<div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/4/46/Trilby_Paradise_Lauren01.jpg)(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/b/b0/Trilby_Paradise_Lauren03.jpg)(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/fa/Trilby_Paradise_Lauren02.jpg)</div><br/><br/><strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;">Lauren Kennedy Embry</span></strong>had the perfect life.  She really did.  She was from an old Boston family, the only child of adoring professional parents.  She married Richard Embry right after she graduated from Columbia, and she taught at a small private school while Richard finished at Harvard Law.  When Richard had his degree and a secure position at a major Baltimore law firm, they bought a wonderful house in the suburbs, and Lauren settled down into a life that she had always dreamed of.  They had two children -- Todd and Amy -- and when they got home from school in the afternoon, Lauren was always there to hear about their day.<br/><br/>Life went on.  Summers and  Christmases came and went.  Richard made partner in record time.  Lauren put her Fine Arts minor to good use designing jewelry for an elite goldsmith in the city.  Outgoing, easygoing, and undemanding, Lauren was friends with most everyone in her community, but she was especially fond of her neighbor, Monica DeLuca. Lauren was fascinated by Monica; she was younger than Lauren by a few years, but she seemed so much more sophisticated and sure of herself.  She was everything Lauren wasn't: witty, sharp, regal, adventurous.  When rumors popped up now and again about Monica and Alan having affairs, Lauren was shocked, even horrified.<br/><br/>“Please, don't ever do that to me,” she begged Richard.  “I can't even imagine.”<br/><br/>Richard gave her his word.<br/><br/>And once both the children had graduated high school and gone off to college, one after the other, Richard Embry took his gun from the safe at four in the morning, sat down under a tree on the front lawn, and blew his brains out.  He left only the briefest of suicide notes:<br/><br/><em>Lauren is a wonderful woman.  She's been a perfect wife and mother.  It's not her fault.</em><br/><br/>Most of the next year passed for Lauren in a haze of Xanax, therapy, and wine.  When she finally let herself feel, what she felt first was an all-consuming rage, and she purged the house of everything that had been Richard's.  If she were reckless enough, or bitter enough, to burn the house to the ground, she might have exorcised her fury at her husband with fire.  Instead, with Monica's help, she renovated and redecorated, top to bottom. Not a stick of furniture, not a plate, not a coffee mug remained, except for the children's rooms.<br/><br/>It helped.  It didn't erase the anger, but it kept her head above water.  It let her walk in and out of her home without seeing reminders of Richard in every direction.  It let her attempt a life without Xanax and therapy.<br/><br/>The wine she isn't ready to give up yet.<br/><br/>When Monica called to invite her along on a trip to Key West, Lauren was thrilled to say yes.  Both Todd and Amy were staying at school over Spring Break.  The three of them had stayed in Boston with Lauren's parents for several weeks after Richard's funeral, but this would be Lauren's first real vacation since, as she usually put it, “Before.”<br/><br/>It seemed as good as place as any to start putting a whole new life together for herself.<br/>