It’s not like she had enjoyed Phil recently, but she hadn’t worried about that. Their marriage had been about the kids, at least for her. She thought it had been for him too.
He said there wasn’t anyone else, he had just “outgrown her,” but she knew better. Men never left a wife unless they’d already lined up the next one. That man couldn’t even feed himself.
A marriage that crumbled without her noticing, kids that didn’t know how to wash a dish to save their lives. What was she supposed to do about it now? Kyle was half-grown. Lucas had a Y chromosome that didn’t bode well. If she knew how to load the Nerf gun, she would let a bullet fly—Lucas didn’t need to know she broke the rules—but guns weren’t her department. What was her department?
Kyle texted:S and I need a ride to horseback riding after school.
She had kids and then rented them ponies. What was her life?
Thursday, 8:10 a.m., 113 Avocado Avenue
Alone at last, Gabby walked into the house to the waiting disaster. Spilled syrup, stray Nerf bullets, piles of paper from backpacks, and a never-ending mountain of dishes. Why did she bother? Housework was the background noise that no one cared about or even saw. A good wife and mother was basically a servant, completing all the tasks without drawing any attention. Gabby was so good at it that she’d achieved the highest degree of skill: invisibility. She was invisible when she was married to Phil, and she still hadn’t materialized.
Those thoughts weren’t helpful, though. They sure wouldn’t get the dishes done.
It had been four months since Phil moved out. She should probably get a job, but it had been fourteen years since she’d worked outside the house, not since Kyle was born. And she had been a travel agent. Her skills: buying plane tickets and booking hotels. She might as well have worked at Blockbuster. People booked their own travel these days.
She hitPLAYon her audiobook. Sloane Ellis would help her help herself.
The agency had been nice, a little place in a high-end strip mall in Pasadena next to a Verizon where she used to flirt with a hot phone guy. He’d given her a secret discount on her phone bill once. Those had been the days—grabbing a coffee or lunch with co-workers and planning tours of Irish castles. That’s how she’d met Phil. He’d planned a vacation for two to Mexico. At the end, he’d asked her to go with him. In retrospect, that was creepy. At the time, she’d really wanted a beach vacation, and Phil had had all of his hair. It had felt like something that would happen in a movie.
Sloane Ellis cut through her feelings like a knife. “Divorce is a new beginning. A rebirth.”
Was it? What was she going to be reborn as? She had an English degree (almost), two kids, and experience buying airline tickets. Her targeted ads were for online therapy, an endless list of vitamins to alleviate PMS, and vibrators. Who knew her better, Sloane Ellis or the algorithm? Of course, it wasn’t up to the algorithm to see her potential. She rinsed a plate and slid it into the dishwasher.
“Stop with the negative self-talk. You might have a prehistoric résumé, stretch marks, and a house you can’t afford, but you can change it all.”
Could she? She scraped a plate of sticky burnt pancake into the trash.
“Youare ready for an adventure.”
She ran the garbage disposal. The sound of grinding metal assaulted her ears, and she fished a spoon out of the drain.
“Not just a weekend away, you are ready for the adventure of a lifetime: self-discovery. A rewarding career, romance, parenting, and above all, self-determination. A life of your own.”
Gabby caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window above the kitchen sink and tried to imagine herself as someone else. Her frizzy hair tamed into a sleek style, her skin lasered extensively. What would a freshly lasered Gabby do?
“The first task on your adventure is—”
The sound of the doorbell cut off Sloane’s comforting yet commanding voice. The dog sprang to action, a low rumble in his throat starting as he ran toward the suspected intruder. Gabby tried to block him with her body while she cracked the door. Mr. Bubbles, a persistent devil, ran between her legs like he was a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound rottweiler instead of a ten-pound fluff ball wearing a bow tie.
“Mr. Jonathon Bubbles!” Jonathon was for Lucas’s preschool teacher, whom Lucas idolized because he did balloon tricks and also had a penis. Gabby once had had a short-term relationship with a guy who made balloons, so she couldn’t blame Lucas. She grabbed the dog’s collar while he pawed at the air. “Sorry.”
The mailman asked her to sign for a package and hurried away with a muttered curse. Another legal document from Phil. Damn divorce papers, like they were even in English. She tossed it into the corner without opening it. Then she held Mr. Bubbles high in the air and stared into his unrepentant face. “Mr. Bubbles, you are such an asshole!”
She stopped herself. She was taking out her feelings for Phil on poor Bubbles.
He panted, exhausted from his effort defending his home, and wagged his tail.
Her heart melted, and she smiled at the little asshole. Why did she have such bad taste in men, even dogs?
She grabbed a broom and hitPLAYon the audiobook. “The first task on your next adventure is to assess yourself coldly and objectively. Your physical self, your emotional self, and your potential. Let’s start with physical.”
That was easy, she was twenty-five pounds overweight in a pair of black yoga pants. She took a swig of coffee.
Sloane started in, “Sorry, but you can’t have yoga pants. They are lying to you.”
Gabby choked on her coffee. Had Sloane bugged her house?
