Chapter 5 - Reclaiming the Water
A month after the signing, the divorce was finalized. It was a record-setting speed for a divorce, driven entirely by Ethan’s sheer terror of public exposure.
Brooke and Mark’s house across the street had a "For Sale" sign thrown carelessly onto the lawn. Mark had filed for divorce immediately, and Brooke, unable to face the whispers at the local supermarket and the glares at the neighborhood meetings, had packed up and moved back to her parents' house in another state. Ethan had been demoted at his firm; word of his "extracurricular pool activities" had reached the senior partners through the grapevine, costing him his partnership track.
As for me? I was standing in my backyard.
The sun was setting, casting a beautiful orange and purple hue over the water. But I couldn't look at the pool without seeing them. The memory of her red lips and his guilty eyes was stained into the blue tiles.
The gate clicked open. It wasn't a cheater this time. It was a local pool renovation crew, led by a tall, kind-eyed man named Leo, whom I had hired to completely transform the space.
"Hey, Lauren," Leo said, wiping sweat from his brow as his team began unloading jackhammers and new tile crates. "Are you sure you want to completely tear out the old design? It’s a perfectly good pool."
"I want it gone, Leo," I said, looking at the water. "I want it deeper. I want the tiles changed from that cheap blue to a deep, elegant emerald green. I want a waterfall feature to drown out the noise of the world. I want to look at this backyard and see my future, not my past."
Leo smiled, a warm, genuine look that made my stomach do a slight, unexpected flip. "I get it. A fresh start. We’ll make it so beautiful you won't even remember what it used to look like."
As the crew began to drain the pool, the water level dropped lower and lower. At the very bottom of the deep end, covered in a light layer of silt, was Ethan’s silver key fob.
Leo reached down with a net, scooped it up, and handed it to me, dripping wet. "Found some treasure."
May you like
I looked at the useless piece of plastic, the symbol of the day I took my power back. I walked over to the trash can beside the grill, dropped it inside, and dusted off my hands.
"Just trash, Leo," I said. "Just trash."
