Repeatedly killing Mike on the page was incredibly therapeutic. I hit him with a gas tanker truck while smoking. I let him fall into an abandoned septic tank and drown. And I wrote about him being crushed by a falling pallet of Tampax while wandering through a Sam's Club. It was like writing a prolonged Mr. Bill sketch.

I read back over the "Mike gets blinded by rabid squirrels" scenario and giggled until I had tears running down my face. I sighed, "I must be very tired."

I rested my head against my arms, sure that I should just turn off the computer and go to sleep. While cruelly ironic and cathartic, none of these little exercises really got at the root of why I was so p.i.s.sed at my soon-to-be ex-husband.

Mike had replaced me. Moved another woman into my territory and expected me to just take it with that quiet dignity I used to cover up when I was really p.i.s.sed off. He'd moved another woman into our home and hadn't expected me to make a fuss over it. Beebee was sleeping in my bed, using my shower, applying her makeup at my vanity table. I thought maybe I could have handled it if he'd given me some warning, some choice. If he'd come to me and said, "I want someone else," I would have been hurt, but I would have eventually accepted it. But feeling disposable, like an afterthought, was too cruel. And when I struck back, I was the bad guy. I was the one who humiliated Mike. I went too far. If I was smart, I would have found a way to hurt him by proxy.

And suddenly, the right words sprang to mind. I sat up, my eyes open and my mind cleared. I opened a new doc.u.ment and typed: Greg had always loved the house, with its vaulted ceilings, the sun nook, the gently sloping staircase that led to the second floor.

He'd fought tooth and nail for it in the divorce. So it made a certain poetic sense when the house opened up and swallowed him.

I stopped, read the words on the screen, and ran with it.

Laurie had been packing all night after Greg served her papers at work. Somehow, he'd managed to convince the judge that she was dangerous, a threat to his safety, and should be removed from their marital home. Laurie had, in Greg's words, "twentyfour hours to get your s.h.i.t and leave." Of course, the real reason he wanted her gone was that his girlfriend, Patricia's, lease was up at the end of the week, and he wanted her to move in.

Laurie tore through the house, gathering clothes, pictures, books, anything she could get her hands on, and tossing them into garbage bags. Greg dogged every step she took, s.n.a.t.c.hing things he'd decided were "marital property" out of her hands and generally being a pain in the a.s.s. If he'd shown this much effort around the house when they were married... well, he wouldn't have had so much time to devote to banging the manicurist he was moving into their home.

Laurie snarled at him when he took back a little china bulldog that had been a wedding present from her grandmother. "Stop it, Greg. Just go into another room. I'll be done in a minute and then I'll be out of your way."

Greg sneered. "I don't want you running off with anything you're not ent.i.tled to in the settlement."

"You hate this stuff!" she yelled, waving at the little gla.s.s knickknacks, the dust-catchers and special touches she'd added to their bedroom over the years. "You used to spend hours b.i.t.c.hing about what I paid for it and now you're going to take a d.a.m.n throw-pillow inventory?"

He followed her out onto the landing, stepping around and stopping at the top of the stairs to keep her in her place. "Because it was my job that paid for everything. Your measly little salary wouldn't keep the heat on in this place. I worked for everything here. It all belongs to me. You're not walking away with anything that's mine."

"Well, I hope you and your things and your wh.o.r.e are very happy here," she shot back, screaming, "Now get out of my way!"

Greg's eyes widened in alarm as some unseen force shoved his shoulders, sending him reeling off the top of the stairs. The staircase seemed to flex, tossing him through the air. He flopped, boneless, as he thudded against the wall opposite the staircase. Laurie blinked furiously as the steps rippled back into place, sure she was imagining the old varnished wood moving as sinuously as snake scales.

"Greg!" she shouted. His shoulders were stuck to the wall, holding him on his fret like a fly caught in a web, even as his body sagged. He shook his head, dazed.

"What the h.e.l.l did you do, you crazy b.i.t.c.h?" he demanded as she scrambled toward him.

"Nothing!"

"Help me up," he growled, pushing against the wall.

"You are up," she retorted, grabbing his hands. He wouldn't budge away from the wall. Laurie pulled harder.

"Stop kidding around, Greg."

"I'm not. I can't move." His voice was getting fainter, higher.

His back looked... wrong. The drywall behind him wasn't cracked, but somehow the fall had pushed him inside of it. He'd been absorbed into the wall, Laurie thought, staring at him, a particularly rotten piece of fruit suspended in a Jell-O mold.

She had to bite her lip to keep down a hysterical giggle. There was always room for Jell-O.

"I think I should call an ambulance," she said, backing away.

"No, don't let go of me," he pleaded. "Laurie, I -"

"Just hold on, okay?" Laurie ran into the next room, hoping maybe she could shove him back through the wall from the other side. But there was nothing to push. There was no damage on the other side of the wall.

From the hail, there was a dull, cracking sound, stalks of celery snapping. She heard Greg scream. She scrambled back to the hall to find him doubled over and sucked back into the wall, his face folded against his shins. She yelped and fell back against the stairs.

"Help me," he wheezed, his lips wet with blood. "Laurie, help me!"

She reached out to take the arm stretched so unnaturally over his head, and then hesitated. She tilted her head and asked, "Why?"

Comprehension skittered across Greg's features. "You f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!" he screamed and was pulled farther in. His head twisted at an odd angle and the rage drained from his blue eyes. There was a series of crunching noises, like chewing, that twisted her stomach. She winced and squeezed her eyes shut. The hungry snapping stopped.

Laurie opened her eyes. And saw nothing. There was no damage to the wall. No blood. No trace of anything that had just happened. She fell back against the steps and convinced herself for half a second that she'd imagined the whole thing. That she was going crazy...

And for the next few hours, I just wrote. I didn't know whether it was a dark fantasy or an extended plea for counseling. I just knew I liked it. Of course, I could have been completely nuts.

Given that I'd just made a house eat a thinly disguised version of my husband, I was going with nuts.

They say you should write what you know. And at the moment, I knew what it was like to have your whole life turned upside-down by a man who couldn't control his urges. Some strange part of me wanted to share that with people, to show them how it felt - the dizzying tumble of humiliation and hurt, the soul-sucking effort it takes to pick yourself up and keep going. Maybe a woman who had been through the same thing would read what I'd written and feel some sort of justice had been done.

Sam's notes for my divorce case could have translated very easily into a hyperbolic comedy. But something made me want to stick with this new dark direction. It felt a little hypocritical, considering I couldn't sit through most of the horror movies Emmett had given me. But divorce was a scary thing. And losing control, losing your options, those were elements in any horror story. This was what I knew.

There would be no shocking first-chapter revelation for my poor protagonist. Well aware of her husband's "extracurricular activities," Laurie had chosen to ignore the affairs, to hold her head up and pretend she was fine. She couldn't bring herself to admit she married the wrong man. The fact that he was cheating wasn't nearly as shocking as the fact that Greg expected Laurie to step aside. She'd been trapped, by pride, by embarra.s.sment, by mortgage payments she wouldn't be able to make without Greg's income. But when she was replaced, kicked out of her home, her home fought back.

I wondered if it would be too much of a stretch to make the house eat Greg's girlfriend, too.

17 * Wax Wings and the Pun Police.

Grizzled, greasy, and smelling permanently of Skoal chewing tobacco, Hap Borchard took care of all manner of odd jobs for Buford locals and the long-established summer people. A jack-of-all-trades/master-of-Budweiser, Hap was honest to a fault, but tended to get distracted by his own long, winding stories or shiny objects if you didn't keep him on task... which was why I was in my sweats, wrestling fifty-year-old waterlogged dock wreckage to Hap's flatbed.

Unfortunately, my yard was still soaked from the deluge, so I was ankle deep in mud, trying to drag heavy timbers uphill. I can't say I was thrilled when I heard Monroe's voice as I slipped in the muck and fell on my b.u.t.t.

"So many 'dirty' joke opportunities here," he said, shaking his head and stretching his hand out. am not above throwing a fistful of this at you," I told him as he pulled me to my feet "Why do you think I'm helping you instead of going for my camera?" Monroe asked, taking the wet, damaged timber and tossing it onto Hap's flatbed Without being asked, Monroe just started working. He was not afraid of getting his hands dirty, or his shirt, his jeans... We were both pretty filthy by the time Mr. Borchard finished collecting bits and pieces of the dock from the sh.o.r.eline. He seemed thrilled at the prospect of meeting Monroe, because here was a person who had not yet heard his story about catching a fourteen-pound large-mouth ba.s.s on his grandson's Snoopy reel.

"Mr. Borchard, this is my neighbor, um, Mr. Monroe," I said as Monroe shook Mr. Borchard's hand. "Mr. Borchard helped my grandfather build this dock when he was eight years old."

"Her granddaddy paid my brother and me a quarter a day, plus lunch. Hector blew his on Bazooka and comic books, but I saved up all summer."

Monroe grinned. "What did you buy?"

Hap looked insulted. "I didn't buy anything. Saved it all, probably still have it in a coffee can somewhere."

"Mr. Borchard doesn't trust banks," I told Monroe, who nodded in sage agreement.

"Sad to see this old thing go," Hap said, swiping his forehead with an old red bandanna he kept in his back pocket. "Back then, we didn't know to put foam floaters underneath, so the dock would just float up if the water rose. It's been swamped so many times over the years, the water flushed it right off the bottom during the storm.

"Miz Lacey, have you given any thought to replacing it?" Hap asked. "Doesn't make any sense to have a house on the lake and no dock."

"Why don't you put an estimate together for me and we'll talk about it," I said.

Sensing a sustained job to keep him busy through the fall, Hap offered to put the estimate together that very minute. I gave him a legal pad and a gla.s.s of iced tea and he settled into the porch swing to start scribbling.

"Shouldn't you be up there with him?" Monroe asked when I found a reason to help him round up bits and pieces of wood.

"No, if I stay up there, he'll start telling a story about a fish he caught in 1972 and six hours from now I'll have no estimate and a profound death wish. I've been through this before, the summer we had to replace the window screens. I learned more about gig lines that I ever thought possible."

"Well, surely that knowledge will come in handy someday."

"Kind of doubt it," I told him. "I appreciate the help, by the way. It was mighty neighborly of you."

"Well, when I see an attractive woman doing solo mud wrestling, I've got to get a closer look," he said as he rubbed drying mud from my jaw. The warmth from his fingers seeped into my skin and it was all I could do not to lean into the caress like a cat. "The good news is you'd probably pay fifty bucks for this at a spa."

"Gross," I groaned, wiping at the itchy patch of skin to cover the shiver that wracked my spine.

"No, wait, I'll do the other side," Monroe said, holding his own grimy hands up as if he was going to swipe them across my face.

I laughed, backing away carefully as he advanced. "Stay away from me, you lunatic, or I'll injure your good b.u.t.t cheek."

"Oh, come on, it's all-natural," Monroe said, lumbering toward me like Frankenstein's facialist. He caught me around the waist as I struggled to keep my face away from his muddy hands.

"No! Police brutality! No!" I squealed, laughing my head off as my upper body slid out of his grasp and toward the mud. I scooped up a handful just before Monroe righted me on my feet. I c.o.c.ked my hand behind my head. "You will pay, Monroe!"

"You wouldn't; you're too nice a girl." He grinned as he held my arms at bay. My face was dangerously close to his, the sc.r.a.pe of beard stubble just grazing the tip of my nose. We stopped laughing, our heads cradled together. I was fixated on the white curve of his smile, the warm flow of breath on my cheek. He tilted his mouth toward mine and -...

Behind us, I heard someone clear his throat. I looked up to see my brother smirking down at us. I glared at him. Chagrined, Monroe let go of me but managed to wipe his hands on my back. I snickered and smacked at him.

"So you must be Lacey's neighbor," Emmett said, barely able to contain his grin.

"Monroe," he said, reaching out to shake Emmett's hand but drawing it back for a wave when he saw how dirty it was.

"I was so worried about you up here all alone with that thunderstorm," Emmett told me. "But obviously you've had plenty to keep you occupied."

"This is my incredibly ill-mannered brother. Don't worry, he's adopted." I a.s.sured Monroe. "Emmett, Monroe was helping me clear away the dock. It sank. And you're just in time not to help us, so I'd suggest you zip it."

"Oh, honey, I wasn't worried enough to actually lift something," Emmett said, shuddering. "So, Monroe, tell me all about yourself. What have you been doing with our little Lacey? She looks so relaxed..." Emmett sighed.

"Leave now," I told a bemused Monroe. "Make your escape while you still can."

"I guess I'll go clean up. Let me know if you need help getting Mr. Borchard off your porch," he told me. "It was nice to meet you -"

"Run, man, run!" I hissed. Monroe took one last opportunity to pat me on the back, leaving muddy handprints. He nodded to Emmett and then sauntered off.

"I don't want to hear it," I told my brother when Monroe was out of earshot.

"Hmmm." Emmett said, linking his arm through mine as we made our way back up to the house. "It seems we aren't s committed to the convent life as we thought."

"Shut it," I told him.

"I like him," Emmett said. "Anyone who laughs at our jokes has my blessing to bone my sister."

"Nice."

"And he made eye contact with me, which is more than I can say for Mike," Emmett said drily.

When we reached the porch, Hap handed me one sheet of paper estimating that it would take what could only be called a "c.r.a.pload" of money to replace my dock.

Ouch.

"And I took the liberty of drawing up a list of things that you could stand to do around here, Miz Lacey, especially if you plan on staying up here this winter. Your storm windows and insulator need replacing. Your roof needs new shingles in a few places. It might take me a little bit, but I can finish up before the cold sets in."

As long as Hap wasn't allowed to talk to anyone, I conceded, that was probably true.

"Well, you just let me know," Hap said as I handed him an envelope full of cash for the dock removal. Hap didn't like to leave a paper trail.

"You're not really thinking of staying up here year-round, are you?" Emmett asked as we went inside.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

"It's because of Monroe, isn't it?" Emmett gasped as I poured us iced tea. "I knew it! You've been tearing up the sheets with Wolverine!"

"Okay, that's it, you're going to pun jail," I told him. "No, I'm not sleeping with Monroe. We're just friends."

Emmett's lips twitched. "Friends who wra.s.sle in the mud and make out?"

"We were not making out!" I insisted. "We were just -"

"Face snuggling?" he suggested brightly.

I groused, "Shut it."

"So if it's not Monroe keeping you, why would you even think about wintering up here?" Emmett asked.

"It's just that it seems to be working out pretty well. It's cheap. It's quiet. I don't have to deal with Mike or anybody else."

"Oh, honey, I don't think people care about you anymore," Emmett said. "Some woman in Texas locked her cheating husband in a dog kennel and posted pictures of it on the internet. By contrast, you're downright conservative. They haven't made fun of you on the radio in weeks."

"On the radio?" I repeated. "When did that start?"

Emmett ignored me. "The citizens of our fair hamlet have had more to chew on than your sorry tale as Beebee is stepping on some toes. The humiliations have been public and spectacular. Beebee has become the talk of the town... again... for completely different reasons. She's like the s.l.u.tty secretarial Icarus. She's flying so high that she can't see how far she can fall. Beebee has lost all of her sense. Ruby Huddleston overheard her telling everybody down at Sa.s.sy Nails that since you didn't work, she wasn't going to work. She is now a full-time, stay-at-home hussy."

"What exactly does that entail?"

He grinned. "Oh, shopping for trashy lingerie, going to the gym, sc.r.a.p-booking the milestones of her adulterous relationship, getting permanent liner tattooed on her eyelids, networking lunches with other hussies. She's spending money like water, redecorating the house like something out of a magazine... that magazine being Weekly World News. It's nothing but hunting prints in the living room and tropical fish in the bathroom. It's a collection of the world's worst decorating themes all in one house."

"I know I shouldn't be enjoying this, considering that she's pretty much destroying my former home," I admitted. "But I am."

"And from what I hear, Beebee's not ascending to the social heights she'd antic.i.p.ated," he said. "She's been wait-listed by the Junior League. And they haven't wait-listed an applicant since 1975. Remember Maude Littleton? She tried to pa.s.s off Knox Gelatine recipes as her own in the church bazaar cookbook and it marked her for years. Anyway, Beebee has been semi-blackballed there. Mike can't add her onto his membership at the country club as long as he's still legally married to you. Beebee has been grudgingly accepted into the Ladies Auxiliary, but not selected for any of the important committees. She's been stuck on the solicitation committee for the spring carnival. The lowest of positions in the Auxiliary's hierarchy," Emmett added with a b.i.t.c.hy snicker.