Pete had recently separated from his wife of fifteen years, and although they’d had no children, he had found it a remarkably complex process all the same. It was amazing how much crap you accumulated over those years together: anniversary gifts and furniture and piles and piles of paperwork, joint checking accounts, broken iPods and DVDs and jewelry and camping equipment. Hell, even friends had to be divided up like consolation prizes. You can have the Davises, but I get Joan and Mark Price. Pete shook his head, and a little beer sloshed onto the F-150’s bench seat, speckling the gray material with a pattern that looked a little like fresh semen across a bedroom comforter. Divorce is kind of like a high school orgasm, he thought, with a wry grin. You feel both an overwhelming relief and a lot of guilt—and you’re never quite sure where the stuff’s going to end up.

His wife (soon to be ex-wife) Jerri was a grade-A bitch. Her nagging had built slowly over the years, and Pete was reminded of the story someone had told him about frogs, where if you threw one into a pot of boiling water it would jump right out, and yet if you put it in cold water and slowly turned up the heat, it would just sit there until it boiled to death. His marriage had been like that.

Finally he’d had enough, and apparently so had she, because when he announced he was leaving her, she hadn’t shed a single tear. He imagined that she might have even thrown a party, although he had no proof of that. It just seemed like something she would do.

Jerri had wanted to meet with the mediator this afternoon, but he’d told her he was feeling under the weather. He told his boss at the Lowe’s where he managed inventory the same thing. And then he climbed into his truck and headed north with his hunting rifle and fishing gear in the back, along with a tent, pack, sleeping bag and a cooler full of booze and cold cuts.