It was as if George Oakfield had some sort of magic crystal ball, because all of his predictions came true.
On the same day that Judge Reeves sentenced Nelson to a term of thirteen years, Kristin Miller, Sam’s divorce attorney, started the process to do exactly what Oakfield had said that she and Sam should do – bleed Nelson Stewart dry – and since Sam had been the victim of domestic violence and unlawful imprisonment by an adulterous and violent husband, it didn’t take Kristin long to get the whole process signed off and authorized by the court.
So, just a few days after Nelson took residency at MCI-Cedar Junction, Samantha Chambers was awarded over fifty percent of Nelson’s fortune through the divorce litigation, plus an extra forty percent in punitive damages for what he’d put her through. In short, Samantha Chambers walked away with pretty much everything Nelson had, including property, jewelry, stocks and shares. The judge also awarded Sam both of Nelson’s prize possessions – a cherry red Lamborghini Huracan, the value of which exceeded three hundred thousand dollars, and a rapid blue, souped-up to the teeth, Corvette Stingray Z51, which had cost him over one hundred thousand dollars. Most of the funds in Nelson’s current and safety accounts were also seized and transferred to his ex-wife’s account.
Kristin and her law firm had been over the moon with theresults of the divorce litigation. In their books, that had been a stupendous win, but Sam didn’t really care to keep almost anything of what she was awarded – the cars, the properties, the furniture, the investments, the jewelry… in fact, she wanted absolutely nothing that could remind her of Nelson Stewart and of her time in Woburn. With that in mind, on the same day that Kristin managed to bleed Nelson dry, Sam instructed her to liquidate everything as fast as she possibly could. Just a few weeks after that, Samantha Chambers was officially a millionaire… several times over.
Ten
When it came to choosing her new name, the woman once known as Samantha Chambers took Oakfield’s advice to the letter. After a quick Internet search, she found out that the three most common last names in America were: Smith, Johnson, and Williams – each of them with over 1.5 million individuals around the USA. The three most common female first names were: Mary, Patricia and Jennifer – with Mary having a count of over three million hits, practically double the number of Patricia’s and Jennifer’s living in the US.
Sam’s priority wasn’t to have a new, cool-sounding name. She truly didn’t care for any of that. Her priority was to make the process of finding her as difficult as possible to anyone who ever tried to, if anyone ever did.
So, with that in mind, a day after Samantha Chambers was granted the right to a new identity, she picked the name combination that would return the largest number of results through a name search – Mary Smith.
‘It actually doesn’t sound that bad,’ she said to her reflection in the mirror, after repeating the name out loud a handful of times.
The next field on the identity change form was ‘Date of Birth’, and she once again took Oakfield’s advice – different day, different month, different year.
It felt good to be twenty-six again.
As for the date, Mary Smith could think of no better date than October thirtieth, because what that meant was that every year, from then on, she would be celebrating her birthday a day before Halloween – by far her favorite holiday season.
With her new name and date of birth finally chosen, all that Mary needed to do to complete the identity change form was to enter her parents’ names and the city in which Mary Smith had been born.
For her father’s name, she simply decided to follow the same rule that she’d used to create her own.
After another quick Internet search, she discovered that the three most common male first names in the USA were: James, Robert and John.
This time, Sam decided to go with the second most popular male first name in America, Robert, and the main reason for that was because since she would soon become Mary Smith, her father would then be Robert Smith, which was also the name of the lead singer in one of her favorite bands – The Cure.
For her mother, she picked a completely different name – Heather. She did think about going with either Patricia or Jennifer – second and third most popular female names in the US – but having a whole family made out of the three most common names in America would be a bit much. Heather was also the name of her real mother’s best friend, which made Sam believe that it was a suitable choice.
Now, Sam had only one decision left to make to complete the identity change process – Mary Smith’s original birthplace. Here, Sam wanted to go with a very large city – Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, New York City, etc. She blew hot and cold over a few of them for a while, but in the end she chose New York City, and the thinking behind that decision was based on one simple thing: Sam knew for a fact that the smaller the place, the more people tended to show interest in their local communities,and what that ultimately translated into was “nosy neighbors”. People knew more about each other’s lives in smaller towns than in bigger cities, and they were usually happy to answer questions if anyone came asking. The Big Apple, on the other hand, was famous for many things, and one of them was the fact that people were usually too busy with their own lives and problems to nose into anybody else’s business. New Yorkers had a reputation for keeping themselves to themselves, many not even knowing the name of their next-door neighbor after living in the same neighborhood for years.
And that was it. It had really been that simple. With the identity change petition already approved and signed off by Judge Reeves, all that Mary’s lawyers had to do was hand in all the documentation that the courts had asked for, which Kristin did on the very same day that she received the form with Sam’s choices – a form that had been delivered to her in a sealed envelope, so that not even Kristin knew what Sam’s new identity would be. A short week after that, a whole new batch of documents – also in a sealed envelope – was delivered to Kristin Miller’s office.
So, on a warm and sunny afternoon in late May, a battered and broken Samantha Chambers was no more. In her place, a shy, but very happy Mary Smith, stepped out of Kristin Miller’s law office, slid her Carrera sunglasses back on, jumped into her rented car, and simply disappeared into the world.
Eleven
Two Days Later
If there was one thing that Mary Smith knew right from the start – something she knew even before she was granted the right to an identity change – was that as soon as she was free from that whole court circus, she would be getting the hell out of Woburn. In fact, Mary was certain that she’d be getting the hell out of Massachusetts too. All she needed to do was pick a new place to start over, and for that, once again, she decided to follow Oakfield’s advice as best as she could and ‘tip the odds in her favor’.
‘If I were you,’he had said.‘I’d place all my belongings in storage and simply rent an already furnished place somewhere.’
Despite being a millionaire, at that exact point in time, Mary Smith had very few belongings of her own. As soon as her divorce settlement came through, she had instructed her lawyers to liquidate whatever they could, as fast as they could, and since then, they had marketed and sold over ninety-five percent of everything that the court had awarded her. All that she’d kept for herself were a few wardrobe items, but not many.
Something else that Mary had decided on was that she would completely reinvent herself – from top to bottom. She would walk, talk, look and dress in a completely different way to SamanthaStewart, and the lack of earthly possessions, at least right then, wasn’t such a bad thing. It actually meant that Mary was free to move around as much as she wanted to, without needing to put anything into storage. And for her ‘move around’ phase, she had her own little trick to add to Oakfield’s advice – her own little way of tipping the odds in her favor.
After yet another Internet search, Mary found out that in America, the largest concentration of women whose first name was Mary lived inside what was known as the ‘Bible Belt’ – a very large area of land that included almost all of Southeastern USA, running from Virginia down to Northern Florida, while also stretching west all the way to Oklahoma and part of Texas. And what better way to hide someone called Mary other than right among thousands of other Mary’s.
With that as her starting point, Mary decided that she would spend the first six months – maybe even the first year of her new life – somewhere inside the ‘Bible Belt’, but there was one problem – the same problem that she faced when deciding where Mary Smith had originally come from: small American towns – and the ones inside the ‘Bible Belt’ – were famous for how everyone tended to stick their noses into everybody else’s business. They were also famous for people being more concerned with your past than your present: where did you come from? Why did you decide to move into their town? How come at your age you’re unmarried with no kids… and so on.
Privacy, or better yet, other people’s privacy, wasn’t something that many folks over in the ‘Bible Belt’ cared too much for. But as far as Mary was concerned, as long as she kept herself to herself and stuck to a large city – where theoretically, the ‘Belt’ should lose some of its grip – she couldn’t see any real problems. This was only a temporary tactical move anyway – a decoy, just like Oakfield had suggested – and out of all the large cities that sat within the ‘Belt’, one certainly appealed to Mary a lot more thanall the others. A place that she’d always wanted to visit but never really had a chance to – Nashville, Tennessee.
From a very early age, music had been Mary’s safe haven from just about everything – pain, bullying, anxiety, loneliness, anger, betrayal – anything and everything that had ever made her feel sad or distressed. It had been the one thing she knew she could count on at any time. All she needed to do was click a button and the notes… the melody… the harmonies… would whisper comfort directly into her ear. But music hadn’t only been there for her during sad times. In fact, for as long as she could remember, music had been the only constant presence in her life – and Nashville wasn’t known as the ‘Music City’ for nothing. There was no place in the world as legendary as Nashville when it came to country music and live performance venues.
