Nora stood up and paced the room. She had no idea of the time, but it had to be afternoon because the sun was flooding the den with its bright light. She had never expected to come to this point in her life when she married Jeff. Nora believed when you got married, you stayed that way until one of you died. That was the way it had always been. That was the way it was supposed to be. It was like that here on Ansley Court, but then, they had all been lucky. No one worked at marriage anymore, it seemed. Divorce was so commonplace nowadays.

She walked into the front hallway and stared at herself in the large mirror over the hall table. Alright. She was heavier than the 120 pounds she had weighed when they were married. She wasn't a flaming redhead anymore. She pushed at the hair near her temples. It was faded even more than the rest of her head. She peered closely into the mirror. Okay. She had a few laugh lines around her eyes. But everyone she knew did too, damnit! But she wasn't a bad-looking woman. In fact she was in pretty good condition for a woman in her late forties if you overlooked the fact that her boobs were going south, and her waist wasn't quite as narrow as it had once been, and her thighs were a bit mottled. Weren't everyone's at this point?

Nora sighed. So she wasn't the girl he had married anymore. He wasn't the boy she had married either. But there was no doubt about it, unfair as it seemed. Men simply did age better than women in most cases. She knew that Jeff worked out at the gym in his office five days a week. He insisted on low-fat, low-carb meals when he was home. He didn't smoke, and drank rarely except very expensive wines. The truth was that he looked better now than he had when they were first married.