54 comments/ 219414 views/ 49 favorites Lyin' Eyes Ch. 01 By: Longhorn__07 It took a funeral and a three-year-old child to pull the blindfold off my eyes and make me face what I really knew had been there for a while. I hadn't wanted to see it; I'd ignored it as long as I could but suddenly I was right up against it. The funeral was for my maternal grandfather, who died of a massive heart attack, and the three year old was my daughter Alyssa. We were at my mother's house the day after the funeral, making ready to leave and return home. The luggage was all packed and loaded into the rear of the Navigator and I was putting Alyssa in her car seat. "Would you like your shoes off, honey?" I asked her. I knew the answer but I liked asking, because she would reply and I loved the sound of her little girl's voice. "Yes, please," she said solemnly and very distinctly. I smiled at her and began to unbuckle the straps on the tiny Mary Jane shoes. I didn't bother to ask if she would like her socks on or off. The answer was always "off." That had to have been from my side of the family. I'd rather go barefoot myself than deal with hot, uncomfortable leather. With her socks off and her toes wriggling in undisguised relief, I tickled the soles of her feet. She knew I would and had been watching me intently, waiting for the moment she could squeal and kick her feet as if she actually wanted to get her away from my tickling fingers. She didn't, though. She'd have been unhappy if I hadn't done it. This was a game we often played, and one we'd both come to cherish. It struck me that we'd been playing it a lot lately. My young daughter and I were spending more and more time together. Both of us seemed to cherish the hours we had in each other's company. It was not so with my wife, Laura, though. Before I could explore that thought, my angelic little daughter interrupted my thoughts. "Daddy?" Alyssa asked. I was leaning past her and placing her shoes on the bench seat beside her. I stuffed each sock carefully inside the proper shoe and pushed the shoes a little into the cushion so they'd stay there. "What, punkin'?" I asked gently. When she didn't immediately answer, I turned to look her in the eyes. "Why doesn't Mommy love us anymore?" she asked simply. I was taken aback. I stared at my child for a moment, unable to answer. "Honey...your Mommy loves us both, I'm sure," I said slowly, "and in particular, she loves you more than anything else in the whole, wide world," I assured her. For a brief instant, there was a sparkle in her eyes, but then it faded. "But she didn't want to come with us to say goodbye to Gran'pa," she said plaintively. I had no real answer except the one Laura had given me. "She had to work, honey," I said. I was going to explain about the biggest account in the accounting firm my wife worked for and how it needed so much of her time and attention, but that would have raised far too many questions in a three year old's mind. I was quiet for a long moment. "Mommy will be there when you get home, baby," I said consolingly. "She'll be there waiting for you." "Does she have to work at night, too?" Alyssa asked. I started to answer, saying no, her mother went out at night with "the girls" a lot to unwind. But again, that would have raised more questions than it answered in Alyssa's mind. "No, baby girl," I said, "I think Mommy's about done with having to work so hard and then she'll have lots more time to spend with you...and me," I told her. Suddenly, I had to end this conversation. It was too uncomfortable. I buckled the last strap on the car seat, kissed my little cherub of a daughter, and patted her arm before closing the door. Twenty minutes later, she was peacefully asleep in the rear seat while I drove the big SUV down the Interstate. My daughter slept, but I could not. I kept replaying her sad words in my mind. If a three year old was noticing, it wasn't just me anymore. That was what my wife had implied the last time I'd asked why she was going out with her friends so often. ******** The sun had nearly set when we pulled in the driveway. My wife, Laura, was indeed home. Alyssa ran upstairs, excited and bursting with things she wanted to tell her mother about all the cousins she'd encountered at my mom and dad's. I tailed along behind, still consumed with the dark thoughts that had taken root in my mind on the drive home. Why WAS my wife spending so much of her time in the office or partying with her girlfriends? I found Laura sitting before her vanity, putting on makeup in her bra and panties. She rose to give me a peck on the cheek in welcome. Without warning, the idea struck me that I couldn't remember the last time she'd given me a strong, lusty kiss and wrapped her arms around my neck to show me how much she loved me. I sat down on our bed and watched. Alyssa talked to her for a while, without much of a reply from her mother. It was obvious even to little Alyssa that Laura wasn't paying any attention and, after a while, our daughter wound down and quietly went down the hall to her own room. Laura continued primping, touching her hair and getting her makeup on exactly right. "What's going on, Laura?" I asked, trying to keep the unexpected emotion out of my voice. My stomach muscles were abruptly cramping and I could feel the surge of blood up the back of my neck. It was difficult to breath. "What do you mean, honey?" she replied. She hadn't noticed my sudden agitation and was still giving all her attention to the mascara brush so near to her right eye. "We've only been home ten minutes," I said brusquely, "and you're rushing off somewhere already?" She stopped brushing at her eyelashes and looked at me with poorly concealed impatience. "Honey, you KNOW I always go out with the girls on Friday nights," she said in a tired, we've-gone-over-this-before, voice. I didn't like her tone and I didn't like the implication that she was doing something we'd agreed was right and proper. "Actually, my dear," I said sarcastically, "you go out with "the girls" on Saturday nights, some Sundays, almost every Wednesday, and virtually every Friday after work for happy hour and sometimes they all blend into one long, excruciating night out for you." Alyssa had quietly disappeared after her mother had shut her out and was in her room with the door shut. I heard the strains of one of her educational toys starting to play a jingle. Getting up, I closed the bedroom door and turned back to find Laura also standing and looking at me without any expression on her face. Moving fast, I stepped close to her and caught up both her hands in mine. I hugged them to my chest. "Laura," I said slowly, striving to keep control of my voice. I didn't want it to break right now. "Honey, Alyssa asked me this afternoon why you didn't love us anymore...and Laura, I have to ask the same question, I guess." Laura's eyes narrowed in that way that told me I'd trespassed into forbidden territory. I ignored the signs and plowed ahead. "Do you? Do you still love me?" I asked my wife of 6 years. For a moment, she didn't answer. Then she fought off a visible irritation and melted against me. "Of course, darling," she said softly, "I love you more today than when we got married...and I thought I'd die sometimes, I was so happy." My stomach was still cramping but I tried to relax. She WAS happy? But not now? "Then stay home tonight, honey," I said, ignoring my sudden misgivings. I refused to let a begging note come into my voice. Laura sighed patting me and stroking my chest. "We can put Alyssa to bed early," I said. "We'll dim the lights and bring up that bottle of wine we've been saving and you can put on that black lace camisole I bought you for Valentine's Day, how 'bout that?" Curiously, her body had seemed to be reacting in favor of my idea...until I mentioned the camisole. When I said that word, her body stiffened and she tried to back away. I held her by the wrists and wouldn't let her retreat far. "Laura," I said deliberately, "are you cheating on me?" I watched her closely as I spoke and...there it was. I saw a quick flicker deep in her eyes and a miniscule tightening at the corner of her eyes. They were gone; they vanished quicker than it takes to tell, but I'd seen them. I heard a sharp hiss as she drew in a quick breath of air. What wasn't gone was a suddenly racing pulse I could feel through my fingertips. I'd kept her close to me by holding her wrists and the pads of my first two fingers were resting on the primary blood vessels there. It was as reliable a lie detector as any FBI polygraph. I had my answer. "Don't be silly," my wife protested. "Honey, I could never love any man but you...you know that!" she said. She leaned into me, cuddling her head on my shoulder to breath softly into my neck and give me little kisses here and there. I noticed, though, her head didn't rest hard enough on my body to mess up her hairdo. I wondered if Laura felt the cold chill that was rippling up and down my back. Laura patted me on my upper arms and pulled away, turning to look at the clock beside the bed. "I'm going to be late," she said, "and I promised the gals I wouldn't be again. I gotta go, but...maybe tomorrow night?" she asked gently. "Laura, we really need some "us" time," I answered, not trying very hard to disguise my rising annoyance. "Tell the "gals" you'll make it some other time and spend tonight with me and our daughter, how 'bout doing that for us, please?" I suggested. She pulled away and went to her closet to pull on a short skirt. "I can't disappoint all my friends," she protested. "Why would you want me to do that?" she said crossly. "Why would you want to disappoint ME and your daughter?" I returned harshly. "Or don't we matter any more to you?" My wife's eyes narrowed as she worked herself into an anger to match mine. "I TOLD you tomorrow," she snapped. "Dammit, I'm entitled to some time for myself without you always being there and smothering me to death! I'm not your Goddamned slave, you know." We argued some more. She told me she was a free and independent member of this marriage, that I couldn't tell her what to do and that she'd damn well do whatever she needed to do to get some relaxation and blow off some steam after a hard day's work. I said that she had always been given plenty of space. I said the proof of that was that she'd never heard a word of protest from me when she went back to work after the baby. I said I thought it was great she was working as a mid-level manager in an accounting firm when I actually made enough money for us to get along fabulously without her working at all. I told her I supported her career, was proud as hell of all that she had accomplished, but I didn't see why her job and nights out with the "girls" overrode the family's needs. I got a little sarcastic when I mentioned the "girls" I guess. She got madder, asked what I was accusing her of...and then I left. I was too upset and too hot to keep going down that road. I'd have said something I might have later regretted so I went downstairs to sit on the couch in the living room. I sat there fuming, with half an urge to physically stop her from going out on me this one night at least. But I knew, even through my rage, that I couldn't do that. When she came down the stairwell, I was reasonably calm. We looked at each other. She was defiant and I...well, I don't know what I was feeling. It wasn't good, though. "Laura," I said, "please don't do this." My voice was unintentionally husky and deep. She stopped for a moment at the door as if in indecision, then she opened it. "Laura," I said a little louder and more firmly. "Honey, I love you. I'm begging you, PLEASE don't do this to me and Alyssa." Laura looked back at me, her face totally devoid of any expression. Then she stepped through the door and closed it decisively behind her. Alyssa came running down the stairs and into the foyer. She opened the outside door and watched as the headlights of her mother's Lexus disappeared down the street. Without saying a word, she shut the door and walked quickly over to the couch. I knew that walk. It was as if the polished marble of the foyer floor was too hot to walk on and she had to get off it quickly. She clambered up on the couch near me and stared fixedly at the door for a while as if hoping her mother would miraculously come back in. I stared too. After a moment, Alyssa climbed onto my lap and we hugged for a long time before I carried her into the kitchen to make a couple of sandwiches for us. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 02 It was a frosty, uncomfortable weekend between Laura and me. She'd come home in the wee hours of the morning and spent most of Saturday with a hangover so bad the slightest noise caused her pain. After suffering Laura's short temper for a time, Alyssa and I bailed out and went to the park and we didn't come home until after dinnertime. That didn't suit Laura very well at all. She lit into me when Alyssa and I got home, expressing her opinion, at length, of a husband and daughter who abandoned her. I took it for a while but quickly got fed up. I told her she'd brought it on herself by going out on me and abandoning her daughter the night before. I said she would have to get used to the idea that Alyssa and I spent this afternoon alone, and probably would again, by ourselves and we'd had a fantastic time. Deal with it the best way she could, I said. Whatever she did, I told her – without attempting to hide my irritation – deal with it civilly or shut the hell up. I'd never spoken to her that way and it took Laura by surprise. The shock, if nothing else, kept her quiet and attentive to Alyssa for the rest of the evening. Detecting a thaw in her attitude later Saturday night, I initiated some tentative foreplay but Laura's stomach was still upset and we had to break off when she ran for the bathroom. I tried again Sunday night but Laura lay there like a log, completely unresponsive. Instead of continuing, I rolled away from her and lay there seething. After a while, I got up and went to take another shower, hoping the rushing water would sooth me and let me get some sleep. It was only marginally successful. ******** Monday morning, I left the house before Laura got up. It was a thing I rarely did, mostly because it forced Laura to get Alyssa up, dressed, fed, and off to daycare. My wife didn't like that. Unless she had everything all organized, it was a process guaranteeing she would be a half hour, or more, late to work. I wasn't in a mood to be terribly solicitous of Laura's wants and needs that morning. Before I left, I went down into the basement, opened a cabinet that seemed to be nothing more than a place for miscellaneous tools, and flicked a switch that turned on a small piece of equipment that would record every land line phone conversation made from my house. A second switch activated a device that would intercept any cell phone calls made within a radius of 150 feet of the device's location. It wasn't strictly legal, but no one knew about it and I'd never use the information captured by the equipment in any legal setting. Surveillance cameras already covered almost every room in the house. After I'd seen a documentary on A&E, or Discovery or something explaining how a murder had been solved with images found on a homeowner's interior spy cams, I had them installed all over my house. A secondary purpose was to monitor the movements and activities of any babysitters Laura and I brought into the house as well as the housekeeper who came in three times a week. We trusted the housekeeper and also the teenage girls we hired to watch our baby for a few hours on the nights on those occasions when Laura and I went out together, but "trust but verify" seemed a good policy to me. We hadn't, I reflected, had to hire a babysitter for too many months. I wasn't sure I was getting my money's worth from the expensive surveillance system. ******** I pulled inside the tall chain link fence surrounding the new campus and around to the business office on the far side of the complex. The fence, and the razor wire at the top had gone up when we got our first Department of Defense contract three years ago. After that, the DoD came back twice for additional small, but decidedly more profitable deals. I pulled into the wide, clearly marked parking slot and shut the engine off. I sat there, unmoving, while I tried to make a decision. My guts kept telling me Laura had some outside interest but my brain countered, saying I had no actual proof. A racing pulse and a quick inhalation weren't enough to be sure. I'd seen a flash of guilt in her eyes but she could be feeling bad about something else only vaguely connected with what I'd asked her. I hoped so anyway. The logo on the wall in front of my Navigator was unexpectedly obscured and it brought me out of my stupor. I lifted my chin in greeting to Phil Sanders, one of the first people I'd hired. Opening the door, I tossed him a quick "Hello" and busied myself getting my palm pilot and briefcase from the rear seat. Instead of going inside immediately, I looked at the brilliantly colored logo. MA Industries. That's me...Mark Archer. At 34, I was CEO and president of a privately held little corporation that had started out as a small tool-manufacturing company twelve years ago. We had found a niche making "tilt and pan" motor mounts for home security cameras. Working hard to sell ourselves, we found a number of private investigation companies who had a need for quality surveillance equipment. Over the years, we gradually built up a solid base of customers who came to trust us to provide high quality, remotely controlled mounts. Eight years ago, we bought out a small company that made some excellent color cameras with an impressive optical zoom feature. The whole thing, including a powerful transmitter and separate receiver that could connect to an ordinary TV, was smaller than a woman's lipstick case. Now my little corporation had the whole package and we began marketing our products all over the state and had plans to begin selling them on the Internet. After that, we absorbed a couple of private investigation agencies and combined them into a division we named "Information and Surveillance Associates." In a year, we had branch offices in three other cities. Overall, MA Industries was doing quite well, though we maintained a comfortably low profile. ******** In my office, I signed the papers my secretary/office manager put in front of me without bothering to review them. This was the "routine activity" stack and they didn't really need my attention, but they did need my signature. I've gotten into the habit of teasing her by calling her "Radar" every so often and did so now. She always responded tartly with an admonition for "Colonel Potter" to pay attention to what he was doing. Maggie was the glue that kept our business office together. When she was on vacation, the place didn't run nearly as smoothly and I dreaded the day she would come to tell me she was retiring. To stave off that day as long as possible, I paid her as well as each of the three company vice-presidents. She knew that...they didn't. "Maggie," I said when she brought me in the first mug of coffee for the day. "Maggie, would you please have Carl Winters come see me?" "Sure," she replied promptly. She looked at me curiously. "Can I say why?" she asked. I shook my head, but reconsidered almost immediately. I felt a need to say something in partial explanation. Maggie was a second mother to me and had been since we started out in a renovated warehouse back in the old days. "Just tell him I need to become a customer of his," I said slowly, not looking at Maggie. She didn't say anything for a moment. "Aw, darn it all," she said softly. "I'm so sorry, Mark." She sniffed softly, bit her lips, and left quickly. I stared after her, wondering what she knew or perhaps had divined. Carl headed up our combined surveillance and private investigations division and Maggie had read something into my request to see him as a customer. That she had accepted my need without question was unsettling. ******** "What's up, Mark?" Carl asked, coming in my office door. I motioned him to close the heavy oak door. I sat, looking at nothing in particular, while he took his first sip of tea from the big mug Maggie had brewing for him when he arrived. "Carl--" I started to explain, but I had to stop to clear my throat. It was hard to swallow. The tightness there was matched by stomach muscles so tense they hurt. "Carl, I need...I'm afraid Laura is getting into something that she'll regret," I said slowly. I was trying to carefully choose my words, not wanting to tell him I suspected she was seeing a man behind my back. "Ah, shit, Mark," he responded dejectedly. "Damn, I'm sorry to hear that," he said. We both took a deep breath. Carl sat the mug on the corner of my desk and stared at his fingernails without speaking. I didn't know what to say either. "Well--" he said after an uncomfortable silence. "Well, we've got everything we need to...find out for sure. I can get a few temps to come in and replace some of our guys to free them up for a concentrated effort. Can you give me an idea of Laura's work schedule, her cell phone number, computer logins, credit card numbers...stuff like that?" I nodded. I started to object to having in-house personnel work the case instead of bringing in outsiders for that purpose but quickly realized Carl wanted to have the best people possible working the issue. Sighing, I bent to the side of my desk and pulled my brief case closer. I'd spent most of Sunday copying account numbers and some of the other information I knew he'd need from documents Laura and I had in our files. I had Carl set me up in the accounting as a paying customer of Information and Surveillance Associates. I'd pay that branch of my firm from my personal checking account. It was a little thing but it would keep any auditors happy. We discussed ways and means of putting tails on my wife to see where she went, who she went with, and what they did when they got there. I felt guilty, and that was foolish. The hurt from this last weekend, combined with what I'd realized Friday night had been a steadily intensifying alienation from Laura's affection, made this a necessity. There were things I needed to know. Frankly, if Laura was doing nothing to harm the marriage, she'd never know what I was doing and maybe I'd find a way to suggest we go to a marriage counselor to resolve whatever "issues" she was laboring under. If she was doing something a married woman shouldn't do--well, that was something I desperately needed to know. ******** By noon, Carl's guys and gals had gotten into Laura's Lexus at the office building downtown where she worked. It wasn't difficult. My name was on the title too, so I gave them my key. They installed a sound powered microphone under the driver's seat. The signal from the tiny transmitter could be heard anywhere within a 1-mile radius. The mike itself was sensitive enough to pick up a soft whisper inside the well-soundproofed car. A GPS transmitter was put in a hidden corner of the trunk and began to immediately broadcast the vehicle's location accurate to within a few feet. Carl had seven of his best people working the case and had dedicated five vehicles to the project. All of the cars and vans were rentals he'd had gone over by our own in-house mechanics to ensure they wouldn't die when needed most. One additional girl, a free-lancer with excellent credentials applied for a job in Laura's accounting firm and expected to start the next week. Carl told me to sit back and let him take care of everything. There were operating procedures already in place to handle things like this and it was best I stay out of it for the present. That depressed me even more. If Laura was cheating on our marriage, it was such a tawdry, mundane thing that there already were standard procedures to deal with it. He also told me I had a choice. If they found out of an impending "tryst," they could try to break it up if my purpose was to do so...or we could hold off and get quantities of pictures and video for a divorce trial. I opted for interrupting any assignation they found out about. I didn't have to think about it. I wanted my wife back. He nodded, and asked me to try and not upset Laura in her routine. When we got to a decision point, he'd let me know. ******** Instead, I let him know a cusp had already come and gone. That night I called him from the basement after listening to the recordings from the cell phone intercept. The information so gathered wasn't legal but we weren't expecting to use it in court. Carl answered on the second ring. "Carl?" I asked. My voice was thick with emotion and he picked up on it immediately. "Oh, geeze," he said. "What's happened?" The concern he felt was evident. I took a deep breath and held it for a moment to get control of myself. "You know the cell phone and land line intercepts I had you install when we built the house?" I asked. "Yeah...uh, sorry we couldn't get over there today and set up the remote monitoring equipment, but--" "Oh, I know, Carl...there's only 26 hours in a day, right? Don't think anything about it. Anyway, Carl, I have a recorded conversation between Laura and some guy called "Brian" about 7:00 PM." I drew in a ragged lungful of air and continued. "You'll be able to hear it yourself tomorrow, I guess...but "Brian" talked of "fucking Laura's brains out...AGAIN soon," to quote the son of a bitch." I wanted to cry, but I wouldn't let the tears form. I couldn't stop the ball of ice from forming in the pit of my stomach. My body felt wooden, as if I were surrounded by massive layers of cotton that deadened every sensation. My chest hurt; I couldn't breath. Laura was having sex with some other guy and I didn't know why. I couldn't think of any reason I'd given her for going outside the marriage for sex and I didn't know why she would betray me and our daughter this way. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. "Anyway, Carl," I said when I had enough control, "that changes our focus. I'm going to call Pete tomorrow morning and start the process of divorcing Laura...so I guess what we need now is to get all the evidence we can find." "Pete" was Peter Robinson, a high-powered lawyer on retainer for MA Industries, and also my personal attorney. "Yeah, Mark, I guess there's not much else we can do," Carl said, his words slow and halting. "Aw, Mark...I'm just so sorry," he said. "I don't have the words to tell you how sorry I am," he told me. His empathy helped some. "Yeah, I know, Carl," I replied, my voice a little stronger. "Thanks partner...but it's on Laura's head. It's no one else's fault, but I have a little girl who's going to be devastated. She and I are the victims...and I don't understand why Laura did this." I focused my attention. I didn't want to play the long-suffering husband beyond this single maudlin moment. "Okay...well, I just wanted you to know we'll be working in a different direction effective immediately," I told him. "I'll see you in the office tomorrow morning, okay?" "Sure, Mark," he agreed. "Hey, take it easy tonight, okay? Don't do anything you'll regret, boss," he said earnestly. I knew he was warning me not to do anything to physically harm my wife. "I'm okay, Carl," I told him. "I ran the tape on this intercept 3 hours ago and I'm already way beyond that." I hesitated a moment. "I will tell you, Carl, I won't be sleeping with her tonight or any other night. I'll have to figure out some excuse, but I won't sleep with a woman that stabs me in the back...figuratively or actually. There are things I can do and things I cannot do...I know it'll make the investigation harder but I just can't." My voice cracked with the final words but Carl didn't remark on it. "That's okay," he said soothingly, "it might take a little longer, Mark, but...people who are doing these sort of things...always think they're smarter than the rest of us. They're convinced they can keep their adultery hidden from their spouse, as well as the rest of the world, and they have no clue what they're doing is predictable and pretty easy to track." I didn't say anything. "Well...you hang in there, boss," Carl told me. "This will all come out okay, no matter how it gets taken care of, you hear me? You're going to come out the other side of this, stronger than you went in, okay?" "One way or the other, yeah, I will," I replied, but I didn't believe it. All I saw was a black hole full of suffering and humiliation ahead for me and my daughter. I hadn't even begun to consider all the heartache this was going to cause her. "Okay, Mark...call me if you need me for anything, all right? Call me...even if it's just to talk, okay?" I told him I would and pressed the "off" button on my cell phone. I turned the intercept equipment back on to catch any more communications between my dear wife and whoever it was she was fucking. ******** I slept in a guest bedroom down the hall that night, telling Laura I had a dry throat and some congestion that might make me snore pretty badly. She agreed quickly and without comment. Besides, I told her, it would be closer to Alyssa if she might need one of us in the night. That our little girl had wet the bed a couple of times last week was news to Laura but she shrugged her shoulders and went back to her magazine. What I recognized as an emotional problem our daughter was experiencing made no impression on Laura. Carl came to me with a preliminary report the next afternoon. Laura's sex buddy was Brian Collier, one of the accounting executives in the same office where Laura worked. He was one of three division supervisors, as was Laura. He was married and had a boy who was 9 years old and a 7-year-old girl. His wife was Pamela, a part time insurance agent in an office across town. Brian was 38, a little taller than I was but quite a bit slighter. I'd been an amateur boxer in the Golden Gloves organization in my early teens and had gotten into weight lifting to improve my upper body strength and leg stamina. I dropped the boxing when I went to college, but I still lifted a couple of times a week. Mr. Collier, as he appeared in the one photo Carl had found so far, was more of a runner, if he was an athlete at all. I didn't know what women considered handsome, but I guessed he might be good looking to the ordinary female, but not exceptionally so. Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed. I wondered it was about him that would tempt Laura to disregard our wedding vows so flagrantly and meet this joker for sex. Carl had obtained a full two-year history of Laura's phone records, bribing a contact he had with the phone company, and some of his people had gone over them quickly. A first analysis showed that there were initially only a few phone calls between the two over widely separated occasions. A little less than six months ago, the calls had begun to be a weekly event, and eventually a daily one. Now, they were occurring two or three times a day, usually at night or early in the morning. Carl knew what time I came in to work and he told me unequivocally the two were talking almost every morning after I left the house. The evening calls were almost always initiated by Laura and were undoubtedly made when Laura could be sure I would not overhear...probably when I was down in the basement lifting weights while my daughter kept me company. The timing was about right for my normal workout periods. "Do you have anything you can tell me about what happened about the time the phone calls began to spike?" Carl asked. He was being very businesslike about it all and I appreciated that. It made it marginally easier to deal with it from my end. I leaned back in my chair to think and even propped my feet up on the near corner of my desk. Seeing me relax a little, Carl did the same on the other side of the desk. Suddenly it came to me. "Oh! Well, maybe not...she went to a training seminar a couple of weeks before that in Chicago with a company that had hired her firm to audit their financial records," I said uncertainly. I was remembering more as I thought about it. "You know--" I said. I stopped while a fragment of a memory coalesced into something I could see in my mind. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 02 "I took Laura to the airport for that," I said slowly, "and this guy was there too, getting on the same plane...I can remember it clear as a bell!" "Okay," Carl said confidently. "I'll have my folks keep on looking for another nexus, but I think we'll find that that "seminar" was the beginning of this whole mess...too many things are pointing toward it." I nodded. I'm not a man who believes in coincidences either. Carl checked his note pad. "That's it for now, boss," he said. "We got the credit card issuers to email us digital copies of all the activity for the past year...it helps that you and Laura have joint accounts on all of them. Oh...that reminds me...we'll be looking at your bank records later today also, to see if there's anything there. I'll let you know what we find out, okay?" I was impressed by the volume and depth of information that had already been accumulated. They'd only been working on the case for parts of two days. "How did you get all that without my authorization?" I asked. I wondered if I really shouldn't pitch a fit with the banks and phone companies about releasing private information so easily. Carl grinned. "You authorized all of it," he said. I let my eyebrows rise questioningly. He chuckled. "Boss, you got no idea what you're signing when Maggie puts a stack of paperwork in front of you huh?" I had to smile and nod. The grin dropped from my face. I used to say I trusted Maggie almost as much as I did my wife. Now Maggie had the top slot. "Okay, okay," I said, raising my hands in surrender. "Go forth and do battle with the bad guys...and girls," I told him. ******** By Thursday, Carl and his team had accumulated a massive pile of information about my wife and her new sex partner. Two investigators had been dispatched to Chicago and they'd already turned up a half dozen people at the company hosting the seminars who remembered Laura and Brian as being very close. One of the desk clerks, a witness to most of their high jinks, had thought they were married to each other before he noticed their different surnames. Another three or four people at the hotel where Laura and Brian stayed recalled them as frequent visitors to the lounge where they imbibed considerable quantities of liquor. Apparently, they would stumble to the elevator and up to one room or the other in the early hours of the morning. The lounge manager had had to ask them to tone down their risqué behavior on two occasions. Carl's two investigators said they were negotiating with the hotel management to see if the security camera tapes from that period were still available and whether they might be obtained for a "reasonable fee." Carl told me with a grin that was a euphemism for an under the table transfer of tapes for greenbacks. I nodded. I'd understood that from his tone of voice. His freelance operative had been called in for a temporary assignment in Laura's office--much earlier than expected--and she was already reporting that Brian and Laura were an "item" around the office. Apparently, their mutual boss knew about it too and he'd admonished them several times to keep their "affair" out of the workplace. Laura, it was said, had already lost a merit increase on her salary because of a poor performance report based on her conduct. I marked that in my memory. My attorney would be interested in hearing of a firm that didn't do much of anything to stop clear violations of the morals clauses written into their employees' contracts. The freelancer was working in the payroll section and had already obtained copies of Laura and Mr. Collier's pay records, along with time and attendance information. It appeared the dynamic duo was taking off one or two afternoons a week for a rendezvous. Credit card data Carl obtained from our bank showed where. It seemed Brian Collier was a cheapskate too, because Laura paid for most of the rooms at an economy motel on the outskirts of town. To me, that signified what a cheap, tasteless little affair this was. They couldn't even get together in a decent downtown hotel. The little group of girl friends that Laura said she was meeting when she went out at night was composed primarily of single and recently divorced women obviously on the prowl for men. Laura had sworn them to secrecy but all of them--except for a woman by the name of Kathy--were talking fast and giving lots of details to Carl's investigators. A hundred dollars was all it took for most of them to give dates, places, and even approximate times when Laura and Brian would hook up as if by accident. Lately, even that fiction had been discarded. Most of the girls hadn't seen Laura in two months. Kathy called Laura almost immediately and told her about being questioned by a strange man about Laura's involvement with the group. She maintained to Laura that she hadn't spilled the beans even a little bit. Kathy was fit to be tied. She thought it was unreasonable, spiteful, and mean for me to be checking up on her good friend Laura. She was right when she assumed it was me. I was the logical person to suspect of course. Kathy had plenty of experience in such matters. A still incomplete background check on Kathy showed she had been divorced twice, once because she caught her husband screwing his secretary and the second time because her new husband caught her with the plumber. For the past few years, Kathy had wandered from man to man. On two occasions, she was named as a correspondent in divorce cases where she went out of her way to seduce the husbands. Somehow, this woman had gotten into the same group as my wife in spite of the fact she didn't even work in the same business building as the others. It seemed Kathy was, at least to some extent, encouraging the affair simply because she could. We also knew that, so far, the $100 bribes were holding with the other women because Carl had cloned Laura's cell phone. The other girls responded to Laura's panicked calls with assurances much like Kathy had given her. That they would actually give her up never occurred to Laura. So, all Laura actually knew was that someone was asking questions but all of her "friends" were protecting her secret...she thought. I was again astonished at the quantity and quality of the information Carl's operation had developed in so short a time. Of course, Brian and Laura were rank amateurs and Carl was the quintessential professional. Brian and Laura didn't have a chance. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 03 The rest of that week and the next two were quiet around our home. Laura had cancelled all but Friday's night out on the town and Carl's agents confirmed the ladies went out to a couple of clubs and danced a while with pretty much anyone who asked. Everyone went straight home afterward. Brian was a good little boy and stayed home with his wife and children. I read a report that suggested Brian's wife wasn't all that thrilled to have him home and she'd been very vocal while wondering about his sudden change of habit. I was surprised the effect of the investigators questioning the girls in the little group was so short, but I guess there had to be an element of arrogance in Laura and Brian's attitude toward me. After all, they'd been going strong for so long. Whatever it was, barely three weeks after the investigators contacted the Friday night partiers, cell phone intercepts began to become more numerous and more explicit. The pair of cheating spouses had decided everything had blown over and they decided that I had concluded there was nothing going on. During this period, I'd almost moved completely into the spare bedroom. I could barely stand to kiss Laura on the cheek when I came home in the evening and there was no way I was going to have sex with her. She hinted several times that she was amenable to some hot sex but I ignored her. I read Alyssa every book in her little library and I bought more to go through with her. After I perfected a harsh sounding, dry cough, Laura didn't question why I was sleeping away from her. Laura never suggested that I shouldn't be around the baby with a cough like that though. Anyway, Carl and his crew noted the cell phone conversations between the two late at night had increased dramatically. On Wednesday of the third week, Laura and Brian arranged to meet at their normal cheap motel. Carl had everyone chomping at the bit to get the goods on the adulterers and Pete, my attorney, had me primed and ready as how to act. I had Mandy, a 16-year-old girl from down the street ready to baby sit Alyssa that night. ******** "Laura," I said, "please don't go out tonight." I was standing in the living room as she was walking out the door. "Please, Laura," I pleaded. I wasn't play-acting. I really didn't want her to meet that son of a bitch out there and fuck him. "Mark!" Laura snapped at me. Realizing she couldn't leave with me without attempting to placate me, her face softened. "Look...nothing is going on, Mark. I'm just going out for a few drinks and maybe a little dancing. That's all," she said with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth expression. She came back to hug me and earnestly look me in the eyes, trying to convince me I was wrong about something I knew for a fact she was going to do. "Laura," I said impulsively. "I know you're meeting someone tonight, but you can't possibly mean as much to him as you do to Alyssa and me. Please, baby, don't go." Laura pulled back and released me. She was suddenly suspicious. She wondered what I knew. "What the hell are you talking about?" she asked indignantly. I had to give it to her. She had developed into a fine actress. "I just know," I insisted. "I know you're cheating on me with someone. You're cheating on me and you're cheating on Alyssa and...it's not fair to either one of us," I protested. She relaxed a trifle. Her reasoning was clearly that if I didn't blurt out a name, all I had was suspicions. "I am not cheating on you," she said firmly. "I'm getting a little tired of all these accusations and it's about time to stop," she admonished me. "You keep it up, damn you, and I might just go get some strange man to take care of my needs to show you!" I had to look away. I'd have blown everything if she'd seen the sudden rage in my eyes. "Laura--" I said brokenly. It wasn't difficult. The fury I was feeling was making it hard for me to speak. "Not another Goddamned word," she said forcefully. "I have never, I am not now, and I never will screw another man other than you! There! Does that satisfy you?" Angrily, she turned and walked to the door, pulling on a light jacket over her shoulders. I could see her breasts jiggle--she wasn't wearing a bra and I couldn't see any panty lines on her miniskirt. "Laura," I said a little more calmly. "If you ever cheat on me, that ends the marriage. You know that, right? We talked about cheating and what it does to marriages when Georgia and Sam broke up last year, remember?" For a moment, Laura's hand didn't move on the doorknob. "I told you," she said. Her voice was controlled, but I detected a condescending note in it. "I swear to you, I don't want any man but you...and I never will," she said. "Now I'm late and I've got to go," she said firmly. Without even looking back at me, she opened the door and left. ******** Twenty minutes later, I joined Carl and three of his best in the room next to where Brian and Laura would soon be. A little spooked by my protests this evening as well as the suspicious questioning of Laura's girlfriends in weeks past, Brian and Laura were apparently driving around at random, trying to see if anyone was following them. The GPS devices told us that. Actually, there was no one behind either of them. Carl had known of the reservation at the motel a minute or two after it was made because the desk clerk had been paid a couple hundred dollars to call when it happened. Since we knew where they'd wind up, there was no reason to track them. It could have been done though. If we hadn't known their destination, Carl would have used half a dozen cars to keep pace on parallel streets with Laura and her friend. With the GPS instruments installed in both of their cars, neither of the two would ever have seen their followers. After I'd been there a short time, Laura and Brian drove up almost simultaneously to the motel in their cars and parked in front of room 113. The motel had exterior entrances to all the rooms and the pair of "lovers" had only to get out of their vehicles and walk a couple of paces to the door. Neither of them noticed the dark van across the street. They had no idea a high-end digital camera was taping their every move. Laura and Brian wrapped their arms around each other and kissed each other deeply while rubbing their bodies all over each other. Carl was watching me closely. He knew I wanted nothing more than to burst out the door and start wrecking havoc. "Mark," he said quietly. "It's going to get a lot worse before it's over...are you sure you can stand this?" I sat back down on one of the double beds and licked suddenly dry lips. "Do you have anything to drink?" I asked. He misunderstood and shook his head. "No, but I think you should take this Valium," he said, offering me a tiny yellow tablet. "It'll help calm your nerves," he said gently. I accepted it and then got a soft drink from the cooler that he had, in fact, brought with him. Carl had managed to get one high-end digital camera into the room, hiding it in the air conditioning vent. It was full color, had a full range of motion through an arc of 160 degrees from side to side and 85 degrees up and down. On top of that, it had a 25X zoom that would isolate one hair in the nostrils of any one of these two...not that Carl expected any need for that kind of detail. Once the duo went inside, the action started almost immediately. Laura had not worn any bra or panties, as I had suspected, and was out of her dress in seconds. Brian wasn't far behind. When they fell on the bed, we turned all the lights in our room off and two of Carl's men went out into the night. In addition to the camera in the air conditioning vent, Carl had brought two fiber-optic "snake cameras" with him. One was slipped under the door to Laura's room and the other over the top of the door. The cameras were less than a quarter-inch in diameter and just a couple inches long. They slid easily through the gaps between door and frame, leaving the transmitter and antenna outside. Once the cameras were positioned where the men wanted them, they taped the transmitters to the outside wall. In the darkness, the dark-colored spy devices were undetectable from more than a couple feet away. To enhance this, the guys unscrewed the only outside light close enough to illuminate the area before they came back inside. The receivers were already plugged into the monitors and recording equipment and we settled back for the show. The theory was that what one camera missed, the other two would certainly catch. It wasn't much of a show, actually. There was no foreplay, no tenderness, and no affection at all. Brian just slipped on a yellowish colored condom, mounted my slut of a wife in the missionary position and proceeded to fuck away. I watched her face closely for a moment. I wasn't sure if it was pain or ecstasy causing the wrinkles on her forehead. "Damn," I said after watching for a minute or two. "That SOB isn't any bigger than me...hell, his dick isn't anywhere near as big as I am," I protested. "What the fuck?" It was true. Laura had been in a heat to measure me when we first got married and had used a ruler on me a number of times. She came up with a figure of 7 inches and a "smidgen," as she said. She'd been pleased to discover most of the other wives in the neighborhood were happy with six or less inches of man inside them. Laura figured out from her girlfriends that my size was on the high end of average. She began calling out to me, demanding to be fucked by my "big cock" when we made love. We hadn't done any of that lately. I guessed I knew why...but then again, I really didn't. Brian was obviously near the low end of "average" and he had to work hard to give Laura any kind of stimulation. Not only that, the bastard had the technique of a hog rutting in a barnyard. What the hell was Laura going to this guy for? My pride was partially redeemed a little later happily. I caught Sherrie, one of Carl's agents, looking at my crotch a little while later. She glanced up at the TV monitors and shook her head. She smiled--I thought I detected a little speculation in her eyes. We both looked away. She worked for me and I wasn't about to mess around in my own back yard, as they say. She was cute, though. Maybe she wouldn't always work for me. There was an opening coming up for a bedmate soon. After a while, I left. There was nothing more to see. Brian and Laura would go at it for a time, rest, and do it again. There was no imagination in Brian's fucking. They went at it in only the missionary and rear entry positions. Laura refused to let him cum in her mouth...in fact only took him in her mouth for a few moments...and when Brian tried to massage her anus, she slapped his hand away. It was depressing. Just what did Laura see in this bozo and why was she throwing away six years of marriage to fuck him? ******* The two adulterers didn't meet for a week and they were both more than a little upset with a world that kept them apart. It seemed their schedules just weren't meshing very well, for a change, and they didn't know what to do about it. One day "Kathy" came to Laura with a proposal that she and Laura go to Las Vegas for the next weekend. The investigating crew had an extensive dossier on Kathy now. They'd found a mountain of information about her. Kathy, it appeared, was an extremely spiteful woman. Friends knew her as bitter and alienated from her parents and siblings by earlier infidelities. In a phone call neither knew was monitored by Carl's crew, Kathy expanded on her earlier suggestion. She wanted Laura to tell me that Kathy had won two free tickets to Vegas in a call-in contest on the radio and had invited Laura to go along. It was clear to everyone hearing the tape of the phone call that Kathy was proposing that only she and Laura take a trip to "Sin City." Simply put, the purpose was to get laid as often as possible. She told Laura she'd bought two-dozen condoms and intended to use every one of them. Laura was won over quickly, but she threw a monkey wrench into Kathy's plans by immediately calling Brian and inviting him along. Kathy sounded unhappy to hear Brian would be joining them there when she heard about it in a later phone call. She made no protest though. I gathered Brian had to pay his own way. He didn't seem to appreciate that much, judging by the snippy nature of his last phone call before departing. I couldn't help but think what a cheap bastard he was. He actually thought Laura should pay for his trip out there so he could screw her. Incredible! Pete, my lawyer, told me he was adding Kathy to his list of people to serve with subpoenas. She was well aware, and had been for a long time, that both Laura and Brian were married. By enticing Laura to spend the weekend in Vegas, she was acting as a facilitator in the whole nasty mess. Pete didn't think she had any money he could get out of her, he didn't even think the lawsuit would go very far in the civil courts, but he was going to put the fear of God into her, he said. She would never, never ever, consider helping wreck anyone else's marriage when he was through with her. We discussed whether to stop this thing with just the footage from the motel or wait until the planned Vegas trip. I was inclined to end the intrigue, the lying, and the deceit right now and just initiate divorce proceedings on Laura immediately. Pete thought we should give them a little more rope to hang themselves, as he put it. The trip outside the state, with all the attendant lies and misrepresentations, would seal their fate. The impact would be especially strong if Laura showed a particularly egregious lack of respect for her marriage vows. Lawyers talk funny. What he really wanted was to see her way over the line in word or deed. As it happened, he got both. ******** The investigators were in the same casino-hotel where Kathy, Brian, and Laura were staying. They were in one of the two towers while Carl and five of his minions were in a room in the other tower where there was a direct line of sight down into the cheating trio's room. It had cost us five hundred dollars for the room clerk to assign Laura a room on this side of the building and one that could easily be viewed from where Carl was. Carl's operative said those five bills disappeared off the counter faster than the eye could follow. A few second's work on the reservation computer console was all the clerk had to do. He probably thought it was the easiest money he'd ever earned in his life. Only a couple of hundred feet away Laura's room, the three cameras Carl had set up to tape activity in the room across the way were ready. He told me there was a good chance they would have something to record. According to studies he'd seen, people in high rise buildings instinctively feel their height and apparent distance from other structures give them a high degree of "invisibility." That had been borne out in a number of the cases he'd handled, he said. Even if they closed the shades, Carl's boys had a laser-based device that would be able to sense the minute vibrations of the window over there of the sounds made by the trio of partiers over there. We'd only have a recording of their voices--no video—but it would be of high enough quality to be able to prove in court who the speakers were. It was, Carl said, something that had been perfected during the cold war and used by Russians and Western intelligence agencies to spy on each other. The telephone conversation was also going to be taped, of course. I was to call Laura and make one last attempt on my part to get Laura to renounce her cheating ways and come home to me. From my attorney's point of view, it was only a prepared script, but I was hoping against hope that it might succeed. I could feel hot flushes and freezing chills chasing each other madly about my body. Conflicting emotions chased themselves around my mind in much the same fashion. I didn't know what I was feeling, except that I hurt. I was sick at my stomach, though I hadn't eaten anything the whole day. Carl and his people left me at home, but I had a great view by way of the cameras they'd set up. A detective following them had watched them almost wear out a stewardess on the plane bringing them little bottles of booze. They were three sheets to the wind already. "Laura?" I said into the cell phone. On the webcam, I could see Laura was on her knees and elbows on the bed being fucked by Brian standing behind her. She'd had to contort her body and stretch around to reach the phone on the nightstand. Kathy was standing behind Brian and evidently had a finger up his ass, massaging his prostate and spurring him on to greater efforts. "What?" she said sharply into her cell phone. She moved away from Brian and Kathy away when she heard my voice. We could see Brian had on a ruby colored condom this time. It looked ridiculous, but at least he had one on. Kathy spread her legs on the bed beside Laura and was pushing Brian's head into her sopping cunt, urging him to eat her out. He was, but Kathy's face said he wasn't doing a very good job of it. Laura began pacing back and forth. "Laura," I said again, "please, honey, don't have sex with B--that...man." I'd almost slipped and said the guy's name. I'd have to watch it; I wasn't supposed to know his name yet. I couldn't let Laura know her every move was being covertly watched. "Come home to me, babe...please," I pleaded. "We can work something out." I tried to sound as coaxing as I could possibly be. This was the wording my attorney wanted me to use. It was designed to show Laura's complete unfaithfulness and indifference. "Laura...please...think of Alyssa...think of what ruining our marriage will do to her." It's amazing how long a man will hold out hope, even when he's seeing something beautiful shattered before his eyes. I loved Laura. I hoped I could see something to give me hope...but there really wasn't any hope. I might love her, I hadn't learned how not to just yet, but I sure didn't like her at all just at this moment. She affirmed that dislike almost immediately. "FUCK YOU!" Laura screamed into the phone. "I've told you before, you stupid shit...I am not having sex with anyone and I've had it with your damned suspicions." I could only shake my head at the duplicity. How in the hell could she say that while she stood naked beside the man who had been fucking her...and would be again when I hung up? I was amazed at the duplicity She was quiet for a moment. On TV, I could see she had moved closer to her "friends" and was watching them go down on each other. "But I'll tell you this, sweetheart," she said finally in a confiding tone. "I just might go pick up some fucker down on the drag tonight and bring him up to my room tonight...how's that...honey? Would you like that? After all, I'll be doing it just so you can be right for once, how would that be...dear?" I was astounded by the vindictiveness in her voice. This was the same woman who only a year ago wanted to be held all night long after a favorite aunt passed away. I knew Laura as a soft, comfortable presence in my bed, the person to whom I could turn with any problem and a willing lover when our baby was asleep. "Laura," I said unsteadily. "I don't know what else to say. I don't know why you want to screw around with our lives like this...think of what you're going to do to Alyssa for God's sake. I--" Laura cut me off with another shrill scream. "YOU GO TO HELL AND TAKE HER WITH YOU," Laura shouted. She was almost incoherent. It was only because I could see her lips on the monitor screen that I could understand what she was yelling. "WHEN I GET HOME, YOU SON OF A BITCH, WE'RE GONNA HAVE THIS OUT, DAMN YOU AND YOU'RE GOING TO BE LUCKY IF I DON'T LEAVE YOUR ASS. YOU GOT THAT YOU--" Lyin' Eyes Ch. 03 She screeched some more things I couldn't understand even with the advantage of being able to watch her lips move. She stabbed at the "off" button and threw the cell phone at the bed. It bounced off and landed somewhere between the bed and the wall. She staggered over to the bed and motioned to Brian to get back in position. He did and his prick was soon sliding in and out of my wife's cunt. ******** Sunday morning, Carl and the crew dismantled the operation, packed up all the equipment, and shipped it home. Exhausted, they got on a plane and slept all the way home. We, literally, had more information in the form of videotape, pictures, phone transcripts, and financial analysis than my attorney could handle. The sheer volume overwhelmed Pete for a time. He'd be filing the divorce proceedings just before noon on Monday. After that, he'd have six months, give or take, to go through the mass of material before the state would rubber stamp the obvious and give me my divorce. One thing we could use immediately was the vivid video of my wife being fucked by a strange man while screaming curses directed me and our daughter after assuring me seconds before that she would never do such a thing. That had been obtained by video taping them through an open window. What a naked eye could observe could also be recorded for evidence. To that we added footage from my home surveillance cameras showing a montage of incidents where Laura could be heard and seen doing something to show indifference to Alyssa's welfare. One example of that was the scene at the door the night Laura went out and Alyssa came running down the stairs to catch her. Other snippets showed Laura being short with the child for no reason and one showed her telling Alyssa she could get her own breakfast because she, Laura, didn't have time. All of that was bundled together and put before a judge early Monday morning. She was moved to grant a temporary restraining order granting me full custodial privileges pending action by the family court system. Another one granted our request to keep Laura away from the child until a family court judge had time to review the case. There were several other motions that were granted almost without question. It's wonderful what a wealthy and influential man can get done in a short period. Actually, I was helping that man, my attorney, become even wealthier. ******** Monday morning was never a good time in the accounting firm. There were more than a few hard drinkers among the staff and, of those, some had begun partying Friday night and hadn't quit until Sunday evening. Most of the other personnel dawdled at their desks or visited with others around the coffee machine until the drinkers got themselves in hand. When the big man dressed in a grey suit came in from the common area hallway just after the lunch hour, a few hopeful women marked his progress down the aisles but he seemed to have no interest. He kept glancing at a photograph in his right hand while looking every woman directly in the face. After a few moments' search, he found the woman he was looking for. He planted himself in front of her as she spoke quietly to a tall, distinguished looking man in his early forties and a shorter, slighter man who was clinging close to the woman. She wasn't very happy about that and kept trying to slide away from him. Her eyes were dark and troubled. She was forcing herself to pay attention to what her supervisor was saying. "Laura Archer?" The big man asked in a deep, rumbling voice. He'd come up behind the three without them noticing. The woman turned and nodded. She was not happy today. Something was haunting her and it showed on her face. She watched as the man took a thick envelope from his inside coat pocket. "You, madam," he said in a booming voice, "are served." He paused for effect, making sure he had everyone's attention. He set his briefcase down on a convenient desk and began taking out legal documents printed on onionskin and backed with a thicker baby-blue sheet of paper. "This," he told a stunned Laura, "is a copy of the petition for divorce filed this morning. It is Mr. Mark Archer's intent to divorce you at the earliest possible moment." He handed her another set of papers. "This, madam, is an order from the court that you not come within 1,000 feet of the residence formerly occupied by you and Mr. Archer." He dropped another set of documents into her hands. "This is a temporary restraining order forbidding you to contact Mr. Archer's daughter, one Alyssa Reogh Archer, for any reason. You may not place a phone call, send an email, a letter, or any other manner attempt to speak to Miss Archer. Is that clear madam?" he asked. Laura nodded numbly. She didn't know what else to do. The look of horror on her face was plain to everyone. By now a large crowd was gathering and coming nearer. "Mr. Archer," the big man continued, "wishes that you be informed all of your joint account credit cards were cancelled two hours ago. Your joint checking and savings accounts you held with your former husband have also been closed. This represents 50% of the total amount in the former joint accounts." He disdainfully held up a cashier's check by one corner, as if it were contaminated with some nasty substance, before adding it to the stack of paperwork in Laura Archer's hands. "Mr. Archer further wishes me to inform you that all of your clothing and personal possessions are being packed at this moment and will be loaded into a truck now arriving at your former residence. All of your personal goods will be placed in storage and will be made available to you whenever and wherever you desire. You may communicate your wishes to Mr. Archer's attorney at the number shown on this card. "You will not be allowed inside the residence you formerly shared with Mr. Archer for any reason and he wishes me to advise you the locks have all been replaced and the security codes changed in the residence's security system." The big man looked down at the now crying woman with no sign of pity. He looked around, spying the slender man trying to slip away without notice. "MR. COLLIER," he boomed, "don't be in such a hurry." Taking another envelope from his briefcase, he slapped it into Brian Collier's unwilling palm. "You, sir, are served," remarked the big man. "Congratulations," he said, "you are named as a correspondent in the matter of Archer versus Archer...and--" He took another mass of stapled papers from the briefcase. "You also are the respondent in a civil case filed this morning by Mr. Archer for willfully and maliciously interfering in the marriage between Mark Archer and Laura Archer in that you have been carrying on a slimy, ugly, sordid little affair with the former Mrs. Archer." Brian looked like he was about to faint and had to hold on to a desk to keep from falling. My attorney didn't think this The big man looked around. Seeing Laura's supervisor, he made his way to him to serve him with notice of a suit also filed this morning demanding reimbursement to Mark Archer for failing to enforce the company's morality clauses with all the contracts for mid-level and above employees. A senior vice president, aware of the problem from the start was also served in the executive offices. Watching from the back of the room, I felt almost nothing. I was cold, my face frozen into harsh, unforgiving planes. I stood silently near the doors through which the process server had entered. I'd paid him a healthy extra fee to give my wife the check and other stuff. It wasn't his job, strictly speaking. I saw dawning realization of how thoroughly she'd screwed herself spread across Laura's pretty face. When she collapsed on the floor, I turned and left through the big doublewide doors. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 04 Lyin' Eyes Ch 4 – Edited By Longhorn__07 ******** Author's Note: For those who see no chance of a straying wife rehabilitating herself and regaining her husband's love, please don't read any further. Take the first three chapters and save them, if you find them worthy of such, and let that be your complete story. Don't read Chapters 4 through 7 in this story...you won't like them. Come on...why torture yourself? ******** I watched my soon to be ex-wife make her way into the dark paneled conference room. I was seated at the head of the long table near the windows. The bright sunshine kept my face in shadow and she had to squint to make sure it was me. I sat in a big executive chair, leaning back and affecting a relaxation I didn't truly feel. I knew I masked it well. I'd practiced often enough. "I wanted to see you before all the lawyers got at me," Laura said hesitantly. She pulled out a chair a few paces away and sat down. It had been nearly four months since she'd lost her job and gone home to live with her brother. Her brunette hair was almost shoulder length again. She'd cut it when she'd gone to work for the accounting company, thinking it looked smarter and projected an image of the professional woman. She was thinner and didn't move very well; she looked like she hadn't been eating or sleeping well. There were dark circles under her eyes. My heart went out to her...but I refused to let any of that show. In something this intensely personal, I was wearing my Corporate CEO face, something I usually showed only to subordinates and business associates. It was often an implacably ruthless one. "And now you are here," I said quietly to my wife. She nodded, looking anywhere but at me. Finally, she couldn't do anything except face me directly. "Mark..." she said softly, "I want to start by saying I am SO sorry for what I've done to you and to my baby girl." I didn't say anything. "I know that isn't...it isn't adequate...and it doesn't begin to make up for all the hurt I've put you through but they're the only words I have," she whispered. "I'm suffering too, Mark," she said. "I cannot figure out why I did what I did and it's driving me crazy." She didn't add anything more for a long while so I filled the silence with a comment. "I beg to differ," I said matter-of-factly. You haven't begun to suffer, Laura, until you have to tell a 3 year old child that her mother might never come home to be with her." Laura broke down and began sobbing quietly. "It's been four months since I had to tell her that, Laura, and she still cries herself to sleep most nights. It's only in the last few weeks that I've been able to coax a smile out of her once in a while." I paused and watched Laura double over in her chair as she cried. "She screams and attacks anyone trying to hold her back from getting to me if I have to leave her somewhere for an unexpectedly long time," I said quietly. "She's terrified someday I won't come back to get her. Can you imagine what that fear must be like to a little girl not quite four years old, Laura? Can you?" I forced myself to settle back in my seat while Laura shuddered through another set of wracking sobs. "She's in a new daycare center here at the corporate campus," I told her. "I had to build one so I'd never be more than a few minutes away. Any more than that and she goes into hysterics when she can't get to me." I watched Laura cry for a while longer. "But, on the good side," I said a lot more cheerfully than I felt, "productivity is way up among the single parents who work here and it's almost already paid for itself." It made no impression on her. I let the silence build. "Why?" I asked as gently as I could. "Why'd you do it, Laura? I loved you more than life itself...and you ripped the soul right out of me. There's a big empty place inside me now, Laura, and I can't even begin to fill it until I know why you did this...thing." She only shook her head and let a river of tears flow down her cheeks. I saw she hadn't worn any makeup. She'd probably anticipated the tears. She was still beautiful, perhaps more beautiful as a mature 30 year old woman than the girl I'd married. My heart was breaking as I watched her cry. I wanted to give in and cry too. I lost a younger brother in an automobile accident when I was a teenager. I was more miserable today than I was at that time and I didn't know how to fix things anymore than I had then. I didn't know if the ache inside me would ever heal this time. "I don't know why," she said after a long time. "I think I might be insane or something." She was quiet. "I can't undo what I've done, Mark," she said softly. "I don't deserve your forgiveness and I won't ask for it," she whispered. "I've hurt the only man I can ever love so terribly bad. I'll have to bear the pain of that for the rest of my life and I don't know what to do about it. I want to die when I look back over what all I've done to my sweet baby girl. When I listen to myself, replaying that night in my head and listening to me scream at you to take her to hell with you..." She broke off and put her head back to stare unseeing at the ceiling. The tears flowed in a steady stream. I almost used the remote beside my hand to bring up the DVD player in the corner. Without referring to the list of bookmarks on the disk, I knew which one was the scene of this woman, naked and drunk, damning her own daughter to hell. It seemed hardly necessary, so I didn't. She apparently knew it well enough already. After a while, her tears slowed and stopped. I thought she was probably too dehydrated to cry any more. I put the remote control in an upper drawer of the nearby credenza. "I'm seeing a counselor--a psychologist," she said slowly. "I'm trying to find out why I destroyed our lives so completely and hurt so many other people too." Her fingers were twining around each other like so many serpents. "I went to see Stacy Collier," she ventured. "I apologized for doing what I've done to her family. "She was nice to me," Laura mused. "I don't know why." She stared at the grain in the heavy table top directly in front of her for a time. "Stacey told me Brian usually managed to find some woman wherever he worked. She said she got used to it, but this time she's had enough. She's divorcing Brian and she's already moving on. She's found a good man interested who loves her children and she says he's the best thing that ever happened to her." I had known Stacy Collier was divorcing her husband and I knew about the new man in her life. I hadn't been aware Laura had gone to Stacy and apologized. That she'd done that implied remorse and a willingness to accept the responsibility for the things she'd done. Something deep inside me stirred. Something hopeful peeked out, wondering if there was a chance it could live and grow. "What is the doctor telling you?" I asked. Laura glanced at me and quickly back to the surface of the table. "We haven't made any progress," she admitted. "I'd give anything to tell you we had, but all I know now is that something happened when I got to drinking so heavy there for a while. It--" "Were you drugged, Laura," I said, interrupting whatever she'd been about to say. She looked up at me and held my eyes with hers for the first time. I couldn't read the play of emotions that chased each other across her face. "I don't know," she finally admitted. "Maybe the first time, I...maybe the first time I had--." She stopped, swallowing hard. "The first time I had...sex with Brian, I know I was awfully drunk." Her head dropped again. "But I wasn't drugged...sometimes I wasn't even drunk...after that," she said. Her sobs began again and she visibly choked them off. "I wish I had that excuse," she said softly, "but I don't...I'm trying to find out what the real reasons are with my counselor." She stopped talking for a while, resuming only when I shifted my weight in the chair. "Mark...?" I lifted my chin and raised my eyebrows in question. "Would you go see her...she wants to talk to you...but not what you think...she just wants to ask you some questions...she wants to ask some questions and see if she can find anything I haven't been able to tell her...she..." Laura's words tumbled over each other in a rushing stream. She was trying to get everything in before I started yelling, I suppose. "When?" I said simply. Laura stared at me disbelievingly. "You'll go?" she asked with her voice full of emotion. I shrugged. "I'm still your husband," I told her somberly. "I'll do what I can to help you so long as it doesn't harm...our child." I'd almost said "my" child but I didn't. A sudden hope blossomed in her eyes and grew stronger. I started to say something cutting to make her realize there was no real chance...but I stopped. I was willing to explore just about any avenue that would be in my little girl's best interests. I had loved Laura without reservation. I still loved her. Love isn't something one turns on and off like a spigot. Conversely, love couldn't conquer the sense of deep betrayal I felt either. But...there was my daughter to think of and I could not set that aside. It was a card that trumped all others in the deck. I'd do almost anything if it would help her become whole again. "Tomorrow afternoon?" Laura stammered. "Is that too soon? I can call and see if she can see you some other time if you want. Is 2:00 o'clock okay?" "Tomorrow afternoon, and 2:00 o'clock, is fine," I said. "I'll be there." Laura started crying again, but her eyes were bright behind the tears. "Thank you, ho--" she started. I thought she might have been about to call me "honey" but I wasn't certain. "Thank you, Mark," she said. She began to rise. It was like watching an 80-year-old woman get to her feet. "Before you go," I said, "I've had myself checked for sexually transmitted diseases and the tests have all come up negative. Have you...?" She nodded. "I always made him use a condom," she said bitterly. "If nothing else, I did that." I sat quietly for a long moment. Condoms weren't a hundred percent effective, but the tests had come back negative in all respects. "Laura," I said as calmly as I knew how. "Do you have anything else you want to say about those long months of hell you put us through?" She flinched at the phrase I used but straightened to look steadily in my eyes. "No," Laura said quietly. "I told you I was so very, very sorry for what I've done to you and Alyssa...and I've told you I didn't know why I did it...and I told you I can't even begin to ask for your forgiveness...those are the only things I came here to say...oh...and to ask you if you would talk with Doctor Jamison," she added. I waited for a few heartbeats for anything she might want to add. She had an air of having ticked off every item on a checklist. "Laura, come sit with me, will you?" I asked. She sat and turned her body to face me with her hands folded in her lap and waiting for me to say something more. "When your attorney asked if I would consent to a private meeting with you, Laura, I imagined all sorts of things. I wondered if you were going to scream and yell at me like you did that night you were in Vegas." I stopped as she bowed her head. I reminded myself of the shame that had spread across her face on the video almost immediately after she'd said those awful words. "I tried to call you back," she said in a low voice. "Once I realized what I'd done, I felt so suddenly and completely guilty...about everything." I knew that. It had been on the surveillance tape Carl had brought back. Brian hadn't gotten very much into fucking my slut of a wife before she'd broken away and scrambled to find her cell phone. Laura had been crying, drunk, and naked. Her vagina fluids had created a shimmering film down the inside of her thighs...but the tape showed immediate feelings of shame and remorse for what she'd done that couldn't have been faked. It was a day late and a dollar short, as they say. Still, it had been genuine. "I know," I said softly. "When I heard yesterday you wanted to tell me you were sorry...I thought you would try and tell me "it just happened" or "it didn't mean anything" like I see on those reality shows about cheating husbands and wives. "If you'd said those things or you'd tried to say the whole damned, cheap, crude thing had nothing to do with me...or if you'd tried to say that you love me and you'll make it all up to me...if you'd said any of that, I'd already had you escorted of the grounds by a couple of security guards." Laura was shaking her head from side to side, tears again falling. I poured a glass of ice water for her from an insulated carafe and pushed it across the table to her. She thanked me with her eyes. "You didn't do any of those things...and your mother tells me you never said a word to your family against me. She says you took full responsibility right from the day you moved back home." Laura lifted her hands helplessly without saying anything. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I was almost certain I was about to make a bad mistake. It was a retreat, if nothing else, from a strong negotiating position. But...I had a daughter who couldn't get over her nightmares and it had been so long since I'd heard her gurgling laughter. If there was the slightest chance I could make her whole once more, I had to take it. And...it was for me too. The huge ache in the middle of my being was slowly killing me. "Laura," I said lightly, "there's a small restroom through there," I said, pointing the way to a small door off to the side. "Why don't you go...freshen up a little," I suggested. She nodded, grateful she wouldn't have to show her tear stained features to the rest of the world without a chance to at least splash a little water on her face. Before she got very far, I got a vial of eye drops from a drawer in the credenza and reached across the table to place it near to her hand. "Here," I said as she got up. "Use a little of this. It should help get some of the red veins out of your eyes." She nodded her thanks again. I picked up the phone and touched the intercom button for my secretary downstairs. "Maggie?" I said when she answered. "Maggie, would you get Alyssa from the day care center and bring her up to Conference Room C, please...yes...thank you, Maggie." I put the phone back down. Laura was half way to the little half-bath. I watched as she stopped dead and whirled around to look at me. She was incredulous; she didn't dare hope I'd actually said what she'd heard. For a long moment, she stared at me, afraid to believe I meant... "Laura," I said gently, I'd have let you see her any time you asked. I would never have kept you apart, don't you know that?" She hung her head again. "I felt too guilty about the things I'd said...and the way I had been treating her, too," she admitted. "I was afraid I'd just start crying and not be able to stop. That wouldn't have done her any good at all." She stood for a moment without speaking. "Are you sure it's all right?" she asked me softly. I looked in her eyes, trying to find something to tell me if it was all right or not before time ran out and Alyssa was ushered into the room. I made a decision, doing it abruptly and using my instincts in the same fashion that I made business decisions. "She'll be up here in a few minutes. Don't you think you should get ready to see her?" I said quietly. Laura burst out in new tears, but she was smiling as they flowed. She turned and fled into the restroom, trying to blot the salty fluid out on a tissue as she walked. I turned to look out the big picture window into the bright sunshine while I waited for my daughter to be escorted upstairs. ******** "Thank you for coming, Mr. Archer," said the well groomed, rather severely dressed but attractive older woman. "May I call you Mark?" she asked. I shrugged. "May I call you Janice?" I asked. I'd seen her full name on the office door outside. Surprised, she glanced up and looked me in the eyes for the first time. Up until this point, she'd been looking somewhere over my right shoulder. "I think I need to keep a good, professional distance," she said, "so I'll have to ask that you call me "Doctor," if you don't mind." Her voice was calm and...professional...so there was no offense given. I nodded my concurrence. "Professional sounds good...for both of us," I said. She looked at me for a long moment, tapping her pen on the pad of paper in front of her on the desk. I looked back. "Laura told me you let her see her daughter yesterday," she remarked. "I don't know if you realize how much that meant to your wife." I snorted. "Doctor, please don't treat me like the village idiot," I said angrily. I didn't wait for a reply. "Of course I know how much it meant to her...and I know how much it meant to our daughter too," I added. The good doctor looked at me with an unsettled look in her eyes. "Yes," she said, stalling for time. "It was a good visit for them both...I hope you intend to keep letting them see each other from time to time?" I nodded. "So long as I can see progress in Laura's resolution of her problem," I said bluntly. "I told her yesterday, and I'll tell you today, doctor. If she slides backward into...uh...conduct like she exhibited for the last year, I'll cut her off in a heartbeat." Doctor Jamison looked at me intently. "But then I'll probably have to take my little girl to the best psychiatrists in the country," I added softly. "Because she...and I...will be in hell." The doctor said nothing for a long moment. "You're a very...perceptive...and interesting man in your own right, Mr. Archer," she said slowly. "You have a hardness in you, a certain ruthlessness that I hadn't realized you possessed based on Laura's description. I gather you show one face to people in your professional life and another to your loved ones." She looked at me thoughtfully for a long while. "Letting Laura and Alyssa come together and hoping they could begin to heal together shows me you have a deep compassion and gentleness for your family," she said finally. There didn't seem to be a question anywhere in there, so I stayed silent. "Do you know Laura loves you so much she's eating herself up with guilt from what she's done?" The doctor sprang the comment on me, hoping I would trip myself up by blurting an answer. I looked at her calmly and held back a reply for a moment. "Yes, I do know that," I assured her. "But love may not be enough to get through this," I countered. "Do you know that there are a lot...a lot...of awfully deep wounds my daughter and I carry that have only begun to scab over and there's no certainty they'll ever get better?" I looked at my wife's doctor, perhaps a little defiantly. I was getting the idea the good doctor thought Laura was the victim and that perhaps it had been me who pushed my wife into the morass where she'd lived for so long. Doctor Jamison looked at me with more sympathy than I'd expected. "Yes...ah...Mr. Archer, I do know that. Trying to apply some...salve...to those scars is what I do here," she said quietly. "And I hope I can help all of you to come to terms with what happened and find a way to get past it to become a family again." I shook my head. "Doctor...before we even think about getting past this, I have to know why it happened in the first place," I told her. "Laura ripped a hole in me so wide and deep that I don't know, sitting here this afternoon, how I can ever be a whole man again. If I can't do that, we will never be a family again either." I stared the doctor in the eye. I knew there was some defiance in my attitude now. I was apprehensive too. I'd let this woman--a psychologist, but still a woman--see a little inside me. Judging by events only four months past with Laura, that could be a dangerous thing for my sanity. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 04 "Is it the sex Laura had with...this other man, Ma...Mr. Archer?" she asked. I shook my head. "Neither Laura nor I were virgins when we got married," I explained. "I've already figured out that I'd probably be able to put the sex behind me...put him in the same place in my mind where her four previous lovers are. I don't think that's a critical thing at all," I told her. I stopped talking to think for a moment. The doctor opened a second notepad and flipped through some of the pages until she found an entry she studied intently while I was quiet. "Doctor," I added, "I'm far less concerned about the sex she had with this guy than the reasons why she had sex with him," I said quietly. "This is the 21st century, Doctor. A man who meets a woman as late as her junior year of college doesn't expect to find a virgin for a wife." I looked into her dark eyes for a long time, debating whether to add anything. "Have you seen the two tapes of her...encounters with him?" I asked finally. The doctor nodded. "Okay...I was going to suggest you view them if you hadn't," I said. "The thing is, doctor, watching her have sex with that guy somehow decreases the impact rather than increases it," I said slowly. "It's no fun--it hurts and it's a terrible insult to me that she would share herself with another man--but it the ludicrous aspect of it deadens the hurt a little. I don't know what Laura's ideas are...but I thought the sex between them was pretty crude and...uninteresting, perhaps...certainly not very imaginative...not what I would have thought a cheating wife would want to experiment with." I waited while the doctor obviously tried to make up her mind. "Laura told me to be completely candid with you, Ma...Mr. Archer," she said finally. A smile quirked her lips for the first time tonight. "To use Laura's words," the doctor said, "he was pathetic." I couldn't help but give her a startled grin in reply, but it faded quickly. "I don't understand. If she felt that way, why'd she do it, doctor?" I asked quickly. "Mr. Archer, why Laura did what she did is going to turn out to be very, very complicated. Right now, I'm convinced she honestly does not know why it happened," she said slowly. "Whoa, hold up there, doc," I said. "It didn't just happen...it happened, and it happened again, and again, and again, for I don't know how many times for nearly six months. And, oh by the way, that's ignoring all the steps leading up having sex with...ah...with Mr. Pathetic. All that took place over another six months or so. It's not just an event, a single happening that I have to deal with, okay?" I forced myself to settle back in the chair's comfortable cushions. "I do know that, Mark," she said gently. "I wasn't trying to trivialize any of this...and neither is Laura." She leaned back herself, holding my eyes. "What I'm trying to say, Mr. Archer, is that what I help Laura discover is probably not going to be a single, clearly definable reason for...as she puts it...betraying your trust and your love. It may turn out to be a jumble of things that all came together at the only possible moment in time when they could combust together." The doctor abruptly leaned forward, dropping her head slightly to look me dead in the eyes. "If that proves to be the case, Mr. Archer, will you be able to deal with that?" she said challengingly. "I don't know, Doctor. What are you saying? Laura has some kind of mental condition that led to all this?" She nodded her head impassively. That was no help to me at all. "If it can all be explained to me in terms I can understand, doctor...maybe. I'm willing to work at it anyway." Doctor Jamison bobbed her head quickly down and back up. The expression in her eyes said that I was a good little boy and was coming through with the right answers. "But, doctor," I said, holding up my hand to stop her from celebrating too much, too early. "Doc, I don't do psychobabble, okay? I'm an engineer. I'm used to dealing with absolutes...black and white, if you will. "I'm going to be awfully, awfully skeptical of an "answer" to her problems that's hidden in some mumbo jumbo and gives her an excuse for what she did...but doesn't give me some kind of finality to it, Doctor." I sat quietly for a moment. The thing about professional counselors is they let small silences build without feeling the need to rush in and fill them. "I'm not talking about revenge, Doctor Jamison...though I've had some," I said, broodingly. "I made sure Laura got a taste of the humiliation she'd heaped on me. I made sure the process of serving the divorce paperwork on her was as done as publicly and as ostentatiously as possible for everyone she works with, and parties with, to see. I had to pay the server $500 extra, but it was money well spent. "I also saw to it the pair of them were fired almost immediately. Laura loved that job and I know it hurt her when they let her go so unceremoniously. On top of getting him fired, I've filed a couple of lawsuits against Laura's little sex toy. If nothing else, he's going to be ruined financially for the rest of his life, just trying to pay his attorney fees...that, and whatever his wife gets out of his hide. I shared those videos with his wife and she's willing to use them to humiliate him even more in her own divorce action." I was quiet for a while longer. "I won't hide it from you, Doctor. I've enjoyed getting a little payback, and I've enjoyed telling you about it too." I smiled at her. "That's why I insisted I become your...patient also. I wanted to make sure the doctor-client privilege extended to anything I told you too." I guess my grin had something of the shark in it. Doctor Jamison recoiled--not much, it was almost unnoticeable, but I'd trained myself to be able to read and interpret body language. It's an invaluable tool in business negotiations. The good doctor now knew that not only was I "ruthless," as she'd put it a few moments earlier, but I could also be vindictive. The latter was one of my faults. I've learned to live with it. "That having been said, Doctor, I don't have much of a desire for retribution beyond what I've already exacted. This "Brian" guy is a broken man and he won't be bothering anyone ever again." I know a very satisfied look was pasted all over my face but I didn't care. As my doctor, she had to keep darn near everything confidential, including my boasting. She didn't need to know that I'd set up a trust for Brian's kids for college. They hadn't been the ones to do anything to me and I hadn't wanted them to suffer. "I know Laura is suffering also," I continued, "whether that suffering has been generated by my acts of revenge or through her own shame at what she's done. But...there's no particular need in me to add to her misery, not anymore." I was rambling now. The doctor had asked me a question and I still hadn't answered it. "Doctor, I guess most of all, I want you to know that if I bite the bullet on this, there had better be some really big returns. If I try to live with what she's done...if I suppress all this anger and humiliation because Laura had some emotional hiccup or something, then I need some kind of reassurance that the same "issues" aren't going to surface again six years more into this marriage." I stopped because the lady was shaking her head in negation. "I won't be able to give you that, Mr. Archer," she said quietly. "No one can...but what we can do is strive for an understanding of what sparked a terrible behavior change that Laura and I have identified as occurring about six months before she started committing little indiscretions and, eventually, full scale infidelities nine months ago. "What we can do is make her aware of what affected her so horribly and find out what all the other factors were that hit her so hard at the same time or a bit later. If these hidden problems are brought out where she can examine them "in the light of day," as it were, Laura should be able to deal with them and put their ghosts to rest. Nothing is guaranteed. Philosophers, and now scientists, have been working for ages trying to figure out how the human mind works and, in many ways, we're no closer to an understanding than we were when we were still living in caves." "What we can do, is teach Laura...and you too, Mr. Archer...what the signs of emotional problems are, what their impact is, and most importantly, how to make sure you can bring them up with Laura before you two lose communication with each other again and you spiral down into something like what has happened now." The doctor had to pause for a deep breath. "Emotional problems? What do you mean--?" I shifted in my chair, suddenly uncomfortable. "All right, doc," I said slowly. "You've got my attention. You're saying there are some deep mental problems involved in this? Not just a...uh...a hiccup? It wasn't a combination of boredom and...some kind of temper tantrum...and...uh...hormones or something?" The doctor was shaking her head slowly from side to side. "Laura and I have gone back over her whole history of the past couple of years, Mr. Archer and unless she is flatly lying to me, there is no hint of anything untoward until she suddenly began responding to "Brian." Laura looks back on that as a rather skillful seduction that began about a year before you caught her acting out her faithlessness. Before that, she'd recognized his desire for her, but she never considered him as a sex partner at all. I've been in this business for twenty-six years, Mr. Archer. When there is that radical a change in attitudes and behaviors...something deeply, and emotionally scarring happened to cause it." I nodded reluctantly. I couldn't say about her diagnosis--I accepted she had a good deal of expertise. Carl's investigators had also looked all the way back to Laura's and my wedding for any trace of adultery and had found nothing. What they did find dovetailed very closely with what the doctor was saying when she identified the start of Laura's infidelity to be about five or six months before the cameras recorded her having sex with Brian Collier. Carl's guys had collected enough anecdotal evidence from Laura's prior co-workers that suggested Brian had indeed been working on her for months before she started having sex with him. My training was as an engineer. I didn't believe in coincidences either. I could accept what the doctor said. I sat quietly for a while, staring pensively over Doctor Jamison's head. I hadn't expected this. Laura had said she felt she was insane...but I'd assumed that was a way of putting off facing the underlying reasons of why she'd cheated on our marriage. I hadn't considered the possibility there was something mentally...emotionally wrong with her. I couldn't decide whether the fact that she might not be consciously aware of why she betrayed my daughter and me was a good thing or not. I decided to table that issue for now. "Okay," I said at length. The doctor looked up from her note pad. She'd been scribbling furiously during the silence. She looked at me questioningly. "Doctor, you say you're looking for some triggering event...uh, let's see...four months ago the bottom fell out of our lives...five, oh say six months before that she started fucking Mr. Pathetic...six months before that was when I first noticed a coldness...so something that happened right around sixteen months ago--almost a year and a half ago?" The doctor had been taken aback by my vulgarism but recovered quickly. "Yeah, give or take," she replied. I thought for a while, believing I knew the answer but surely Laura had already told her counselor. I couldn't think of anything else. "Doctor," I said slowly, not sure this was going to be productive. "Did Laura tell you her Aunt Ruth died right about that time...maybe a little before? Laura thought the world of her aunt and she was devastated when her aunt died so suddenly." Doctor Jamison almost gasped. She shook her head. "No, she didn't," she told me. There was a faraway look in her eyes. "Oh my," she said. "My goodness," she said distractedly. I tapped my forefinger on her desktop to get her attention. "After she came home from the funeral, she cried for three days straight," I said, trying to be helpful. "I took off work to be with her...but there wasn't much I could do...just hold her and...uh, just be there, I guess." The doctor nodded. She'd heard me but she was concentrating deeply for a long time. "Hey, YOO-HOO, earth to Doctor Jamison," I quipped. She blinked and came back to me. "You think her aunt's death might be significant, Doctor?" I asked. She nodded vigorously. "Yes...and that she didn't think to tell me is even more significant, Mr. Archer," she said confidently. She stood up abruptly. "Mr. Archer, thank you very, very much for coming in to talk with me. We have to stop now, but I think you've given me a critical area I need to explore with Laura. I can't really know what it means yet, but it's so very promising, I can assure you. Will you come back to see me some time?" I nodded and gave her my card, after scrawling my cell phone number on the back. "Doctor, that is my personal number. Call me anytime, day or night, for anything you need and you will have it," I told her. The good doctor looked startled for a moment. She wasn't used to taking instructions from anyone. We shook hands and I left. I didn't know enough to be able to tell if Laura's infidelity could be laid at the feet of an emotional disorder...problem...disease...whatever. Still less did I know if such a thing made any difference in my heart or not. The basic facts remained. Laura had betrayed me and my daughter, wrecked two marriages, and created an enormous amount of pain. I wasn't sure there was anything that could be done to get past that. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 05 Two months later: "You and Doctor Jamison have talked about your Aunt Ruth?" I was watching Alyssa race through a big maze of stout, hollow tubes hung from the ceiling at Chuck E. Cheese's. I could only see her through the occasional window and a few clear plastic sections in the big, round pipes. The happy screams of young children playing on equipment designed with them in mind made a noisy backdrop to the conversation Laura and I were having but it suited me just fine. The place was comfortable enough for Laura and me to interact, but public enough to give us that little bit of space too. "Yeah," she said, just loud enough for me to hear over the clamor. "But I don't know what she wants to know about Aunt Ruth and Dad for," she added distractedly. She was watching Alyssa too, mildly concerned that an older girl seemed to be shepherding Alyssa through some of the sections. That Laura's counselor was inquiring about her father was news to me. "What's that about your father and aunt?" I asked. She turned to look at me blankly. "What?" she asked. "You said Doctor Jamison was asking about your Aunt Ruth and your Dad," I replied. She shrugged and shook her head. "I'm sorry, I was watching our daughter being silly...Mark," she said apologetically. "I don't know why I said that," she said. "She's been asking questions about Aunt Ruth, but we aren't getting anywhere. I'm really kind of tired of talking about her." "I see," I said. After a long conversation with Doctor Jamison a couple of weeks ago, I was a little more sensitive to things Laura said or did. "Aunt Ruth was your mother's sister, right?" Laura nodded. "Yeah, Mom and Dad were devastated when Aunt Ruth had her stroke and died," she said. "Well that's understandable, don't you think?" I asked. "Ruth lived with your parents for a long time, right?" I was trying to pull out some hazy memories from my mind. I didn't know her family that well. We weren't close, though I liked them well enough. "Uh huh," Laura answered. She stood up and walked a few paces to get a better view to make sure our daughter had emerged from an opaque section of the tubing. Alyssa was a little late getting t the next transparent bit of the hollow pipe if she'd continued running at the same pace as when she'd disappeared. There was no other place for her to go though. I was sure we'd see her in another second or two. "Your parents were close to Ruth, huh?" I suggested when she came back to stand beside me. "What? Oh, yes, pretty much," she replied. "When Aunt Ruth's husband died, she moved in with Mom and Dad. That was...huh...twenty five years ago, I guess." Alyssa came running up with another little girl trailing a step behind. She was Terri, Alyssa said by way of introduction, and she was almost five years old. Terri's parents waved from a nearby table, nodding as Alyssa made to offer Terri a piece of her pizza. Terri had a younger brother and a baby sister it seemed; both were wailing about something and their parent's hands were full. Laura and I talked for another forty-five minutes while the two little girls laughed and giggled their way through an astonishing amount of pizza. I was trying to figure out who Laura was and where she was coming from in most everything she said. I looked for a hidden meaning in every subject, every conversation. It was tiring and frustrating. I really wanted to give free rein to my anger at what she'd done, but Doctor Jamison had already told me in unequivocal terms that Laura was suffering, or had suffered--I wasn't quite sure which--from some kind of emotional breakdown. I didn't know what to do or how I should feel anymore. Can you get mad at someone with a mental problem? It seems an awful lot like spanking a baby for wetting a diaper. Neither can control the process and neither is responsible for it happening...right? Alyssa enjoyed the whole experience at the children's pizza restaurant, especially the part about meeting another youngster near her own age. When we left, she skipped through the parking lot holding on to my and Laura's hands. When we dropped Laura off at her brother's, Alyssa accepted it without the crying and heartbreak it had caused last week--the first time I'd chanced a joint outing. I'd explained the separation to Alyssa as being similar to making her go to her room when she misbehaved. It was in terms she could understand and made sense to her. She wasn't happy without her mother, but she could deal with it better this way. When she asked what her mommy had done, I told her I didn't tell others what she did to deserve being sent to her room and it was only fair I not tell her about what her mother had done. Alyssa didn't like that, but she let it go surprisingly easily. She fell asleep on the way home. The next morning, I called Doctor Jamison and asked her if Laura's unexpected connection between her father and her aunt in our conversation could possibly be significant. As before, she said anything that Laura didn't seem to want to address could surely be important. She promised to keep me in the loop with what she discovered with Laura at her next counseling session. ******** Nine days later: Doctor Jamison chewed on her lip for a long moment, debating whether to tell me something. "Mr. Archer, in your first visit, you said neither you nor Laura was a virgin when you got married right?" I shrugged and nodded. I couldn't see how this tied in to Laura's aunt's death in any way. The doctor decided to go for it. She cleared her throat for a second's longer delay. "Well...Laura DID say to be completely frank with you...I just hope she remembers that when we get together tomorrow," the doctor said. "Uh...Mr. Archer...what would you say if I told you Laura did not, in fact, have two lovers before you?" My face must have shown my confusion. "Mr. Archer, Laura was not technically a virgin in the sense that she didn't have an intact hymen...but Mr. Archer, you were the first man to take her." I sat back, stunned for the first time in our conversation. "I...I...Doctor, I don't know what to say," I protested. "She sure didn't seem like a virgin that night...darn, she was as ready to...as ready as I was. She wasn't uncomfortably tight or unresponsive or anything like that...I don't understand, Doctor." I finally just gave up. "Because you were experienced, you led her through the whole process of love making...apparently pretty effortlessly and without noticing her lack," she said softly. "Somehow she got the impression that her being experienced also was something important to you. She'd been using her...uh, I'm going to have to be careful not to embarrass myself here...but...she had "experience" using a dildo and her fingers, but...that's all," she finished. I stared at her blankly. "But why would she think that...and why hasn't she ever told me?" I asked. "Why in the world would it have made any difference?" It was the doctor's turn to shrug. "We may never know," she answered, "a chance remark...or the lack of a remark...a gesture...no way to tell. Your wife told me about her lack of experience and she saw some humor in the situation. I think that, while she's forgotten the initial reason, it had some kind of effect on her self-esteem at the start. She brought it up while we were discussing her affair with her..."Mr. Pathetic" guy." The doctor began playing with her notepad. "The thing is, Laura told me about it quite easily," she said. "Laura wasn't trying to hide that. It wasn't a sensitive matter to her...at least not any longer." She fiddled with her ballpoint for a long moment. "Mr. Archer, I hope I can tell you this in terms your experience and training has prepared you for." She looked at me closely, trying to read me. She sighed. "In for a penny, in for a pound," she muttered. Taking a deep breath, she laid it out for me. "I'm all but certain that one of the reasons in taking Mr. Pathetic as a lover, was that Laura was reversing the roles she experienced with you early in your marriage. I've found some indications that Laura was trying to...teach...uh...Brian how to be a better lover, though she wasn't succeeding very well. The role reversal was apparently therapeutic enough for her to rid herself of the underlying cause." "What was that?" I asked. I knew there was a big frown on my face. Doctor Jamison was trying to be very impersonal with Laura's sexual involvement with Brian Collier but I didn't feel very detached at all. "I don't know for sure," she answered honestly. "I think it was probably a deeply suppressed resentment at the fact you did guide her through her first sexual experiences. Laura has, in laymen's terms, a little streak of contrariness. "That seems to be linked in some fashion to her relationship with her father. He seems to have been something of a remote, authoritative figure but also someone she loved as a little girl almost to the point of adulation. I haven't even begun to make any headway there yet." I opened my mouth but the doctor held up her hand to stop me from commenting. "It's not going to come all at once, Mr. Archer," she admonished. "Some days we may hit...uh...the mother lode, so to speak. Other days we won't have any progress at all. In fact, some of the leads we've already developed may turn out to be false ones. I don't know yet. This just isn't an exact science in any sense of the word," she said firmly. "But couldn't she have resolved that resentment with me? Couldn't she have mentioned it sometime and work it out with me...together?" "Oh, goodness, sure she could," Doctor Jamison replied almost cheerfully. "But only if she was consciously aware of it to begin with. Instead, she took an extreme route to get to where she was going...and she was solving some other issues along the way, too. Oh, I see you don't like that word, huh?" She'd seen me wince. "How about "problems," huh? Good, we'll use that" "Hmmmm, that brings up a good point I've been meaning to raise with you. Ahhhhh, darn it, we only a few more minutes. I'm sorry I couldn't rearrange my next appointment so we'd have more time, but I felt I should speak with you and bring you up to date." She pursed her lips and looked at me while she searched for the words she wanted to use. "Mr. Archer, things are going to begin getting complicated. It's going to get confusing and you're going to have an especially tough time because I can see you have not yet completely laid aside your anger at what has happened. I understand that...Laura understands it...and I need you to recognize it in yourself too, okay?" I nodded. I'd already realized I was going to have to suppress some of my own instincts while I explored this idea of Laura having an emotionally disturbing problem. I was willing to do that...but at the same time, I was offended by it. I had tried to search my soul but I could not, to save my life, figure out what I had done to deserve Laura's adultery. Yet it seemed I was doing most of the "bending" here. Still, I had to keep Alyssa's welfare fixed firmly in the center of everything I did. I would keep on down this path for a while longer for her. "Good, I need you to remember whenever we talk that you are getting the layman's version of what are actually far more complicated issues. You asked me to talk to you on your first visit in terms that an engineer could understand, right? I'm trying to be true to what you asked for and also to Laura's request that I be absolutely forthcoming and candid with you. "I'm not saying you aren't smart enough to understand the myriad of crosscurrents and conflicting emotions in the human mind, Mr. Archer. It's just that you don't have any training in my field. I, although I think of myself as smart too, don't have a clue what uh...vectors...and force...and gravity and...stuff like that really means, okay? "You do know what they are. It's part of your daily life. Your mind can get around those things while mine can't really. See what I mean? On the other hand, you probably have been sitting there thinking of sharing a simple definition of a "vector," haven't you? "I bet you could gin up one in just a few seconds more that would give me a definition my mind can process and use, couldn't you? But would that simple explanation be something the technicians and engineers working for you could use? No...I didn't think so. Do you see what I'm trying to do and why some things might not ever become totally clear?" I sniffed expressively, and showed Doctor Jamison a wry grin. "Okay, Doc," I said, "you saved yourself with that last little bit, you know that don't you?" "Young man," she replied with a serene smile, "why do you think you're paying me the big bucks?" ******** Three weeks later: "Honey, I think you need to do it. You've said yourself you and the doctor haven't made any progress for weeks now, right?" I could have kicked myself. I hadn't intended to use the affectionate term. It just sneaked out while I was trying to coax Laura into something she didn't want to do. Somehow, talking her into accepting a form of treatment she really didn't want to do had become my job too. I think the expression is "grin and bear it." I did, but I didn't have to like it. Laura glanced up at me as we walked side by side across the grassy park. She was chewing her lip and had a worried expression on her pretty face. We were walking close together, but not touching. "But it feels like such an...an invasion," she complained. I didn't like the petulant tone of her voice. For the first time in many months, I caught her by the wrist and pulled her around to face me directly. Her face flushed immediately. I knew my woman; she was excited by the first contact. The casual move meant more to her than it did me; I needed to make sure I wasn't misleading her. I looked around and found a picnic table under a tall cottonwood a short distance away. Releasing her wrist, I gestured toward the inviting shade under the tree. "Look Laura," I said as convincingly as I could, "you say Doctor Jamison and you agree you're not making any progress on discovering your reasons for...doing what you did, right?" She nodded. We reached the table. Laura sat on the bench seat and I straddled it, facing her. It was a good fifteen degrees cooler here in the shade. Texas is hot in the summer, period. "Then don't you think we need to get this whole thing jumpstarted? Shouldn't we agree to use anything we can to get the process going again?" Laura looked out over the park with a troubled look. The wide expanse of thick grass, dotted with small clumps of trees here and there, was almost deserted at noon on a weekday. We had all the privacy we could wish for. "I know," Laura said after a long pause, "but it seems like putting me in a trance and digging around in my mind is so...so...dirty that I don't know if I can do it. Please understand...hon--Mark, I just don't think it'll do any good." "How can you know that?" I demanded. Laura winced at my tone and expression. She shook her head in protest. "I just don't believe there's anything it will help," she replied defensively. "She and I can talk a lot more. I don't mind that. I'm being as open with her as I can, Mark." I was silent for a long while. Laura was being stubborn, unreasonably so. I'd had a long telephone conversation with Doctor Jamison in which she asked me to press Laura to accept psychiatric hypnotherapy as hard as I could. She sensed there was something Laura was unconsciously keeping buried deep behind layers of concealment and denial. The doctor thought if she could bring whatever was troubling Laura up to the conscious level, Laura would be able to deal with it effectively. The doctor was sure there were a series of repressed memories--some hated experiences, or a bitter disappointment lurking somewhere beneath the surface. She said bringing them to the forefront so Laura's conscious mind would have to deal with them was the key to a resolution of her problems. I wasn't as optimistic, but it seemed to be a logical step to me. Assuming Laura wasn't being deliberately and consciously evasive, I was intrigued at what she might be hiding. "Laura," I said slowly, carefully, "I'm trying as hard as I can to be supportive in all this counseling and stuff. It's very, very difficult for me to do that if you aren't doing everything you can to explain to me why you had a goddamned six-month affair with that--." I had to take a deep breath and stifle an anger that wasn't very far beneath the surface whenever I focused about her unfaithfulness. I tried again. "I have to know why you made such an investment of your time and energy in your lover at my and Alyssa's expense," I told her. "Laura, if you leave it as it is, I won't ever have any kind of finality to this whole thing. What you will leave me with is a gnawing feeling that I've been had...that you picked some minor trouble from our past and built it up into an excuse to have sex with a man outside our marriage. "That won't cut it, Laura. Even if I was willing to set my humiliation and pain aside, that feeling...that doubt...would ruin us later down the line. But we aren't ever going to get to that point, honey, because I am not willing to ignore the dishonor and pain, Laura. If you don't take this next step, you're choosing to end the marriage, honey." I stopped and watched as Laura put her forearms down on the picnic table and rested her head on them while she cried brokenly. I tried to be impassive but it was hard. I almost told her I would take her daughter away too but that's a cruel thing to say--much less do--to a woman. I'd hold it back as the only trump card I had left, but I hoped I wouldn't have to play it. My daughter deserved better than to be used as a pawn. After a time, Laura's weeping subsided to the occasional sob and then faded away to nothing. She brought her head up to look at me from eyes drowned in harsh tears. She nodded her head vehemently. "Okay, Mark," she said unsteadily, "I'll do it." The anguish on her face was plain to see. "That's good, honey," I said, not minding the small endearment this time. "Will you come with me?" she asked, almost pathetically. She held her breath and held her body stiffly while she waited for my answer. I didn't hesitate. "Of course," I said, smiling gently. "Where else would I be?" I asked her. She smiled and caught my hand up in hers. We walked hand in hand back to my SUV. I didn't mind it nearly as much as I thought I would. ******** A week later: Laura's marathon session with Doctor Jamison had been three days ago, on Friday afternoon. I'd been there, as I promised Laura I would be, but I wasn't allowed in the room with them. The doctor just would not allow that. One of the requirements for hypnosis, she said, was that the patient had to concentrate their attention on one person and if I was in the room, Laura would be constantly looking to me for feedback. It just wouldn't have worked, so I sat in the waiting room and worked on memorizing the contents of sixteen magazines on the rack there. When I woke up, I couldn't turn my head to the right at all. Laura had come out of the doctor's office ashen faced and obviously shaken. She hadn't wanted to talk to me at all. Neither of them had. I was a little pissed off; I'd waited for four hours and nobody wanted to say a word. I knew the doctor and Laura had also met for a couple of hours on Saturday and a short while on Sunday, but I didn't know what they discussed. I was ready for some answers. "Good morning, Mr. Archer," Doctor Jamison said amiably. She sat behind her desk, leaning back in her chair and her elbows resting on the chair arms. Her hands were clasped comfortably across her belly. The doctor looked content, though Laura was far less happy to be there. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 05 "Mornin' Doctor," I replied in a noncommittal tone. I didn't know what was in store for this day and I was on edge. "How're you today?" "Fine...fine," she replied. She looked at Laura and smiled gently. "You okay with we discussed over the weekend, Laura?" Laura nodded but she wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it. She wasn't speaking and had been uncommunicative when she met me in the lobby downstairs. We'd come up on the elevator together. Doctor Jamison beamed at the two of us. "Okay, let's get to it then," she said briskly. She looked at me for a long moment and her smile faded a little. "Mr. Archer," she began slowly, "how much does a man with a degree in engineering know about the subconscious mind?" I shrugged. "I read everything I could this weekend on the subject of hypnosis and the subconscious versus the conscious mind...right brain, left brain...reasoning versus emotion...stuff like that. I saw that the subconscious is where we get our imagination and impulse. It's where human beings store memories and emotional feelings, right?" The doctor seemed to be trying not to glare at me. I suspected she figured I had just enough knowledge to be of danger to myself. I had to admit, but only to myself, she was probably right. Still, I'd found enough articles on the web to be able to see where she might be heading in our conversation. "Yes," she said at length. "That's a pretty good summary of some of the major functions," she added. I was put in my place. She'd reminded me who was the expert here. I smiled faintly. Dealing with the good doctor was very similar to bargaining and negotiating contracts in the business world. "If you didn't run across it in your...research, hypnotism is a way for a therapist to get in direct contact with that subconscious mind," said the doctor. "Hypnotism is a deep-relaxation technique, a tool that I can use to bypass the "reasoning" function of our consciousness and get deep into Laura's experiences and her interpretations of those events." "Memories and emotions are what we want to focus on today," she said. "Specifically, Laura's memories of watching her father as he involved himself in a long-term affair with his sister, Ruth." She waited expectantly for me to respond. I sensed Laura was holding her breath. "Okay," I said flatly. I really didn't know how I should react to that news. "Yes...well, you know that Laura was born comparatively late in her mother's life, so late in fact that her brother is almost in another generation, correct?" I nodded again. "So for all practical purposes, Laura can be considered an only child?" I pursed my lips and thought for a second or two, but there was nothing wrong with the logic--nothing that helped explain Laura's conduct either. I nodded. "Okay, Mark, can you accept the fact that Laura adored her father very much and that her mother never totally accepted her in her life. Laura was something of an interruption in her routine--not that she didn't love Laura, but she didn't quite know what to do with her." I'd been on a "Doctor Jamison" and "Mr. Archer" diet for a long time, but I'd forgotten why I'd insisted on her addressing me so formally. I let the more familiar use of my first name slide without comment. "Yeah," I replied, "I can believe that. The first time I met them, I sensed a...uh...remoteness in Laura's mother. I was never really sure I had her attention even when she was looking straight at me. That impression didn't change much after a number of meetings." Doctor Jamison nodded. "Anything more?" she asked. "Well," I said reflectively, "her father was much the same, except that where her mother was retiring, her father was almost belligerent in his aloofness. I always thought he liked to dominate his family and everything around him." I thought for a long moment. "And, for what it's worth, I did see a certain closeness between him and Ruth. It was nothing to overt--nothing to comment on, but in retrospect, I can see there were signs the were closer than one would expect." I let more memories build in my mind. "The curious thing is I don't recall Laura's mother ever objecting to Ruth standing closer than she was to Laura's father...for instance. I'd have to expect an affair lasting that long would not have escaped her notice, but she never reacted to it that I saw." I waved my right hand at the doctor to show her I was finished dredging up old memories. "Correct," the doctor said shortly, "but it's more than that. As far as Laura remembers, her Aunt Ruth took over much of the functions of a mother while her mother confined herself to her poetry writing and the social club circuit. Until this weekend, Laura has successfully suppressed a deep-seated suspicion she is actually "Aunt" Ruth's child. A suspicion she is actually Ruth's daughter was one of the reasons she was so distraught when Ruth died." I digested that for a moment. I could see if I had been in Laura's place, that kind of confusion would eat at me. "Shouldn't it be possible to find out?" I asked, more or less rhetorically. Doctor Jamison nodded. "As a part of Laura's treatment, her need to give herself some finality on that, she'll be asking for a DNA analysis. Her mother and father are balking--Laura talked to them Saturday--but she and I have discussed the phone call and we both came away with the impression their reluctance is more contrariness than anything else. I think they'll come around and we'll have a resolution to that fairly easily and relatively quickly...and indications are Laura will be able to set aside her fear she was Ruth's baby." I nodded. "Sounds like a plan," I said irreverently. "Indeed it is," Doctor Jamison said primly. "But the waters get a little muddy from here on," she warned. "Laura's father and aunt did not, apparently, think a young girl would understand and remember her father coming out of Ruth's room with his clothing disarranged and, on one occasion, undressed to the waist. In fact, although she did have memories from her earlier years, Laura didn't make the connection until she was a teenager and far more sophisticated than a four-year-old, but she clearly recognized the signs of a sexual affair by the time she was thirteen or fourteen. Even then, it seems her father and aunt paid only slight lip service to attempts to conceal their relationship." The doctor looked at me expectantly. "So, Mark, from your delving into psychology this weekend, what do you suspect Laura's subconscious mind did with those separate and distinct feelings?" I tried to think. I wasn't sure what the doctor meant. "Okay, Laura was unsure of her status within the family?" I asked. Doctor Jamison nodded. Beside me, Laura stirred. So far, she'd allowed the doctor and me to talk without interruption. I turned my body in my chair to face her more directly. "It was worse than that, honey," she said. "There were lots of times I cried myself to sleep when I was in my teens because I didn't know who I was." "Well, we'll know shortly and then...then you can slay that demon, don't you think?" I asked gently. Laura hesitated and nodded tentatively. "I think so...yes," she said quietly. "Good," I said confidently. One problem solved. "So you also looked up to your father at the same time you knew he was doing something wrong?" Laura nodded. I thought for a while. I held up my left hand, cupped as if holding a quantity of some substance. "He was your father...you loved him dearly...but he was doing something that was hurtful." I lifted my right hand as if it held the hurt. "You loved him...you hated what he was doing? Am I close here?" I made juggling motions with my hands. Laura nodded and I saw Doctor Jamison from the corner of my eye joining in the general nodding session. I frowned. "I don't know where to go from there," I told the doctor. "How does that tie in to anything Laura is doing or thinking today?" Doctor Jamison beamed. She was needed. "Mark, did you come across a Professor Westermarck and the process of "imprinting" in your reading?" I hesitated. "Something about birds being imprinted with the false idea that a human was one of their parents?" "Close, Mark. Some of the early studies into the concept of imprinting were done with animals and, more specifically, chickens, geese and a few other species of birds. One researcher went so far as to fly hang gliders and ultra-light aircraft with a flock of geese because the flying action of the ultra-light mimicked what birds do on long distance migrations. "But it applies to human beings also. Your baby imprinted on you, as her father, and on Laura, her mother, probably within hours or days of being born. It doesn't stop there though. A baby, then a toddler, child, teen, and a young adult do not stop observing and learning from their parents. Most of it is unconscious...or controlled by the subconscious mind. You can think of the unconscious mind as mankind's connection with our instinctive, primitive animalistic side--with me so far?" I nodded my head shortly. "Good. Now, remember the subconscious mind is where we store learned behavior. Sometimes what we learned clashes with what we recognize later is good and moral. When there is a conflict, it creates turmoil in the mind but it cannot always be resolved without intervention from the conscious mind. That's why people like me are around...and why hypnotherapy is one of my most valuable tools. When my patient is deeply relaxed and focused on me, I can bypass the conscious mind and speak directly to the subconscious mind." Doctor Jamison seemed quite proud of herself. Her words were slow and considered. She was doing her best to explain things in layman's terms, as I had demanded weeks ago. "Laura loves you, Mark, and does so very deeply. It's difficult for you to accept that now and she understands that. You need to know also that she sees you as a very focused, dynamic, and forceful man...a very powerful one. That's not an exaggeration at all, from what I've learned about you over the past few weeks. Can you appreciate that fact, Mark?" I knew I had a slight frown on my face. I was an engineer who had developed into a businessman. My position required some degree of hardness and ruthlessness, but I took great pains not to bring my job home with me. "I understand it intellectually," I told the doctor. I glanced at Laura. "But I'm not sure how that translates into anything dealing with our problems. I've never treated Laura or Alyssa in any way like I run my business. I made sure I didn't, as a matter of fact." "That doesn't keep her from recognizing you as such, Mark," she said. "She could not avoid seeing those qualities in you, if for nothing else but the fact that your company is frequently a matter for discussion by people in the business community here in town and Laura was a part of that community until...recently." I nodded my agreement. "Okay, Mark, here's where things take a sharp turn." Doctor Jamison took a deep breath. Laura tensed beside me. "Mark, you have to remember that logic, as our reasoning minds use it, does not exist in the unconscious mind, okay?" I shrugged. She was the expert. "Well, let's just throw it out there," she said. "In her subconscious mind, Mark, Laura identifies your status in the community as equivalent or exceeding what her hard-driving father had when she was young." The doctor looked at me closely. Laura was watching my reactions intently, anxiously. Her fingers were twisting about each other with her agitation. I kept still for a long moment while I thought. I did not like the direction my thoughts were going. I cleared my throat. "Laura sees me...or did see me...as taking her father's place?" I ventured. The doctor shook her head vigorously. "No!" she said emphatically. "It's nothing like that." "Then would someone please explain it to me?" I asked impatiently. "Laura saw you as a hard-driving...a domineering man...as her father was," the doctor said slowly. "But she also saw...on a deep level it was vividly imprinted on her mind...that her father was having an affair. That was normal, if you will, in Laura's instinctive mind." I tried to absorb that. I turned to Laura. "You thought I was having an affair?" I demanded. "That's why you were unfaithful?" I was incredulous. My temper, and I have a bad one, was dangerously near ignition. "Just what the hell made you think that?" "No, that's not it, Mark," Doctor Jamison interjected. I waited, half-turned toward Laura but twisting around so I could see the doctor too. "You see...on an unconscious level, Mark...always remember it was nothing she consciously considered at all...Laura's instincts were telling her you should be having an affair." I didn't say a word. My mind was in turmoil. Doctor Jamison wet her lips. "Mark, she saw that as what successful, powerful men did. If you had had an affair, there's every chance she would have looked the other way. If she'd caught you with another woman and could not ignore it, she'd have forgiven you almost immediately, no matter what her conscious mind was telling her. Her mother's acquiescence...or indifference...had already been implanted upon her too." I frowned. "But you weren't cooperating, Mark," the doctor told me. "You were so clearly not having an affair, even Laura's subconscious mind could not interpret any late meetings, business dinners, or any of the myriad of business meetings as anything but exactly what they were." I looked at her stolidly. "So, instead, she had an affair?" I said facetiously. "Exactly," Doctor Jamison said firmly. I could feel my eyes widen in shock. The doctor continued talking while an icy fierceness engulfed me. I struggled for control. "Her subconscious mind knew...quote, unquote...successful, powerful families participated in infidelity. When you did not--" I was on my feet without knowing I was going to rise. "This is bullshit," I said carefully. "There's nothing here but some crap designed to give my wife a free pass for screwing around and betraying our marriage, not to mention me and our daughter." I turned and was through the door before Doctor Jamison or Laura recovered from the shock of my abrupt, almost violent movement and harsh words. I didn't stop until I was safely enclosed inside my big SUV. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 06 Laura's Story: I stand in front of my mirror, staring wonderingly at me. I am as I've always been, if the image is to be believed. I'm still 5'5" tall; I have the same shoulder-length brunette hair, and green eyes. My complexion is still creamy smooth, though I'll be thirty years old this Fall. Those faint little freckles are still there across the bridge of my nose. When I take this dress off, I'll see the same 36C breasts I've had since Alyssa was born. The left one droops the tiniest bit...it's a tad lower on my chest than the right. Mark has always said he can't see it. Both of them were perfect to him. I wish they were but I know different. My hips sweep out from a narrow waist in a gentle arc. Mark used to love to sweep his hands down my sides and over the curvature of my hips and on down my thighs. He used to like to just watch me walk around. He said only a beautiful woman could glide over the floor, swaying the way I did. He doesn't say that anymore. I don't know who I am these days. I look in my eyes in the mirror and try to see but they show me nothing. I cannot explain to Mark how much I hurt because I have caused him such deep pain. The shame of sleeping with another man is constantly on my mind; I can't shake it. If there were some way of explaining to my husband, my love, how I truly feel, I would do it. He won't listen to me though. I'm afraid I've hurt him too much. We haven't talked much since that day when Mark walked out of the doctor's office--just briefly, and about things to do for, or with, Alyssa. I don't know what to say to him anyway. Doctor Jamison says I need to let my guilt slide away but I don't know how to do that. I am guilty...guilty of cheating on Mark, and Alyssa too. My God, the memories of what I said to him the last night I was with that Brian haunt me day and night. I can't sleep without hearing those awful words again. I don't deserve a man like Mark. He's right to have pushed me away the way he has. ******** I can't explain how those long months when I was seeing Brian seem so unreal to me. It was as if I had pillows for shoes--the ground didn't feel solid under my feet, except that...at the same time, in my head, I saw me walking down the edge of an endless razor blade. It was like if I made the slightest misstep, I would cut my feet to ribbons...and I would fall...and then I would die. That was how I saw my life. How do I explain the fog that filled my mind for so long? I couldn't think. I couldn't reason. When Mark talked to me, all I heard were incomprehensible sounds that were lost in the screeching noises already filling me. I wanted to hear him but I could not. It's so very hard to remember the things I did. I try; I need to comprehend them so I can get better but there's nothing to hold on to. Everything that went on in those days...in the months; they feel like they happened to someone else...except I was there...watching me do them. Doctor Jamison nods when I say these things. She says she understands what I talk about, but she can't really. No one can. Sometimes, it's like I will explode and all the pieces of me will fly apart to lay scattered on the ground. I don't know where all this will end. I think I will end some day and then things will be peaceful again. ******** It's been three months now...three months since Mark and I talked to Doctor Jamison in her office. I'm better now. I'm not afraid anymore when Doctor Jamison wants to put me into what she calls a light trance. She can do that very quickly now. She doesn't snap her fingers or anything like that stuff you see on stage, but I can focus so much better now and she can ask anything she wants. I'm not embarrassed by anything she might dredge up anymore. She's found so much and later, when she brings me out of it, she makes me discuss whatever she talks with me about when I'm under. Sometimes, when I just talk about it outside of deep relaxation, it goes away like it never was actually there to begin with. I don't understand how that can be, but Doctor Jamison says not to worry about it; it's just my mind dealing with whatever it was and resolving it. She says that's why she brings those issues up. It's so I can consciously face them and put them away like clothes I no longer want to wear...clothing I don't need any longer. It does feel good to set them aside. I feel fresh and clean again...but the hurt always closes back in when I think about my little girl and my husband. "Baby steps," Doctor Jamison tells me. Big problems don't get solved easily, she says. It takes time and lots of work. There are times Doctor Jamison has to help me deal with a problem in a different way. Like with my father and mother...Doctor Jamison talked them into coming down here from Albany for a week. It took all I had to face my father and tell him how bad he made me feel when I saw him come out of Aunt Ruth's room with his shirt outside his pants and stuff. I told him that when I saw Aunt Ruth in that black camisole, kissing and hugging him...I told him I wanted to hurt him when I saw that. Didn't he know it was wrong? I asked him why--but I really was screaming at him. I made my father cry. I never saw him cry before. I yelled at my mother too. Why did she let him do it? Didn't she ever think how horrible it made me feel, knowing my mother was a cuckquean but not able to do anything about it. Why didn't she do something? I didn't really realize how old my Dad and Mom were getting to be until I watched them cry in front of me. I couldn't take it. I kneeled down between their chairs and wrapped my arms around both of them. I just wanted them to love me and to love each other. We cried together and then Doctor Jamison talked quietly with all three of us for a long time. Mom, Dad, and I talked until we were all exhausted. Mom told me how she found out early on she just had no sex drive at all. She told me she just couldn't get past the indignity of the sex act, the total exposure of one's self, the sweat and messiness. She said when she had me was one of the few times she got beyond all that and made wonderful love to Daddy. She said she was sorry but there'd been nothing she could do about it. She'd been the one to suggest my Daddy go elsewhere. Her sister had been widowed the year before, and was a lonely woman. It had seemed like the ideal fit; her sister had always had a lively libido and was suffering without her man. Daddy was a healthy male and effectively had no woman. Mama told me everyone had been very careful at first but it was hard to make sure of where I was all the time. She was so sorry I had found out. Daddy was too. He got down on his knees and held me while he begged me to forgive him. I told him I did, and it was the truth. It wasn't a huge brick wall I was running headfirst into anymore. Doctor Jamison talked to Mom and Dad a few hours a day for the rest of that week. When they left to go home, they both looked a lot happier than I've seen them in too many years. Mom was hanging on Dad like she was a newlywed--like I used to look when Mark and I walked together. ******** I'm stronger now. It's been almost six months since Doctor Jamison first put me under hypnosis. I see things so much clearer. There are so many things that I did, said, and felt which I now see were so incredibly stupid. I can't imagine how I let myself get into those situations, for one thing. Why in the world I let myself get talked into going out drinking with those girls...I just don't know. That was the start of it, I think. Doctor Jamison gave me a list of books to read and it was a revelation to me. Alcohol takes a woman and turns her inside out. Like one of them says, it's the most effective date rape drug in the world. It deadens the thinking processes and lowers inhibitions to the point of non-existence. Heavy drinking is such a self-destructive thing to do too. It makes the body react hard in order to throw off the poisons and it alters the body's chemistry. Doctor Jamison has helped me figure out I was drinking hard so I could make myself numb and not have to deal with the things I was feeling. It didn't work. It only made me more vulnerable to Brian. It made it easy for him to get me to sleep with him even though I really didn't like him. I knew he was one of those men who think every woman is a "score," and who feel nothing for the woman as a human being. I knew he was a scummy thing to begin with and I knew it every time I let him do things to me. Doctor Jamison and I think that I was degrading myself to bring myself down to where I figured I would be equal with my Mom and Dad and Aunt Ruth. They were the all of my life for so long. I guess something inside me was saying they were the best I could be and so I tried to be them. It wasn't working; I knew better from being around my dear husband and daughter. That was why it was tearing me up. It was hard breaking that conditioning but I'm here finally. We also found out that a part of me thought Alyssa was a rival for Mark's affection. That was stupid but it made me feel resentful whenever she and Mark were around me. Doctor Jamison, and a specialist she called in, say it appears to have started when Alyssa was born...well, a little after. Many people call it postpartum depression...which is really just a depression that happens right after childbirth. I don't know why all that emphasis is put on it because it's not fair. Anyway, I never got close to any postpartum psychosis, thank goodness. There was never a moment when I wanted to hurt myself or my baby. What did happen was that I was just so tired, exhausted all the time, but I couldn't sleep either. And I was so moody all the time. I thought Mark didn't love me anymore but I didn't know why I felt that way. He never did stop holding me and telling me how much he loved me. But it was like I was so remote from him and everybody else too. It didn't help that I had all those things in my head about Mom and Dad either. I was a mess. I wanted to be a good mother but I was so sensitive, I couldn't nurse Alyssa without crying from the pain. When I started getting irritable to boot, well...Mark took to giving Alyssa her formula and changing her more often than I did and walking around with her in his arms when she fussed. I don't think I got up a single time at 2:00 AM for her feeding; it was always my baby girl's wonderful father. I know now how special that was. Girls I talk to say they'd have given their left foot if their man would have done that even once or twice a week when their babies were small. Doctor Jamison says my hormones probably got messed up too. I know I didn't want Mark to touch me for the longest time. When I did, he didn't notice at first and it took forever for us to get back together. Even when we did, it seemed like I was still kind of holding back but I'm not sure I have memories of that or whether I just recognize it in retrospect. Then I let that idiot Brian seduce me and things went all crazy for me...or it went all crazy and I let Brian do things to me...I don't know which. I'm comfortable thinking about it that way. I know it's not very...precise...but it doesn't bother me and Doctor Jamison says that's the important thing. ******** I get so mad at myself sometimes. How could I have been so stupid? Most of the things I did back when I was drinking and running around with that Brian don't make any sense to me, looking back at them. It's been eight and a half months since my husband and I sat down with Doctor Jamison to talk about my first session under hypnosis--"deep relaxation hypnotherapy" is what Doctor Jamison likes to call it. She gets irritated sometimes because she says any hack can hypnotize someone on a stage. But it takes a professional to be able to help people with their problems using those techniques. She's helped me with methods of hypnotizing myself and taught me how to pull hidden thoughts out of my subconscious mind when I feel something bothering me. She has also helped me figure out the signs when something is bothering me. It's really very easy and it's so frustrating I didn't know how before I messed everything up so bad. Sometimes the shame of what I did with that Brian almost overwhelms me. Whatever they did among themselves, my Mom and Dad...and Aunt Ruth also (she helped mold me too)...well, none of them raised me to behave like a hussy. Certainly they were never so obvious in what they did. Doctor Jamison and I have figured out part of me was rebelling at what I was doing. We found out that I was escalating...her word, not mine...anyway, escalating my drinking and promiscuity so Mark would find out and stop me. That was so self-destructive and so demeaning at the same time, I can't believe it. Not only that, I knew darn well that one of Mark's companies was a large-scale investigative agency. I was going to be caught one day, no matter what I did. Being stupid about it just hurried it along. We haven't found out yet why I picked that path to stopping myself from the cheating lifestyle I'd fallen into. Doctor Jamison has to keep reminding me the subconscious mind doesn't process information in a linear...that's her word again...a linear fashion like when I'm awake. That sucks, but all this therapy is making me so much more aware of myself...I know I will never again find myself slipping down into such a downward spiral. I know too much about myself and how to watch myself now. I can share what I learn with others too. Last week, I started working with the rape hotline downtown and I think Shirley...she's one of that gaggle of girls who used to go out drinking with me...I think she is going to get some counseling for her drinking problem. I told her I would take her to an AA meeting and get her a sponsor and everything. She burst out crying, she was so grateful to find someone who cared just the least, little bit. I felt so good that I could help her. I'm going to stay with her the whole way. Me? I tried to sip a little wine the other day and it almost made me sick. ******** Christmas has come and gone--almost a year since I first learned about hypnosis. I see Alyssa two or three times a week. Mark lets me see her anytime I want; all I have to do is call him. It's not like living with her and my husband, but it's better than nothing. She'll be five in a few months. She's growing up so fast, and I'm not there. Doctor Jamison and I have very little to talk about anymore when I go to see her. I feel so animated and excited just to be alive all the time now. I really feel good about myself. I know I did so many bad things but it's like another Laura did them. I'm not the same woman who was so stupid that I drove my husband away...not any more, I'm not. I'm restless a lot lately. I haven't made love to my husband for so long. I want him so terribly much. I won't be whole again until I'm back with him and my baby. I talked to Doctor Jamison about it. I said I didn't think Mark loved me anymore and I didn't know what I could do about it. She asked me what gave me the idea he didn't love me and I told her how cold he was sometimes and how he wouldn't let me too near him or talk to him privately and stuff. She sniffed...she does that when she wants to act superior and all that...but I just stick out my tongue at her now. We only do that behind closed doors when no one can see us. She's closer to me than my mother was for so long...but even that has switched around. Mom called me the other day and was so happy on the phone. She and Dad were going on a cruise to Jamaica...to get reacquainted, she said. I was amazed. It seems Doctor Jamison's treatment, and some follow-on counseling back home, has awakened something in Mom she never expected. We cried for the longest time but it was a good cry. Well, anyway...I told Doctor Jamison I wanted to get my husband back but I didn't think I could. He didn't seem to care. After she got over her sniffing attack, she asked me if Mark had ever had his lawyer finish off the divorce. Mark had not done that, but I put that off to probably his lawyer saying it wouldn't look good to divorce a wife who was in therapy. Doctor Jamison almost sniffed again but she didn't. She asked me if she'd ever asked me for a dime to pay for all her valuable time we'd used up in the past year. She told me Mark could have stopped the therapy any time he wanted to by not paying for it, but he hadn't done that either. I knew that, but I hadn't focused on it like Doctor Jamison did. It made me think. She asked me when the last time was that Mark hadn't let me see Alyssa and, of course, he hadn't. She said I should think about those things. They didn't sound like what a man would do if he wanted to shut me away. Then I said I didn't think Mark would want me back since I'd been such a vulgar hussy and so mean to him and Alyssa. She snorted this time. I told her that was very impressive and we laughed about that. I think the world of Doctor Jamison. She's so cool and calm and everything all the time. She told me that Mark was a lot less concerned about the sex than he was about the deception and betrayal of our wedding vows. His pain was more about me abandoning the marriage than it was anything physical. I hadn't meant to do any of it. I knew that in my heart. If I'd been in control of myself, I wouldn't have done any of the things I did. It makes my skin crawl when I think of the cheap hotels we went to, the dives where we drank and danced until all hours of the night...and the sex. The sex bothers me a lot. Except for that six months or so, I've never allowed any man but Mark to even kiss me, other than a little peck on the cheek or something. All that's completely separate from the pain I caused Mark and my baby. I'm so terribly sorry about that too but I don't know how to apologize anymore than I already do anytime Mark will let me. Doctor Jamison asked me if Mark would come back to counseling with me. He undoubtedly had a lot of anger he needed to come to terms with, she said. She said if Mark knew I had found myself again...if he could be convinced I'd lost myself for a time but I was recovering now...then he should be willing to work on the marriage instead of getting out of it. I told her the last time I'd tried to talk to him about coming back to work with me and her, he hadn't even replied to my question. Doctor Jamison asked how long it had been and I had to think. It had been months. She said that a lot can change in just days, much less months. She also said Mark might be looking for a sign from me that I wanted to work with him to save what we had together, or better yet, find a way to move past what had split us and forge a new togetherness. Then I had to go because her next appointment had arrived. All that made me think. I found little things that stuck out in my mind about the way Mark wasn't really cutting me off nearly as bad as he might have. I caught him one time watching me as I walked away after I dropped Alyssa off. I thought...well, I may have been reading something into an expression that could also have been one of pain and suffering. I think I'll call him tonight. He's always home by 6:00 PM because he's taking care of Alyssa full time. After dinner, they play games or watch Disney Channel or read books or something. He's always in a good mood then. I think I'll call him and see if he will consider coming to some of my therapy sessions...maybe just to be there and see how I'm coming along. Maybe it will mean more to him. I hope it will. I want my man back. I want to be his wife and lover more than anything else in the world. If he will take me back, I know I'll be making my baby girl happy again because she'll have a full time mother again. First, I want my husband back. I'm going to fight to get him back. I will make him see I'm his woman. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 07 "I have a grandson," Carl announced. I glanced at him over the rim of the big mug of coffee. I had a feeling sometimes I was keeping Juan Valdez in business; the main office always had a huge urn of coffee brewed and I drank my share plus a little more. Lately, I had to switch to decaf in the afternoon or I went home to Alyssa with my nerves jangling and my fingers dancing on the steering wheel. Carl drank tea. I think he avoided most of my problems with the brew. "Yeah, I know," I replied. "Two of them...I've met them a couple of times." I had. Carl brought his wife and children, plus their offspring, to every family day picnic or dinner the firm sponsored. I was being facetious in saying I'd met them only twice. I'd actually watched his three granddaughters and two grandsons grow from tiny babies to young ladies and gentlemen. Carl was shaking his head. "No. I have three grandsons." I cocked my head to one side. This was something I didn't know. I didn't say anything. Carl had become one of my closest confidants over the past year and a half or so. He'd worked with me to detect and document my wife's infidelity and then quietly dismantled the team of investigators who'd done the work. There was no one left, save him and Maggie, my personal secretary and assistant, who knew all the details of the tragedy. "My daughter Janet's oldest boy, Zane has been institutionalized for years," Carl said quietly. "He's fifteen now." "I didn't know, Carl," I said softly. "I'm so sorry...I should have been more observant." I felt terrible. He waved it off casually. "Not at all," he replied. "He was already in treatment in Colorado when I came to work here...and he's unfortunately not a part of our daily lives any more, though we see him when we can." I nodded. I was still uncomfortable. I felt like I'd failed him somehow. "Zane's a big boy for his age...six feet tall already," Carl mused. "His weight goes up and down...he'll be up to 250 pounds for a while and then forget to eat for a long time and get down to 170 before you know it." Carl shifted in his seat; the leather seat squeaked under him with his movement. "Most of Zane's life isn't based in the here and now...he hears voices that worry him, confuse him and lead him into hurting others." Carl was watching the swirling liquid in his own mug as he moved his hand in slow circles. "He's physically very powerful; mentally...he's very immature and very hard to deal with. Some days he is a silly, sweet little ten-year-old boy. Other days, when he's in a paranoid stage, he's your worst nightmare. My daughter couldn't handle him; he's been bigger and stronger than she is since he was eleven and we went through the hell of having him confined to a treatment center." Carl stirred a mug of coffee that didn't need stirring. His face was moody. "We hope they can work with Zane and get him able to deal with his demons so he can survive on his own when he's grown, but there's no guarantee of that. He can tell the difference between the voices in his head and real people now; we have a lot of hope for him--he's responded well to some of the treatments." He coughed behind his hand, glancing around to me. "Have you seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind," boss?" he asked. I nodded. "Well," he said, "the doctors say that is Janet's child. If you want to understand my grandson Zane, that's the thing to see." I nodded again. My eyes were fixed on nothing against the far wall as I thought of the gut-wrenching scenes in that movie. I shook my head. "I'm so sorry, Carl," I said, not knowing what else to say. "I wish I'd known," I added. He shook his head in turn. "Nothing you can do," he said succinctly. "I'm not a man who can talk about such things just for the heck of it." For the first time in a long while, he swiveled his body around in his chair to face me directly. "Boss, I'm not ashamed of my grandson, though I don't talk about him to much of anyone. My wife and I don't talk about him because it brings up a lot of pain that we have to keep under control or we can't get through the day...you see what I mean?" I did and my face must have reflected the sympathy I felt for my senior vice president and friend. He looked away. "What I wanted to say is...well, it's not Zane's fault, you know? He didn't go out and decide one day for his mind to go sideways into a place where we couldn't reach him...couldn't help him." Carl cleared his throat a couple of times and took a long swallow of coffee before continuing. It gave me time to think too. "Boss," he said hesitantly, "you've let me into your life a little more than I ever expected. You've trusted me to run my share of the corporation my way too, and I appreciate that. I respect you more than anyone I've ever worked for and I think you respect me in return." I nodded. I did. "Thing is, boss," he began, "I just can't sit and watch--." I held up my hand to stop him. "It's not Laura's fault either?" I said quietly. He nodded, watching me closely to see my reaction. I sighed. Carl had brought home to me something I'd seen coming for a while. "Yeah, Carl, you're right," I said finally. "I still have a problem--no, more like a question-- why Laura didn't talk to me about some of the things that were bothering her but...well...I've done a lot of reading and I understand a lot more now." I chewed at the inside of my cheek for a bit. "I hear what you're saying, Carl. She didn't intend for her mind to start playing tricks on her but some of what she did was so...treacherous...I just..." My hands made a helpless gesture. Carl nodded his understanding. "But, Mark," he said softly, "can you let that go? Can you understand, deep down inside, that if she'd been in command of her faculties she would never have done any of those things? If she'd been the Laura you married, the Laura that I know, instead of a woman eaten away by things she couldn't understand and couldn't deal with...she'd never have been unfaithful. You know that...I know you do." He watched me struggle with it for a moment. I wanted to say yes, but the images of that last night kept flooding my mind. Curiously, the rage inside Laura that had burst forth that moment in Las Vegas had also brought her out of the trancelike fog she'd been in for so long. I'd gleaned at least that much from listening to Doctor Jamison. "Boss," Carl said smoothly, "if Laura had cancer and she was going through chemotherapy...and lost her hair and stuff...and she was down to skin and bones and was pale and weak...Boss, would you blame her for having her disease? Could you do that?" I sat frozen for a long time. I'd had some thoughts along this line, but Carl threw a vivid image at me--one I could not ignore or set aside. What he was requiring me to do was examine my core beliefs and wonder whether I was a real man or a Hollywood image of one. Did I want my pride (my ego?) and my instinctive revulsion at the thought of Laura having shared her body with another man to be the defining characters of my manhood? Either my thoughts were being pasted on a billboard on my forehead or Carl was far more perceptive than I'd known. "Mark," he said gently, "if you were just meeting a young divorced woman--call her, oh, I don't know...Laura?--and you were thinking of committing to a deep relationship with her, would you ask her...would you even be interested...in how many times she'd had sex before she met you, what kind of sex it was, and with whom? Would you?" he said challengingly. "I didn't think so," he concluded, seeing the answer on my face. In truth, those would be things that were none of my business--things that were part of Carl's "fictional" divorcee's private past. They were things a man marrying a divorcee would automatically get past. He'd live with her past as a matter of course and not feel any the worse; he'd feel no humiliation, no desire for retribution...if he were man enough. She'd live with his past too, comfortable that he was with her now, and not with the women he had been with. Abruptly, I was reminded of a few parties I'd gone to with one girlfriend I'd had before I met Laura. I didn't dwell on those wild gatherings--I hadn't thought of them in years--but some of the things I'd done at them weren't things I was terribly proud of. Laura had lived with those things, though she'd never known of them. They were part of who I was as surely as the high school football games I'd played in. They made me who I was; I'd learned what not to do...what to avoid...and what I didn't want to be. "Carl?" I asked, settling back into my comfortably cushioned executive chair. His eyebrows rose in question. "I know you have a degree in criminology, Carl...did you have a minor in applied psychology too?" I inquired with a small smile. He grinned and shook his head. "Nope," he said shortly, "but I was a cop for seventeen years, boss. You run into all kinds of stuff driving a radio car." His face stiffened. "My grandson taught me a lot of things too, Boss. I'm sorry to say I didn't start out the experience with him with as good a mindset as I have now. I--." I held up my hand to stop whatever he was going to say. "Don't beat yourself up for that, Carl," I said sympathetically. "I guess we all have to learn as we go through things...and I've learned today, my friend. I thank you," I said simply. "Nah," he said with a grin, "you were working your way down that road anyway; I just scooted you a little farther along and maybe a little quicker, that's all." The telephone rang at that moment, interrupting what I was going to say. It was Maggie, on the intercom. "Yes, Maggie?" I said, pressing the button to put the conversation on the speaker. "Mark...Laura is on the phone," she said quietly. I didn't react for a moment. "Put her through, would you please?" I said at length. I turned to apologize to Carl for taking the call, but he was already slipping through the side door leading to his office. He gave me a thumbs up sign before disappearing. ******** "Doctor," I said quietly. "I've found ways to deal with almost everything to do with this whole episode, but I still have problems accepting why my wife couldn't have talked to me about what was bothering her right at the beginning. I might not have understood immediately, but she could have at least said something." The doctor looked at me contemplatively for a while. I know at the back of her mind was the fact that I'd gotten up and walked out more than a year earlier when something she'd said didn't sit well with me. "I'm not going anywhere," I told her with a wry smile. Her eyes widened briefly. She hadn't expected me to be able to read her. She returned my smile. "She couldn't have articulated them well enough even to make sense to herself, Mark," the doctor said. "And that's assuming she noticed when the first bits of stray memories began to eat at her," she added. "Laura didn't have the tools to work with her feelings at that time either." "I do now," Laura interjected firmly. "I'll be talking to you about things that bother me if I have to kick down the bathroom door while you're...while you're having a bowel movement if I have to," she concluded. I blinked, taken aback. "Uh...I don't think you'll have to go to that extreme," I muttered. The two women laughed at the embarrassed flush creeping up my neck to engulf my ears. It was good to hear Laura's cheerful chuckling. It had been a long time since I'd heard it. She squeezed my hand. It was captured in both of hers and she was holding it tightly. We were sitting close against each other, our arms touching for most of their length. I was comfortable again with the intimacy. I'd crossed a barrier with Carl's help and I wasn't going back. "As Laura said, Mark, she has the tools now to deal with you and with any stray quandaries that escape from her subconscious. There's no guarantee, but she's so much better prepared now. It's taken a long time, Mark, for Laura to come to this point and there are still things we need to explore, but she's exorcised her major demons. There will be things you need to address as a couple but Laura and I believe there will never be a confluence of so many problems that cascade down on her at the same time. "How about you though, Mark?" the doctor asked. "Are you okay with what we've discussed?" I took a deep breath. "Doctor Jamison, with the help of a good friend, I've worked through most of the...issues." I smiled briefly at the doctor. I'd objected to that word a few months ago. "Briefly, my friend shared the story of his young grandson who shares the same mental disorder they showed in the movie "A Beautiful Mind" and what Carl's family has gone through with his grandson made me face my anger and put it in perspective. The doctor nodded her empathy with me...and with Carl's family. "I had to reevaluate a lot of things," I continued, "and I let go of the pent up anger and disgust I felt." I thought for a minute. "I'm not saying I'm healed, but it's no longer the central focus that I'm holding on to," I added. I turned to face my wife. "There will be times, I'm sure, when events will get me down and I'll let some of the meanness slip through and I'll hurt you with the words I use, Laura. But I'll get better too...and I won't stop working on that, okay?" Laura's eyes brimmed with unshed tears. She could only nod and pat my hand. "Honey," I said, "Some part of me still wants to say there is no excuse, no reason for what you did and I should not allow you back into my heart...my life, but I refuse to give in to that urge." I looked at my wife's pretty face as she watched me. The last time we'd been together in Doctor Jamison's office, she'd still been weak...still recovering...and she'd been weepy. She'd only infrequently been able to meet my gaze decisively. Now she was again the woman I married...perhaps even a little stronger. Sometimes the weld is stronger than the original material. "I think...I think if I can tell you that I can forgive what you did...but at the same time if you understand that I cannot absolve you of those things...then I can move on with less difficulty." I halted, waiting for someone to say something but no one did. "I just don't think that we can behave like all this never happened, Laura. There's been too much pain and suffering...on everyone's part...for that to happen. I can get by that...but..." "But I want to use these horrible...events...in focus too, Mark," Laura said delicately. "I can't forget them, but if I use them, make them work for me as reminders of what I can never descend into again, they'll be tools for me. Do you see?" I did. I nodded in understanding. "Is there anything else, Mark?" Doctor Jamison had been quiet for a while. I breathed deeply, shrugging my shoulders to loosen them and let them settle again. "I think some men will see me as a cuckold in the ancient sense of the word, a wimp to be scorned by every man I meet," I said slowly. I wasn't used to opening up to that extent before an individual I knew as poorly as I knew our counselor. "I will have to deal with those men on terms they will understand. Few of them will be men whose opinions I value...but still, I'll have to deal with them." Doctor Jamison was shaking her head in negation. "I don't think you will, Mark," she said decisively. "I don't see any wimps in my practice. Wimps, whether male or female, accept what abuse their spouses dish out without objection." The doctor looked at Laura and let a grin curl her lips for a brief instant before returning to me. "Laura and I have discussed...things," she said, "and if there's ever been a man who took decisive action, excepting only some overt violence, to put an end to something he would not tolerate, that man is you." She said firmly. She paused with her hand half-uplifted. She wasn't through making her point. "I've said this to you before, Mark, but there is a side to you that you don't show often, and almost never to Laura...I suspect never to your child. You can be utterly ruthless and unforgiving to someone who wrongs you...and Laura understands that at a deep level now. If nothing else, if no other understanding has come from this, she knows you will never accept conduct like what she exhibited back then." She shuddered delicately. "Oh, and I don't think there will be many who will think poorly of you," she added. "I think they'll see your compassion and comment on the love between you two rather than dwell on the circumstances that brought you to where you are." She looked at me and grinned. "Still...if you have to challenge some...slime ball...to a duel...then go for it," she concluded. "I'll hold your coat while you beat the slime ball to a bloody pulp, honey," Laura said softly, "and we'll walk home together, okay?" There was nothing I could do but kiss the lips my woman offered me. ******** I was having trouble buckling the car seat into the cab of the truck. It wasn't easy. Trucks aren't made with small children or car seats in mind but I got it done eventually. Alyssa had been waiting for a while, almost exhausting her patience in the process. She threw herself into the protective seat as soon as I finished. "Hurry, Daddy," she said, urging me to secure her lap belt and shoulder straps. "Shoes off or on?" I teased. For once, my 5-year-old daughter hesitated. She was older now but she still loved the tickle game that inevitably followed taking her shoes off. She really didn't like the car seat anymore but she was still so small; I needed the reassurance she would be safe if I screwed up driving. "On," she said finally. "Let's go now, Daddy!" she insisted. I smiled. "I'm hurrying as fast as I can, honey," I told her. I closed the passenger side door, ran around the front end so she could see I really was, and climbed up into the cab. In a few minutes, we were on the open road and rolling fast out into the county west of the city. We were on our way to Alyssa's Uncle Dan's house and we can't get there fast enough to suit either of us. Laura has been staying with her brother, Dan, for the past year and a half while we worked on getting our relationship back on track. Today, my young daughter and I are bringing her mother and my wife home where she belongs. ******** Epilogue That wasn't the end of it of course. Laura and I still had many, many trust issues to sort through and deal with. I know I watched everything she did for a long time. I'm sure sometimes the suspicion showed in my eyes but Laura always took the time to explain whatever I asked about. I'm quite sure she resented it on some level; she wouldn't have been human if she hadn't, but she took it in stride. But then again, perhaps she felt it was something she had to do. Two years ago, she called me almost in hysterics, pleading with me to understand she was stuck in traffic and she couldn't get home when she'd told me she would be. I had to help her calm down a little so she could drive safely. I could see on Transguide there was a big pileup on the Interstate ahead of where she was and there was heavy traffic backed up for miles in both directions. With the help of a map website, I suggested she take the next exit and told her which ground streets to take which would get her home more easily than waiting out the traffic jam. The point is that her anxiety made me less concerned. I've worked my way past most of my suspicions now, but neither of us will ever forget why we are apprehensive about unexplained absences and delays. I, by the way, am careful to let her know when I'm unexpectedly delayed too. We don't talk about why anymore. ******** I sit here in the dark in our living room, with only the moonlight shining its ghostly light through the side window. I like this time of night; there are no traffic sounds, no hurry and bustle outside to intrude. There's only the softness of the nighttime; it enfolds me in its peacefulness. Lyin' Eyes Ch. 07 Cradled in my arms is my youngest daughter. Marissa is only four months old, still a tiny, wriggling bundle of love. I almost always get up for the early morning feedings, loving the time it gives me with my child. She's asleep now, full of her mother's milk I warmed from the refrigerator. She is so precious. There is nothing that can restore a man's faith in humanity quite like holding a sleeping baby in his arms. It was that way with my son too. Chris was born a year after Laura and I got back together after repairing our broken relationship. He's a healthy three-year-old now, well past the "terrible twos" that never seemed so terrible to me. Alyssa is almost ten and mature beyond her years. I can already see in her the young woman she will be far too quickly for my peace of mind. She's gradually leaving childhood behind, though she'll always be my baby deep in my heart. She helps with Chris and Marissa both and loves them dearly. She cried so happily the first time Laura let her hold baby Marissa. I love all three so much I almost cannot bear it sometimes. I didn't even know until Chris was born that a father's love isn't a thing that cannot be measured or divided. It is a thing that expands to encompass all of a man's children; certainly none of mine lack for any part of my love. It is there for all of them. "There you are," I hear Laura say tenderly. There's no need for more words. She's found me sitting in the dimness, my eyes swimming with the tears I let no one else see. I give up my little daughter to her mother, but only for a moment. Laura sits down on my lap and folds herself against me as she holds our daughter. She kisses me gently, searching out my lips and touching her fingertips to the salty droplets on my cheekbones. In the darkness, my wife and I sit, holding our youngest child...born of a love we almost lost. End