Page 1 of Cruel Lies

1

CALI

~Congratulations on reaching your goal weight

You've lost 40 lbs!~

I blink at my phone in confusion.

I think the BioInfo Smart Scale I bought last month is having a brain fart.

There are a couple reasons to think that.

Firstly, as nice as it would've been to lose forty pounds, I'm nowhere near that quite yet. In fact, I'm only three weeks into my new diet and exercise routine. The devil works fast, but Dubai chocolate and fourteen-hour work days work faster.

Secondly, I'm not even home. I'm at a work conference in Phoenix, clear across the country from my bathroom scale. So unless that squat little square of digitized plastic grew wings and flew here from Manhattan, there's no way it should be sending me anything at all. The kids know they aren't allowed in Mommy's bathroom, and my husband Todd would—and I quote—"rather die than let a nerdy little robot monitor my donut consumption."

So that leaves one real option: The scale is broken. Either that, or it's predicting the future. Or maybe I'm just hallucinating after a very, very long day?

No one ever told me entrepreneurship would be easy, but I never thought it would be quitethisexhausting. I was always told that motherhood was a job of wearing many hats. And that's definitely true. At home, I'm a maid, a chauffeur, a Michelin-star chef of chicken nuggets and scrambled eggs. I'm an ad-hoc therapist whenever a new boy at school cuts my son Hayden in the line for kickball and an unlicensed wedding officiant whenever my daughter Isabella decides that it's time for two of her Barbies to tie the knot. I buy the groceries and pay the bills. I wipe the counters and make the beds.

I. Do.Everything.

So when the opportunity came to start my own business, I figured,How hard could it be?

Turns out: hard.

Very.

But I am nothing if not determined. So here I am in Phoenix, Arizona, despite the concept of "REM sleep" sounding more like "faerie magic" to me these days, to flog my data science company to prospective investors at an industry convention.

Not gonna lie: It's a bit humiliating. I feel like Oliver Twist, pleading for "just a few more dollars, sir and/or madam!" But I had a few intrigued nibbles today, including a lengthy conversation with Emmett Glover, the hotshot CEO of a hugeindustrial services company who'd be a dream client if I could land him. We're supposed to meet for coffee before the convention starts back up in the morning to chat further. I was hoping to have time to assemble some notes tonight on how I can help him so I could really knock his socks off.

But this notification has thrown me for a loop.

I click on it and the app opens up. It shows a chart with my weigh-ins on it. For the last three weeks, the line goes down a little bit at a time. Half a pound here. A pound there. Slow, but steady. The way it's supposed to go.

Then, today, the line drops straight off a cliff.

The last entry says 142 pounds.

I weighed 182 this morning. I know because I stepped on the scale before I left for the airport. I always weigh myself in the morning; it's part of the routine. Weigh-in, cup of yogurt with my morning celery juice, then forty-five minutes of grueling StairMaster and dumbbells in my silent, unheated garage before the kids wake up and it's time to be SuperMom again.

I'm doing all this for our anniversary. It's going to be ten years in June. I can't even believe how fast the time has flown. Ten years ago, I was a skinny little thing, freshly married and radiantly happy, with killer boobs and a waist-to-hip ratio that would've made Michelangelo salivate.

Since then… Well, like I said: Life has gotten busy, and baby weight is a stubborn S.O.B.

But Todd and I are doing a big trip in two months to celebrate a decade of being the Bradshaws, just the two of us frolickingin sunny Santorini, and I want to look good. Better than good, actually—I want to be in the best shape of my life.

I keep saying I'm doing it for me. That's definitely true. I want to prove that I'm tough and capable of anything I put my mind to. If I can push two littles out into the world, if I can bring this company of mine to life, if I can run a household and maintain a happy marriage, then what's a measly few pounds?

But it's not thewholetruth.

I'm also doing it—a little bit, just a teensy little bit—because of Todd.

He never comes right out andsays it. He's not like that. He just makes little comments. He'll see me getting dressed for work and say something like, "Isabella sure left some stretch marks on her way out, huh?"

Or we'll be at a restaurant and I'll order dessert and he'll raise his eyebrows and say, "You sure about that, Cal?"