Loveyoubye is a memoir about the power of choice in shaping a woman's identity and forging a meaningful life. The story opens when Rossandra White finds a cryptic, hastily-written noteon the kitchen counter from her husband, "Gone to Mexico, Adios."  Hereturns weeks later, offering few details about where he went. Thissequence of events has played out before.  But this time is different. A subsequent confluence of crises rattles Rossandra's core, sheddinglight on the dark elements of their marriage.  In SouthAfrica, land of her birth, Rossandra's brother, whose physical andmental disabilities have stricken her with a lifetime of guilt, needsher help, and she answers the call. She returns to California where herdog Sweetpea, who for years has served as a vital emotional link between Rossandra and her husband, has begun to succumb to a fatal illness. Rossandra White has written a captivating memoir that takes you from the jungles of Africa to the beaches of Southern California. Rossandra writes with heart and wisdom about being abandoned by her husband, dealing with unresolved issues from the past and her great love for her dog. An entertaining, and ultimately uplifting book. --Anita Hughes, author of Monarch Beach, Market Street, and Lake Como "Life must be understood backwards, [Although) . . . it must be lived forwards" --Soren Kierkegaard Rossandra White, secure in marriage to the American man of her dreams took up writing to quiet the voices from the past back home in Africa. The result: Monkey's Wedding and Mine Dances , two young adult novels about family, race, and the dark magic of a society poised on the brink of change. And then her world fell apart when her marriage unraveled, along with a crisis back home in Africa and the worsening ill health of her beloved dog. Loveyoubye , her memoir, resulted as a way to heal the past and to face the future. She lives in Laguna Beach, California with her two Staffordshire Bull Terriers with whom she fights for space in her bed. When she's not writing, she enjoys yoga, Jazzercize, and hiking the hills behind her home in Laguna canyon. Loveyoubye A Memoir of Betrayal By Rossandra White Ingram Publisher Services Copyright © 2014 Rossandra White All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-938314-50-6 CHAPTER FOUR   I thought of the mess the powerful Santa Anas would leave behind. How fitting. Along with raking up bamboo leaves, bougainvillea blossoms, and wild figs from the vine on the twenty-foot-high wall we shared with the body shop next door, I’d be in intense conversation with my inner psychologist about Larry’s latest escape. Those devil Santa Ana winds could whip the smallest ember into a town-leveling fire in no time; they’d done it thirteen years earlier, when the fire barely missed our house. But they could also pump up great waves. Larry had timed his escape just right this time: the waves would be perfect in Mexico. If that’s even where he was. Sweetpea trotted into the room and stretched out on her stomach on the floor next to me, back legs splayed like a frog. Jake followed her, ever-present floppy Frisbee dangling hopefully from his mouth. I started upstairs to get a top and came face to face with a mask of Larry’s face, set in a three-foot-high tea-stained jar wedged into a corner of the staircase. I’d hand-built the piece when we first married, inspired by his artistic talent and encouragement to try ceramics myself.   I sank down onto the staircase and touched the nose. Such perfect features for a mask: narrow oval face, straight Indian nose—he was one-quarter Arapahoe, three-quarters Irish/Scot—salt-and-pepper Sam Elliott moustache. Even at thirty-five when I married him, three weeks after we came together in a wild frenzy of sex and feverish togetherness, he was still as good-looking as his Anaheim High School photos revealed. I’d been amazed that this gorgeous, creative man was still available. With his prematurely greying hair, which he kept long, he would turn into a dead ringer for Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien’s leader of “The Fellowship of the Ring.” But he didn’t like people calling him that. It took me a long time to realize he hated to be the center of attention. This was someone who seemed to cultivate the limelight. Late afternoon light shifting through the window glanced off the mask’s empty eyes. Eyes so different from those first days when they challenged me to share the joke with him, slate-blue eyes that pulled me in, eyes that I would learn never gave away his thoughts. “What?” I would smile. He’d shake his head, and then I had to drag it out of him. He’d felt “moony” over me. That’s the closest he ever came to silly love talk. I remember the day I cast his face in plaster of Paris for the mask. He lay on his back on the then-cement front deck, Vaseline smeared all over his face, his beard and moustache matted with the goo. I’d finally persuaded him to go along with my experiment, but he almost lost it when I kept sl