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Trial Separation

By: StangStar06



Hi Folks, Another tale of woe and love gone wrong here. And as requested last week, this one is much shorter. SS06 

* * * * * *

As I looked around the church, I felt useless. The flowers were beautiful. The decorations were beautiful. The architecture of the hall was exquisite. Great care had been taken with every detail of the wedding and I hadn't had a God damned thing to do with any of it. 

It was crazy. It was embarrassing as hell. I don't remember ever going to a wedding where the mother of the bride was kept completely out of the loop for the planning. The groom had done everything. I don't know how he did it. His parents weren't rich and they weren't helping him.

Tommy is a really nice kid, if a little boring, but that is Candace's problem. I don't think she'd take any advice from me if I did offer it. My daughter and I have a very strained relationship at best. And today won't make things any better. Candace blames me for her father's absence from her life over the past three years. 

The only thing that makes the situation palatable is the fact that she's almost as angry at him as she is at me. I think that deep down inside, both of us want the same thing. We both want Sam Hill to come strolling into this fucking church and make everything better.

She wants Sam to come back because every girl wants her father to give her away at her wedding. I want Sam to come back to take me away from my miserable life. And if he can't or won't do that, then I have something planned for him that will make my life better any way.

I can't believe the quality and the beauty of the place cards and the seat markers. They're absolutely beautiful. I'm still at a loss as to how Tommy paid for all of this. My future son is obviously more successful than his parents already. Maybe I can hit him up for a loan. 

I laugh because there's almost no chance of that. Tommy barely speaks to me. Oh, he's very polite if we're trapped in the sme room and he has to talk to me, but I get the impression that he avoids me like I have an STD that can be transferred just by me glancing at him. I swear I've seen that boy wash his hands after talking to me.

Anyway, Tommy seems to be pulling the money for all of this out of that Internet business that he's a partner in. I'm sure that he hired a wedding planner too because all Tommy ever wears are Jeans, T-shirts and Asics running shoes. Stylish, he ain't. 

As the ushers open the doors one of Candace's bridesmaids, Lupita, comes over to look at everything and make sure it is all perfect. I guess that she doesn't see me here doing the exact same thing. The silly girl could have simply asked me and I'd have told her. But I keep forgetting, most of these fucking people don't talk to me anymore. 

Seeing Lupita in that dress pisses me off. Tommy and Candace somehow managed to spend almost a thousand dollars apiece on the bridesmaid's dresses. The dresses are so nice that most of those girls are going to wear them a lot. They look really good. And here I am, the mother of the bride, wearing a dress off the rack from Kmart. 

My dress isn't tailored and it doesn't fit properly. It has a lot of...ruffles that stick out at odd angles. I hate this dress. But it was the only thing I could afford. I had given a lot of consideration to just asking Tommy to buy me a dress, but again, getting a chance to talk to him was like getting an appointment with the Pope if you're a Satanist. 

I tried everything. I tried subtlety. I kept asking Candace who had bought the bridesmaids dresses, but she didn't take the hint. I tried showing her the pictures of dresses I liked. Usually she just nodded her head and told me whether or not she liked them. Now the doors were open and lots of people were coming in. Most of them looked wonderful and here I was stuck in this ridiculous dress. Once again I blamed Sam Hill for my predicament.

As I turned to go and see how my daughter looked in her five thousand dollar wedding dress, I caught a glimpse of one of the women pointing at me, out of the corner of my eye. I turned towards her and her smile disappeared. 

The groom's side of the church was filling in nicely. There were a few scattered people on the bride's side. 

Tommy's parents walked in and looked around. His mother smiled and nodded her head. Her husband hugged her as a tear rolled down her face. She gently dabbed her face to prevent her makeup from being smeared. I hated that bitch. 

Then I noticed it. Tommy's dad was walking with a limp. He was supposed to be walking Candace down the aisle since her deadbeat deserter of a father couldn't be found or bothered to attend his own daughter's wedding. That really sucked for me because I was sure that the bastard would be here. Oh well, I'd just have to wait for Tommy to knock Candace up. Surely Sam would show up for the birth of his first grandchild.

Just before the ceremony started, there was some commotion going on. With his dad out of commission apparently, Tommy had decided that some uncle who had just shown up should walk Candace down the aisle. 

Tradition be damned apparently, Tommy and Candace were discussing it so loudly that I could hear them as soon as I went behind the stage area.

"Tommy, Honey, one of my mother's brothers can give me away," said Candace.

"No, Candy, it has to be my uncle Santino," said Tommy. "Trust me Honey, you'll be glad."

"What difference does it really make who walks me down the aisle?" she asked. Just as I was about to step in and try to help them solve the problem, Tommy cocked his head and stuck his lip out. 

"Please, Honey," he asked. And my daughter melted. She nodded her head and his eyes lit up. He tried to kiss her and she backed away. 

"Not until after the wedding," she said.

"We're going be doing a lot more than kissing after the wedding," he said.

"We did a lot more than kissing last night," she smirked back at him. Clearly I wasn't needed here either. When I went back into the church proper, the photographer was taking pictures. 

Son of a bitch, he had just finished photographing the section that I was sitting in when I got back. As he and his assistant moved on to the next section, I tapped him on the shoulder.

"I'm sitting there," I said pointing to my section.

"Okay," he said nodding. Then he turned to go back to where he was going.

"Hey, I'm the mother of the bride,'" I said. 

He turned back to me and sighed. "Then you should have been in some of the pictures we took," he said. I was shocked. I sat down in my chair and watched to see if the photographer would come back in my direction. It really wasn't a big deal. They'd be taking pictures all day long. They'd probably take hundreds at the reception.

There was a little bit of commotion on the groom's side. I watched as a bearded man walked into the church. The woman with him was wearing a dress that I'd have died to wear just once. 

It was a beautiful shade of sea foam green. It was molded to fit her body and every man in the church looked at her. She was slim yet curvy. Her breasts were uncovered just enough to be tantalizing, but covered enough to be modest. The dress was tight enough to show the shape of her ass, but not so tight that it screamed, "Skank."

Her eyes seemed to sparkle and her face had a few lines on it. The lines on her face were the kind made by a lifetime of laughter. They added to her beauty rather than detracted from it. She had to be at least fifty, but her body could have been on a thirty year old. Judging by her face you also couldn't really tell her age. Her hair really pissed me off. Her stylist had to be a genius. Somehow her pixie cut had layers of inky black under a very natural gray that was prettier than either would have been alone. 

The bearded man was hugging everyone while his wife or date or whoever she was sat down next to Tommy's parents and started talking to them.

The organist started to warm up and the bridesmaids got into position. I looked to the corner of the church and saw my daughter. Most of the audience couldn't see her but from my seat I could. She looked beautiful. For once, I really wished that her father could have been here to see this. Then I noticed the expression on her face. She had given in to what Tommy wanted but she wasn't happy about having some stranger give her away.

As the organist played the wedding march and Candace walked down the aisle, I noticed the expression on her face had changed. Apparently my daughter had decided that her wedding, her special day was more important than the details. She held the bearded man's hand and there was a big smile on her face.

After that everything went off without a hitch. The ceremony was non-traditional. They just walked down the aisle, stood in front of the preacher and said their vows. There was no part for the mother or the father of the bride to play. I think those things had been eliminated from the ceremony because of Sam's selfishness.

As they said their vows I noticed that the bearded guy, Tommy's uncle, had tears in his eyes. There was something about that bearded man that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I started to wonder why he'd be so emotional about seeing a girl that he was meeting for the first time, getting married.

It was there on the tip of my tongue. It was that nagging feeling just before you remember something or someone. Agonizingly, just before recognition fired, the vows were complete and the couple started to walk back down the aisle. I looked up and noticed that the photographers were taking pictures and everyone was getting up to position themselves for the bouquet toss.

My daughter turned her back to the crowd and then tossed the bouquet over her head, where it landed, not in the hands of one of the young women who eagerly sought it, but in the lap of the bearded man's companion. She'd been laughing and talking to Tommy's parents when it fell.

She pissed me off yet again with her reaction. She looked at the bouquet, laughed, shook her head sadly and then flung it to the group of younger women. I'm no expert on body language, but her reaction was clear. She wanted to get married but knew that it wasn't in the cards for her. Perhaps that bearded guy that she was with has no intention of getting married. There were lots of guys out there who didn't want to pull the trigger. Most of them had commitment issues. I knew about that far too well.

I went to the outside of the church and watched as my daughter and new son were showered in rice as they left to church before getting into their waiting limo. I caught a ride to the reception with a friend of mine named Ralph who'd been here just in case I needed him to provide a service for me.

At the reception everyone danced and ate and had a great time. The food was incredible. As I've stated before, Tommy had spent an incredible amount of money on the wedding. He would probably be paying for it for a very long time. On one hand, I was glad that he'd spared no expense to make sure that my daughter's special day was indeed special. But the length of time that they'd spend paying for it made me wonder if it was worth it.

After the bride and groom had their dance, Tommy's parents and the bearded guy and his date did a dance. That should have been for the parents of the happy couple. So supposedly I should have danced with the bearded guy, but since we'd never met, I guess I didn't expect him to come and find me. Still, it would have been nice to have been included. 

Then as all of the other couples went out onto the floor to dance and the reception turned into more of a party than a formal affair, things started to happen.

Ralph came over to me and smiled. I thought for a moment that he was coming over to ask me to dance. 

"Linda, it looks like I don't have to do anything," he said. "But we still have a deal, right?"

"Yes, Ralph," I said. "We still have a deal. I don't suppose you want to dance do you?"

"I'm not a very good dancer," he said. Then he walked away smiling. As soon as he walked away, another guy came over to me. He was looking around as if he wanted to be sure that no one saw us together."

"Hey, Linda," he began. "I uh, heard that you're working the late night shift over at the 7- 11. I think I'll stop by for a slurpee and some pussy?"

Unfortunately, his timing was awful. Just as he spoke to me a couple of women had moved over near us that he couldn't see. They both looked down their noses at me. At the same time I noticed that Ralph was out on the dance floor trying to resurrect the eighties by doing the robot, with some woman that I'd never seen before. I was so angry that the plastic of my dress started to melt. 

At that moment, as I was looking for a place to hide, it happened. I noticed that my daughter was dancing with the bearded man. She had her arms around him and was smiling from ear to ear. He was smiling down at her as well. I started to wonder what he could have said that would make her that happy. It was embarrassing for her to be dancing that closely with another guy in front of her new husband. Then I noticed his eyes. They were exactly like hers. It all made sense then. 

"Ralph," I screamed at the top of my lungs. "It's Sam, arrest him!"

Ralph looked around stupidly and shrugged his shoulders. He held his hands up in the universal, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about gesture."

I pointed at the bearded man who kissed my daughter and then started running. Ralf took off after Sam who was running not towards the doors but the rear of the hall. I couldn't figure it out. There were no exits that way, unless he intended to go up the stairs and out of a window on the second floor. His date seemed to be in a hurry to get away from the commotion. She headed for the door. Maybe while he was in jail, I'd talk to Sam about his choices in women to replace me. 

For some reason most of the people in the crowd seemed to move out of Sam's way. They also seemed to be doing their best to block or impede Ralph. Then I saw that Sam was making his way back towards me and the doorway to freedom. Ralph was also closing in on Sam. Sam was in good shape but he's 52 years old. He's a year older than I am. Did he really think that he could outrun a guy who's ten years younger than he is?

Just as Sam passed by the supply closet, with Ralph hot on his heels, the door to that same supply closet suddenly opened up, hitting Ralph so hard that it knocked him off of his feet. He landed hard, with his breath knocked out of him and lay there.

I looked outside to see where Sam was and he was at the curb. I heard the growl from outside. It was louder than all of the commotion inside of the building. Sam's car pulled up beside him. He jumped in on the driver's side and the car pulled off like it was jet propelled. 

Sam's car was a special edition Rousch Blackjack. It was a highly modified, supercharged Mustang GT. I remember the day Sam picked that car up. He spent so much time telling me and everyone else who'd listen to him about all of the things that separated that car from the normal Mustang GT. The chase was over. Even if that door opening hadn't knocked the shit out of Ralph, he wouldn't have been able to catch Sam. The Blackjack made over six hundred horsepower. Ralph's police department Jeep couldn't keep that car in sight.

Once Sam got to the highway, it would have been over anyway. I didn't know what to do. My frustration and my anger had quickly reached peak levels. I was so angry that I forgot where I was and all of the people watching me and laughing at Ralph. 

"Fuuuuuuuccckkkkkkk!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I started crying and just sat down at the nearest table. I had suffered three long years of anger and sadness and regret and a hundred other emotions after what Sam had done to me. I had finally had my chance to make that bastard pay and he slipped right through my God damned fingers. It was just too much.

Tommy's dad took pity on me and grabbed me by my elbow and upper arm. "Come on Linda," he said. "Let me take you somewhere that all of these people won't be staring at you."

I nodded my head and he led me through the hall. I heard a bunch of tee-hees and a few genuine laughs as we made our way through the crowd. We went to one of the rooms on the second floor of the hall. He quickly disappeared and I thought at first that he just didn't want to be seen with me. He came back a few minutes later though, with a good bottle of Scotch and three glasses. Of course he brought his wife too."

They were good people. I appreciated what they were doing for me. I heard a siren as we started to drink. I looked out the window and saw an ambulance.

"It's for Ralph," said Tommy's Dad. "He's kind of out of it."

"Did you know?" I asked him.

"No I didn't think he got hit that hard," he said. "But he ran flat out, straight into a metal door. He kind of did it to himself."

"That's not what I meant," I said. "Did you know that my husband was going to be at the wedding?"

Neither he nor his wife could look at me. "Yeah, I knew," he said. "Shit, most of the people here, knew. Linda, who do you think paid for all of this crap?"

"I guess I should tell you that I'm sorry about not telling you, or participating in the lie, but I'd really be lying then because I'm not sorry. Linda for months now all Candace has said over and over again is, "I wish my daddy could be at my wedding."

"Linda the only thing stopping him from being here was you. He found a way to make his little girl happy one more time and I don't think he regrets a second of it. So yeah, I knew, my wife knew, Tommy knew too. Maybe a few other people around town were in on it as well. Candace didn't know so don't blame her. That was Sam's idea. He didn't want to put Candy in a position to have to lie to you or pick sides, so she didn't know."

"What I'd like to know myself is what caused all of this. I mean everyone knows the stories and the rumors, but only three or four years ago, I remember going to barbecues at your house and you guys were just like every other couple in town. The next thing I heard was that Sam had run out on you. Some people say that he left you for another woman. The woman he was with here tonight is pretty enough that a lot of guys would leave their wives for her. But Sam just doesn't seem to be that type. And since he left, we've been hearing some stuff about you that isn't very good. I chalked it all up to you going a little crazy over your marriage going down the tube. What exactly happened between you two?"

Just as I opened my mouth to say something the door opened and Buck Ettacrap, the local police chief stepped in. He didn't look very happy either.

"Linda, I need to ask you some questions," he said staring at me. He walked in, big as life and twice as serious with a gun strapped to his hip. Tommy was in the hall behind him. He still had his suit on. He had his tie open and dangling though.

Tommy and Candace weren't leaving on their honeymoon until the following morning so it didn't surprise me to see her push her way into the small room, look around, and seeing that there were no available chairs plop down on Tommy's lap.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Hey Candy," said Buck. "I really hate to intrude on your special day, but we have a couple of little things to look into."

I just knew that somehow I was in trouble. And I also knew that it was all Sam's fault again.

"Linda, i have a deputy downstairs, with a broken nose, a sprained wrist and a possible lacerated spleen. The EMT's tell me that they need to transport him to the hospital to verify the spleen, but Dave has seen enough of them both working as an EMT and over in Iraq where he got his training to be pretty sure. How the hell does that happen to a trained law enforcement officer at a wedding?" he asked.


Trial Separation



"How the hell should I know?" I said. "Everyone saw it. He ran into a door. It was an accident. Or maybe just bad luck. Buck maybe he was just clumsy."

"Linda, is that your final say on this?" asked Buck.

"Yes it is," I said. "Everyone here can vouch for me. I was halfway across the room when it happened. I wasn't involved in any way, shape or form with what happened to Ralph."

"Thank you Linda," he said. "That wasn't so hard was it? Candy, you and Tommy enjoy your life together. Wait, that isn't really the right thing to say. The two of you have been together for so long already. I guess I meant to say enjoy your honeymoon. You guys are going on cruise of the Caribbean aren't you?"

"Yes," said my daughter, smiling and grabbing Tommy's arm.

"Shit, you guys are lucky," said Buck. "When Susie and me got married. We crossed the state line and drove up into Michigan for our honeymoon. We went to Dee-troyit."

I almost laughed at the way he pronounced Detroit. But I wouldn't have laughed for long.

"Okay Linda," he said. "Let's leave these newlyweds alone and start taking care of business. I have to get back to Susie after I drop you off."

"Drop me off where?" I asked.

"Linda, I spoke to Ralph," he said. "I know everything. I'm taking your lying ass to jail."

My mouth dropped open in shock. "Buck you can't be serious," I yelled. "What are the charges? This is all Sam's God damned fault! You should be arresting him, not me."

"Linda, you coerced a licensed law enforcement officer into conducting an illegal investigation for the purpose of personal gain. You had him try to trap an individual for whom there is currently no warrant issued or interest in by this jurisdiction. That constitutes harassment and entrapment. A law enforcement official was injured during this illegal operation. And lastly you attempted to use sex to pay off said law enforcement official. That's basically prostitution which I've warned you about several times. Those are very serious charges, Linda. I can't let you off this time and I'm going to have hell to pay with my wife, Sarah, when I suspend her little brother Ralph without pay. I really ought to be firing him. Linda you can't go around offering guys pussy like it's the prize in a God damned cracker jack box."

"Buck since Sam ran off and left me, high and dry, I don't have any money. I have to make the best of what I do have," I whined. "This is all Sam's fault."

"What does Sam have to do with any of this?" asked Buck.

"Well, Ralph was chasing Sam, when he slammed into that metal door," I said.

"Why the hell was Ralph chasing Sam in the first place?" asked Buck.

"I uhm...hired him to," I said slowly.

"Using the promise of sex as a price, right?" asked Buck. I nodded.

"Mother!" hissed my daughter, angrily. 

"Candy, he ran out on us and left us destitute and..." I began.

"That isn't true," said Tommy sharply. "He paid for Candace to finish college. He even paid for her room and board."

"Yeah but Tommy you've paid for everything else for her," I said. "You took money out of your business to buy her a car and to pay all of the expenses since she moved in with you. Hell you even paid for your own wedding. You're a really good..."

"That isn't exactly true either," said Tommy. "I don't exactly own the Internet business. It's incorporated in a different state. I just do all of the computer work. I basically manage the web site and upload content. I handle server issues and customer complaints, but that's all."

"Then where does all of the money come from?" asked Candace. 

Everyone in the room turned to Tommy then. I did, Tommy's parents did, even Buck looked at Tommy, but I got the distinct impression that Buck knew what was going on.

"Candy, I love you," began Tommy. "And I'm sorry I lied to you, but I made a promise. I only agreed to it because I'd have done it anyway. But this way I had the chance to give you, to give both of us a better life."

"Spill it Thomas," said Candace in that way that wives always use to get their husbands to come clean.

"Candy, your father owns the business. I just help run it. He's the one who's been taking care of you. Just before he left, your father made me promise to take care of you. He didn't want to leave but your mom forced him to," said Tommy.

"Bullshit, Tommy," I screamed. "He ran out on me for that young floozy that he brought to the wedding. They ran off together three and a half years ago and he deserted his wife and daughter for HER! Like so many men he got caught up by some young chick and forgot his responsibilities."

"No!" said Tommy. "Ma'am, I love your daughter. And I respect you. But that just isn't true at all. Sam never wanted to leave. He was almost crying over having to leave Candace. And he didn't meet Caroline until more than a year after he left. Besides that, Caroline is really pretty. I've spoken to her often. But today was only the second time I've seen her in person. I do know though that she isn't some young chick. She's actually older than you are, she just doesn't look it."

"it doesn't matter how old that whore is," I screamed. "She still stole my husband. She's still living with a married man. He probably lied to her about being married."

"Why don't you just start from the beginning so we can sort this whole pile of crap out, Linda," said Buck. "Maybe we should all know all of the facts here before we proceed."

"Okay," I said. "That's a really good idea."

"As you all know Sam and I have been married for...it will be twenty five years in December. And..."

"Linda, Sam has been gone for three years," said Buck looking at me crazily. "You can't surely be counting the past three years as..."

"Yes, I can," I screamed. "We're still legally marries and..."

"But didn't he file for a divorce before he left?" asked Buck again.

"Our divorce was never legally completed and he actually withdrew the petition," I said. "Can I tell my God damned story or not?" I looked from face to face and they all nodded so I started again.

"Sam and I got married twenty five years ago. Is that okay? We were both in our mid twenties. Sam was a pretty popular guy and I was very shy. Sam was already out of college and doing well as an industrial sales rep. He basically worked for a company that sold Tool and Die machinery as well as presses and machine tools. And please don't ask me anymore about it because I have no idea what a tool is or what has to die in order to be considered a press. He tried to explain it to me many times over the years. But I just didn't have enough interest in it to understand it. Just let it suffice to say that Sam made very good money. He made enough that I was able to drop out of college for the second time and be a stay at home housewife.

In the early stages of our marriage, like most young couples, we had a disproportionate interest in sex. I think that a big part of that was that Sammy was my first. So I didn't have a lot of experience when we first got together. But over that first year of marriage we experimented, although at what seems like a snail's pace to me now. I can't believe that he had to beg me to let him eat my pussy. Once he got down there though, it changed everything. 

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't stupid. I knew the ins and outs of how to do it and what to do, but at first it was just something I needed to let him do to me. My mom had told me that once I got married I'd have to let my husband put his thing in me, to keep him from going to some nasty whore. She told me that men needed to do it, or they went crazy. She even told me how she'd almost lost my father. She'd stopped having sex with him after my brother and I were born. My dad had started screwing his secretary.

When Mom found out she confronted Dad and got the surprise of her life. Dad gave her some money, told her they'd work out a schedule for when he could see his kids and moved out. It took some time, but they eventually got back together. I really believe that it was a combination of things. My dad missed seeing his kids every day and he was tired of fucking his secretary. That was what had saved their marriage.

So my mom told me that like it or not, if I wanted my marriage to last, I needed to get on my back and spread 'em, regularly. That was not a problem for me. Six months into my marriage, I was a dick seeking missile. Less than a year after we got married, I was pregnant. If there hadn't been complications with the delivery that made me unable to have any more kids, Candace would probably have eight or nine siblings.

Candace didn't slow us down either. If anything she made us even more desperate for each other. When she was a baby we had to wait until she fell asleep. When she was older, even when she was asleep we had to be quiet because there was more of a danger of her hearing us and coming in on us. Then in her preteen and teenaged years we had to find clubs and activities and sleep-overs with friends for her, so we could have uninterrupted sex. God, I loved those sleep-overs.

As the years rolled on and Candy grew older, we didn't have to hide anything. Sam was still happy, but I started to wonder if there were other things that I hadn't experienced. A new couple moved into the neighborhood; the Campbells, Glenn and his wife, Sue. He was a lineman for the county. And she made specialty soups for a local restaurant. I think she was kind of famous for them. But to be truthful, I'd never heard of Campbell's soup. It's probably one of those big city designer things.

Sue and I became closer over the years and I started to notice things about their marriage. Both Glenn and Sue had cheated. Glenn had done it first and they'd stayed together although Sue made him pay for it. Then Sue had her turn. I was shocked enough when Glenn had done it. But since I'd had the experience of my father doing it, somehow it wasn't as shocking when a man did it. But for Sue to not only cheat on her husband but to enjoy it, was like dealing with aliens. 

Even more shocking was the fact that Sue kept doing it. I started to view her as if she was one of those aliens.

Finally I asked her about it. She told me that she'd started doing it mostly as revenge for what Glenn had done, but then she'd discovered that it was exciting and fun. 

"For almost twenty years I've only had sex with Glenn," she said. "It was kind of the same old same old, you know?"

"But don't you love your husband?" I asked. 

"Of course I love him," she said in shock. She actually looked at me as if I was the one who didn't see the obvious. "Linda, humans need a little change or some variety every once in a while. It keeps us sane. This has nothing to do with love. This is just sex. You know how men are, if you give them what they want too easily, they get bored and they don't put forth any effort. That's partially why they're always looking for new pussy. But if you make it more challenging, they want you more. After all you're the one they married. But we have the right to have a little bit of excitement too. And sometimes, even when you have steak at home, a hamburger is just good."

Glenn had never found out that Sue was cheating on him. Women are just better at hiding things. So when Sue caught Glenn the second time it was all out war. She threw him out of the house and filed for a divorce. She never intended to go through with it, but she wanted to throw a scare into him. The thing was that she was the one who got the scare. Like my father, Glenn decided that maybe the grass was greener with his new woman. Unlike my father, Glenn had no kids to come home to.

Sue didn't really want to lose Glenn, so she came up with the idea of a trial separation. They would just take ninety days off and then meet again to discuss their future. That was what she said in the lawyer's office. What she told me was completely different. 

She really wanted to give him a couple of months to get bored fucking his new woman. She hoped that if he was able to spend as much time with her as he wanted, he'd come to miss Sue. After all a big part of the allure of an affair is the forbidden nature of it. It's very exciting to sneak around and be with someone new. But when it's all out in the open, it becomes normal or even boring. The woman that seemed like a primal sex Goddess when you're screwing her in the closet at work becomes just another woman. Then the man sees that the goddess shits and pisses and whines and has periods, just like the rest of us.

Glenn moved out of the house and into an apartment with his new love. As I visited with Sue during the first week of the separation it did something to me. It just seemed like I was on a treadmill with every day of my life the same. Sue's life on the other hand was a revolving door of one new experience after another. It reminded me of when Sam and I had just gotten married and were still experimenting with sex.

"You should come and do it with me," said Sue. "Tell Sam that you just need to take some time off to find yourself. Women our age, just before the change, they do it all the time."

"I couldn't," I told her. But I was thinking about it. And that afternoon it happened. The phone rang while I was at Sue's house. She told me to go into one of the upstairs guest rooms so I'd be out of sight. A few moments later a guy who was only twenty years old showed up at the door. He came in and he and Sue made small talk for a few moments. I left the door cracked so I could hear them. It didn't take long before I heard Sue moaning. I crept to the stairs and looked down into the living room. He had Sue's skirt up around her waist. He was slamming his huge dick into her from behind while he mauled her breasts. It was angry sex. It was so intense that I found myself fingering my own wet pussy while I watched. It only took about ten minutes before he pulled out and started shooting long ropes of semen across her back. Then he zipped up his pants and told her he'd call her and walked out the door.

When I got home that evening, I was irritable. I kept trying to start an argument with Sam, but he was so good natured that he just kept politely giving in. Finally I just told him that I needed some time to myself.

"Okay, I'll go out to the garage and wash my car," he said. He just didn't get it. 

"Sam, I'm going to move out for a while," I said. It tore me apart to see the look on his face. Sam is one of the strongest men I know but he looked as if he was going to cry. He was doing everything wrong. He was supposed to just say, "fine," like my father had, and like Glenn had. I almost reconsidered. But I figured that I'd already hurt him enough. If I didn't go through with it, I'd have hurt him for nothing.

"Wait until the two of you make up," said Sue when I told her about it. "It'll be like a second honeymoon." 

"We've already had a second honeymoon," I said. "He took me to Hawaii."

"Well it'll be like a third," she said. 

"We went to the Bahamas and renewed our wedding vows for our third honeymoon," I said. She just looked at me strangely then. 

"Any way, I didn't last the whole three months, but then neither did Sue and Glenn. They ended up getting back together after about six weeks. Sue had given my story about Sam and I renewing our wedding vows a lot of thought. She and Glenn had both gotten their fill of strange sex and decided to truly give their marriage a second chance. They had a big party and renewed their vows in front of a lot of their friends. I invited Sam to come as our first date since the separation and intended to suppose him by moving back home afterwards."

"The five weeks that Sam and I had been apart had been interesting. I'm not going to lie. I did some things that I'm not proud of. But all it seemed to do was to confirm for me that Sam was the man that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with. I learned so many things during those five weeks that I guess I should have known from the beginning."

"One of those things was that Sam was a gem. He really and truly loved me very deeply and he showed it. As I told Sue about the things he did for me on a regular basis, even she was surprised. I think she got the idea during the first weeks of our separation when Sam was always showing up to try to talk to me or to bring me things."

"I think during those first few weeks Sam really had the idea that he'd done something wrong or that it was his fault that we were apart. He was trying with all of his heart to win me back. Unfortunately Sam's timing was off. During those first few weeks, I was overwhelmed with new experiences. That was when I started doing those things that even now I regret. But once the newness wore off and I was ready to move back home, Sam had stopped coming by. He'd even stopped calling. And I began to worry.

"He's probably met someone," said Sue.

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

"Well Honey, he knows what you've been doing. So maybe he decided to go out and get some for himself," she said.

"I was in shock. My heart was beating so fast that I thought I was having a heart attack. I called the house and got no answer. I drove by the house just in time to see Sam getting into his Mustang and driving somewhere. I followed him. He went to the park near our house. He got out of the car and went out for a run. Sam had been on the cross country team in college, but he hadn't run since then. I watched him for a few days. He wasn't seeing anyone, as near as I could tell, but he was different."

"Ooh that's a good sign," said Sue. "He's trying to get into better shape to try to win you back."

"The next few days found me trying to call him several times a day. He never picked up the phone or returned any of my calls. I tried calling him at work, but his secretary always told me that he was out of the office and wouldn't be back that day. Sam hadn't gone out to do sales or meet with customers in the six years since he was promoted to sales manager and then regional manager. I knew that bitch was lying. Then I started to think that maybe Sam was screwing her. It did seem to fit the pattern."

Sue just laughed. "Honey if he didn't want to screw me, why would he want her?" she asked.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I asked. 

"Uhm...the other night when he came over, he uh...I uh..." she muttered.

"Just fucking tell me," I said angrily.

"Jeezus, Linda," she said. "I was trying to help you. The guy came over here like a puppy dog, bringing you flowers. It was so sweet. Then he walked in and saw you. Linda, he was crushed. I wanted to do anything I could to make the poor man feel better, so I flashed him. You know with most guys especially when they're upset about their girl being with another guy, they'll go for a revenge fuck in a second. I intended to rock his world, but he just wandered off. He hasn't been back since. Haven't you guys talked about it when he calls?"

"He hasn't called," I told her.

"Don't worry, Honey," he's just hurt and upset. He probably needs to do a lot of thinking before he calls you. You just need to be ready for him. In a few weeks the two of you will be back together and better than ever, you'll see."

"I hoped that she'd be right. Everything happened so quickly then. I began to have some medical problems and I began to realize that for the first time in my life I was on my own. And I didn't like it. Sue couldn't find the time to go to the doctor with me. Sam would have taken the day off from work to be with me normally. In this case though there was no way that I would even consider asking him to go."

"At the same time, Glenn and Sue had gotten back into contact. They were having a series of long loud arguments that Sue told me were good. Then they met to talk about the things they were angry about in person. They ended up fucking. Neither of them even cared that I was in the house. Once they got back together they continued talking and working their way through things. Glenn admitted to all of the women that he'd cheated with and promised not to ever do it again. They talked about why he cheated and agreed to talk before they ever got into that situation again."




Trial Separation



"Sue admitted to less than half of the things that she'd done. She later told me that it's far easier for a woman to go out and find a man to have sex with than it is for a man to. She also reminded me that what Glenn had done was far worse. She'd had a bunch of non-emotional sex with some nameless men. She wouldn't remember most of them if they stood in front of her. Not a single one of them was a danger to her marriage."

"Glenn on the other hand had been involved in two long term affairs with women who had set out to replace her in his life and he had allowed it. Both of those women had been younger and prettier than she is. He had spent time with them. He had dated them. He had moved in with one of those whores. The worst part is that Sue knew the woman. She worked in a store that Sue shopped in all the time. Every time that Sue went there, the woman just smiled at her."

"So when I invited Sam to the party, I had to drop the invitation off at his office, because he still wouldn't take any of my phone calls. His secretary and I had a good relationship. At least we had before that day. But I could tell by the look in her eyes, that she hated me. Her politeness towards me as I dropped off the invitation wasn't her usual heart-felt response. It was simply her being professional."

"But at least Sam was coming to the party. At least I could begin the process of repairing the damage and making us whole again. I had worked so many things to tell him. Sue and I had sat down and practiced what I'd tell him. I had the very highest of expectations because if Glenn and Sue could get back together after what they'd done to each other, Sam and I should be a piece of cake."

"The day of the party I'd bought a new dress. I'd gotten my hair done and my makeup done by a professional makeup artist. For a fifty year old woman I looked pretty good. Sure I was no longer slim and trim, but one thing I'd learned during my time apart is that men don't really care about that nearly as much as women do."

"My dress out lined my rounded backside and displayed my breasts without being obvious about it. It was a dress that I would never have worn before the separation. In time I was sure that Sam would come to enjoy his new sexier wife."

"The party started at seven. Everyone was supposed to mingle and have a few drinks and then watch the happy couple renew their vows. Then there'd be dancing, more drinking, a buffet and everyone could do whatever they wanted after Glenn and Sue took off for their hotel room."

"I stayed in the lobby impatiently waiting for Sam to show up. My husband is always punctual. He doesn't understand the concept of being fashionably late. So when he hadn't shown up by seven thirty, I was afraid. Sue did her best to calm me down, but even she was nervous by seven forty five. After saying her vows she came to find me at eight fifteen and looked around."

"Maybe we should call the hospitals," she said. My heart started to beat rapidly again. But it was for nothing. I could tell by the crowd reaction that something had happened. I looked in the direction that the crowd had turned in and saw him. Sam had lost a few pounds and he looked fitter than he had in years. Sam had never really gotten out of shape, but now he looked buff. He had on a nice new gray suit and had cut his hair for once. His hair was cut short and the gray strands shone like silver. My heart clutched in my chest."

"My husband wasn't alone. I had only given him a single invitation but apparently no one at the door had questioned him as he walked in with some young blond strumpet on his arm. She couldn't have been a day over twenty three or twenty four. She was half his age. She was only a year or two older than my daughter at most. Her hair cascaded down her back to waist level. Her boobs were generous without being stripperish. She had a beautiful shape and long thin tapering legs. She held onto his arm and the look in her eyes was filled with concern for my God damned husband."

"At first, I wanted to go over and wring her neck, but then I realized that the whole thing was my fault. I had taken a really good marriage and put us in jeopardy. Now I'd have to do what my mother had done. I'd have to wait for Sam to tire of her and come back to me. In the back of my mind I kept wondering what I'd do if he didn't. But he had to, didn't he. They always did. First, my father had, then Glenn and now Sam. They always came back. But I could see that like my mother it might take some patience on my part, to get him back."

"Sam pointed at me across the room and I knew that I was in for it. He wanted to rub it in my face. Maybe he just wanted me to feel some of the hurt that he'd felt when I told him that I needed to move away for a while."

"She took his arm again, which infuriated me. How dare that little bitch act as if he was hers? Sure maybe with her big titties and her tight little pussy she could rent him for a while, but I owned the man. And sooner or later he would remember what we were and what we had and then he'd come home."

. "As they approached me, I smiled, because it was very obvious. This wasn't Sam's doing, it was hers. She was the one pulling the strings here. She was far prettier than I had ever been but she was probably insecure about her hold on him because she was the one coming over to me. Sam looked like he would break into tears at any moment, but she urged him on. The smile on my face couldn't have been any bigger, because I was sure that I could easily snap her tenuous hold on my man. Sue was right after all. It took a lot more than sex to hold a relationship together. No matter how exciting screwing someone new was, love was far more important. Sam and I had love, so this bimbo didn't have a chance."

"Hi Sam; I've missed you, Honey. I know I've made some mistakes..." she interrupted me rudely. 

"Just to clarify things," she began. She was chewing gum and she cracked it a couple of times. "Are you Linda Hill?" she asked.

"I know you're blond," I spat. "But are you really that dumb? That's my husband you're standing there with. Of course I'm Linda Hill."

"Apparently I'm smarter than you are Granny," she spat. "I've only known him for about an hour and I already know that he's your ex-husband. You've...been served!" she handed me a sheaf of papers and then grabbed Sam's hand and walked him back out of the room." I looked at the papers in shock. 

"All of the party goers were staring at me. Some of them were smiling. Others were almost as shocked as I was. Glenn and Sue came over to me, and for once Sue had no idea what to say. I felt as if my entire world had just crumbled."

"I went back to Sue's house that evening while she went to the hotel she'd booked to screw her husband in. That night was the loneliest night of my life. All I could do was cry. Sue called me and told me that I could stay in her house while she and Glenn were away and that as soon as she got back she'd help me with the fight. She reminded me that neither Glenn nor my father had actually ended up divorced."

The next day after Sue had flown off on her honeymoon, I began to realize that I had problems. My bank card didn't work. Neither did any of my credit cards. I also had a letter from the finance company informing me that I had missed two car payments. If I missed another, my car would be repossessed. 

I had no idea of what was going on so I went to the bank. Sam made really good money so I began to suspect that he'd gotten so upset with me that he's quit his job. A man at the bank clarified things for me. Three weeks previous, about the time that Sam had seen me, he had filed for the divorce. At that time he had taken half of the money out of our checking account and our savings account. He had set up his own new accounts and had left me half. The problem was that my half didn't have any income. Sam's paycheck was being deposited into his new account. Sam also wasn't making my car payments. He was also not paying for my credit cards and for the five weeks that I'd been living with Sue I'd been spending money like water. I'd paid over a hundred dollars to get my hair done and another eighty for my makeup. I'd spent four hundred dollars on my dress, another two hundred for the purse I carried and three hundred dollars for my new shoes. 

When I thought about it, I realized that the amount of money I'd blown for clothes to wear to a party, could have paid for most of my bills, I was sick. I just stared at the man in front of me as he told me that I was overdrawn. 

"What about the money in savings?" I asked.

"You have overdraft protection," he said. "We started pulling money out of your savings account to cover the charges on your checking account and keep you from having to pay overdraft fees."

"Aren't you supposed to notify me when you do that?" I asked. 

"We emailed you and sent letters to your home," he said. I just looked at him stupidly.

"Sam has to fix this," I said. "He just has to give me more money. I didn't realize that I needed to save anything."

"Ma'am, I'm not a lawyer," he said. "But from what I've seen your husband has already done what he has to legally. He evenly divided the contents of your accounts. If you're going through a divorce in most cases you're going to split things fifty/fifty. He may still have to split any investments with you and maybe his pension depending on how long the two of you have been married. There may be some sort of spousal support ordered after you file and get into court and you may have to sell the house, but until you get into court, he's been very fair."

I just looked at him again. "Are you aware that he is preparing for that as well?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

"He has hired the bank's real estate arm to appraise the house before beginning the process of selling it. He could have gone to any realtor for that but I guess it's easier to do everything in house."

My shock had grown. "He's not selling our house!" I said.

"You'll get half of the sale price," he said smiling.

That was when I lost my cool. "This isn't about money," I said. "I'm sure that Sam would be fair. But he's not selling my fucking house. All of our memories are there. It's more than just a house. It's our home."

"Well then you need to make arrangements to try to buy the house," he said. "I think you house is going to appraise for about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. You two only owe another thirty on it. So if you want to keep the house you're going to have to arrange to pick up the rest of the mortgage and pay your husband seventy five thousand dollars. Just speaking as your banker, you're kind of out of luck. You have no work history and your credit is all in your husband's name before the past few months. And once he split everything, you immediately started missing payments. No bank, including us, is going to give you a mortgage for a hundred thousand dollars."

"What else could I do?" I asked. 

"You need to get a lawyer Mrs. Hill," he said. "But you might be able to convince your husband to give you the house. But that depends on a lot of things like how amicable the divorce is. If the two of you are fighting tooth and nail, it ain't gonna happen. But maybe you could make a deal where you give up any claim on his pension and he gives you the house. A lot of couples do things like that. Think about it. You wouldn't see any pension money for fifteen years at the least anyway, but you could keep your house and have a place to stay, now. Over the next fifteen years who knows what could happen. You could win the lottery or anything else could happen. I remember one woman who got the house and ended up remarrying her husband so she still ended up with the pension money too."

I left the bank wondering just how everything had gone so wrong. I needed a lawyer but I had no money to hire one. I tried calling Sam several times. All I wanted was for us to talk. On the other hand something bad was beginning to happen. The medication that the doctor had given me wasn't working. I had another appointment in three days for a follow up but it still burned when I peed. Guys kept showing up at Sue's house. Some of them were friends of Sam's and mine who'd heard what Sue and I had been doing and wanted some pussy.

"The worst thing that happened involved you, Buck," I looked at him. I noticed that my daughter and Tommy were both shocked at my story.

"Some guy whose name I didn't know claimed that I'd given him an STD and he'd given it to his wife and she'd left him. He broke into Sue's house, destroying a door in the process. Luckily the neighbors had called the police, but he still beat me up pretty badly. I got to the hospital and found out that I'd been taken off of Sam's health care coverage."

"I didn't press charges against the guy, because he agreed to pay for my medical bills. I also found out why the drugs the doctor had given me weren't helping. He'd only treated me for one STD and I had several. The guy had been right."

"When Sue got back she dove right into helping me or trying to. I think she did it partially because she felt responsible in part for what had happened, but also to get me out of her house. She and Glenn loaned me money for a lawyer. Sue told me that I needed to dress up for the meeting with Sam and his lawyer. She said that I needed to show him what he was trying to walk away from. But again Sue was wrong. Sam had given his lawyer power of attorney and didn't attend the meeting."

When I got home and cried to Sue about it, she was aghast. She had never heard of anything like it. "You have no choice," she said. "What you have to do is go scorched earth. Demand everything in the divorce. Make it too expensive for him to divorce you." 

So again I listened to her. Even my lawyer told me that I was being ridiculous. The judge wasn't going to give me more than fifty percent of our assets. And if I wanted to keep the house, just like the banker had predicted, I would have to either give up a share of Sam's pension or the alimony or possibly both. There was also the fact that since I was the guilty party and also the one who had voluntarily left the house, I might not get as much anyway.

Sam agreed to it, shocking all of us. Sue couldn't believe it. "You have to go back and ask for even more. Tell your lawyer you want eighty percent of everything," she said. "You have to come up with something to make him come to the table so the two of you can talk. I just don't understand this. Is he stupid? He's doing everything wrong. He isn't acting the way men are supposed to."

So I followed her plan again. And finally it got better. "Sam's lawyer called me and asked for a meeting. We kept looking over our schedules and Sam had a business trip to go on. I offered to go on the trip with him, but he said no to that. So we had to wait two weeks for the meeting. I thought it was too long. I wanted my husband back. The lawyer got Sam on the phone. 

"Sam, why can't we just talk?" I asked. "We used to talk about everything and nothing. I miss that."

"That was when you were mine," he said. Hearing him say that hurt me more than anything else in my life ever had. It hurt more than finding out that we couldn't have more children. I was glad that we were only speaking on the phone because tears rolled from my eyes and I couldn't control them.

"I'm still yours, Sam," I said. "I just made a mistake. Can you please forgive me?"

"I guess we need to talk," he said. "Linda, I waited more than three months while you destroyed what we had. It doesn't seem out of line for you to wait two weeks for a chance to fix it."

"Okay Sam," I said. "Two weeks from today, here in your lawyer's office." I was overjoyed. I was the happiest woman on the planet. Sure I had to wait fourteen days, but I was getting a second chance. 

"I told you," said Sue. I think the thought of getting me out of her house had her happier than I was. For the first time I started to make plans. I knew that our daughter would be home from college for the summer in a little over a month and I wanted to have everything back to normal or close to it when she arrived. It looked like things would just work out.

On the day of the meeting, I had all kinds of thoughts. I wanted to convince Sam to take the meeting away from the lawyers. I remembered the first face to face meeting between Glenn and Sue and how they ended up fucking on the spot. For the first time in a long time I felt like having sex. I dressed for the meeting. I borrowed an outfit from Sue. It was sexy but not slutty. I was completely covered, but it showed off my attributes.

I got there early to wait for Sam. I waited for an hour, then two, then three. I was pissed. I had his lawyer call him for the fifth time. "Maybe he didn't get back from his business trip yet," offered his attorney. He called Sam's office. He spoke to Sam's boss, Ted, whom I'd known and been friendly with for over ten years.

He didn't sound much like a friend that day. "Has Sam Hill returned from his trip yet?" asked my lawyer.

"Sam Hill no longer works here," said Ted bitterly. 

"Why was he terminated, if you don't mind me asking?" asked the lawyer again.

"He wasn't terminated," spat Ted. "I'd pay whatever I had to for him to stay. He walked in here a couple of weeks ago and quit on the spot. He said something about starting all over again in another part of the country. He's been trying to get a divorce from that whore he married, but she just pushed him too far. I have no idea what that bitch was after. He kept giving in to her settlement demands because he just wanted to be done with her. But every time he said Okay, she asked for more. I don't know what the fuck was wrong with that bitch in the first place. Sam loved that woman like crazy. It was stupid of her to cheat on him. She won't find another man like him. All he wanted was to move on."

"Did he leave a forwarding address?" asked my lawyer. 

"Nope," said Ted. 

"What about his pension do you have a bank account number to pay his pension into whenever it matures? By law you have to give us any contact information you have."

Ted just laughed. "Sam is a friend besides a great employee," he said. "I didn't want him to lose out on his pension, so in honor of all of the things he did for the company over the years, we gave him the full maturity value of his pension, now."

My lawyer's eyes lit up because I would be getting a share of that money, maybe even half.

"And we gave Sam the money in cash," said Ted. My lawyer's glee faded instantly. Over the next few days I discovered that Sam had become a ghost. He'd sold the house to a realty company at a price that was twenty percent below market. That still meant that instead of giving me fifty percent of our equity in the house, Sam hadn't given me shit. He had also cashed in all of our investments. Sam had paid off my daughter's last two years of college and her room board and books as well as leaving her a bank account to draw on for general expenses and emergencies. He had visited her but hadn't told her anything about what was going on with us and then he'd left town. 

Over the last few years my life has been hell. Sam stole all of our money. I now know that he spent it all on that bitch he showed up at the wedding with. What he did was illegal. He abandoned me and our daughter. My lawyer told me that I could get a warrant and have him arrested or at least hire an investigator to attach his wages.

"And Sam loves his daughter more than anything," I said to them. "I was pretty sure that he'd be here to see her get married. I just didn't think he'd show up disguised. Once I realized it was him, I told Ralph to get him."

"For what?" asked Buck. "Did you ever divorce him? After a year you could have filed under abandonment. If he had left you any outstanding debts that you paid off, you could have sued him to get that amount back. But he paid everything off except for your personal bills. He sold the house. But technically since he bought it, he had the right to. Now, if you had divorced him, you'd have been entitled to half, but you never divorced him. The same thing is true with the pension. That was Sam's money that he'd worked for. But since you were married, in the event of a divorce, half of it, probably less since you cheated on him would have been yours. But again there has been no divorce."




Trial Separation



"I don't want a divorce," I said. 

"Then what the hell do you want?" asked Buck.

"I guess...I want him back," I said slowly. "I want to go wherever he is and start over. I want him to forgive me for what I did and I'll forgive him for running out on me. It's time for us to get back together."

"So basically you, who have no right to arrest anybody, coerced a law enforcement official to try to unlawfully detain an innocent man, right?" asked Buck. 

"Buck he isn't doing what he's supposed to do. We were supposed to get back together after six weeks. It's been three years. I live in a one room basement apartment. I work part time at a 7-11. You wouldn't believe what I have to do to make my rent money. Most of what I eat is throwaways from the store. It isn't fair," I said.

"Linda, what did Sam do to you to make you cheat on him?" asked Buck.

"He didn't do anything," I said. "It was just something...Sam was the only man I'd ever had sex with. I just wanted to see...what it would be like...he did it with other women before we got together and..."

I looked around the room. Not one person in the room looked sympathetic. "Mom, did dad ever sleep with anyone else after you were married?"

"Do you think he isn't screwing that woman he brought to your wedding?" I spat. 

"Mom, don't change the subject. I mean before you cheated on him," she said.

"I guess not," I said. My daughter grabbed Tommy's hand and started to leave.

"Candy, where are you going?" I asked. 

She turned and glared at me. "Do you know how much time I lost with my dad for your selfishness?" she asked. I couldn't face her.

"But it worked for Sue and Glenn," I said. "It actually made their marriage better."

"Mom your friend Sue's marriage was shitty to begin with. She and her husband had a history of cheating on each other. Daddy had never done anything wrong and you betrayed him. Your friend Sue turned you into a whore. Everyone still talks about you screwing guys at the 7-11. You forced Daddy to leave. You left him no choice."

"But I didn't want a divorce. I just wanted a separation," I said. Buck took me to the court house. He booked me and put me in a cell. I sat there thinking about all of the things that had happened in my life. I had taken a great marriage that was full of love and respect and ruined it. I cried for much of that night and spent the next day Sunday thinking even more. Monday morning the judge came in and set my bail at twenty thousand dollars. Ralph was fired and might even do six months of probation. That was a stiff penalty for bad judgment. The worst part was that Ralph was also going to end up divorced. From what I heard from a couple of the deputies, the manager of the 7-11 had hired a cute teenager to take my shifts.

My court appointed lawyer told me that I'd probably get off with probation so if I could post ten percent of the bond I could probably get out. If I couldn't I'd have to stay in the lock up until the trial which was a month away.

I asked my lawyer if he could talk to the judge to get the bond reduced or cancelled because there was no way I could pay it. He came back a few moments later and told me that my bond had already been paid. I looked around the courtroom just in time to see Sam walking away.

I screamed at him and ran after him. I caught him just as he got to the parking lot where his all black Mustang waited for him.

"Sam, can we please talk?" I asked. He spun around on his heel and looked at me. He'd shave off the bushy beard and looked every bit as good as he ever did.

"Sam, I'm so sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have sent Ralph after you, but you left me no choice. Do you know what it's like to have the man you love walk out on you without saying a word?"

"Try having the woman you love and want to spend the rest of your life with, tell you that she needs to find herself," he spat. "For the first few weeks I thought that I'd done something wrong or not done something or forgotten our anniversary or just fucked up. Do you have any idea what it's like to walk into a house carrying a bunch of God damned flowers for your wife who needed to "Find Herself" and see her being fucked by three guys one after another and she's enjoying herself so much that she doesn't even noticed you're in the room? Probably not. Well I guess you found yourself while you were jumping up and down on someone else's dick. That was probably the whole point of your trial separation, right?" his voice broke. 

He was still choked up with emotion. And then she was there, beside him. She had her arm wrapped around his waist and she was glaring at me. This was not the cool and calm expression she'd had on her ace at the wedding. The look on her face warned me that she would hurt me, if I hurt him or tried to.

"It's Okay Car," he said. I remembered from hearing Tommy that her name was Caroline, like the Neil Diamon song. My husband called her Car, pronouncing it like "CARE."

"None of that shit even matters anymore," she hissed. "Her voice was surprising. From her fashion sense and her clothes, I was expecting her to sound sophisticated. I might've expected an accent, or at least for her to sound snooty. But her voice and her accent were from the deep-south. 

The magnolia in her voice stretched small words into multi syllable ones. Hence shit became sheeeyit etc.

"We may as well get this over with once and for all so we can move on," he told her softly. She glared at me again. Her blazing eyes dared me to say anything. Then those same eyes moved to him and instantly softened. 

"I'm gonna go back inside the courtroom and say goodbye ta Tommy and Candy," she said. Her arm slowly uncurled from his waist. She was a bit smaller up close than she appeared from a distance. I guess her legs were so long proportionately, that they made her seem taller.

"Sam, you were my first," I said. "Until then, you were my only. I never had a chance to sample anyone else. I was overwhelmed with curiosity. It's like being stuck in one room for your entire life and then suddenly you notice that the door is unlocked."

"Well now you're free to check out every room in the God damned house," he said. "You can even check out the backyard, the neighbor's yard, the city and the whole world. You have what you want. I just don't understand why you needed to put me through such hell."

"Because Sam using that same analogy, I went out and checked out some other rooms. But I found out that the room I'd started out in was the best and most comfortable room there was. The problem was that somehow when I left, the door got locked and I couldn't get back in," I told him. "Sam I wanted you back. I missed you the whole time. The first couple of guys I tried were exciting. But they were exciting because it was someone different. It took me slowing down and thinking about it to realize that what was different was that they were just pounding on me. Then I got really smart and realized why. They just fucked me because they didn't give anywhere near a damn about me. They didn't care if I had a good time or not. Yep, when you saw me pulling a train that was the end of it. Do you know why I did that? It was another of Sue's ideas. She told me that if one guy couldn't get me off, I should have another one there to take over when he ran out of steam. 

It took me a little while to realize that it was all of the little things you always did that got me off. Sometimes it was just the things you said while we were doing it that made me super hot. But it was too late. And you also need to know that every night was not like the one when you walked in. That was the only time I ever had more than one guy at a time and I told you why I tried it then. Sam, I had only screwed a couple of guys before the night you saw me. Surely in all of the years before me met you had sex more than that. I just wanted to see what I'd been missing.

But now I know that I wasn't missing anything."

"Well, that's good. Even the blind squirrel finds a nut sooner or later," she said from behind us. "So take that knowledge into your next relationship and be happy. But while we're talking about you, and you're lying about how many guys you fucked, shouldn't you tell him about how many there've been in the three years that he's been gone? Aren't you like the town whore now?"

"But I had to do that in order to survive," I said. "It's not my fault."

She stepped next to him and had me wondering how the hell she walked so effortlessly in those heels.

"You've had your chance to talk. You've said what you wanted to say. So we're heading out of here. If you really want to do something for him, you could give him the divorce," she spat.

"Then you'll marry him," I said, angrily.

"You're damned skippy," she said. 

"Sam I made one mistake. You didn't react to it the way you were supposed to. You were supposed to..."

"Oh Lord Jesus, save us from stupid bitches," she hissed. She closed the distance between us and got right up in my face. She had to go up onto her tiptoes to get to eye level with me but I felt anger coming off of her in waves. 

"What makes you an expert on how a person is supposed to react to getting their heart broken?" she asked. "I've heard this story, lots of times but I always miss the part where you got your degree in psychology. Or maybe your doctorate is in games. Your trial separation was a game. The way you handled the divorce was more of your fucking games and in the end your marriage was a game. When you and your stupid friend were plotting out all of your moves in the game, did either one of you ever think that Sam wasn't playing? Sam is a pretty straight shooter, Linda. The way you deal with a man like that is to be honest with him. For the life of me I don't understand why but Sam took your marriage seriously. It was not a game to him. It was only a game to you. And so you played the game, you bet your marriage and you lost. Game over."

I could see that she wanted me to react. She wanted me to make a flip comment or a snide remark so she could beat the shit out of me. I have never been so terrified of a woman in my life. She was three years older than me, much smaller than me and about forty pounds lighter but I was sure that she would mop up the floor with me and wanted the chance to do it.

Sam pulled her away from me and said the words that I'd waited three years to hear. 

"I forgive you Linda," he said. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "I can understand your point of view on things now," he said. "Curiosity can be a powerful thing. In fact maybe that's something that we have in common even though we've been apart for all of this time."

"You mean like the way we experimented, when we first got married?" I asked trying to drum up some of those old memories in him. She turned back towards me then and I could see the effort that Sam was putting into keeping her off of me.

"Kind of," he said. "But it's just a little different. You got curious about what sex with someone else would be like. You wanted to find out and then we'd get back together right?"

"Exactly!" I said. "That's what I meant by TRIAL SEPARATION. It was never meant to be permanent."

"Well I'm curious about something too," he said. "I'm curious about living the rest of my life without you." I heard her sharp high pitched laughter as she and Sam got into his Black Mustang and drove away from me. They never looked back. 

I was out of jail, thanks to Sam, until my hearing. But I was unemployed. I turned to Sue and Glenn for help and they turned me down. It surprised me that the woman who had started me down this road looked at me as if I was some kind of whore. 

In the end though whoring was what I ended up doing. I went from town whore, to real whore until I got caught. With the added charges of prostitution on my list, I didn't get probation. I ended up in jail. It really isn't so bad here. I get three meals a day and not much to do. I've decided to write my life story as a cautionary tale for others out there who might fall into the trap that I made for myself. Maybe I'll make the best sellers list or failing that one of those Internet sex story sites.

The end.