Breaching a Partnership

The subpoena was a stroke of luck. I tried to turn it t my advantage. "Amy, I am a lawyer. I tell you that the best thing you can do is to get away from everyone and everything before testifying. Let's go away, and you come back the day before you testify. You won't have to think about the grand jury and you will not be surrounded by people and places that will simply stress you out. Let's do it. For you sake, my sake and for Mikey."

After further discussion, Amy emailed to her superiors her intention to take four vacation days the following week, which she needed because of the stress of the events, with assurances that she would return in time to testify.

In the next days, we prepared for our trip, while I also prepared for my leaving town. I met with my partners at the firm, and arranged to transition my work to others, as well as negotiate various financial aspects of leaving a practice. I met with the divorce lawyer and arranged to file for divorce after Amy had testified.

My mother called back to say that dad had "ordered" her to go to France. Between visiting nurses and neighbors, there would always be someone for dad.

Things were moving along but I still had to live with Amy and pretend that I knew nothing. It was not that hard as Amy herself was fairly depressed and not interested in talking or doing anything. Although it was not something we could talk about, I guessed that Amy was concerned that she did not know what the Feds knew about her relationship with Jim. She could testify truthfully and hope that the secrecy of the grand jury prevailed, but it was most unlikely that such titillating information could be kept a secret. She could lie under oath, but perverting justice was risky and against everything she stood for. Amy was also no doubt angry at herself for falling into a relationship with a simple criminal who was willing to help the country's enemy. Or maybe she was still in love with Jim and hurting that he was in prison and would likely spend most of his remaining adult life there. I casually thought that Amy was feeling guilty about having cheated on me and her son, but, if she ever thought about that, I suspected that she would rationalize her actions as being limited to a different Jim/Amy world where I did not exist. Seeing her depressed, I sometimes wished that I could cuddle her in my arms and tell her that everything will be fine, but I could not lie like that.

France

I was able to get the expedited passports just in time. The flight to Paris was uneventful, with little Mikey generally being good and sleeping a lot. We cleared customs and I picked up our car rental, and drove us to a small hotel in a village on Paris' outskirts.

It was late afternoon and Amy had just nursed the baby and the three of us went to get some dinner. I wished that I did not have to drag the baby for this, but we could not leave him alone or with some stranger. Thankfully, the baby would not be able to understand anything.

After dinner, I acquired a bottle of wine and a couple glasses and took Amy to a quiet sitting area outside our hotel.

"Amy, just before we left for France, I learned something dreadful. How did it begin?"

Amy looked at me with eyes wide open. Her mouth was moving as if trying to say something, but no words formed and no sound was heard.

"Amy, I know all about you and Jim, including the three nights that you spent in his home. I can tell the positions you were in when you made love to him and even about the belt spanking and your new calling as a masseuse. But I do not know why? I do not understand your motivation for abandoning your family or how you saw this play out. Maybe you can say something that will make it better because I don't think anything could get worse. Please be honest."

Amy now had a horrified look on her face. My references to spanking and her calling as a masseuse clearly told her that I had somehow witnessed everything. Tears were forming in her eyes. She started to cry. Suddenly she bolted back to the hotel. I just sat and sipped my wine. About ten minutes later, Amy returned and tentatively sat next to me. "How did you find out?"

"I can't tell you. But if you want I can show you images of you and Jim, although there is no point. We both know what you did. My only question is why."

Amy remained quiet for a minute, but then slowly started to answer, "we worked together closely. Jim listened to all my ideas and proposals and criticisms. We talked. We bantered sometimes to silliness while discussing some aspect of the case. I told you that e went to lunch just the two of us. He used to hold my hand at these lunches, and we talked about everything. I wanted to remain faithful and thought I could always stop before crossing the line. But we became very close. I started to like him very much. I admired and respected him tremendously. Then one day, we had a huge breakout event. We did a warrant search on a house and found a huge load of information, and were able to arrest the owner and perp. I had been instrumental in identifying the house and the perp. When we got back to our task force station, Jim was there to greet and thank us. He called me into an office to get information regarding the arrest and closed the door. Once inside, Jim gave me a congratulatory hug. I somehow automatically reciprocated and put my arms around him, and it felt comfortable. He then stood back a little with our arms still around another and looked into my eyes and I into his. He then brought his face next to mine and I did not move. He kissed me on the lips. I don't know why I did what I did, but I instinctively went up on my tiptoes, and our lips came together, and we were driving our tongues into each other. I felt that kiss throughout my body. My nipples tingled and I felt getting wet. I almost had an orgasm just by kissing him. I did not want to end that kiss even though I knew that we were doing was wrong. We were saved when there were voices outside, and we had to return to the team. That was that."

"Was this before I went to see my dad?"

"I guess the day before."

"I guess I did not notice anything."

"You weren't supposed to. What Jim and I did had nothing to do with you and me."

"Nothing to do with me? You didn't think you were cheating on me."

"I never wanted to cheat on you. I actually thought that this might be a single event to never repeat. Yet, my kiss with Jim felt so natural and so good and so right. I was confused, nervous, eager, uncertain, excited - a cacophony of different emotions. The next morning, I actually planned on avoiding any situations where Jim and I were alone."

"I guess that you did not convince yourself of your plan?"

"My plan did not survive my meeting Jim the next day. We went to a funeral of a prior chief of police. There were so many law enforcement groups and other people. That took us to the end of the day. We ran across some out-of-town officers who had to stay the night, and Jim and I took them to dinner. It was surreal. I felt as if Jim and I were a married couple going out with friends. But I fully intended the evening to be just dinner. But then we sat at the table looking at each other. I saw only his lips moving, the same lips that had given me such great pleasure the day before. I knew I had to leave right then, but my legs could not move, and my mouth could not form a good-bye. After dinner, after the others had gone on their way with a lot of gratitude for taking them out, Jim and I went outside and he kissed me again, and it was over. I was going home with him."

"Did you consider us - your husband and your son - at all?"

"I am embarrassed to say that when I was with Jim, I was no longer a wife or a mother. I was just a woman wanting to be with her lover. There was this attraction between us, and I could not stop. I just rationalized that my family and Jim were just two distinct components of life having nothing to do with each other."

"I was not enough for you."

"After Jim's arrest, I have been reflecting on what I did with him and why. It is not true that you were inadequate in any way, or not completely true. You are a good faithful husband and father. I was perfectly happy with our sex life. But your goodness was also the problem. I did not feel comfortable being completely open about my sex fantasies, and since I could not talk to you about my fantasies, you could not provide what I was looking for. I was looking to find a different excitement from being wicked, being a sinful delinquent, rather than a cop, a mother and a wife. Jim offered an opportunity to do all the wicked things without the constraint of societal norms or my fear of how you would perceive me."

"So you seduced Jim?"

"No; definitely not. Jim became infatuated with me. He then really seduced me. He was a hunter and I was his prey. Jim always said the right thing and made me feel special. I did not respond well to his seduction. I respected and admired Jim. Jim was charismatic, powerful, sort of my superior and he had plenty of time to work on me. I can see those lunches now as acts of seduction. God, I wish now that I had listened to you when you warned me about my private lunches with him. But I didn't listen. I let him slowly occupy more and more of my time, and so he made himself my work husband. In fact, I was spending more time with Jim than with you. So being Jim's work wife and sleeping with him ultimately seemed natural. I now realize that I had deceived myself and really never stepped back and really analyzed my growing relationship with Jim."

I had to admire Amy's introspection and openness. I sat silently trying to absorb what Amy just explained, or confessed - I did not even know how to categorize. Amy then continued.

"Honey, I will tell you everything. I will answer every question as completely and truthfully as I can. I will do that because I know that any doubt or feeling that you don't know everything will be an impediment to your ability to forgive me. I will need to convince you to trust me at least a little. I have my work cut out for me. I hope, however, that you will find it in your heart to forgive me at some point and so I will share everything with you. I will be shaming myself with every answer, but I will do anything to earn that forgiveness."

"From what I saw, your feelings for Jim were far more intense than they were for me."

"I don't think that is true. I hope it isn't true. I love you honey very much, and I love our child, and those feelings are intense. My feelings for Jim were different. Even when I was with Jim, the intensity of my attraction to Jim scared me, the sexual nature of it surprised me and the combination of the two confused me. But I never saw that as impacting what you and I had."

"Why could you have thought it would not impact. You did things with Jim that you never did with me - you were a different, far more sexual person with Jim than you had ever been with me. You were more loving with Jim than you had ever been with me. You were giving Jim something that you would never give to me. How could that not impact us?"

Amy just stared at me. Her lips began to quiver. Perhaps she recognized for the first time the truth of what she had given Jim but withheld from me. Maybe it was my fault for not being more proactive with Amy, not pushing the envelope with her. But it was Amy, not Jim, that pulled his belt and started the mock spankings that I could never have foreseen her doing at all, or at least with me. She started massaging Jim, even though she had never offered anything similar to me. She volunteered with Jim but not with me.

Amy now started to cry. Suddenly, she got up and ran to our room. I followed her and saw that she was in the bathroom bawling. I just grabbed my laptop and went down to the sitting area near the reception desk, signed on the internet, checked e-mails, and pretended to do some work. By the time I went back to the room, Amy was asleep or at least pretended to be asleep.

As we had previously planned, we were up early. We didn't talk. Amy took care of the baby, while I dressed to go the Company. Amy should have the rental car, and so the Company had a car pick me up. After a long day of meetings, I was brought home. Amy was outside on one of the benches, with the baby sleeping in her arms. Amy's face was forlorn and her eyes empty. I suspected she had cried during the day.

"Hi honey, how were your meetings?"

"Went OK. Just a lot of stuff to do."

"The baby is fed, but I have not eaten. I thought we might go out together to a restaurant for dinner." That was fine with me, and after changing, the three of us went to dinner. I still wanted some more answers.

"Amy, when you talked about your affair with Jim being something separate from your family, the thought occurred to me that we never discussed what marriage meant to us."

Amy looked at me, nodded, and wanted me to continue. "I view marriage as a lifelong commitment to a partnership where we shared our lives to the exclusion of all others. The key word is 'partnership.' Our interests would be fused, and, as in any partnership, you could not unilaterally give any part of the partnership to another. Neither of us could share the fused oneness of our bodies and our souls with anyone else."

"Michael, I don't think that I gave away anything of ours to Jim. I was with him on my own free time and only when you were unavailable. I never stopped loving you as my husband. You lost nothing and so I could not have given away anything of ours."

"Amy, think about it. Did Jim know that you slept with me?"

"Of course he knew. We are married, and I told Jim that, if anything, I had to be more open to you; make you happy."

"Ah, yes, pity sex?"

"No, not pity sex! You are my husband and the father of our child, and you have always been there for me. I have always loved you, and never wanted us to be apart."

"We will get back to that, Amy. But you told Jim about us, what we did together, didn't you?"

"Yes, Jim always wanted to talk about us. You little boys are always in competition and Jim wanted to win whatever game it is that you little boys play. I didn't say much beyond that you kept me perfectly happy."

"But you did talk to an outsider about your partner and the partnership. Forgetting the sex, you were disclosing partnership secrets to an outsider. How do you think I should feel about you telling Jim everything while keeping secrets from me? When you shared our secrets with Jim but kept Jim's secrets from me, who were you treating as your husband?"

"It is true that Jim and I kept a secret from you. But I could not tell you because I love you and I knew that telling you about Jim would hurt you, and I did not want to cause you any pain. I kept the secret as much for you as for myself."

"You are such a loving wife indeed."

Amy grimaced and was about to say something, but then bit her tongue. I continued, "I saw you massage Jim. I saw you play a belt-spanking game with him. These were loving intimate actions that I never saw. Why Jim and not me?"

Amy was quiet for a bit, thinking. "I don't have an answer. I told you before that I did not feel comfortable in letting you the slut side of me. Maybe I took our marriage for granted and did not feel it necessary to arouse you or entreat you to want me. Maybe I felt freer because I was already cheating and might as well let everything go. But, Michael, if I have the opportunity, I would happily do everything and anything you wanted. You were never less important than anyone else."

"How can you say I was never less important when you when it was more important for you to fuck Jim than it was to remain my faithful wife? I don't want you to answer me now, but I want you to give some thought to this question. If Jim had not been arrested, wouldn't you have continued your relationship with Jim, and, if you did, wouldn't there have at least been the strong possibility that you would have so fallen in love with him, that you would choose to divorce me and marry him? If you say that nothing like that would have happened, how do you know? And how would I ever know that you would have chosen me over Jim?"

"I can't really comprehend the pain that you must have experienced if you saw Jim and me together. You are right that I was acting as a wanton slut and did things for Jim that I never had done with you. Please understand that this just followed my stupid thinking that the whole affair was just me being anti-Amy, being the opposite of what I was and should have been. It was stupid. It was selfish. It was wrong. Find a word describing unforgivable conduct, and I was guilty of that. But it was the anti-Amy, and not the real me."

"But the anti-Amy is part of you."

There was a moment of silence. Neither of us desired to continue the conversation. After we undressed and washed up, we went to our separate beds. I started to read a book to calm down. It was a history book, and although I like the subject, reading history or science tends to make me drowsy very quickly. But then, a few minutes into my reading, I saw Amy get out of bed and drop her robe to expose a sexy negligee. She quickly crossed the distance to my bed and forced herself next to me.

"As long as you have the light turned on, I can't fall asleep, honey. I want you to continue reading, or doing whatever you wish, but can I just lie here next to you until you turn off the light?"

Amy's gesture was not really unexpected. My big head was fighting with my little head. She was alluring as any woman could be, and my little head was screaming at my big head -"Get it while you can because you never know when you will get laid again, and certainly not to someone like this. Take it."

Amy looked into my eyes and guessed at my internal debate. "Please let me do something for you. It doesn't have to mean anything." Her right hand was now caressing the bed covering over my little head.

I knew that surrendering to Amy would be gratifying, but that I would regret in the following days. I gently moved her right hand away and continued to nudge Amy off the bed. "You should get some sleep. I am turning off the light and turning in." I could hear Amy sniffling as she returned to her bed. I doubt either one of us slept well.

The next morning one of my future reports at the Company picked me up and took me to the office. I was generally successful in focusing on what I needed to do.

After returning to the hotel, Amy was again nursing Mikey. I again saw the love of the mother and child, but also had flashes of Jim's hands on those breasts, and his mouth on those same tits probably drinking in the same milk. I changed into more comfortable clothes.

After Mikey was fed, burped and had his diaper changed, we went to dinner at local neighborhood restaurant to enjoy some standard local fare. It was not a place that anyone seemed to speak English and so we had a measure of privacy. I ordered, and the server brought a carafe of red wine for us to share. After pouring our glasses, Amy raised her glass to mine and gave a toast - "Here is to us, whether we are together as I hope, or at least individually if we cannot."

I returned the toast, "we will be.'"

"And what will we be my love?"

"Referring to me as 'my love' is the question and answer. I both loved you and was in love with you. I would have sacrificed my body, my work, my happiness, anything. But, as we talked yesterday, I felt that because we were partners and I thought that you loved me perhaps not as much as I loved you but still wanted to be my one true partner. I could live with that."

I took a deep breath in silence, which Amy quickly interrupted. "But I love you and am in love with you. Nothing has changed in my feelings for you."