The Divorce Party

Laura Carter has been somebody’s wife since she was twenty-five. As of this afternoon, she isn’t.Nobody cheated. Nobody screamed. She and Adam just stopped being curious about each other somewhere around 2013 and didn’t notice until it was over.Now she’s fifty-two, she’s got a house with too many rooms in it, and her best friend has decided the correct response to all of this is a party.A big one.With a theme.With a professional planner named Tiffany Lane, who scores venues on a rubric with a column marked FEELING and does not accept feedback in the form of a face.And a hundred and ten guests, every one of whom has already decided what Laura’s marriage was, why it ended, and how she ought to feel about it now. Not one of whom is going to ask.What Laura doesn’t know is that the man helping plan it has been in love with her since 1999.Daniel McAllister built her deck. He remodeled her kitchen. He stood at her kids’ birthday parties and went home alone, every time, for twenty-seven years. And he never said a word, because Adam was his friend and because it wasn’t his life to wreck.He still isn’t going to say anything.He’s just going to carry tables.But his foreman George has had three beers, the party is six weeks out, and Laura is about to find out that she’s spent a decade being looked at by somebody who was actually paying attention.The trouble is, she’s only just figured out that she doesn’t want to belong to anybody.Not even him.