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As Sienna Ford parked her car in the garage of her oceanfront Marina del Rey home, she pulled out her phone.
She had just dropped off Candace. And with that final, major responsibility of the day complete, she did one last check for missed voicemails and texts. Finding none, she did something she’d been looking forward to all day: she put her phone on silent.
With her husband, Paul, currently crossing the Atlantic Ocean for an emergency investor meeting in Brussels that would keep him away over Christmas, she knew he wouldn’t be calling tonight. In fact, since it was 4 p.m. here, it was already the middle of the night on his plane. He might even be asleep.
And now that Candace was 10, she’d developed a real independent streak. When she went to a friend’s house for a sleepover, as she was doing tonight, she often refused to even answer her phone for a final “good night” and “I love you” call. Sienna would probably have to reach out to Rianne, the mother of Candace’s friend, Lissa, and make her bring her own phone to Candace for the obligatory call. But that wasn’t for a while.
Sienna estimated that she had a good five hours before she had to worry about such things. Which meant she had five hours of uninterrupted alone time. No work calls about the gallery opening next month. No family to feed. No friends coming over. Just Sienna time.
She had a lot of important action items on the agenda. First, she’d start with a bubble bath, before eventually moving on to some white wine, girl dinner, and at least three episodes of Top Chef. It was going to be a wild night.
She walked into the kitchen and threw her keys in the basket on the counter before pulling off her high heels and making her way directly to the bedroom. Her calves were killing her, and she intended to soak them for quite some time.
“Alexa, play Sade,” she called out to the voice assistant as she made her way down the hallway to the bedroom.
“No Ordinary Love” came on as she entered the bedroom and began to undress, laying her clothes on the bed. Clad only in her bra and underwear, she made her way into the bathroom, intent on finding her favorite bathrobe. As she passed in front of the vanity mirror, she stopped and stared at herself.
At 34, she thought she was doing a decent job of fighting the battle against time. She’d had Candace when she was just 24 and still in graduate school, getting her master’s in art history. Unlike some of her friends who had kids after thirty, she’d managed to bounce back physically pretty quickly. It helped that Paul was making $300K by the time Candace was born, affording Sienna the freedom to work with a personal trainer and a personal chef.
Still, so far at least, she’d managed to stay firm without artificial assistance. Deciding that she’d admired herself long enough, Sienna tied her jet-black hair in a bun. She wanted a nice bath, but without getting bubbles in her hair.
She found the lavender robe on the back hook of her walk-in closet door and put it on. It occurred to her that she was being unnecessarily modest, considering that she was alone in the house. Years of worrying about a little girl barging in on her had made her needlessly cautious.
She turned on the water in the bath, got it to the preferred temperature, then added the bubble bath soap. The noise from the water was loud, so she instructed Alexa to increase the volume on Sade. While she waited for the tub to fill, she returned to the bedroom to take off her other clothes.
She moved fast as she wanted to get in the tub soon. For one thing, she deserved it. And for another, she suddenly felt an odd chill in the air.