Free Once More with Feeling by Cynthia Baxter

ran her fingeralong the smooth edge of her coffee mug, watching the hands of the kitchen clock edge toward seven.
    Her hair hung limply in her face and her shoulders were slumped. Sitting alone in the kitchen, weighed down by the silence of the house, she wondered if she would ever feel whole again. Her decision to leave the marriage that had dragged her down for so many years had been hard, but it was nothing compared to living with the aftermath. Shutting her eyes tight, she felt the roller coaster.
    If only I can hold on, she told herself, I’ll get through it. One day it’ll all be over. I’ll be my old self again. I’ll be the star of an exciting new movie: Laura’s Life: Part Two.
    What terrified her was that she still didn’t have the faintest idea what the plot would be.
    She couldn’t even be sure of the setting, since Roger had yet to agree to move out of the house. Glancing around the kitchen, Laura tried to imagine leaving it behind. Right now, giving up something so familiar was unimaginable. With everything else in her life shifting beneath her feet, she clung to whatever constants she could find.
    As for the cast of characters, she’d been slowly working down her checklist of those who had to be told. While she’d been certain Julie and Claire would be supportive, she wasn’t as sure about her parents.
    “Mom, Dad, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
    When she had told them, sitting on the living-room couch in the house where she’d grown up, Laura had felt ten years old again. It was as if she were confessing to her parents that she’d been sent to the principal’s office for passing notes. Only this time, not only was she bringing herself down, her actions affected her child, as well.
    The tense, somewhat confused look on her parents’ faces prompted her to lower her eyes. Quickly she replayed in her mind the speech she’d carefully planned: “Mother, Father, Roger and I are splitting up. Yes, I know it’s a big decision, but I want you to know I’ve given this a great deal of thought....”
    “Oh, Mom!” Laura gasped instead, bursting into tears. “I’m getting divorced!”
    She braced herself for a barrage of “I told you so’s.” At the very least, her parents were entitled to indulge in a little tearing down of Roger. Yet her mother came over and put her arms around her. She hugged her for a few moments, then smoothed back her hair, just as she’d done whenever Laura came to her after suffering a scraped knee or a slight at school.
    “Honey,” her mother told her, “whatever you decide to do is right.”
    Taking a sip of coffee now, Laura forced herself to confront the painful fact that things wouldn’t go nearly as smoothly with Evan. In fact, the prospect of telling her son his mom and dad were getting divorced was what had kept her awake all night, tossing and turning like a wooden ship in a storm. Of everyone concerned, an eight-year-old boy who’d done nothing to create this situation was going to suffer the most.
    When she heard Roger coming upstairs from the basement where he’d begun sleeping on the foldout couch, she tensed. Simply being in the same room with him was difficult. And this morning she had something much more important to talk to him about than whose turn it was to take out the garbage. The coffee sloshing around in her stomach picked that moment to turn to acid.
    “You look terrible,” Roger commented, glancing at her before he headed over to the coffeepot.
    Laura wondered if she was imagining the gleeful undertone to his words. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
    “Join the club.”
    “Roger, we have to tell Evan.” Laura swallowed hard. “And we should tell him soon. I don’t want him finding out from someone else.”
    Roger cast her a stony look. “All right,” he said slowly. “Why don’t we tell him tonight?”
    ‘Tonight?”
    “You said we should tell him soon.” Roger’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Tonight’s