Ladies' Night by Andrews, Kay (popular books of all time .TXT) 📕

our old friends.” Grace blinked back tears, and wondered if her tear ducts would ever dry up. “And that hurts, too. I try to keep busy, to keep from dwelling on everything, but everyday, it’s like something else happens, another slap in the face. My blog? I know it seems silly to you, but, Mom, this is my work. If I don’t have a marriage, and I don’t have any friends, and then, somehow, I can’t even make a living, what the hell else do I have? What kind of life is this?”

Rochelle handed her a paper towel. “Dry your eyes, honey. This is the life you’ve got, so put on your big-girl panties and make it what you want it to be. All your old friends are gone? Find some new ones. Ben’s attacking you. Counterattack. Stay on the offensive. The best way to do that, from where I’m sitting, is to figure out a way to do what only you can do, and then get on with it. Everything else will take care of itself.”

“How?” Grace’s voice quivered with emotion.

Rochelle threw up her hands in surrender. “I don’t know, Grace. I’m not Dr. Phil. But you can’t just give up and sit around and whine. That’s not how we raised you.”

She leaned closer to Grace, rested her forehead against her daughter’s. “Figure out what you want. And then go get it.”

*   *   *

She hadn’t had all that much contact with the Gracenotes advertisers. That had been Ben’s department. But she’d had some correspondence with the bigger, most important ones: Home Depot, Levolor, Benjamin Moore, Viking, a big carpet manufacturer, and DeWalt, a power tool manufacturer.

Now Grace scrolled through the contacts on her laptop, searching them out, mentally composing the message she’d send.

Dear Sir: Just wanted to take the time to thank you for your past support of Gracenotes. Unfortunately, a situation has arisen that I wanted to make you aware of. I am currently in the middle of an unpleasant split from my husband, Ben. The result is that although Gracenotes.com is still online, I am no longer authoring or associated with those posts. I’ve started a new blog, TrueGrace.com, and I hope you’ll take a look at it. In the meantime, you should know that Ben is actually lifting my intellectual property—my writing, my recipes, and my photographs—and publishing them on Gracenotes, representing them as original. I also believe he’s actually engaging in sabotaging my career as a blogger, by posting potentially libelous, scurrilous, negative comments and material on other lifestyle blogs and signing my name to them. I know your company values your brand and identity too much to underwrite these kinds of activities, and I hope you will take the appropriate steps to ensure that your company is not associated with individuals who rely on devious, underhanded, negative activities. All best, Grace Davenport (formerly Stanton), the True Grace.

She pushed the SEND button and, for the first time in weeks, felt like herself. The real Grace.

19

Grace had never been what you would call athletic. She’d been a book nerd as a kid, always happier inside with a book than outside with a racket or a club or playing a sport that made her sweaty.

It was only after her sophomore year of college, when she’d gained not just the freshman fifteen but a whole twenty pounds, that she’d reluctantly taken up running. She’d kept it up, off and on, since then. Running to keep her weight down or the stress of daily life at bay.

Lately, she’d started running for sanity. Since the split with Ben and moving into the apartment above the Sandbox, she’d taken to waking before dawn. Sometimes she read; sometimes she worked on her blog; sometimes she laced up her running shoes and hit the road.

Reading again through all the e-mails in her in-box left her feeling infuriated and helpless, even a day later. Ben—or somebody—had done a thorough job of poisoning her Internet presence. Using her name, he’d posted inflammatory blog comments on every single blog from her old blog roll. She knew this because nearly all of the bloggers had e-mailed to tell her that she was dead to them, too.

She had to get away. It was still dark when she slipped down the stairs and let herself out the Sandbox’s side door.

Grace wasn’t fast, and her running form left much to be desired. She popped her earbuds in, pressed the PLAY button on her iPod, and loped down the street. The route she’d developed took her along the winding roads that paralleled the Gulf of Mexico. If she looked to her left, she could see blue skies, sometimes catch patches of blue-green surf through the tree line of shaggy Australian pines and palm trees.

After crossing the bridge from Cortez, she ran through Bradenton Beach, on to Holmes, and Anna Maria. After an hour, her nylon tank top was drenched with sweat, her gym shorts plastered to her butt. Even her ponytail dripped sweat onto her shoulders.

The last mile of her run was actually more of a cool-down walk. She did a run-walk on the beach for a half mile or so, keeping her eyes on the surf line, scanning for any shells, watching the seagulls and sandpipers. At one point, she stopped and stared at a huge gray heron, poised, motionless at water’s edge. The bird never flinched as Grace approached and stood, marveling at its elegant blue-gray plumage. Eventually, she moved on, but the heron did not.

It was early Monday morning, so the streets of Anna Maria were quiet. She loped up one sandy, narrow street after another, walking, fuming. Every once in a while, she felt a faint breeze coming through the tree line. The houses on these streets were cottages, many of them bearing real estate signs indicating they were vacation rentals.

This was a new neighborhood to Grace. She slowed to a stroll, appreciating the modest concrete block or frame structures, so unlike the rambling, overblown megamansions on