"So did you do this just to spite me for saying you wouldn't?" he asked.

"What? No!" I scoffed. He stared at me. "Okay, yes. That had a little bit to do with it."

"I'm sorry I said that," he told me. "And all of the other mean, horrible -"

"Incredibly hurtful, yet accurate?" I added.

"Yeah, those things I said. I didn't mean them," he promised. "Well, I meant it when I said I love you. But the rest was just my being an a.s.s. Could we go back to the way things were before? I don't care if we don't put a label on it. We were happy and that's all that -"

"Let's just take things slow, okay?" I asked. "We'll start with you reading that."

"Well, I'm looking forward to it," he said. "So does Laurie find love with a brooding, far more handsome man in the end?" He blanched. "Wait, did you make the house eat him, too?"

"You're just going to have to read and find out for yourself."

27 * BIah, BIah, Blahdy Blah.

I'd like to say that my newsletter ruined Mike's life, that his clients were so disgusted with his extracurricular activities that they abandoned him. But if anything, the newsletter and the ensuing drama gave the firm more cachet, like having your taxes done by the cast of Melrose Place.

The employees in the lobby of Terwilliger and a.s.sociates froze when I walked in. A couple of clients were sitting on the couch, their jaws unhinged and a gleeful antic.i.p.ation shining in their eyes. Libby Hackett, Beebee's younger, blonder replacement, widened her eyes to an even more doe-like state when I approached the desk. Dexter and Dave, the junior a.s.sociates, snapped out of their stupor first, dropping their coffee mugs on the floor with a clatter and scrambling for the video function on their cell phones. I smiled sweetly, which seemed to frighten the receptionist even more.

"I need to see Mr. Terwilliger, please," I said.

"I'm supposed to call the cops if you show up," Libby whispered.

"Would you mind giving me a five-minute head start?" I whispered back.

She let loose a nervous laugh. "Okay."

"You know I'm kidding, right?" I told her.

She shook her head. "No, I don't."

"Libby, honey, if you feel you need to call the cops, you go right ahead. I won't hold it against you."

"Really?" She sighed in relief. "Thanks."

"No problem. I'll just pop into Mr. Terwilliger's office before the sirens get close, okay?"

Libby nodded. Behind me, I heard Dexter and Dave follow me into the hallway. Over my shoulder, I saw them holding up their phones.

"Mike," I said, knocking on the frame of his door, something I'd never bothered with before.

Beebee was in his office, demanding his opinion on fabric swatches. The b.i.t.c.hy part of me wanted to tell her that they were all hideous, but the whole point of this visit was emotional growth and that wasn't a good start. (But seriously, they were all b.u.t.t ugly. We're talking a lot of pink. Mike was going to be living inside of a Pepto-Bismol bottle.) Somehow, that made it easier when Beebee sprang up off the couch and yelled for Libby. Mike looked up and, for a moment, it looked like he forgot we weren't married. His first instinct was to smile. Then I'm sure he remembered, just as soon as he saw the thunderous look on Beebee's face. I could tell by the flinching.

"Don't make me call my lawyer," he said, sounding tired.

"Oh, I'm not going to do anything; sit down," I commanded. Mike looked unsure. "Sit down."

I turned to Beebee, who was sending a poisonous glare Mike's way. "I just want to tell you that I hope you're everything he deserves and more."

"What do you mean by that?" Beebee demanded.

"If you think about it for a while, you'll figure it out," I told her, winking. "Would you mind if I spoke to Mike alone, please?"

"Like h.e.l.l!" she cried.

"Beebee, please." Mike said.

"No, Mike." She glowered at him. "We've talked about this."

"Beebee," he pleaded.

"Fine," she huffed. "But I'm waiting right outside. This door stays open and I'll be listening to every word!"

"She's a ... lovely girl," I told him, sitting across from him. "You caught me off guard the other day. There are things I need to say to you, without lawyers... or witnesses present."

Mike looked so hopeful for a moment, but his face fell when I said, "You're a jerk, Mike Terwilliger. What you did to me was just shameful, wrong, despicable. But what I did was sneaky and spiteful and immature. I was a good wife to you. I may not have met all of your needs, but I never set out to do anything to intentionally hurt you. You can't say the same thing. But I forgive you for what you did, because I don't want to carry this around with me for the rest of my life, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up everything else that I touch. I don't want you to have that kind of power over me. And I hope that one day you'll forgive me for what I did."

I took a manila envelope out of my shoulder bag and slid it across his desk. "I had my lawyer draw these up. It's a settlement. It lists all of the a.s.sets I brought to the marriage, plus a request for the equivalent cash value of my car, the equity I have in the house, my part of our savings - enough to get me started. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want anything from you that I didn't earn. I've already signed them. I'd appreciate it if you signed them and we could get this over and done with."

I'm pretty sure all Mike heard was "Blah, blah, blahdy blah, I'm going to make this easier for you." But I didn't say all that for him. I said it for me. If one of us was going to learn from this, I'm glad it was me.

I stood and offered Mike my hand. "Good-bye, Mike.

He pursed his lips and grasped my fingers. I had been holding that hand since I was nineteen years old. I knew every ridge, every scar. It was warm and solid in my hand. And it might as well have belonged to a stranger. I shook it. He smiled sadly.

"Good-bye."

"Lacey," he said as I walled out the door. "I'm dropping the lawsuit, and so will Beebee.

Beebee gasped. "But -"

"So will Beebee," Mike said again, giving her a stern look. "A clean split, okay? I'll tell Bill we want to do this as quickly as possible. No more fooling around."

I smiled and nodded. "Thanks."

I was pretty sure that was the closest thing I was going to get to an apology.

I walked out of the office with a clear conscience.

Somewhere in my heart a little door closed with a clean, quiet "snick." I was through with Mike Terwilliger. And he had moved on to a woman who, while she obviously didn't make him entirely happy, was still better suited to him than I was. Whether he stayed with her or left her within a year, I knew it wouldn't affect me either way. Instead of waiting for them to collapse on themselves, I would be living my life. I may not have wished them well, but at least I wasn't devoting precious energy to wishing they would spontaneously combust.

Surely that had to be a sign of emotional development.

As I hauled in the bags of groceries I'd bought in town I found another package from Maya on my doorstep. It contained very subdued, expensive-looking letterhead for Season's Gratings. It listed both Maya and me as owner/operators. "Okay, final offer time," Maya's note read. "Full partnership."

I'm not going to say it wasn't tempting, especially when I saw what my share of the profits would be as a full partner in Maya's company. But I'd finally made a clean break from Mike and Beebee. Even though it had some, let's say, negative aftereffects, I couldn't say the newsletter was a mistake. I'd taken a stand. The newsletter had shown people that I was more than my father's daughter or my husband's wife. I made my own choices, even if those choices had the potential to get me in a lot of trouble. And it had brought me to the lake, to Monroe. And even if things with Monroe had taken a turn toward the end, his friendship had helped me figure out what sort of person I wanted to be.

Still, somehow it seemed like a step backward to write more. The newsletters were my way of standing up for myself. As much as I wanted to help these other women, they needed to do the work for themselves. They needed to find their own way of striking back at their exes, or not, if they managed to cool down.

I opened my e-mail and composed a new message for Maya ent.i.tled, "You may find this hard to believe...

28 * Moving On.

Mike had provided everything I had asked for, plus some family Christmas decorations and an heirloom rocking chair I'd forgotten in my flight from the house. He even agreed to replace my iPod, which had mysteriously been run over by Beebee's car.

It was the nicest present he'd ever gotten me.

In return, I was giving Mike the skeleton of his boat, unscathed. He'd sent movers for it the week before I planned to move out of the cabin. It would have felt like a hostage exchange, if not for Wynnie Terwilliger 's glowering at me from the front seat of the moving truck. She made it a little less friendly than a hostage exchange.

Samantha felt bad for taking my retainer, but not taking my divorce case or my lawsuit to trial. It looked like Mike and I were going to be able to wrap everything up in mediation now that we'd agreed to start acting like adults. She didn't feel bad enough to repay my retainer, but she was helping me move, so I guess it was a wash.

I had elected not to move into the Pheasant Hollow apartments, no matter how nice they were. Because the only unit available had recently been abandoned by Beebee and that would just be weird. So I was using my first month's paycheck to put a deposit on a rental house Sam found. It was just a few blocks away from Emmett's, close enough for the occasional visit, but well outside of smacking range.

I was toting the last of my bags out of the cabin when I ran into Monroe and a giant basket. We'd been carefully maneuvering around each other for weeks, afraid to broach the subject of our relationship, now that I was finally ready to call it one, or what my moving out would mean for us. Conversations were short, superficial, and unsatisfying.

I chuckled. "Funny, I didn't order a big manly man bearing chocolate..

"Maya sent this for you," he said, hefting the basket onto the porch railing.

Maya's basket was full of various chocolate products and a specially printed card with avenging angels dancing around the border. "I still love you even if you don't reconsider (PLEASE, PLEASE reconsider). Call me," I read.

"Creepy and yet resourceful," I said, handing it to him.

Monroe seemed pleased and surprised by the contents of the little card. "So you couldn't pull the trigger, huh?"

"No, I don't think it would have made my life mean more or make me feel better. I don't think it would do any of those women any good. What worked for me probably isn't going to work for most women. Someone told me I'd make a pretty decent novelist. So I think I'll give that a try"

"No, you're going to be a great novelist. I finished the book, and there are some rough spots," he said. "But there's some seriously scary stuff going on there. For a day or so, I was honestly a little leery of my bathtub because I was afraid the shower curtain would try to smother me."

"Thanks," I said, laughing. "Emmett hated that bit, too, when I told him about it. I'm still editing, and will probably start submitting it to agents in the next few months. But, in the meantime, I've been offered a position working for a pathologically disorganized antiques expert who can rat me out to our mother if I don't reach my performance goals."

Monroe watched Emmett huff and puff as he loaded my suitcase in the car. "I would say he wouldn't do that, but I know I'd be wrong."

Emmett draped himself dramatically against the frame of my car. "Honey, I told you, I don't lift things," he groaned. "Nice to see you again, Monroe."

"Hi, Emmett, how are you?"

"Peachy freaking keen. So are you two finally going to kiss and make up or what?" Emmett huffed, with his usual amount of tact. "I don't know if I can stand any more of this romantic tension. Or lifting. I can't emphasize the lifting enough."

"We're working on it," Monroe told him. When Emmett didn't take this as a hint to leave, Monroe gave the front door a pointed look.

"Emmett just says things sometimes. We're having him tested," I said, adding, "I'll get everybody out of here as quickly as possible."

"You don't have to." Monroe's face softened. He reached out and stroked a hand along my arm to take my fingers into his. "You could stay up here. Stay with me."

I smiled sadly, my mouth lilting at the corner. "In a parallel universe, where I met you first, I bet we're the kind of couple that makes all their friends sick with how happy they are. I'll bet we have two-point-four kids, a golden retriever named Max, enjoy smoking hot s.e.x on Wednesdays, the whole bit."

"n.o.body has smoking hot s.e.x on Wednesdays," he said.

"That's why all our friends hate us." I giggled when his serious expression broke into a grin. "I can't. I can't hide up here anymore. I have to go out and face the world, learn to be a grown-up. I'm not sorry, not for coming here or being with you. But I'm just not ready - Oh, what the h.e.l.l."

I grabbed him and kissed him, pushing him against the truck and swallowing his startled grunt. Vaguely, I could hear my sibling, and possibly Sam, wolf-whistling from behind the window gla.s.s.

"Stay," he said when we came up for air. "You can do all that. Figure out who you are, what you want to do, just let me be there while you do it. You can have all the s.p.a.ce you want, write as much as you want, do whatever you want. Just stay."

I leaned my forehead against Monroe's. Here was a man who didn't want control. He just wanted me. I could choose to be with him and still do all that growing stuff. I just had to choose. I leaned back and narrowed my eyes at Monroe's painfully earnest expression.

"I don't have to entertain your friends," I told him.

"I don't have any friends."

"I don't have to join certain groups or clubs. I don't have to host anything or plan anything or do anything remotely beneficial for the community."

"These seem like oddly misanthropic rules, but I'm willing to agree to it if it means you'll stay."

"Well, actually, I was thinking, what if you moved in with me?" I asked. Monroe's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "Not right away. But maybe in a couple of months or so, we could work toward you sharing the house with me. I know you like solitude, but Emmett says my new place is surrounded by married couples. There are no crazy divorcees, well, except for me. You'd still have the whole day to yourself to write while I'm at work. I just think we need to rejoin the world, or it's going to pa.s.s us by."

"But when will you write?" he asked.

"At night, when things are slow at work, weekends," I said. "I mean, people don't start out as full-time writers, right? I have to start somewhere."

"Just to be clear, you're not asking me to be your roommate, are you?"

"No," I a.s.sured him. "This offer is for strictly nonplatonic cohabitation, possibly leading to long-term commitment." He quirked his lips. "I've spent a lot of time with Sam this week," I told him.

"Is she going to make me sign contracts?" he asked, shooting a wary look at the door.

"Possibly," I said solemnly. "Come make a home with me, Monroe. Please?"

He nodded and then the kissing started again. Samantha came out and saw us mashed against the truck. She sighed, but was smiling as she said, "If you tell me that you're not moving after all, I'm going to throw this very heavy box at you," she huffed. "You know, I don't do this for my other clients."

"Don't worry; your manual labor has not been in vain," I said. "But you might have to come back in a while to help me move Monroe."

Samantha managed to conceal the beginning curve of a smile. "Good, then you might want to get into your bedroom, Lace. Emmett's going through your closet, muttering something about 'ridiculous novelty pajamas' and throwing a bunch of stuff into a box marked Goodwill."

"Emmett, leave the candy-corn pajamas alone!" Monroe barked. "There's sentimental value there."

"Then you get your happy-ending-having a.s.ses in here and pack your own d.a.m.n boxes," Emmett yelled back.

"I think I finally understand why my brothers didn't faze you," he said as we walked back into the cabin. "You've been dealing with your own irritating sibling for years."