Page 8 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

THREE

LENNON

I burstthrough the surface of the water laughing.

I don’t stop myself or lower my voice or make myself smaller in any way.

That’s my new thing, starting now: I don’t stop myself. Jake isn’t here to do the hand signal—that small, practiced lowering of his palm that meansvolume, Lennon, we’re in public, lower your volume.

I am technically in public, but nobody’s around in the little RV Park plaza with a pool and closed-down café.

And I just left my husband and I am in a hot tub with neon lights going underneath the water like a disco. It feels like a spa after the day I’ve had, and I will laugh as loud as I want.

I cackle, actually. Full, unhinged witch cackle because I’m off-script and who the hell cares? It bounces off the pool deck.

I’m going to get a cat in whatever place I rent. Jake hated cats and never let us get any.What if it scratches the baby?he’d always say.

There was no baby. And it felt like punishment for the miscarriages, when he wouldn’t even let me get a cat to snuggle with when I was already so damn sad.

I’m going to gettwocats.

The thought arrives fully formed and I laugh harder, feeling so free.

There’s no more Jake. There is just me and the bubbles and the neon and the completely deranged fact that four hours ago I was driving south on I-35 with no destination, having just told my husband of nine years that I wanted a divorce.

Four hours ago. It feels like a different century.

Three and a half hours ago I called my mother to tell her, and she saidcongratulations, honey, that man never once tipped a waitress in his goddamn lifewith the same energy she generally uses to comment on the weather.

Mom’s been a waitress most of her life. I always hated Jake’s no-tipping thing and it’s embarrassing Mom knew about it, too. I kept extra cash in my purse to slip onto the table when Jake wasn’t looking every time. You don’t grow up as a waitress’s daughter and not tip well. I mean,c’mon.

It was also during that phone call when I learned Mom had moved to an RV park in Uhland last summer without mentioning it to me. Which was why she’d been dodging my calls for months.

But it’s a really nice RV park, as it turns out. Nicer than it has any business being, frankly. There’s a pool, and alongside it, this fabulous hot tub I’m currently lounging in. Plus a little café, the office they’ve Spanglished into theOfficinaso it’s welcoming for all clientele, and they also have two cabins on site, like little hotel rooms.

An hour ago, I sat on the edge of a surprisingly comfortable cabin bed in the surprisingly nice RV park and listened to thesilence of a room that had no Jake in it. Mom had to disappear for a shift so it was just me, myself, and I.

I reached for the TV remote on instinct, the same way I always do when I’m alone and the quiet gets too loud.

And put it back down.

Because I just left my husband. And if I turned on the television and stared at it until I fell asleep, what was any of itfor?

So I’m in a hot tub instead. In gym shorts and a camisole because I packed forflight, notleisure, and the hot tub was right here.

I never get to enjoy hot tubs because they’re another thing Jake has always hated, and now I never have to care about that ever again.

I found the switch that turns on the jets and the neon lights and I clapped my hands together like a delighted child and did a small shimmy on the pool deck in the January cold. For once I didn’t hold any of it in.

Because I don’t have to hold anything in ever again.

And then I submerged myself completely—eyes open, the neon rippling around me in blue and purple and green, bubbles streaming past my face—and I stayed under until my lungs made their opinion known, and then I came up laughing.

I’m still laughing now. I can’t remember the last time I felt so delighted orfree.

Oh my god, I’m finallyfree.

When I was seventeen, the pastor at Mom’s church held me under the baptismal water and everyone clapped when I came up gasping. I had to wear a white robe that smelled like mothballs. The water was so cold I couldn’t catch my breath.