It had been a week and he still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Chelsea had left him. ‘I’m sorry, Jacob,’ she had said, standing by the door... with the last of her belongings in a small bag. He had come home to find she’d moved nearly all of her things out while he was at work. As he stood there, dumbfounded, she’d continued. ‘It just isn’t working. I want different things than you do, and it’s ridiculous to stay here and pretend otherwise.’ Then she had left. Two years, he thought. It took her. It only took about an hour with the sledges and wedges to split them up into small pieces.While Buttercup hung around grazing near us, we burned the grass off a small spot and then placed the cups in the center of it, then we stacked the smallest pieces of split wood around them and lit them. As it got going we put more wood around it until later the burning wood was completely covering the cups. We kept it going all day, even eating in shifts at lunch.We considered staying with it in shifts. " She just misses a man being in her life. I think it's especially a certain part of a man that she misses the most. If you get my drift." Sex?" Bingo, give that man a prize. Yeah, I think Mom is missing a good fuck now and then." Well, she can hire a gigolo, a male prostitute. Women do, I've heard." Oh, come on, how impersonal is that. That's a dick, not loving." Yeah, I suppose you're right. Has she tried an online service to meet people?" She says she has and that it's a bit like a meat. She’d planned to do that once she got to Troy’s house. She didn’t know how it worked or what music was on it, but if she could drown out Wade, she knew she could hold out until after the cops showed up to haul him away; Helen could do her time under this boat easy. She put in the earphones, turned it on, and started pressing and wiggling the circle until music began playing. A cheerful little guitar, drum, and piano mix. And soon the singer came in.“Dry your eyes, my little friend.“ Warren.