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."