A Strange Car in the Driveway

"Well?" I asked after a long pause. "Don't you have anything to say for yourself, dear wife?"

Hester and Pearl exchanged an uncomfortable glance. Hester then sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. She looked again toward Pearl and asked, "Do you want to tell him?"

Pearl looked down at the floor and she shifted nervously in her chair. "I'm sorry, Daddy," she said, "but that's not Mom in the video. That's me."

If someone had heaved a medicine ball into my gut at that moment, I would have preferred it to the sensation I felt instead. All the blood from my face drained, and it felt as though my head detached from my body and began to float around the living room. I tried to speak, but couldn't form the words.

"I'm so sorry, Daddy!" Pearl shouted. "Please don't be mad!"

"It's my fault," Hester interjected. "I introduced the two of them. He's an intern in my office. He seems like a nice kid. I thought the two of them would hit it off. I had no idea how well, until now."

"We kept in touch with each other when I went away to school," Pearl explained, sheepishly. "One thing led to another...and he wanted me to come home for a short visit. I knew that no one would be home, so..."

"Oh, Pearl," Hester said, shaking her head.

Pearl shrugged. "I said I'm sorry."

All of my plotting and scheming had gone horribly wrong. It turned out that Hester wasn't cheating on me. That whole time, I had convinced myself that she had wronged me, just like all of the heartless, soulless, wives I read about online. She wasn't like that, though. She wasn't a cheating whore after all. Instead of listening to her beg and plead to save our marriage, the tables had turned, and I began pleading for her forgiveness.

"Please forgive me, honey!" I said. "I'm so sorry I doubted you! Let's just put all of this ugliness behind us and go back to the way things were."

When Hester looked in my eyes, I saw pity. For a moment, I thought she understood how sorry I felt, and was prepared to forgive me. She took the envelope from the table, and I expected her to shred it to pieces. Instead, she tucked it under her arm and stood from her chair.

"I'm going to take this to my lawyer," she announced, "and make sure everything is fair and equitable. If so, we'll begin the process. If not, I'll send you the new terms. Now, which one of us is leaving the house?"

I fell to my knees. The cat dug its claws into my thighs before leaping off my lap in a panic. My Scotch spilled onto the floor and the glass landed with a crash.

"Please, Hester, don't do this!" I pleaded. "Think of our family! Think of our wedding vows! Think of everything we've been together!"

She strolled out of the room, and then turned just as she reached the kitchen. "You should have thought of all that before you began your little witch hunt."

EPILOGUE:

This is the part of the story where I'm supposed to tell you how I ended up with more than half of our assets and a gorgeous new wife with enormous tits, a mouth like an ElectroLux, and the sexual appetite of a frat boy. The truth is I'm lonely and miserable. The only joy I experience on most days is visiting my favorite stories site and reading about all the jilted husbands who exact their perfectly-executed revenge plots on their soulless cheating wives. Sadly enough, I live vicariously through those literary heroes.

In some of those stories, the cheating wife ends up so desperate for cash that she sells herself to a Mexican whorehouse. The irony of my story is that I became so desperate for sexual contact that I paid a visit to one of those fine establishments. Now it burns when I piss. I guess it's time to run another series of tests.