Swimming for Sunlight

by Allison Larkin

Genres: Animals; Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

When recently divorced Katie Ellis and her rescue dog Bark move back in with Katie’s grandmother in Florida, she becomes swept up in a reunion of her grandmother’s troupe of underwater performers—finding hope and renewal in unexpected places, in this sweet novel perfect for fans of Kristan Higgins and Claire Cook.

Aspiring costume designer Katie gave up everything in her divorce to gain custody of her fearful, faithful rescue dog, Barkimedes. While she figures out what to do next, she heads back to Florida to live with her grandmother, Nan.

But Katie quickly learns there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Nan—like the fact that in her youth Nan was a mermaid performer in a roadside attraction show, swimming and dancing underwater with a close-knit cast of talented women. Although most of the mermaids have since lost touch, Katie helps Nan search for her old friends on Facebook, sparking hopes for a reunion show. Katie is up for making some fabulous costumes, but first, she has to contend with her crippling fear of water.

As Katie’s college love Luca, a documentary filmmaker, enters the fray, Katie struggles to balance her hopes with her anxiety, and begins to realize just how much Bark’s fears are connected to her own, in this thoughtful, charming novel about hope after loss and friendships that span generations.

Publisher: Atria Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Swimming for Sunlight

PROLOGUE

My husband brought a date to our divorce.

To be fair, she didn’t come in the actual room. And according to Eric she wasn’t a date, she was a friend, but it was still bullshit. He knew it and I knew it and I don’t think either of us wanted it to be that way, but that’s where we were. He was defensive and hurt and mean, and needed to bring his friend along to say, See? You see? Someone loves me. You couldn’t, but someone does. And I was just there. Involuntary processes. Flesh taking up space. Even in that moment, I wanted to be better for him. Give him a better divorce. A satisfying fight, or at least one last burst of kindness to end what we both started with decent intentions. With hope, at least. We didn’t get married out of indifference.

His friend sat on a bench in the hallway and pressed at the screen of her phone with the pads of her fingers, long fake nails clicking against the glass. I swore I could hear her from the conference room while Eric’s attorney droned on.

“My client requests a divorce be granted on grounds of Irretrievable Breakdown . . .”

Click. Click. Click.

“. . . and maintains neither side is at fault . . .”

Click. Click. Click.

“. . . furthermore, we expect the fair and equitable division of assets . . .”

Clickity. Click. Click. Click.

I picked at the ragged edge of my thumbnail, bitten down too far, while my attorney, Arnold Troyer: Rochester’s Best Divorce Lawyer, responded in sonorous tones, beads of sweat collecting around his sad little horseshoe of brown hair.

I’d pictured Eric’s friend many times, imagining a better version of me. Someone more polished, less nervous, who liked listening to Eric curse through Buffalo Bills games on Sunday afternoons, but was otherwise fundamentally the same. I imagined her that way because I wanted to believe if I’d worked a little harder I could’ve fixed things. If what Eric and I had was close enough to almost work, that meant it had been reasonable to try.

The woman in the hall wasn’t a better version of me. She wasn’t the same species. Probably not the same phylum. Like there was a special kind of spinal column for women who were born to be trophy wives, and it was so much lighter and thinner than everyone else’s. Seeing her made me realize that even if I had worked harder to get better, to be better, to learn the difference between a checkdown and a backward pass, I still wouldn’t have been the right person for Eric, the same way he wasn’t ever going to be the right person for me.

When we were almost done dividing up assets, Eric’s attorney stated that Eric was seeking full custody of my dog.

“Wait! Time-out!” I said, jumping to my feet, making a T with my hands.

“There’s no time-out in divorce, Katie,” Eric said, turning his wrist to check a watch I’d never seen before: big and silver with an unmarked blue face.

“Whatever. Sidebar,” I said, tugging at Arnold Troyer’s sleeve.

Arnold grabbed his files and allowed me to drag him to the hallway. Once we were out of earshot from Eric’s bottle blond friend, I took a deep breath and said, “Bark is all I want.”

“What is Bark?”

“Barkimedes. My dog. I told you. Eric can have everything else, but I need my dog.”

“Let’s not be rash,” Arnold said, wiping his nose with a folded paper towel he’d pulled from his pocket. “Perhaps, if you’d be willing to share custody—”

“No! Eric hates Bark. He’s only doing this to pick at me. To prove a point he doesn’t have to prove. I get it. I know why he cheated. I know I was a shit wife. I just want my dog.”

Arnold thumbed through my file. “Is this dog a purebred? Show dog? Can we assign a cash value?”

“Does your best friend have a cash value?” I asked, my voice getting froggy as my throat tightened.

Arnold sighed, mopping at his head with the same paper towel. “I like to tell my clients not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.”

“I don’t want the forest,” I shouted, and then, surprised by the echo of my voice in the hall, I tried to take it down to a whisper, “or the house, or the stupid blender his mom gave us, or the baby clothes I bought too soon, or the ugly couch he probably screwed her on.” I pointed down the hall to the friend, who was still clicking away on her phone. “I want Bark and I want to start over. And I think it’s all he wants too; it’s just that this—this is the worst part of it.”

Eric needed to justify himself. The cheater doesn’t get to feel like they’ve been wronged, and that lack of acknowledgment was making him reckless, like a kid coloring on the walls in permanent ink. He cheated. I checked out. Neither of us was right, but I checked out long before he cheated. This was him, embarrassed, hurt, broken, saying, Look at what you made me do! Pay for what you made me do! React to me for fuck’s sake!

I wiped tears from my chin with my sleeve.

Arnold reached into his pocket and handed me another paper towel folded into four. I wondered if he sat around at night folding paper towels so he could have them at the ready. Why didn’t he carry tissues or a handkerchief like a normal person?

Arnold watched me while I blotted my eyes. His face softened. He leaned in close. “Is this really what you want?”

I nodded. Okay, Eric. I’m reacting. This is the end, and I’m fighting.

“Alright,” Arnold said, pulling his files to his chest. “Go to the ladies’ room, calm down, splash some water on your face. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” I blew my nose. It echoed.

“If I can get you more, I’ll get you more, but if all else fails we take the dog and call it a win.”

I ran down the hall, the high heels I almost never wore punctuating my retreat. In the bathroom, I ran cold water on my wrists and tried not to picture what it would feel like to hand Bark’s leash over to Eric.

I loved that dog from the second I saw him on the shelter website. He had a face like a German Shepherd, the bat ears of a Boston Terrier, and fluffy Chow fur that was spotted and dappled like a Border Collie. One of his eyes was the richest caramel brown, and the other was a clear bright blue. I needed desperately to save someone, and there he was—Dog 2357—waiting for rescue.

I made Eric drive us all the way to Syracuse to adopt him. We got there just in time. Bark was scheduled to be put down the next day.

Because he was from Syracuse, I thought naming him Barkimedes was hysterical. Eric didn’t get it. He wanted to name him Jeter. Plus, Bark ate the back of the passenger seat in Eric’s brand new BMW when we made a pit stop at a gas station on the way home, so right off the bat, Eric was not a Bark fan. It went downhill from there.

For all intents and purposes, Bark was my dog. Every morning I sat on the floor next to his bowl of kibble and drank my coffee with his ribs pressed against mine because it was the only way he’d eat his breakfast. I was the one who knew which patches of floor he was afraid of, and that you couldn’t use the stove without first closing him safely in the bedroom with three toys and his favorite blanket, and that when we went to work, he needed the radio tuned to NPR so he could listen to All Things Considered and feel less alone.

Eric didn’t know these things. He didn’t bother to learn. He didn’t take me seriously when I told him how Bark needed us to act around him. So the one time I left them alone to go to Florida for a funeral, I came back to find shirts shredded, a section of the rug chewed away, and a dog who probably hadn’t eaten in four days, cowering in a corner while a basketball game blared on the radio.

I had to believe that Eric was only posturing and he wasn’t really going to take my dog. And I had to believe that Arnold Troyer: Rochester’s Best Divorce Lawyer was at least slightly competent.

I dried my hands and smoothed my hair.

My phone buzzed.

A text from my grandmother: Over yet?

I wrote back: Almost.

Hallelujah!

I smiled and typed: Nan! So smug!

Grab freedom by the balls!

I laughed and looked in the mirror and stood up straight as if Nan had told me to. My cheeks were flushed and my eyes were starting to swell, but when I walked back down the hallway, I clacked my high heels against the marble floor like a statement.

Eric’s friend was still sitting on the bench outside the conference room. She had begun to wilt, eyeliner pooling under her eyes.

Suddenly, I felt sorry for her. If Arnold Troyer did his job, I would walk away with Bark, but she’d still be stuck with a cheater who clipped his toenails at the kitchen table and talked to his mother on the phone every single day.

“I’m Katie, Eric’s ex,” I said, reaching out my hand to shake hers.

She didn’t introduce herself, only mumbled hello in a voice that was softer than I expected. Her hand was cold and boney. There were rhinestones glued to her nails.

“He should be done soon,” I said, and then blurted out, “Nice to meet you.”

Nice to meet you. And it played in my head when I sat next to Arnold and signed by the X’s. Nice to meet you, woman who facilitated my husband’s escape from what I’d previously thought was a lifelong thing. Woman who left your hair clip in my living room like you were marking your territory. Woman who gave me the push I needed to start over. It’s nice to meet you.