83 comments/ 63195 views/ 20 favorites The Secrets We Keep From Each Other By: chilleywilley This story is about two ordinary people who are struggling to save a marriage and their family. Life is what you make of it, and they are doing the best they can. If you can't accept forgiveness and redemption, you won't like it. Copyright, Chilleywilley, January, 2012. Noone has the right to publish this story elsewhere * My family is an ordinary one, living in a small town in Pennsylvania. Our physical appearances are not remarkable, clean, reasonably well groomed. I'm not a wealthy guy, I manager the local sewage treatment plant so you could say I'm big in shit. The work is interesting, challenging, and I'm home most nights. Unlike many of the characters in these stories, for my wife and I, sex is a part of our lives, but a fairly minor part. Neither of us was a virgin when we met, but then we weren't promiscuous in our single days either. Now a days many jobs are insecure, automation, outsourcing, he quest for cheap labor mean almost any job can disappear overnight. Wastewater treatment jobs are different. With a high school education you can take courses to improve your knowledge and by experience and testing get certified for higher valued jobs in wastewater treatment. In this way the Mayors' brother can't leave his job as an insurance salesman and run the plant. I have reasonable job security. My wife worked for several years before the children came along, but chose to be a stay at home mom. It meant sacrificing a second income leaving us strapped for money, but it was well worth it. She did a very good job. Our two daughters (Stacy and Annie) are now in middle school and high school respectively, both very good students but now not needing so much guidance. It was time for Ann to rejoin the workforce, fulfill her life, and more pragmatically, earn money to help pay for their college education. She had a tough time of it as this is a lousy time to look for a job, especially if you haven't been employed for years. After almost a year of ego shattering cycle of search and rejection, sending resumes that were never acknowledged, herself esteem suffered. She shed her dreams of what a good job would be, rejections beat her down until she would take about any honorable work she could find. At last she was hired by an insurance company for a public relations position. Like so many people, she didn't particularly like the work, mostly because it was to obscure and/or justify actions by the insurance company that the general public thinks are somewhere between wrong and despicable. However from a human perspective, she liked her co workers, liked the idea she is supporting her family financially, and liked being recognized for doing a good job. Her ego was at a low ebb due to the horrible job search, and maybe that was a lingering problem. I don't think our sex life fully recovered from the hit it took during those discouraging months. Part of any job is fitting in and making connections to others at the job, so it was no surprise when she mentioned that the girls at work were going out for a pub supper and a few beers Thursday night, and did I mind if she went along? "Sure, you'll enjoy yourself, you should go. Tell me where you'll be, who you'll be with, and when to expect you be home, just so I don't worry. Anyone I know going as well?" "Well as it turns out, Vicky Freeman works in accounting and she's going. They go to Finn McCool's and I should be home by 8 or 8:30. " Finn McCool's is a nice Irish pub near her job, about a 35-40 minute drive from here. The pub was named for Finn McCool, a mythical Irish Warrior, of Paul Bunion stature. Vicky and her husband Charles are casual friends of ours...we get along better with Charles than with Vicky. Vicky imagines what is good for Vicky is good for everyone, but she doesn't bother me that much, I didn't marry her. Don't misunderstand, they're good, upstanding people, just not my cup of tea. Nothing more was said until she reminded me Wednesday night: "Remember, I won't be here for supper tomorrow night, you're on your own with the girls." "I remember. You have a good time. I know you won't drink much, but if it should creep up on you, don't get in the car. Call me and I'll come get you." "Right, like I'm going to get drunk in front of my new co workers!" "No no no, of course not! You don't drink much, and that's a good thing, but because you don't, you haven't much tolerance for it. I just mentioned it because I care about you, and don't want you to hesitate to call me. I'll think better of you, if that's possible, when you can admit to yourself that you shouldn't drive." The kids and I had fun. We made homemade spaghetti and meatballs which involves mixing handling cold hamburg, cheese, garlic, breadcrumbs, parsley, and raw egg with bare hands. Stacy, our youngest liked to do it first of all because she liked homemade meatballs, and secondly because she could complain "Eeeuuu! This is awful! Like cold puke!" while she mixed and shaped the meat balls. Annie did the salad, salad dressing, and set the table, I drank a beer and chopped bell peppers and onions. I delegated Annie to mince the garlic cloves. "Aw come on Pop, my hands stink of garlic for a couple of days!" "Well that's good thing, don't you know. You know why in the old days gentlemen use to kiss a lady's hand, don't you?" "No" "Well, first they would take her fingers in their hand, and feel for calluses, so they would knew if the woman did useful work or not, and then as the bend down to kiss the back of the hand, they sniffed to see if they could cook...they also only kissed the right hand." "You're kidding! Why only the right hand? "The left hand was 'unclean', their toilet hygiene left something to be desired Daad! That's awful!. Is that true?" "The part about the left hand is true. The rest, I have no Idea, but it makes sense doesn't it? If you are wealthy, you might not want a lower class woman, as a middle class person, a woman who can work and cook is a desirable woman. So for out class of people, if a lad smells garlic on your fingers, it's a good thing!" "Maybe a hundred years ago, but not so much these days, Pop." The wife came home right on time, smelling of beer, but sober, and happily regaled me with a recap of the evening. The girls nights out became an every other week event, with Vicky and the girls from work at Finn McCool's . By early summer I noticed she was coming home later and later each time. So when she said she would be home at 10:30 or 11:00PM, I had a problem with that. "I can see having supper and a couple of hours in a bar with friends. But four or five hours of sitting around chatting seems excessive, even for a bunch of women. " "Well, I was telling you when I expected to get home, not asking your permission." I picked up my ears! If I understood her right, she just said 'my way or the highway'. "So it is just six or seven women including Vicky, Mary Ryan, June Russell, and a few others, and no men at McCool's?" She paused just a second before answering a bit defensively. "...Yah, that's right. Well, of course there are men at McCool's, just not with us. After all these years, don't you trust me?" "Of course I do, Ann, because the day we can't trust each other to tell the truth, that's the day we're in trouble, isn't it." That Thursday I wanted to drop by McCool's and see what was going on, but frankly it would look better if I was with someone, spread the blame so to speak, I called Charlie Freeman, Vicky's husband, to see if he wanted to go have a beer with me. I offered my eldest as a free babysitter. "Geez Chris, I'd like to go, but Vicky and I are wallpapering the kitchen tonight. Just about any other night would be good, though." "Vicky hangs paper?" I was surprised because I didn't think she had much capacity for work. "Well, she doesn't like getting up on the ladder, so she's doing the cutting and pasting, and I'm hanging it on the wall and trimming. It's slow work, but it goes better with the two of us. The kitchen is a mess, we've got it cleared out, so we're ready to go and eager to get it finished." We said a few more words and rang off. So Vicky wasn't with them tonight. Since I set up the wife's I-phone, I can go on line and track about where it is. She had location services off, so I just had the cell towers to locate it. At 7 PM, she was over by the Delaware River, nowhere near McCool's. I went on Google Street view, and there were three restaurants in the general area. Well, I could get in the car and go looking for her, but I probably wouldn't find her. Besides I really didn't think the worst of her. Just about then Stacy was struggling with a math problem, and while I could solve the problem, I wasn't able to explain it to her in a way that she understood. I told her to pick up her cell phone and call her Mom who's better at math and science than I am, and to put her on speaker phone, so if she didn't fully understand mom's explanation, maybe I would. It took a while for her to pick up, which didn't mean anything, but when she did, it was quiet on her end. No restaurant or pub sounds. She was irritated, trying unsuccessfully not to show it. She was curt in answering her daughter's question. I asked another question to clear up a point, getting no better treatment. Ann hung up after the usual 'Iove you's'. "Geez, what's with Mom! Like I'm only asking for help on school work." "Don't know. PMS?" "That'll be next week, Pops." I thought to myself 'Women always know these things, don't they.' An hour later, the older one was having trouble with her advanced placement chemistry, so she called her mom. It rang and rang until voice mail popped in. "That's funny, Pops, she never leaves her purse anywhere. She's ignoring me. I'll ring her again, then she'll know it's important." Ann picked up after a lot of rings. I wasn't on speaker phone, so I only heard Annie's side of the conversation. In short, it sounded like the wife was really irritated at the call, but ended up in a longish explanation of ionization in solutions. Ann's explanation was apparently not very clear, and in some regards wrong as she and Annie were going back and forth on it for a while. "Well, at least she's not pissed at just Stacy, she was pissey to me too. What's with her? She's been, like weird for a while now." So it wasn't just me. The girls noticed something was up with Mom too. I was getting worried. I guess the phone calls shook her loose because she came in the door an hour early, which meant she left wherever she was, soon after Annie's call. The kids were already in bed, and the wife was not in a great mood with me either. She went upstairs to change, and I made an excuse to be there. She looked normal, no marks and was wearing all of all her underwear, anyway. When she came down, she said: "I didn't appreciate the girls calling me on my night out. You should have been able to answer Stacy's question, and Annie could have asked the teacher tomorrow. Now that I'm working, I get little enough time to myself as it is." "I was working with them on their homework, but Stacy couldn't see it from my explanation. Vicky has kids, as I suppose several of the other women you were with do too, and after all, you were only at McCool's, not some fancy restaurant, so I don't see what the problem is here. There was a time when your daughters' school work was a number one priority with you. What's changed with you? Is this the new you?" "Nothing's changed. Vicky and I were talking, and I had to go outside to answer the phone." "In McCool's parking lot?" "What the fuck do you think is outside of McCool's? Yes! You guessed it! The god damn parking lot!" Ahh ha! I touched a nerve. "Hmm, right! McCool's parking lot. Well you got one out of three. Could've been worse." "What are you talking about?" "Oh, one out of three? When you first started with these girl's nights out, I asked you to tell me three things, where you would be, who would be there with you, and when you would be home. Tonight you lied to me about two out of three of those things. At least you were home earlier than you planned. You got one out of three, so you flunked the honest spouse test. So what does it mean, you lying to me like that?" "What do you mean? I didn't lie to you!" "You just said you were talking to Vicky Freeman, but that was a lie, wasn't it?" There was a long pause. And I pressed her: "Take your time, maybe you'll think of a way to avoid the yes or no answer the question requires." "What makes you think Vicky wasn't with me?" "Sorry Ann, can't answer a question with a question. Answer me, why did you lie to me about Vicky?" "She couldn't come, but I was with other women, so it was the same thing." "So if it's the same thing, for the third time, why did you lie to me? What are you hiding?" "I don't appreciate the third degree. I did nothing wrong, here." "Yes you did do something wrong. You're telling me lies when you say the truth would have done as well. I want to know why? Why tell me Vicky was there at McCool's when she wasn't?" "I don't know why I said that. I shouldn't have. I'm sorry." "Apology accepted for that one. Now where were you, really, and who were you actually with?" "What are you trying to say?" "Ann, its simple god damn English we're speaking here. You weren't anywhere near McCool's, or McCool's parking lot, were you, and you weren't with Vicky, so where were you, and who were you with?" Guilt flashed across her face. "Did you follow me? Goddamn you! That is completely uncalled for..." "And you've got fucking shit for brains tonight! You know god damn well I was home helping our daughters with their homework! We talked on the fucking phone!" She took a deep breath paused and said: "I'm sorry. You're right. June and me each got a gift certificate for two... from work... for a restaurant I never heard of, Swirling Eddy's, in Essington, on the Delaware. We asked two of the other woman to go with us. I felt guilty because I should have taken you." "Had you told me this in the first place, I wouldn't have objected. Why did you think it was better to lie to me? Now I know I can't trust you, can I? You're telling me you lied for no good reason...don't you trust me? I'm thinking the 'no good reasons' are maybe more lies. How can I know if you're telling me the truth?" "Well I guess you can't. In the end, you have to have faith in me. It's not what you think." "So if I believe what you're telling me, it's not what I think?" "That's it, Chris, I'm going to bed. Let's put tonight behind us as a bad night. " Well, she was up to no good, but what or with who was for her to know and me to find out. If she was playing around, I wasn't going to put up with that. I admit I slipped off of the fidelity wagon for a couple of nights about five years ago now. I was up in Binghamton New York helping the wastewater plant get back on line after they were flooded out, and ran across a woman whose husband was sailing solo around the world. At the time the idiot was half way across the Pacific heading to Australia, where he was to dry dock, fly home for a few weeks, and then fly back and finish the trip. He was in a little boat in the middle of the Pacific, and his wife gave me two nights of the best sex I've ever had. I never saw her again, and I never told Ann, either. I enjoyed the sex, for me an experience of a lifetime, but nothing compared with the joy my family brings, so while I got away with it that time, it was a foolish risk to take. I've tried to relive it with Ann, but she refused all my efforts to go beyond vanilla sex in our bed. A week later, as the wife and our daughters went rushing out the door after supper to shop for school clothing, I was cleaning up the kitchen. She left her laptop on the table, and when I went to move it, I saw she was still connected to her company web. Well, hand me an opportunity and I'll take it! I looked through recent e mails, and opened forty or fifty until I came to one from J. Worthington Proctor. He was talking about what a lovely singing voice she had, and that he was looking forward to the next afternoon they had planned for when he was in town on the 23ed. Didn't say what they would do, but I could guess. He apparently worked in her companies New York office. I did a search on her computer. Proctor is not a particularly common name, found the folder with their e mails and copied it on to a flash stick. The company also has a section where you can look people up by name, phone number, or department and see a brief biography and picture, so I did. He was a nice enough looking chap a few years older than me, with a short beard and a shaved head. He was from Tiffin Ohio, had some sort of financial job with her company. I looked at the time, it had been an hour, and I still had work to do, so I backed out, and left everything as I found it. I was pissed. A mother with two children! Fucking around! On me! Yes, I screwed sailor boy's wife, but my infidelity was a onetime event, this was a regular affair that could become serious. Of course it's a little like distinguishing between killing someone with one shot as opposed to four or six shots. Either way it's serious and it's murder, but still... It's a good thing house work is mindless work. My hands were occupied, and my mind was spinning. I was trembling with rage. When I get real upset, I don't barf, instead it pours out the other end, and it did that night too. I finished cleaning up the kitchen and the family room, washer-to-drier and started another load, and was folding clothes when they came in with bags of new clothes, a half gallon of ice cream and a box of ice cream cones. Older readers might get the wrong idea, me doing house work, but when both you and your wife work, and you can't afford a maid, both have to share the work that needs to be done. Tonight the house needed to be picked up and the girls needed new school clothing. She was better at shopping for woman's cloths than I was, so I did the cleanup. I was raging at the wife, and refused her offer of an ice cream cone, knowing she picked the flavor to please, or maybe appease me. The girls didn't have homework to do that night, and they had used up their computer time earlier in the day, so the four of us sat around the kitchen table, played Uno, and ate homemade popcorn I cooked in a pot on the stove. Annie won two games, me one. Lots of laughter, trash talking and joking. Later that night the wife was singing to herself and reached for me in bed. I loved to hear her singing because it meant she was relaxed and happy, but it was a lot different now because she was singing to another man as well. I was conflicted; given what was going on, but the little head won. Charged up with suppressed anger, I went short on the fore play, and gave her a hard fucking and a long one, because truth be told, I was too angry and had trouble cumming. She was fine with it, even commented favorably about how a nice fucking was good once in a while. The next afternoon, I had some time, and read the string of e mails. They were indirect, probably for fear the IT people might read them, but I gathered they had one session of kissy-feely in her office, that lead the next day to a heavy petting session , getting each other off, she sucked him, he did her tits and got her off with his hand. Not clear where it was this happened. He was telling her to shave her pussy as he'd liked to eat her, but didn't like the hair. She knows I like it hairy, but said she'd think about it. Evidently she was still thinking about it as she hasn't done it yet, and didn't say anything to me about it. The Secrets We Keep From Each Other The last 'girl's night out,' the one our kids interrupted, started in mid afternoon when they left work early and went to his hotel. I assumed they fucked and later, went out for dinner and were returning to the hotel for another round when she got the first call. The second call was when she was in bed with him. That call broke the mood; she got dressed and came home. She was telling him they had to cool it for a while as I was suspicious. He was having none of it and she agreed after much arguing, to take a full afternoon off, so she could be home at the regular time. While no other hook ups were mentioned, there might have been some. However enough was documented, in the e mails to show it wasn't a onetime thing. She was more circumspect in her responses than he was, in fact she told him twice to drop the specifics. The date was over a week away, so I had ten days to think about it and decide what to do. This could be a problem for me because I tend to think too much, and come up with complicated solutions to simple problems that have simple solutions that I don't always see. Basically I loved her, I knew she loved me, and we both were devoted to our kids. The rest was up in the air. This divorce thing. At one time, when a divorce needed to be justified, infidelity was one such justification. Now they get divorced for no reason at all. But here, I cheated first and at the time felt really guilty. Like I said, it was a mistake, I haven't done it again and I don't think I ever will unless our marriage falls apart. At the time, to ease the burden of guilt I wanted to confess it, to seek absolution, but that is something priests give, not wives. There was no question; I wasn't going to confess it to her. Why in the world would anyone do that? Dump a lot of pain on someone. When I was in school years ago, somebody asked "If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?" Having a logical and unsubtle mine in those days, I said of course it does, sound is a physical phenomena. But the question really was, if we didn't sense it, don't know about it, how do we know it happened? To us who weren't there, it didn't happen. Similarly, from a moral point of view, the question in my head was 'should I have filed for divorce when I fucked sailor boy's wife on the grounds that our marriage vows were broken (by me), and the divorce would just be acknowledging that fact? If infidelity is automatically the end of a marriage, then I should have ended my marriage. It sounds stupid to say that, doesn't it? I decided what I imagine a lot of people decide, shut my mouth and say nothing! To my wife, my adultery didn't happen. I figured the real world issue is who knows about it. I know about my fuck up and she doesn't. So as long as she doesn't know about it, my fucking around has little effect on our marriage, and what effects there are, are in my head. In fact, arguably it strengthened my marriage because I realized that the quality of my sex life with her was not the most important thing in my life, probably not even in the top 3 or 4 things. As to telling her, this is a case of what you don't know won't hurt you. If she found out, somehow, then she and I would both know about it, she's going to respond; she'd be furious, hurt, humiliated, and months of mutual misery and maybe divorce would follow. So it's not the deed, but the knowledge of the deed, knowledge of having been wronged, betrayed, found lacking and inadequate, that brings troubles down on your head. So now she's the one cheating. Should she file for divorce? Or should I? I know about it but she doesn't know I know. I could get all hopped up raise up a riot, call her all sorts of names, throw her out of the house, and what do I get from that? There would be satisfaction in dumping all that guilt and pain on her, but a lot of that would spill onto the girls, but that in no way lessens my own pain. The resulting anguish and turmoil would cause us years of grief and shit, and maybe divorce, alimony, child support, two households, same income, I suffer, she suffers, my kids suffer, no more college education fund, my 401K dies. I just see the girls on weekends; the family is destroyed physically, economically and emotionally. Eventually, maybe I remarry; start the whole thing all over again, only this time with less money. Would that make me happy? In a word, no! Doing nothing and hoping it burns out is not an option either. If her affair continues, infatuation might become love, and we end up in a divorce so she can marry him. And even if they don't get serious, maybe she will like adultery so much she will decide to have more such lovers. The thing I have to do is stop her infidelity, without her knowing I know about it. That way, she can live with her guilt, as I live with mine, and we can face each other...and love one another. So I need to figure a way to end her affair, like this week! Make her realize it's a mistake, and have her think it's her idea to end it. That's about impossible, and just now I can't think of a way to do it. Well sometimes I put problems aside, and the solution comes to me after a few days. Meanwhile, life went on. That weekend we went tubing on the Delaware. That's a poor man's yachting, where we take two cars, one loaded with used truck tire inner tubes and a cooler of drinks, some towels in plastic bags, and the other car is the drop car. We parked the drop car at a park downstream, the wife got in my car with all the gear and we drove about 6 miles upstream and parked that car in a state park. The Delaware River is very wide, but only a couple of feet deep in this area, so you don't have to worry about a kid falling off the inner tube. On the other hand, with your ass hanging below the tube, if you don't keep an eye out where you're going, it can get hit by a rock. It took us over three hours to drift down the river to the pickup point. We stopped to dry off and warm up in the sun on an island in the river. What a lovely time it was! The girls were shrieking with laughter, the wife tickled my bum under the inner tube with promise of more that night. Later that week the annual carnival arrived across town, sponsored as a fund raiser by the local volunteer fire company. Compared to an big regional amusement park, it's small potatoes, but it's still fun to go to on a summer night. The girls were on me in a full court press. They knew I was an easier mark than their mother, so I got it first. "The carnival is really awesome this year. Can we go? We didn't get to go last year. Come on, dad it'll be fun, and we have our own money so it won't cost you anything." Right! I thought and then playing a bit hard to get; "So what do they have this year?" "Debby and Emma said they had everything! This big swing, like a Viking boat that holds lots of people, and a Ferris wheel, and teacup things that swing round and round, and a midway with all kind of games. An Emma had her fortune read, she's gonna cross a sea next year, and Debby won a piggy bank shooting real guns, it's really wonderful! Will you take us Pop?" "Well, I'll go if your mom wants to go too, and you each have to find a friend to go with, 'cause we aren't going with you on those rides. They're only for young people who aren't afraid to die." Squeals of delight as they ran off to persuade Ann. The wife's more critical of that sort of thing, but we'd been before and had a good time. She just wants them to be reasonably safe. Then it came to me how I could solve my problem about her little dalliance with Proctor. The kids came back to say that tonight was the night, that Mom would go if I did. I didn't have much time to prepare my plan. Just before supper I got on the computer, typed a short letter, pasted a picture on it, shoved in an envelope with fifty bucks, and stuffed it in my pocket. The carnival quickly separates you from your money. They do this as you enter the gate, right away we had to exchange cash for strings of thickets and then spent the tickets on the rides and such. Tickets don't seem like money, so while fifteen or twenty of them are about seven bucks, they're actually only a fistful of cardboard, so you forget they're money. The kids had just gotten on a ride, and I told Ann I would be back in a couple of minutes. I had spotted the fortune teller sitting idyll, and doubled back, leaving my wife watching the girls. I quickly explained to the woman what I wanted her to and gave her the letter and the cash, with the promise of another $40 at the reading. I saw a sign for the toilets, and figured I might as well pee while I was at it. I got back just in time to watch the girls jumping off the ride and run around to get in line again for the third time. I persuaded Ann to walk with me. "I don't want to leave the girls." "They want us to leave them so they can act grown up. They've got their friends with them, and we'll be a cell phone call away. Come on. Let's have some adult time. I'll buy you an ice cream." She called our eldest to tell her they were on their own and to watch out for her sister, put her phone away, and smiled the smile that melts my heart: "Oh well, 'though it will put my children in mortal danger, for Ice cream, I'll leave them to their fate, even knowing that in return for the ice cream, I will have to let you have your wicked way with me!' 'Leaving her children', I was thinking she was damn near doing that fooling around with J. Worthington. We were licking the last of the soft ice cream cones when two kids were leaving the fortune teller as we went by. I was about to say something, but Ann beat me to it: "Oh look, come on, let's get out fortune told. Maybe we'll be going overseas like Emma!" For ten dollars each, the woman did a bit of mumbo jumbo and bland ambiguous stuff, so I played the skeptic, which of course I was: "Forget this stuff. It's inconsequential. Tell us something important, something substantive!" "I am sorry! I did not realize you were serious. Come in back. I will close the curtain so we will not be disturbed." We went into what amounted to a six by eight room, draped in red and black cloths and old carpets. "You pay $50 now and when I am finished, you pay me, your choice, nothing more or another $50 when you leave." "Chris, that's too much..." "Knowing the future can't be cheap, can it." I gave her three twenties and got change. Worse yet the old woman was robbing me, I was in for $140 at this point! We sat down on rickety chairs in a closet that didn't smell too good. She had the three of us hold hands, and we sat sweltering for a long time her with eyes closed, breathing deeply and noisily, but erratically. The noise of the midway was muffled, a murmur with an occasional word coming through the tent's padding. I hoped she was OK, her breathing sounded bad. Ann started to fidget. We jumped when the woman intoned in an accented voice: "You both have been lucky in life; it has left only little scars on you. This is about to change. You have come to me just in time. Your future is in flux, about to take a new course, the course you choose will carry you to the end of your days. Listen well or woe betide you! You have so little time to decide." My hand had been resting on Ann's, but with this ominous remark, she gripped it. "Woman, you have born two daughters, children of the light, and though you will yet conceive again, no more children will come from you. Sadness and darkness is coming upon you very rapidly. In a matter of weeks, you will start two years of turmoil, pain, and struggle in both your lives." The woman turned to me looking at my eyes but hers focusing far beyond me: "There will be two important women in your life and in your bed. Both have brown eyes, one brown hair, the other a dusky woman with hair coal black. You will have a child with her. With the arrival of your son will come wealth and prosperity...he will comfort you in your old age. You will live long, with peace and joy to the end of your days, surrounded by children." She continued to look off slack jawed, into space. I glanced, speechless at Alice who she was pale and drawn, looking as though she would cry. Good! She turned her attention to Ann: "You madam, on your life path... dark clouds, all dark clouds are swirling around you and the ground under your feet gives way with treachery, dragging you down. There will be three men in your bed and in your life. The next is as bald above as you will be below. He is the one who will crush your soul. Following him are seven years and seven months of loneliness, sickness and sorrow before the darkness lightens. After which you shall find not love but comfort with a sickly man." Ann was trembling, shaking actually and gasping for breath. The old woman stood up and wiped her mouth with a cloth. "I can say no more. I am sorry for you both. I will take no more of your money." Ann spoke with a choke: "Chris, wait for me outside, please." Her voice was quavering and her eyes were tearing. "Sure! Are you all right?" She dismissed me with a wave of the hand. It was noisy and smelled of popcorn outside in the fresh air. Damn, that woman was good! She took the facts I had given her and scared the shit out of Ann. And me too! I was glad to be out of there. Alice was almost running when she came out of the booth into to the lights and brightness of the midway, tears in her eyes. "Chris where are the bathrooms?" I pointed her in the right direction, and when she was out of sight, I got out $90, fifty for doing a good job plus the forty I had promised and folded it in my hand. "What happened after I left? Your wife said "You've seen...you know...I've been very foolish...Can the future be changed?" I was thinking John Calvin and the others in the predestination crowd wouldn't have agreed that the future can be changed, but so what! I told your wife: "With spirit and resolve it is not yet too late!" "What do I have to do?" "Foolish woman, if you know not that, then it is already too late now. Begone! Your fate is sealed!" And she ran out the door. "I think that did the trick." And handed her $90. "I said I would take no more money. There was no trick here; I spoke of what I was given to see! I spoke of what was true." "I didn't mean it that way. You did speak the truth. Don't argue with a satisfied customer. If you don't need it, bless god for your good fortune, and give it to someone who does need it." I followed after my wife. She took a while, when she came out of the John, she was still upset. I put an arm around her and we started walking but she started crying again and was attracting attention. Strangers glared at me, probably thought I was the cause...I pulled her out of the path and held her. "I'm sorry. I thought it would be fun, too. Surly you don't believe she can tell the future? It doesn't mean anything, it's just babble, and she was cruel to say those things to you." She struggled to get herself under control, and with a snort of snot, rubbed her nose like she was going to push it off of her face and said; "Let's find our 'children of the light'. Having been told I'll have a pregnancy aborted, my husband is going to leave me and I will die sharing my bed with a sick old man that I don't love...I've had enough of adult time at the Carnival, thank you very much! We'll save some for our bedroom." She was a tiger in bed that night, saying she loved me three or four times. I called her at work on the afternoon she was supposed to be screwing...she was at work. I kept her busy for a couple of weeks, out to movies and to the pub with friends. No hours not accounted for, or shopping at the mall coming home empty handed. The girl's night outs became less frequent, and back to being couple of beers, supper, and home by eight thirty. Labor Day weekend the two of us went on a weekend retreat for married couples put on by our church. It included talks on how to talk to your spouse, tell each other how you felt. We never were very good at talking about feelings or about sex, and to my surprise, when I complained about rules in the bedroom, she said was willing to do about anything two people can do with one another, and that night she showed she could walk the walk. When she licked the crack of my ass, I nearly shot my load. Sunday they talked about Jonathan Haidt's book "The Happiness Hypothesis." In short, it asserts that how happy we are is a matter of how our brains are conditioned. I was mid range, and Ann was a bit off of the bottom, meaning she generally was not so happy. The book suggests ways to learn how to re program our brains so as to be happier, and it worked for us. I can recommend it. It started us on a course of learning how to enjoy life, and how to have constructive discussions. I know it sounds woo-woo touchie feelie, but we're getting good with it, and avoid a lot of misunderstandings. The fortune teller was right in one regard, Ann had one more pregnancy, this time a boy, but it went awry, and we lost the baby quite early. The complications that ensued ended any chance for her to have another child. She came out of ICU, wacked out on drugs and drifting in and out of consciousness. I was kicked out at midnight. The next morning, I brought her clean clothes. They were going to release her later in the day. The doctor had just left the room when she burst out crying about what we both were thinking, but she put it into words: "It's all coming true, didn't it? That night at the carnival! Now you're going to leave me so you can have the son I can't give you." And she started crying. "Don't be silly! Out of curiosity, did they shave your pussy? Are you bald below?" She looked panicked and slid her hand between her legs. "Oh my god! Well, some of it they did." "Well then, I can't leave you, can I, until... what did the ole woman say? Something about you being bald below? So as long as you're not completely shaved down there, none of the rest can come true! Am I right, or am I right?" It got her laughing despite her stitches. Epilogue We had our thirty fifth wedding anniversary last month, with three grandchildren in attendance. Now you might have done things differently. Maybe you think I should have divorced her on grounds of my infidelity after sleeping with that sailing guy's wife. Or maybe I should have divorced her after she slept with her fuck friend. Of course we didn't do either. Instead I found a path to save our admittedly flawed marriage and the family that is my life. I've never for a moment regretted doing so. Yes I had the anguish of knowing we've both been in another's bed, but nothing would have changed that. Nothing! But by my silence, I could save her, me, and our kids from years of emotional turmoil and heartache. We both know what we nearly lost... it's the secret we keep from each other.