After Everyone Else

Bailey is charged with murdering Elliott, her former husband, a well-known television chef she has not seen in two decades. Forensic evidence places her DNA throughout his apartment and on his body, so she must face the accusation while her marriage and her demanding work come under strain. The novel asks how far a person will go to shield the people she loves.

The story moves between the present and the past. The earlier chapters follow Bailey as she weighs marriage and motherhood. She grew up without a mother or any other woman to model herself on, and she wonders how that absence will shape the kind of mother she becomes. Before long she discovers that a child answers back in ways no wall ever could.

Bailey works to grow her young design business while meeting the demands of raising a difficult child. She must also keep her husband close and handle a guarded, hard-to-read lawyer, and both of them privately doubt that she is innocent. The book presses a painful question: when obligations compete, whom do you put first, your spouse or your children?

At its center, the novel explores how the past never fully disappears, how forgiveness can be painful yet necessary, and how durable love can hold on to the person who comes after everyone else.