And then Tony had come home from his Boy Scout meeting and seen her packed bags and his father lying there, and his young face had clouded with confusion. "Mom," he had said, "Mom, where are you going? You're not going away, are you? Oh Mom!"

Her heart had gone out to him. In spite of her feelings for Hale, she still loved her son, the product of her flesh, and she had taken him into her arms and held him tightly, trying to explain to him that she was in love with another man, that it was impossible for her to stay there feeling as she did. But he had been so young then, and he hadn't understood. Anger had flared in him, and he had cursed his mother and then run sobbing from the room. Bette had taken several steps toward his bedroom, crying a little herself, wanting to go to him, to explain further, but then she remembered Hale Bixby waiting for her, wonderful, loving, passionate Hale, and she had pivoted abruply, picked up her bags and left the home she had helped to create for the last time.

Hale took her to Chicago at the end of that week, just as he had promised, and her first three months in the huge metropolis had been a merry-go-round of expensive nightclubs and restaurants, parties, trips to New York and Bermuda, wild lovemaking, delirious happiness. She had thought of David and Tony often in the very beginning, but as her blissful existence with Hale continued, she thought less of her former life, blotting it out of her mind. When she received the notification from David's lawyer that he had filed for divorce, she experienced a mild pang of regret and guilt, then nothing. The past was behind her; there was only the future now, exhilarating and exciting, the adventure she had always craved and now was embracing completely.