ponytail, she doesn’t mind, doesn’t have an urge to hide behind the grapefruit stand.
She has taken up yoga, joining the new yoga center that has opened on the outskirts of town, and is finding not only is she calmer, more centerd, but she has found new friends, women like her—grounded, down-to-earth women—not to mention Tracy, the charismatic owner of the yoga center, who has swiftly become one of Kit’s favorite newer friends in town.
Kit has been avoiding the charity circuit, choosing instead to focus on the handful of friends she trusts and adores. Getting divorced in a small town, she discovered, was no walk in the park. For a while there, she and Adam were the subject of various gossipy lunches. The rumors shocked and upset her. In the course of one week she heard the following different reasons for their divorce:
1. That Adam had been unfaithful
2. That she had been unfaithful
3. They had run out of money, so now she was leaving him
None of it was true. The truth, that they had simply grown apart, was far more prosaic, and didn’t seem to make sense to people, hence the need to embellish. The rumors had hurt Kit far more than she let on, and it was only when she met Tracy at the yoga center that she became willing to expand her social circle again, beyond Charlie, her oldest friend in Highfield.
For a long time after the divorce, she had stopped being invited to things. She doubted Adam was being invited either, but that was largely because he was rarely in Highfield these days. She realized that however much people liked her while she was married, even though she was effectively single in those days because Adam was hardly ever around, it was different now that she was actually divorced. People seemed to become frightened of being around her too much, as if, she sometimes thought, some of her bad karma might rub off on them.
Not that she felt as if she had bad karma. Not anymore. She felt as if she had had bad karma during her marriage, when she would go to bed at night and feel that she was drowning in loneliness. Since the dust settled, and once the children were fine again, she has woken up every morning looking forward to the day, trusting that it will be good, knowing that she has finally discovered who she is, and with a sense of peace.
When Kit first saw the house she bought for herself and the kids after the divorce, she fell in love. Instantly. White clapboard with sea-green shutters that had little starfish cut-outs, the window boxes bursting with impatiens that tumbled over the sides, it was the prettiest house she had ever seen.
She recognized that she was falling in love with a lifestyle rather than with a house, but she didn’t care. She wanted that lifestyle. She saw herself swinging on the porch swing, hosting dinners around that kitchen table, kneading dough on those marble countertops.
The kids would curl up on the huge, squishy, mushroom-colored sofas as a fire blazed in the grate and she merrily made dinner while sipping a glass of ice-cold pinot grigio, and the three of them would all live happily ever after.
It was something of a shock to do the walk-through on the day of closing, to realize that without the smells of cinnamon buns rising gently in the oven, the sounds of soft jazz filling the air, without the mushroom-colored sofas, softly lit table lamps and fresh blue and white curtains, the house was just . . . a house. A nice house, admittedly, but Kit couldn’t help but feel a swell of disappointment.
She knew the sellers were taking the furniture, of course, but she didn’t think it would make the house feel so . . . different.
By the next morning, she had forgotten that. She had forgotten it because she woke up after their first night in the house, the sun streaming through the curtainless windows, and realized that it was hers. All hers. And more than that, her life was hers.
There was something so different about living in a small, manageable house, living a life that felt real, rather than a pretense. Never again would she have to squeeze into high heels and dresses because that’s what her husband liked. Never again would she have to sit through boring dinners with people she didn’t understand, people with whom she had nothing in common, because Adam was