“That doesn’t make any sense.” “Sure it does, but you’re too deep inside your head, Alice. Your path, your answer, cannot be found until you...leave that mind far behind,” she tapped her free hand to Alice’s forehead. “Follow your heart.” They were close enough that Alice could feel the heat of Hattie’s breath. “And how the fuck do I do that?” “You trust me,” she whispered to Alice’s lips.Alice’s body tingled from tip to toe, frozen and poised but perhaps not entirely ready for whatever whimsical. That left two people on the property, Rosa, their gardener who Brooke almost never saw out of her little house in the backyard, and Nathan, Brooke’s brother and the only man around the house most of the time with her father on nearly constant business trips. Nathan was shy and tended to keep to himself. When Brooke was growing up, Nathan was younger than her and a boy, so even though Lexi his twin came right along with him, Brooke always saw him as an easy target to pick on while Lexi was her. These two rooms would be my main classrooms for a while. Back inside her chamber, Mistress pulled a hanging, woven fabric rope. Somewhere in the depths of her vast abode, unheard by us, a bell rang, summoning a servant to come attend her needs. A pretty girl, my age or slightly older, soon entered saying, ‘Yes Milady?’ She was petite, with small features, and had thick layers of dark hair falling to her waist. Her smoky blue eyes held a calm, sultry intensity. She radiated pure and potent. I know children go through their own grieving and sorting-out process and this is just part of it. But God it hurts when my children have taken sides against me.Wow, I never knew how the big "D", divorce, made people so uncomfortable, and their wish not to be around me. It is so unfair, as friendships I genuinely shared with my now ex-spouse just up and left me. The husbands all felt I would be a "bad influence" on their wives. I thought the days of the scarlet "A" were over, but friends that.