embarrassed.

"That was me," she croaked. "I didn't keep up with anybody from high school, and the friends I made in college I left pretty much the same." She sniffed hard and went on. "I didn't have a high school boyfriend, but I dated a few guys in college, one of them, Lance, for two years. He asked me to marry him about a month before graduation. I put him off and then ... just sort of drifted out of his life." She couldn't help a bitter laugh. "I didn't even have the decency to run away. I just walked away and pretty much forgot about him by the end of that summer."

The tears flowed freely now.

"I had a pretty good start to my career, two or three parts a year for the first few years. A lot of my friends," she choked a laugh, "if you could call them that, struggled, working shitty jobs to stay afloat. I was lucky. I had this dream about becoming a successful actor, of being famous, bright, and sophisticated. And it worked. I got a little fan mail, some glamour shots in magazines and on the Internet. People would recognize me in public. There were even a couple of minor awards. It was great," she purred. "But then I met Otto and traded it, traded it all for what seemed like a bigger, better dream."

"I thought you kept acting after you married."

"Oh, no ... I did," she said as she dried a few tears. "Otto was this big mogul ... a great impresario. And being with him helped me land a few parts, a couple of them pretty good. But ... slowly ... he, um ... he had this way of smoothing people, of getting them to do what he wanted. I'd seen him use that charm a million times. It never occurred to me then that I was one-million and one. Before long, I was putting all my energy into taking care of ... him, I guess. I woke up one day at thirty-five and realized I hadn't acted, really acted, in almost three years."

"But I was caught up in the new life," she said with a weak smile, "which was so ... idyllic. And then Otto died." She reached over and touched his shoulder. "Eli, I know I'm going to Hell for saying this, but over the next few months, I started to see him, to see our life and our marriage, for what it was. And, so help me God, I felt like someone who'd just been sprung from a cult. Nothing was as it seemed, not really."

"What do you mean?" As he spoke, his hand came up and their fingers intertwined as they'd done before.

"Otto wasn't just a terrible investor, he was .... Everything about him was smoke and mirrors." Her tears had abated, but there was a regret in her voice she refused to temper. "We weren't always broke, but our finances were boom or bust ... mostly bust, none of which I realized until after he died and I sat with the lawyers. It's silly, but I always assumed that behind the scenes, he was as frugal as my folks always were and that the opulent life we lived was just a sign of our great wealth .... Oh, crap," she sobbed.

It took her another few moments to steady herself.

"Anyway, after he passed away, I sat down and went over every record I could find." When she laughed, it was almost in the maniacal tone at which she'd been playing earlier in the day. "We almost went bankrupt half a dozen times while we were married, unbeknownst to me. We always ... always ... lived above our means, another thing he kept hidden. I lost track of the number of fancy dinners and trips to Ibiza I later found were paid for on credit cards that were near maxed out. The only thing keeping us afloat that last few years was some money he inherited from his mom."

"I mean, it wasn't all bad," she said with another sniff. "There was still some inheritance money in the bank when he died, not a fortune but enough to pay off Otto's personal debts, which were ... epic. The beach house, cars, and all our personal property are, miraculously, lien free. But our home in the Hills has God only knows how many mortgages against it ... all to finance some project or another. 'You gotta spend money to make money, baby,'" she aped sarcastically.

"And your property in Lompoc?" he ventured encouragingly.

"Oh ... that must be a gem. Even Otto couldn't convince anyone to loan him money with that as collateral."

"Still ... Kate, being a shitty businessman isn't a crime," he said in a soothing voice. "It isn't my strong suit, either."

"Elijah, it's not that. It isn't just the money." She felt a flood of tears coming and had to press her lips hard for a moment to fight off a sob. Long moments passed before she continued.

"After he died," she went on in a thick voice, "it was like people couldn't wait to tell me what an asshole he was and the many, many ways he'd fucked them over the years. I was scandalized at first," she murmured, lowering her head, "I didn't believe it. I mean, what sort of person does that? Comes to a widow and says those kinds of things? Mmmm ...."

A revolting lump swelled up in Kate's throat, and she felt herself beginning to whimper. That was the line she refused to cross. Instead she lowered her head and sat trembling. After what seemed like only a minute, she gazed up through sodden eyes and realized the truck now sat motionless in a rest area beside the road.

Eli regarded her with the deepest sympathy. "The world is full of terrible, terrible people," were his comforting words.

"Except everything they said was true," she replied with a voice that was near to normal. "I looked hard at our life together ... at him. Otto wasn't a mogul. He was a conman, a dodgy operator who'd screwed a lot of people over the years. He had his name on a few things, and a few moderately important people in the business came to his services, but he was mostly just a shady character making his living along the fringes of a sleazy business."

"And you blame yourself for not seeing that?"

"Yeah," she said as the tears made a rally and her voice nearly cracked. "But I think I could have survived learning that."

There were another few seconds in which she simply couldn't speak.

"I ... I never really wanted kids," she rasped at last, "but I always assumed I'd have them, maybe one or two. But Otto said we already had kids ... the butt-fuckers." She laughed bitterly. "Well, he didn't call them that."

Kate reached up and let her hand and fingers run gently down Eli's nose and cheek.

"I gave up my dream ... everything ... for a guy who wasn't much more than a small-time hustler," she said plainly. "That was all me. I don't blame him, I don't blame society ... I might blame you. I haven't decided yet."

"I'm willing to shoulder my share of the burden," he said, smiling back at her. "If I'd been a little better judge of woman-flesh in my youth, this all could have been avoided."

On their face, Eli's words were presumptuous and more than moderately sexist, but she found herself laughing, nonetheless. "Let's get this crate going, buddy, or we're never going to make it back to LA."

"Is that really where you want to go?"

"Yeah," she said. "I've thought about moving someplace new, starting over. It would just seem too much like failure at this point. I'll sort things out. And don't worry, it's not like I'm going to starve in the meantime."

"Dinner is on me next time, anyway." His hand came up to her shoulder and gave it a squeeze, one far warmer and more affectionate than any before. "Try and cut your husband some slack ... and cut yourself some while you're at it. You're not the only one to break with the past. It isn't a sin. In any event, good people sometimes do bad things. We shouldn't have to carry our every thoughtless act around our necks like a millstone for the rest of our lives."

"We? Our?"

"I've done some pretty awful things," he confessed, "the kinds of things I hope won't define me."

"Oh, nonsense. You've never even so much as jaywalked."

"Well, nothing that bad ... but bad."

She let out a shocked gasp and whispered, "Waterboarding?"

"I don't want to have to be rude to you, so I'm not going to tell."

Still exhausted from her tears and her tale, she settled back into her throne to rest and relax.

"I'll find out."