When I was twenty-three, my marriage sank to the bottom of Lake Despair.  Okay, it hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the four years that it lasted, but I had tried to make it work for the sake of the son my husband (now ex-husband) and I shared.  Tomcat was three and a half the day our divorce was finalized.

I spent the weekend I turned twenty-three moving out of the home we had created, leaving the life we had made for ourselves behind.  He refused to sign the papers accepting service at first – he didn’t want a divorce, he said.  But here’s the thing: He’d been looking for a place to move, away from me and our son and closer to the mistress he’d been seeing for four years, closer to the son he shared with her.

The day we were scheduled to appear in court for the hearing on the stipulation, he didn’t even bother to show up.