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Chapter 1

Emily

“If you won’t let the law school thing go, I swear I’m

going to break into the gallery and switch all your paintings

with nudes. Not the tasteful kinds either. The really gross,

nasty kinds.”

“Emily Radcliffe!” Emily’s mother, Sandra, put her hand to

her heart with a dramatic flare, like she was actually going to

suffer a heart attack for real.

Emily felt zero remorse for putting the image in her

mother’s mind, though she was only half kidding. “Don’t you

think it’s weird that you’re over fifty and still care what people

think?”

Sandra sniffed. Her hand went to her carefully dyed blonde

hair next. Her wedding ring set with the giant diamond and the

band with all the tiny little diamonds flashed in the afternoon

light streaming in from the living room’s big bay window.

Emily had walked in after a day of classes and found her mom

sitting in the navy-blue wingback armchair with a magazine

about cooking, like it was nineteen forty-nine. It might as well

be, for all the freedom her mom wanted her to actually have.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that you’re over twenty-one and

you don’t?” Sandra shot back.

Emily dropped down hard on the couch. She slid her