Chapter One

1

There is a hole the size of a golf ball in the right side of Katherine Givins’s black Bali bra.

This is the one article of clothing that has made her feel sexy for the past 3.6 years in a row, and even though the straps lie at half-mast on her fine shoulders, the elastic exploded last summer and the hooks have been pulled so many times she has actually used a needle-nose pliers on them, Katherine cannot bear to throw the bra away.

“Shit,” she says, turning into the mirror and then leaning so her nose practically touches the glass to make certain there really is a hole. It’s there, and getting wider every second, as she puts her finger in the middle and realizes that one wrong move could explode all of the seams and send her breasts into orbit.

Just as she grabs them and begins laughing hysterically at the long-held notion that the bra, like her lost marriage and her fabulous mother and the man she thought she loved two men ago or even the one she loves now, would last forever, the doorbell rings and makes her scream herself back into reality.

Her scream, the kind you might make when something normal—like a doorbell—flushes you from a very far-away place—reaches the UPS woman on the front step who is glad as hell that someone is home so she doesn’t have to leave a note and come back the next day. In the UPS world, screams, especially those coming from anywhere in front of the brown trucks and not under the rear wheels, are very good signs. So the UPS woman waits.

Katherine does not care who is at the door immediately because she is already in mourning