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hold on to the rings for me for a while in case I changed my mind. I drove home, printed out the necessary documents from DoltYourselfDivorce.com and filed them at the county courthouse. When I returned, I found a technician from the Peace of Mind Locksmith Company waiting for me in the driveway. I’d called a service from two towns over to keep Mike from being tipped off about my plans to re-key every door in the house. The technician, a stocky guy in his forties whose shirt dubbed him “Roy,” assured me this would only take an hour.
    I wandered into my suddenly silly bistro-themed kitchen with the ridiculously expensive appliances. And I felt a little lost. I was so alone. I wanted my mama. It seemed wrong to go through something like this without her. When the chips were down, my mother could be counted on to tell you you’d done something irretrievably stupid, but she loved you anyway. She was well aware of our faults, but God help the person who pointed them out to her.
    My parents were out of town at Daddy’s annual Phi Rho Chi reunion in Hilton Head, a bunch of old businessmen remembering what life was like when they still had hair. It was the highlight of Daddy’s year. Right up there with the week he spent hunting with the Phi Ro’s at a stocked lodge in Missouri… and the week he spent deep-sea fishing with them in the Florida Keys. Mama was a very patient woman.
    I’d dialed her number on my cell a dozen times, but always hit end before it rang. As much as Daddy loved his children, he would not come home early from the reunion unless it was to bury one of us. And even then, he’d probably fly back to try to finish out the weekend. Mama had enough to deal with, pouring my dad into bed each night as the Phi Rho boys participated in the annual beer-related relay challenges. I didn’t want to put her in the position of choosing between the two of us. Besides, she’d probably need to conserve her strength for the aftermath of my little publication when she came home.
    I can usually count on Emmett’s indignant wrath in situations like this. But Emmett was on a two-week trip to the Bahamas with his current boyfriend, a “freelance food service contractor” named James.
    If this were a Renée Zellweger movie, my girlfriends would rush over here, alcohol and chocolate in hand, to assure me that everything was Mike’s fault, that I was perfect and I would find a better-looking, richer, more sexually expressive man in no time. The problem was that I didn’t have a lot of friends. Well, not any real friends. I knew some ladies from our Sunday school class. And I was friendly with the women in Junior League. We had couples we went to dinner with, clients that we entertained, but I didn’t have any girlfriends of my own. When you’re a couple, it’s hard finding friends that you and your husband agree on. Generally, you try to hang out with couples so no one feels left out or weird. But maybe the husbands get along but the wives hate each other. Or the wives get along great, but the husbands have nothing to talk about. It was just so much easier to hang around with Mike’s friends and their wives. It was the simplest way to get him to agree to socialize.
    I let friendships with my single friends fall by the wayside because it just seemed like so much work to maintain them. Finding neutral conversational territory is a killer, especially when they’re out in the world working and your biggest problem is finding drapes that complement the new sofa. Plus, I couldn’t help but feel that my working friends judged my staying home, particularly when we didn’t have kids. The last time I had lunch with my friend Katie, a preschool teacher with three boys, she asked me what I did all day. I rambled on about appointments and meetings for about ten minutes before I realized I didn’t have a very good answer for her. We didn’t have lunch again.
    I sat at the counter bar, toying with an apple from the crystal bowl