Kisses & Lies is available on Smashwords.

The kernel around which this story was built is based on an instance of betrayal that occurred in my life. The structure of the novel is built around playing with point of view: each of the four main characters tells the same story from their various perspectives.

Mary Jo and Annette have been best friends since junior high. When they were in their twenties, Mary Jo introduced Annette to one of the lawyers she worked with. Annette and Christian married shortly after, and started a family immediately. Christian and Mary Jo were work friends and buddies, while Mary Jo and Annette remained best girlfriends. Things were fine until Mary Jo met Frank Bennett, a fabulously successful sales executive with a cosmetics company. Neither Christian nor Annette liked him, but Mary Jo married him anyway, and then she proceeded to achieve professional success that threatened to eclipse Christian's.

Eight years later, Frank and Mary Jo are deliriously happy with their daughter.  Christian and Annette's  marriage is not faring so well. Things come to a head when Christian and Mary Jo are both candidates for the same partnership position. Secrets, lies and betrayal result in catastrophe for one career, one marriage and all three friendships.

Here's a sample:

Chapter 1

“Let me make sure I understand this. My oldest and dearest friend is a backstabbing liar and cheat. My other best friend and favorite colleague is a skirt-chasing bastard who, for years, encouraged people to believe he was screwing me to enhance his reputation as a lady's man. What is more, my kind, wonderful husband is a mean, hateful son of a bitch.”

Mary Jo stretched out on the double chaise, where she lay with her husband beside their backyard pool, enjoying a lovely late-summer afternoon. She looked up into his eyes, grinning, “So tell me, what else don't I know about my life?”

Frank smiled back at her and stroked her cheek, “I think that's most of it. The most important thing you have always known.”

“What would that be?”

“That I love you and I want you to be happy.”

She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in the hollow place at the base of his neck. The certainty of his love and his support were sufficient for her. With that, she would be able to deal with all the rest.

At least, she hoped she could.

“Why didn't I see this coming?”

“I would like to say it is because you're pure of heart and you never see any malice in the people you love. You automatically make excuses for us when we deviate from the wonderful images you hold of us. That's what I have always believed. And, I think there is a lot of truth in it.”

“I hear a 'but' coming.”

He nodded, “But, I don't think that's the whole truth. I think part of it is that you quite simply get so wrapped up in what you are doing, most of the time you're oblivious to what is going on around you.”

“You mean like 'denial'?”

“No. I mean as in obliviousness.”

“Or, clueless-ness?”

“Those two things are not exactly the same, in my opinion. Clueless people are those (women and men) who are too stupid or shallow to understand their circumstances. You, my love, are oblivious not because you are stupid or shallow; you are neither. What you are is ... sort of self-absorbed.”

“You say that as though it isn't a totally bad thing.”

He shrugged. “I don't think it is necessarily a totally bad thing. Your ability to focus on a given task and to block out distractions made you an exceptional student and has brought you to the brink of being a great lawyer. In the case of your relationships, however, your focus on your career allowed you to miss some significant warnings in your personal life that ended up causing you a lot of heartache.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I think there was more 'denial' going on than you want to believe.” She reached up and tweeked his nose, “You like to make excuses for my weaknesses and failings, too, you know.”

She closed her eyes and went on, “I think there was a part of me that knew or suspected some of the crap that was going on. I chose not to acknowledge it because I didn't want to deal with it. Instead, I buried my head in my work and in my relationships with you and our daughter and kind of hoped all the rest would sort itself out.”

She looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, “You never liked Christian or Annette, did you?”

He rubbed the back of her neck and paused for a long time before speaking, weighing his words carefully. “Let's just say, we got off to a rough start and never managed to get past it.”

“Will you tell me why?”

“I will tell you what I think about all of this, but first, you tell me your version of the story.”

“Starting when? Why?”

“The beginning might be a good place to start. You are not a very introspective person; telling your story out loud to me may force you to consider some things you have not thought about before. Who knows? We might both learn something.”

Mary Jo shrugged and snuggled closer. He was right. She was not an introspective person. She lived her life facing forward, and rarely thought about the past. It took her a while to get started. Frank's relaxed body and stillness told her he would give her all the time she needed. The way he held her tight and the insistent look in his eye told her he was not going to let her off the hook.

She sighed and began to talk.

Chapter 2 - Mary Jo's Story

I met Annette on our first day of Junior High. My family had moved from Indiana to Cincinnati during the summer after I finished the sixth grade because my dad's family's farm in Indiana was not making enough of a profit to support all of us. Before that we lived with my grandparents. My uncle and his wife lived in a separate house on the property. My grandpa, uncle and dad worked the farm while the women all worked in town. Gram was a cleaning lady in the high school, Aunt Lil was a hairdresser and Mom was a practical nurse who worked at a clinic.

We moved to Cincinnati so Mom and Dad could find better paying jobs. The idea was that their salaries would support our family and, hopefully, we would have extra money to help with the farm expenses. Dad found work in plant that made plastic products. Mom got a job as a nurse in a long-term care facility for severely ill and terminal patients.

None of us was happy about moving away from our home. The first year after the move was probably the worst period in my parents' marriage. They were both unhappy and they took it out on one another. I was unhappy about the move and, even worse, I was frightened by discord in our home. I was afraid they were going to get a divorce after uprooting us all to this strange place. It was a difficult time for all three of us.

Within a year, however, we had settled in well and we all eventually came to love it here and we all now consider Cincinnati to be our home. That was later. During our first few months here we were all homesick, miserable and very worried about our future. I was scared to death all day nearly every day about everything imaginable. I try to think of that time as little as possible.

Add to that the the ordinary anxiety about matriculating to Junior High and you can imagine what a horrible summer I had. I was a total wreck by the first day of school.

I met Annette in the home room period that day. I took a seat half-way back in the first row by the door. The other students talked among themselves. It seemed to me that they all knew each other. I felt alone and out of place. I thought everyone would think I was some kind of country bumpkin hayseed, which is precisely what I was. I started to shrink into my own personal protective zone when a beautiful girl sitting in front of me turned around and said, “Hi. I'm Annette Summers. Are you new to the district, or did you just go to a different elementary school from me?”

I said, “My family just moved here from Indiana. I went to elementary school in Milan.”

Annette said she thought that was cool. She told me that she had lived her entire life in the same house and had only been past the Indiana state line once or twice. She said she had never really met anyone from “someplace else.” I thought that was kind of funny. Milan, Indiana, was only about 50 miles from where we were sitting, and Annette talked about it as though it were another country. Nevertheless, she didn't make fun of me for being a hick. I was grateful for her kindness. I needed a friend. So, I didn't tease her for being so parochial.

It turned out that we were in nearly every class together. We moved from class to class and sat next to each other. We ate lunch together and Annette introduced me to the people she knew from her elementary school. I didn't think it was odd at the time, but she seemed to have very few friends. She wasn't exactly shy, but her social skills were not very good. She was kind of outspoken and opinionated. I later learned that the kids didn't like her very much.

She was nice to me, and that was all I cared about. I wasn't interested in being popular, so having a friend who was not exactly Miss Congeniality was not a problem for me. If anything, since I was kind of a brainiac nerd with opinionated tendencies of my own, we seemed to be natural best friends. We were kind of the two odd-duck females in the school who clung to each other because nobody else wanted to hang out with us, and because neither of us was willing to do what we would need to do in order to be more popular. Think Romy and Michelle, only smart.

It turned out that Annette lived within walking distance of my house, that is if you climbed a fence and cut through a neighbor's garden. Going by way of the street was a relatively easy bike ride, as well. Proximity that did not require parental transportation allowed us to be virtually inseparable. Annette became an extra member of our household. I was sort of a hanger-on at her house as well. We spent more time at my house because Annette came from a very large family. Their house was like a bus station, with people coming and going and a lot of hollering and racket.

My house was quiet. Mom and Dad both worked long hours, so Annette and I typically had the place to ourselves after school. We would do our homework and then start dinner. Most of the time, Mom would have meat thawed and potatoes peeled in the fridge. Annette and I would put the food on the stove or in the oven. When Mom got home from work, all she had to do was add the finishing touches.

Annette ate most of her evening meals with us. I am not sure anyone in her family ever missed her. There were so many of kids in her family, I was never sure Mrs. Summers noticed when a few were missing. She was a very nice lady and a good mother, but she was very busy and exhausted all the time. I don't know how the woman functioned.

Annette and I were inseparable through high school. She was kind of a jock. She played volleyball, basketball and softball in their respective seasons. Her family supported her, en masse, with great cheering and yelling. I went to all her games, too, and became a sort of auxiliary member of the Summers Cheering Section. Sometimes, usually for really big games and championships, my parents came, too, because they had sort of adopted her as a second daughter in our family as well.

I was a very serious student. I didn't play team sports or socialize very much, although Annette did shame me into joining the track team for the exercise. I totally sucked as a competitive runner, but the experience caused me to develop good exercise habits.

My main social outlet was hanging out with Annette's family. When it came time to go to school dances or other date-like events, Annette would enlist one of her brothers who wasn't busy to be my escort. Half the time she got another brother or one of their friends to take her since she didn't date any more than I did. Smart girls and female jocks were not exactly the most sought-after dates in our high school.

I certainly didn't care, and don't think Annette did, either. Getting involved with boys, especially local boys from the neighborhood, did not factor into our plans, or at least it didn't factor into Annette's plans. I didn't really have a plan or any real goals in life. It was as though each day gave me so much to think about and to do I never had time to think about the future.

Annette went to nursing school at Mount St. Joseph College after high school. I did not plan to go to college immediately after graduation. My parents could not afford to pay for my tuition because they were using a significant percentage of their income to help support the farm, but they made too much money for me to qualify for financial aid. As you are well aware, I have the farm-kid's terror of borrowing money, so I did not want to take out school loans. I decided to get a job and work my way through college.

Initially, I planned to study nursing, because my mother was a nurse, Annette's mother had a nursing degree and Annette was in nursing school. It seemed a natural and safe choice. I really did not like to be around sick people very much, however, so I was in no hurry to get started. Can you imagine me as a nurse? God have mercy on any poor schmuck who might ever have me for a care-giver!

Anyway, after high school I got a job working in a husband-and-wife law office. At first I was supposed to be a receptionist and file clerk. They quickly added duties because I caught on very quickly. I had all the makings of a cracker-jack legal secretary, and I liked that idea just fine. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college. I didn't need to go to college to be a legal secretary. I already was one. I thought I was set at least until I got married. I don't know how on earth I thought I would ever get married because I didn't know any guys my age and I never went anywhere to meet any, but in my world girls worked for a while until they got married, so I thought that's what I would do, too.

My bosses had other ideas about my future, however. He was both a lawyer and a CPA who did taxes, wills and probate work. She specialized in family law. She is still the best divorce lawyer I have ever met. She doesn't make enormous amounts of money, but she mediates marital disputes with amazing skill. In some ways she is more like a counselor or minister than a lawyer. She tries to keep marriages together. When that fails, she shows her fangs and goes for the jugular.

They turned me on to the idea of becoming a lawyer. Correction: they pushed, shoved, cajoled and badgered me into it. Since I still didn't have any other plans, I went along. Besides, I liked school and I really did want to go to college. Becoming a lawyer would get me out of becoming a nurse. It seemed like a win-win situation.

They let me adjust my work schedule around my classes while I was in undergrad school and the first year or so of law school. When it was time for me to get a job as a law clerk, instead of working at a big law firm, Marilyn got me a job in the office of a judge in common pleas court. I learned so much about civil procedure it was amazing. I learned that I did not want to do criminal or family law, but I did want to be a litigator. In that job, I got to watch a lot of courtroom goings-on both from the gallery and inside the judge's chambers. Even today I tend to draw on that experience when planning how to argue certain motions or how to handle difficult witnesses.

Annette started college in September right after high school and went to school full time. I didn't start undergrad school until the second quarter of that year and I only went to school part time. It took me almost a year longer to finish undergrad school. I did very well in college and was accepted to the law school at the University of Cincinnati.

The company my dad worked for offered scholarships to kids of employees. I applied for one of those scholarships and won it. The scholarship paid for all of my law school tuition. All I needed to pay for were my incidental expenses and books, which doesn't sound like much until you price legal text books. Fortunately, my bosses had a decent law library, and a lot of texts of their own. What is more their son had recently graduated from the law school at Ohio State. I managed to get away with borrowing a lot of my textbooks from them. With a scholarship paying the tuition and my bosses' help with books, I managed to go to law school full time and work only part time. As you might expect, going to law school full time and trying to work even a few hours a week put big crimp in my already non-existent social life.

By then, Annette was a nurse at Cincinnati General Hospital. I still officially lived at home, but she had a tiny studio apartment in Clifton near the hospital. Her apartment was only a few blocks from the law school, so I ended up sort of unofficially moving in with her at least during the week when I was essentially closing up the law library every night. I slept on the floor of Annette's apartment in a sleeping bag.

I went home on the weekends because Annette dated and partied a lot. She appeared to be making up for all the carousing she did not do in high school. I had neither the time nor the inclination for that kind of thing. I did not fault her her lifestyle. She never invited me to join her. I attributed that to her knowing I was too busy, but somewhere deep in me I felt that she didn't invite me to join her because she didn't want me to come along. It's very stupid and petty I know, but I was a little hurt by that slight. I'd like to have been invited to join her crowd at least occasionally. I've never said that out loud before. I don't like how it sounds. That doesn't make it any less true.

I met Christian Davis at the beginning of my second year of law school. Even before we met, I knew he was the son of a prominent local attorney. Since I was not really plugged into the politics of the legal community in Cincinnati or the society scene for that matter, I was too ignorant to be impressed by his pedigree. Frankly, even if I had known the details about his family I probably would not have been all that overwhelmed because “society” was (and is) an alien world to me, and, frankly, I'd be happy to keep it that way.

I did not know or care about his background, I simply thought Christian was a nice guy. He was quiet and polite. He was a very serious student, as was I. He should have gone into academia. He was and is an intellectual at heart. He never really had the heart of a litigator. He only pursued that avenue because it's what his father had done and his overbearing, demanding witch of a mother expected him to follow in his father's shoes whether they fit him or not.

Sometimes I think Christian and I are the only two lawyers in America who enjoyed law school. He loved the intellectual stimulation of trying to cram all that information into his head. I quite simply thrived on the competition. My limited experience at athletic competition in high school was sort of a disaster because I stink at sports, but it will come as no surprise to you that I was and am extremely competitive. I didn't really have much academic competition in high school or even undergrad school for that matter. I loved going head-to-head with really bright students and professors in law school. When I started law school, I set myself the goal of being on the law review. By the end of my first year, I had learned I wasn't a good enough writer for that, but I was competitive and fast on my feet. I got involved with moot court and, as they say, the rest was history. Apparently I was a natural born litigator.

When Christian and I met, he was ranked first in our class and I was a very close second. I was determined to beat him out for the top spot. He was determined not to let me. You would have thought that would have made us enemies, but it turned out to be more fun to compete with one another up close. Christian became my friend, but we were always competitors as well. In the end, we both ended up with nearly perfect grades. He beat me out for the top spot in the class by less than one GPA point based of some arcane formula wherein his work on the law review weighed more than my moot court victories. At the time, that seemed very important and I was very pissed off. Now it just seems silly. I think both of us did better in law school than either of us would have done without our “friendly” rivalry.

Christian was smarter, more stable and, it seemed to me, he had more marital potential than the interns Annette was dating at the time. It turns out I was apparently wrong on that latter point. Christian's career appears to be stalled – and maybe even destroyed – whereas most of those drunken, over-sexed interns Annette dated back then are now prominent doctors. Perhaps I should have butted out.

In any case, I introduced Christian and Annette to one another during the Christmas break of our second year of law school. They got married the following summer. Annette moved in with Christian at his very nice apartment. I sold my car and sub-leased her studio apartment. I thought I had gone to heaven. As much as I love my parents and their home in Colerain Township, having my own place was beyond wonderful, not only because it was close to the law school but because I felt it meant I had achieved some preliminary level of adult independence.

For the next several years my entire life was consumed with school and work.

I saw Annette a few times a week. Often I met her for breakfast at the hospital before the start of her shift. The food in the hospital cafeteria was not bad and it was very inexpensive. Most days that was the only hot meal I ate. About once a week, Annette and Christian invited me to their apartment for a home-cooked meal. On Sundays, I had dinner with Mom and Dad. Mom would load me up with enough leftovers to stave off the rickets until the following weekend. At that point in my life I had no interest in food or sex or anything other than working and studying. The people who loved me (basically that amounted to Mom and Annette) took care of me as best they could – with minimal cooperation from me, as they are both quick to point out.

Carly was born about a month after Christian and I graduated from law school. Christian's father had died some years before, and his mother had remarried and moved to Florida. Mrs. Davis had sold most of the land they owned and rented out the family home, ownership of which she turned over to Christian when she remarried. When the tenant's lease was up, Christian declined to renew it. He, Annette and Carly moved into his family home that summer. Christian had accepted a job at Friedman & Jostens but chose not to start work until September. He, Annette and Carly spent part of the summer with his mom in Florida. They spent the rest of the summer fixing up the house. Actually, Annette did most of the work herself. I helped in the evenings and on weekends. Christian's main contribution to the project was staying out of the way.

The common pleas court judge I clerked for liked me a lot and recommended me for a clerkship with one of the federal judges in the Southern District of Ohio after I graduated from law school. That was a wonderful experience. I worked there for a little more than a year. I loved the work and I really adored the judges. I would have spent my entire career there, but the chief judge for whom I worked was adamant that I needed to get some hands-on experience as a lawyer. I guess I have to say that I have been blessed with career-angels who have guided my career at critical junctures when I wasn't paying sufficient attention to my own future.

I think the judge called in a favor or two to get me an interview at Friedman & Jostens. They offered me a job that same day. Christian had already been there a year. I thought I would have to start at the bottom but they took me in as a second year associate and put me in the litigation department. I didn't realize at the time how small the legal community is and how many unseen hands were greasing the skids for me behind the scenes. All I knew was it seemed weird that I started somewhere besides at the very bottom.

I guess I was clueless or oblivious ... or, at least, incredibly naive.

Anyway, Christian was in the same department, although even by then it was obvious litigation was not a good fit for him. He should be a law professor, not a practicing attorney. He's just not suited to the rough and tumble of practice and certainly not litigation practice. He is from a prominent family; he's politically well connected. There has never been any question in anyone's mind, other than Christian's, that he was destined to be more of a rainmaker than a fee-generator.

He doesn't like that. His dad was reputed to be one of the best defense attorneys in Ohio in his day. Christian, at the insistence of his mother, always saw himself as following in his dad's footsteps. That was never going to pan out. From the very outset Christian had difficulty arguing even simple motions in front of judges who were inclined to be magnanimous. I can't imagine him actually trying a case. It has always been a source of frustration to him that the firm has never let him try his own cases. In point of fact, Christian couldn't try a case by himself if his life depended on it. He's about the only one around who doesn't know that. Or, maybe he does know it deep down, and that's his problem.

I think the genesis of Christian's animus towards me was over that very issue. Make no mistake. Christian and I are friends and we work well together, but even as clueless as I can be, I know his feelings for me are complex. I think those feelings include a lot of resentment. I hadn't been at the firm six months when I tried my first case. Granted it was a pro bono case, but I specifically volunteered to do a lot of pro bono work in order to gain experience. That meant I worked even more than the killer hours junior associates are normally required to work in order to keep up my billable hours and still handle the pro bono work on the side. Since I had no other “life”, I didn't mind.

The first case I tried was a slam dunk. A landlord had evicted a tenant without proper notice. The tenant was a young man who made his living designing and maintaining websites for small businesses. He worked out of his home and had all his computer equipment in his apartment. His mother was in hospice care someplace in West Virginia and he was called home suddenly when she was dying. He neglected to pay his rent before he left. His landlord put his stuff out on the sidewalk without jumping through all the proper eviction hoops. His belongings included thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment, which the kid needed to make his living. Naturally, it all disappeared. When he returned after burying his mother, he had no money, no place to live and no means of support, so he came to Legal Aid. He was a really nice kid. In other words, he was the perfect plaintiff: he was very sympathetic and he had the law totally on his side.

I was assigned to represent him. The landlord owned a lot of apartments in bad parts of town. He refused to settle the claim out of court on the theory that, if he settled with this kid, other evicted tenants would be more likely to sue. The landlord's attorney acknowledged they had no real legal defenses, but the landlord insisted on taking a hard line. The attorney more or less invited me to file suit, which I did. Nobody ever tried an easier case. Naturally, I won. The really good thing was that both the judge and the attorney for the landlord called the manager of the litigation department at F&J afterwards and told him I did a great job even though it was a bullshit case.

A few months later, they assigned me to work on a significant product liability matter. The billing attorney was a mid-level partner who was about the only person in our firm who did a significant amount of plaintiff's work. On account of that, he was kind of an outcast among the defense litigators, but he brought in money by the truckload, which, as you know from first-hand experience, will buy you a lot of leeway in business.

Our client was a woman who had been made infertile by one of those intrauterine contraception devices. She was very quiet and shy and she, understandably, did not feel comfortable talking about the negative consequences of her infertility with a bunch of male lawyers. From the beginning she clung to me. The partner gave me the responsibility for conducting in-depth interviews with her and shepherding her through the litigation process. I prepared her for her deposition, defended it and, amazingly, they let me conduct her direct examination at the trial. After her testimony, the partner told me he wanted me to do the closing argument. He had put on a magnificent case. We had put on all kinds of great experts and presented a lot of complex medical evidence. He said he thought he could hammer home the scientific points during the body of our case. He wanted the jury to hear a woman talk about the subject of the pain of infertility in the closing argument. I couldn't believe it.

As an aside, I have to say that after what we went through trying to conceive Melissa, I don't think I could ever make an argument like that again, at least not without breaking down and weeping hysterically in front of the jury, which wouldn't do my career any good.

In any case, I – a lowly junior associate – presented closing arguments in a significant case. I didn't get emotional or resort to any drama. I simply talked about what happened to the woman and the impact it had on her marriage and on the quality of her life. When I was finished, about half the jurors were in tears. The partner told me he even saw the bailiff wipe her eyes. The jury deliberated less than 45 minutes. They came back with a unanimous verdict in favor of our client and a damages award with more zeros than any of us had imagined. The actual damages were reduced on post-trial motions, but our firm ended up making a few million on that case.

I got a really nice bonus that year!

Even better, from my perspective, I was suddenly the hottest commodity in the litigation department. Since then, I have been second chair on a lot of cases. I've even been permitted to try a couple of small cases on my own. As a result, while still only an associate, I participated in more trials than a lot of the partners.

I don't think Christian has been inside a courtroom since the first time they let him attempt to argue a motion. He bungled it badly. He's a genius in the library. He can come up with crazy legal arguments and find cases to support them. He is personally responsible for a whole bunch of summary judgments that nobody ever thought would be granted because of his amazing creativity at coming up with brilliant legal argument based on solid legal research. He couldn't talk his way out of a parking ticket, but he is an amazing legal writer. Since writing is not my strong suit and I'd rather have a root canal that do the kind of legal research he does, plumbing the depths of case law for hours on end, I have always been impressed by Christian's brilliance.

I thought he and I made a perfect litigation team. He could come up with the ideas and do the research. I could try the cases. A lot of really top notch legal teams work like that on complicated litigation. I always hoped Christian would come around to teaming up with me. We would be a regular Dynamic Duo, I am absolutely convinced.

Unfortunately, I think Christian always saw himself as the “out front” guy. While I respect and appreciate the things he can do that I can't do, I think Christian grew resentful of my talents. It seems stupid to me, but I believe it to be true. I never allowed myself to acknowledge it because I somehow thought it would be egotistical of me to think that someone with Christian's breeding, background and manifold talents would be jealous of me. I may be a tiger in the courtroom, but at the end of the day when I take off my makeup and look in the mirror, I still see myself as that scared kid from the broken-down farm in Indiana. I know how far I have come and I never, ever take it for granted. I feel I have to prove myself every single day. Christian has always had a sense of entitlement and, until those early years at F&J, he had never tasted any kind of failure. When he came up against the barrier of his limitations as a litigator, he did not know how to handle it.

We were still good friends and great colleagues, but there was always an uncomfortable undercurrent. I didn't know what to do about it, so I ignored it.

My relationship with Annette changed, too. For one thing our lives were following different paths. She was a homemaker with a baby and soon another on the way. She was trying get used to being the wife of a lawyer, which generally means waiting until he decides to come home from work, hopefully (and rarely) before the kids' bedtime. She and I continued to see each other regularly, but our conversations were more about her life than anything else. Since I basically did not have much of a life outside of work, that seemed only natural. I assumed she heard all the scoop about F&J from Christian, so I usually just listened a lot when we got together.

I was surprised and disappointed to watch how Annette got caught up in the accumulation of material things. Recall that she grew up in a large family. Her dad worked at the General Electric plant. He was a union worker and, by my family's standards, he made a lot of money, but he had seven children to support. Annette was second from the last. She had grown up wearing nothing but hand-me-downs and sharing absolutely everything. Christian was an only child. He had inherited quite a lot of money from his father. He had a really nice house that was paid for. He was bringing home an amazing income, at least by Annette's standards. Annette started buying expensive clothes for both herself and the kids. She also got very, very carried away with home decorating. As it turned out she has a real flair for design and she has a lovely home to show for her efforts. Shopping became Annette's animating passion.

I sort of joined in the fun up to point. I had a few small student loans to pay off, but not as many as most young lawyers because I had worked my way through school and had benefited from the scholarship from dad's company. I still lived in the studio apartment in Clifton. By my standards, I was making a bloody fortune. My first year out of law school I made as much money as my parents' combined income for that year, and they had each been at their jobs for decades. I let Annette talk me into going with her on some clothes shopping expeditions. Mostly I bought very expensive suits for work because even as clueless as I can be about a lot of things, I knew that image is very important in the courtroom. Only later did I learn how important it is in the corridors of a law firm. In any case, I bought a lot of clothes for work. Annette bought everything she saw.

Clothes were my one extravagance. As far as everything else went, I was pretty frugal. I invested most of my income. I did not really plan on getting married. I saw myself as a career woman. To the extent I had a “goal” it was to sock away as much money as possible so I could retire in my fifties and then travel the world. If I wasn't able to save enough money to live on, I planned to run for a judicial office. I think I'd make a great judge.

I saved every dime I could spare, which – since I essentially had no life and very few expenses – was quite a large percentage of my income. My parents and Uncle Bob and Aunt Lil were by then supporting my grandparents almost completely. The family had sold off virtually all of the farmland, but kept the house for my grandparents to live in. I was making more money than all of them, so I offered to help, too. My parents rejected my offer, but my uncle was not so proud. Without my parents' knowledge he agreed to take money from me. I was proud to be in a position to help my family.

After both my grandparents died, my uncle wanted to buy the house, but didn't have the money for the down payment. I made him a gift of the down payment money and co-signed on the mortgage. My parents would kill my uncle if they knew he let me do that, but I was pleased to help him. He and I agreed that, in order to keep peace and for him to save face, we would not tell my parents. When Uncle Bob dies, the house will come to me. If my parents are still alive, I'll explain it to them at the time. They'll sputter and fuss, but I'll bet you any amount you want to name they'll ask if they can buy it and move back there. Even after all these years in Cincinnati, they both refer to the farm as “home”. My answer will be that the house is not for sale, but they can live in for free it as long as they live.

While I was squirreling away every dime I could, Annette and Christian seemed determined to spend his entire inheritance as fast as possible. With a couple of kids to support, I thought they were foolish to spend the way they did. I never said anything to them because it wasn't my business, but I worried about them. I still do. They say that more marriages break up over money than anything. I worry about what will happen to them when the inheritance pot runs out and they have to start living on what Christian makes from the firm. I don't know exactly how much he makes, but I'm pretty sure it isn't enough to maintain their current lifestyle. Maybe that's a moot point, now.

Annette and I shopped together and went out to breakfast or dinner occasionally. She entertained me with stories about Carly and Becky. I never had much to tell her because I assumed she would have heard about the goings-on at F&J from Christian, and I still didn't have a life outside work. In any case, we sort of hung on to our friendship out of habit. I think it was almost an obsolete relationship even then because it was based on the girls we had been instead of the women we were. Neither of us had any other girlfriends, however, so it seemed natural to continue.

Soon, two really significant things happened very close in time. First, the old chairman of the litigation department retired and Ronald Henderson stepped up to that job. I had already worked with Ron on a number of cases. He has been my mentor and benefactor. As he rose in the department he had almost always treated me as his personal Number Two Lawyer. Even now, if anyone else in the department wants to use my services, they have to clear it with Ron. He loans me out regularly to other lawyers for their big cases. I've benefited enormously from that relationship, as you know. Ron gets a lot of mileage out of favors owed by others who “borrow” me. Because of Ron's influence, I have had the opportunity to work on some of the firms most significant litigated matters, with its top lawyers. Needless to say, Christian was apparently not very happy about my position in the department. I didn't realize until recently how deeply he resented it.

Also around that time, I met you. You know how you swept me off my feet from the very beginning. I have adored you from almost the day I literally ran into you in the parking lot of that Kroger's Supermarket. It still amazes me that you asked me out after what I did to your new car. You were different from any man I had ever met, not that I had a lot of experience with men, of course. You were sophisticated, smart, funny and worldly in ways that I admired, although I did think you were a little too impressed with your money.