Free After She's Gone by Lisa Jackson Page B

where she could get away from the noise of LA and the emotional stress of her family, now appeared tired and worn with the dust and dead insects trapped in the cobwebs in the corners, months-old magazines strewn over the coffee table.
    Closing the door, she had a quick flash of the last time she’d seen Trent. He’d pounded frantically on the carved panels of the door, his fist banging loudly on the heavy wood. Watching him through the sidelight, she’d actually worried that he might break the window. As if he’d read her mind, he turned his attention to the old panes, his fist curled and raised. She’d held up her phone so that he could see her, that she was threatening to call 911, intending to place the call and have him hauled away by the cops. His jaw had been set, his knuckles bleeding, his eyes sparking fire as he glowered at her through the panes, but he’d hesitated.
    She’d backed up a step, put the phone to her ear, and watched as he’d sent her a hard, killing look, uttered something she couldn’t hear, then threw his hands over his head and walked stiffly away.
    For damned ever.
    “Good,” she said now, though her voice sounded a little uneven. She hated herself for her weakness where he was concerned, but wouldn’t even give herself the excuse of having just been released from the hospital. She’d always been a moron when it came to Trent. What kind of fool gets her heart broken not once, but twice, by the same man? What idiot marries the bastard after the first breakup and thinks things will change, that he’ll love her forever, that he won’t cheat on her? And especially with her own younger, more famous sister? “Stupid,” she muttered under her breath and spied a framed picture on the narrow table near the door. The 5x7 was of Trent on their wedding day.
    Maybe she’d toss it later.
    Then again, maybe not.
    She was still legally married to him.
    Why hadn’t she gone through with the divorce she’d threatened?
    She cleared the sudden lump forming in her throat and decided she’d chalk up her inability to end an already-dead marriage to one more mental problem on her ever-growing list. Her eyes grew hot and she blinked hard rather than let a single teardrop fall. She’d cried her last tear for Trent Kittle. Her very last. Against her will she remembered that last fight, how his anger had radiated off him in waves and his fury had been etched in all the sharp angles of his face.
    Shaking off his memory, she walked through the small apartment, which now seemed just an empty space with no heart, no soul. She probably should have let it go and moved months ago, during the filming of Dead Heat.
    While Allie had moved to Portland and found her own place during shooting of the movie, Cassie, who was in far fewer scenes, had flown back and forth to LA or camped out at her mother’s house in Falls Crossing, or sometimes, when she was beat, rented a room in a hotel located a few blocks from the set.
    When she’d checked herself into the hospital, the few things she’d left in the hotel room had been transferred to her mother’s house in Falls Crossing, to the very bedroom she’d occupied as a teenager. What had been a convenience at a low point in her life now seemed completely wrong. Uncomfortable. As soon as she figured out where she was going to end up, even temporarily, she’d get things moved, but she wasn’t certain where she’d land. Back here in this retro apartment in LA? Or somewhere else entirely. Of course it depended upon what had become of Allie.
    For what had to be the zillionth time, she tried to call her sister and for just as many times she heard that the voice mailbox associated with the phone was full. She texted her again. Call me. But she figured this text, like all of the other ones she’d sent, would show on the screen of her own phone as delivered but not read.
    What had she expected?
    She walked into the kitchen area where a yogurt container with a spoon sticking