Chapter One: The Second Girl

I Find Susie
"Thanks for the play date!" I call out to Susie. As usual she is smiling her trademark grin, one of the few things I really know about her. The woman is perpetually happy. I am convinced she receives royalty checks from the drug company that produces Prozac. She probably just spits in a cup once a week, her magical happiness saliva single handedly curing no less than 10,000 people of depression.

"You too!" I smile back as I deposit my daughter in her car seat, and then drive back home to Divorce Land, all the while secretly hating Susie for being so damn happy. We hardly know each other, but we are nieghbors and our daughters are the same age. She is on the parameter of my world, and completely oblivious to the fact that my husband moved out just a few weeks ago.

Two weeks later the gossip grapevine snakes its way to my social circle and my neighbor is revealing in a hushed whisper on the sidewalk. Did you here? Susie's husband moved out. He wants a divorce. NO! Not always so smiley I want to smack her Susie? Not that Susie! Yes, that Susie.

I can not get to my phone fast enough. I leave an endless voicemail on Susie's cell at least ten minutes long. I practically beg her to meet me for coffee. My husband moved out two weeks ago I blurt. Little did I know, Susie is the queen of rambling voicemails, and in the months to come it would be her sea of words that would come to my rescue.

Here I thought I was on the only one in this landscape of marital despair. Now there are two of us.

I am the first girl.

Susie is the second.