“You have to do what’s right for you. I can figure something out. Please don’t worry about us.”
Mrs. Simon’s face brightened, and she clutched my hand. “Well now, that just dills my pickle! I’d been feeling so guilty these past days thinking of leaving y’all in the lurch.”
I smiled and nodded, searching for words to pacify her, to put her at ease, but finding none. I had to settle for a fake smile.
Having spent most of my adult life in Chicago, my accent became less Dixie and more Ditka as time went on. But I was back below the Mason-Dixon line, drinking sweet tea, eating homemade scones and apple butter, and sitting across from the woman who just metaphorically lit my last shred of hope on fire.
So, all I could think was hell’s fucking bells, what in the world was I gonna do now?
* * *
“Twelve million dollars?!”
Leah was nursing a glass of wine as we sat on the back patio.
I nodded, staring dejectedly at the Smokey Mountains in the distance, the sun had just set a few minutes earlier. I’d had to break it to my kids before they fell asleep that Mrs. Simon would be leaving us at the end of this week. Ryla, ever one for priorities, had asked if that meant she could still eat cookies every day while Max’s crestfallen expression making me fear that he was reliving his dad leaving him all over again.
Leah whistled as she shook her head. “Well, shit. I mean, good for Mrs. Simon, that woman is salt of the earth. When does she have to leave?”
“We settled on the end of this week. Her mom’s got “the dementia”,” I put finger quotes around that, “and a broken hip. I couldn’t ask her to stay.”
Leah murmured an agreement then took a sip of her wine. “What are you gonna do?”
I leaned back and rubbed my hands over my face. My force of habit was to say,I’ll be fine, orWe’ll be ok,but I went for the truth, too exhausted to keep up the polite pretense.
“I have no idea. I’m exhausted. Brunch days with the judge are never good, but this one almost put me over the edge.”
“What’d he say this time?”
“I think his exact words were, ‘a failed marriage isn’t an excuse to drop the ball.’” The persistent sting of that comment made me wish I wasn’t drinking water.
Leah made a fist and beat it into her palm. “The divorce wasn’t even your fault! You’re not the one who packed your bags and left to be a full-time yacht person or yachtsman, or whatever the douche called it. And while we’re at it, what self-respecting forty-year-old man has a midlife crisis to be a yachtsman?”
My ex-husband, David, ran a yachting adventure company. His company’s brand focused on bringing luxury accommodation to remote locations all over the world. A companyI helped fundwith my entire sign-on bonus, any savings we had in the bank, along with any of my salary that wasn’t going toward expenses or repaying my loans.
This was the same yachting company he started when he left his IT job only a year after Ryla was born.
Did he know how to yacht when he told me he was starting this new business? No.
Did he own a yacht? Also, no.
I grinned, remembering when I’d called Leah after David asked for a divorce. Leah and I so rarely talked on the phone, that she’d answered on the first ring, alarm in her voice when she asked, “Polly?! Who’s dead?”
A year ago, I’d come home late after work to find my husband of twelve years sitting in our foyer. He’d only just come home from a six-week-long yachting trip a few days prior, so I was surprised to find him a pair of large suitcases next to him, his captain’s hat atop them. I was more surprised when he calmly asked me for a divorce, then left for parts unknown.
Leah, upon hearing the story over the phone, called him every name in the book, swore revenge, and offered me an alibi. It was exactly what I needed.
She then proceeded to be there for me, even from a different state, even though she was busy with her own life, teaching third grade and raising two kids. She took time to support me throughout my whole divorce process, where I was essentially cheated out of every figurative penny I had.
Leah narrowed her eyes in question. “What did he tell you that night? Something about it being time?”
“He said it was time for him to take to the seas,” I recalled flatly, then swung my eyes to Leah whose lips quirked. “I always thought that husbands left their wives for the nanny or a yoga instructor,” I continued on, “but nope, not my husband. My husband wanted to . . .”
“Take to the seas,” Leah wheezed out, leaning forward in her chair, covering her mouth with her hand, her shoulders shaking in silent laughter.
“He didn’t even have the audacity to be a cliché.” My voice was increasing in pitch, the odd hilarity of the situation finally catching up with me. “He hated being married to me so much that he literally sailed away from me . . . on a ship!” I was full-on laughing then, having a hard time getting words out. “Did I tell you that he’d bought a little captain’s hat . . .”
“Stop!” Leah was breathless, holding her belly.
