Desperate Measures

"You ready for the big show?" I asked Seabra.

She looked up at me with those tilted up eyes, a look in them that told me this wasn't all a game to her. They were huge and a luminous brown and I felt myself falling into them. I saw those full luscious lips part slightly and her little pointed tongue came out to moisten them. I couldn't help myself. I had to taste her. It was everything I thought it would be, and more. I heard a noise, and Amanda and Mr. Bill were sliding back into the booth.

"Ohhh, Nooo," I said in my best Saturday Night Live voice impression. "Look who's back!" Seabra got it and so did Amanda, but Mr. Bill was oblivious.

"Don't do anything mean to him, Sluggo," Sea chortled.

Amanda swelled up like a puffer fish and the little smirk vanished off her face. "Sea and I are going to get out of here," I told them. "You kids have fun now!"

Amanda walked us to the door. "Are you sure you're okay, Corwin?" she asked. "You were being kind of a dick back there."

"No, I'm not okay," I told her. "Mandy, it's not too late. You had your fun. Just walk out of here right now with me. We'll go home and try to work things out. If you stay, this is for keeps."

"No, Corwin," she said. "This is going to be so great for us. Just go and enjoy Sea. It's going to be awesome, you'll see. Just try not to be such a dick, okay?"

"Yeah, well, it's not my dick you're interested in, is it, Mandy?" I said. "We both know it's Mr. Bill's dick. Good luck with that. We're out."

She grabbed my arm. "This is going to be so great, Corwin. You'll see. Sea is hot for you. You can tell me all about it when I get home."

"Aren't you spending the night with him?" I asked. "I figured with a stud like him he'd go all night."

"Well, I guess I might." She was a little hesitant. "I thought I'd get home around midnight and then we'd do our thing, you know, spicing things up."

"Oh, right," I slapped myself on the forehead. "I forgot. Well, see you when you get there. If Sea and I are still, you know, banging, try to be quiet, okay?"

She gave me a look and kissed me. I hope she enjoyed it; it would be the last one. I went out and got in the car. Sea was waiting.

"You sure you know what you're doing, Corwin?" she asked. "You've been married a long time."

"Yes, I'm sure," I sighed.

"I expected you to be more upset than this," she said.

"After a while you just run out of juice," I said. "I was upset for a long time. I'm just sick, now. Tired and sick. I just want it over. Somehow, I've lost the energy to be upset. I've cried gallons of tears and the crying time is over. It's time to move on. Let's go get the girls."

When we pulled up, the moving truck was already being loaded. The girls were carrying their clothes downstairs and packing them in big plastic tubs. We weren't taking much furniture: the bed out of the master suite, the girls' beds, their TVs and electronics and the big screen we'd replaced six months ago with a bigger one. When the girls finished packing, Sea took them in her car and they drove to our new place. It was about as far from the old one as we could get and still be in the same school district.

The guys finished packing and I took a last look around. It looked empty and silent; the ghosts of 19 years were all that remained. I sighed, took off my wedding ring and dropped it on the kitchen table along with my cell phone. The girls' phones were already there and it was time to go. I felt the melancholy close in. I was going out with a whimper. A few petty jabs at Amanda and Mr. Bill and I was walking away from 19 years that had been pretty damn good. Oh well, shit happens. I locked up, loaded my tools from the garage into the back of my truck and I was gone.

The girls were pretty excited about the new place. It had a pool in the back yard and they couldn't wait to try it out the next day.

"You like that, Baby," I asked Audra?

"Yeet!" she said. I had no idea what the hell "Yeet," was, but it sounded good.

Seabra was there and she still looked amazing, but if she had been Jennifer Lawrence in the flesh, I was just tired. Not that I'd prefer Jennifer Lawrence to Seabra, you understand, but you know what I mean. She sensed that, I think, and she just gave me a dazzling smile, a quick peck on the cheek and she was gone, the lingering smell of her perfume the only reminder that she'd been there.

We went to bed, and surprisingly, I slept. Not well, but I did sleep. I got up and made coffee the next morning and the girls came in after a bit. We had a Danish Kringle and chocolate milk for breakfast. They watched cartoons on TV until noon and then two gorgeous little bikini clad bundles of energy were splashing in the pool while I sat in a lounger and watched. I wasn't really paying attention. I wondered what Mandy was doing. She'd be frantic by now. I was sure she was calling everyone she could think of, trying to figure out what had happened.

She was going to have a tough time finding us. I wasn't working; I'd sold the business and made out like a bandit. The girls weren't in school; it was summer vacation. We weren't going anywhere except to the grocery store and we walked and took a bus there. The truck was parked in the garage. I was sure she had the police looking for us, but not driving a car, they were going to have problems. The only way she had to get in touch with us was electronically. She filled our inboxes with messages; IM'd the girls every time they signed onto social media and sent tweets and messages on Instagram. We read them, but didn't respond. Let her find us the hard way. I knew she would, eventually, but she had to work and pay bills. I wasn't making any payments and if she didn't, she'd get behind in a hurry. We had a good bit of equity in the house and I knew she wouldn't want to lose it.

I guess she got desperate, because a private detective came up to me in the grocery store one day about three weeks later. "Mr. Decker?" he asked.

"Who wants to know?" I said.

"Your wife hired me to find you," he said. "I'm going to tell her where you are. You should give her a call."

"If I see you around, I'll have you charged with stalking," I told him. "Beat it, mutt."

I wasn't about to call her. It turned out that I didn't have to. The police turned up and Mandy had handed them a line that I had kidnapped the girls. They asked me to go down to the station and sort it out. When I declined, they arrested me and hauled my ass downtown. The girls went in another car and when we got to the station, Amanda was there.

She tried to hug the girls, but they weren't interested. They pushed her away, and a woman came and got them and Amanda. They went into one room and I went into another. The cops started questioning me as if they had a hard on for me. I identified myself; they already had my driver's license, and the only other words that came out of my mouth were, "I intend to remain silent and I want to speak to an attorney." That shut them up.

"He's lawyering up," I heard one of them say.

They gave me a phone and I called John Trimble. He was there 45 minutes later. Sea was with him. We had this planned. It took about three hours to sort everything out. The girls said that they were with me because they wanted to be, there was no kidnapping and they didn't want to speak to their mother. John took care of it from there. He pointed out that there was no court order on custody, that under Georgia law both parents were considered equal candidates for custody and that children over 14 could choose the parent with whom they wanted to live.

They had no choice but to let us go. Sea walked out with us and Amanda was trailing along behind, pleading with the girls to talk to her. They got in Seabra's car and drove away, leaving the two of us alone in the parking lot.

Amanda was crying buckets and she looked like a mess. She turned those forlorn eyes toward me and fell to her knees. "Corwin, for God's sake, talk to me. Please, I'm begging you."

"I seem to remember begging you not to fuck Mr. Bill," I said. "You didn't listen. Why should I?"

"Please, Corwin, don't treat me like this," she wept. "I'm sorry, okay. Could we please just go somewhere and talk?"

"Okay, let's talk," I said. "Where do you want to go?"

"Home?" she pleaded. "Could we please just go home? I don't want to go anywhere anyone can see me like this."

"We can go to my home," I told her. "I don't have any interest in going to yours. I don't know who you've been fucking there."

She gave a little wail of dismay, but she nodded her head. "Okay, Corwin, whatever you want," she said. "But it's your home, too."

I wasn't going to argue with her. She wanted me to ride with her, but I wasn't about to be stuck in a car with her. I called a cab and she followed me home. I knew the girls were with Seabra and they were spending the night. They'd known her all their lives and they were getting very close. Amanda came in and I got her a cup of coffee. We sat at the bar and the silence stretched uncomfortably. Silence hadn't been uncomfortable between us since our third date, but it sure was now.

"What do you want, Corwin?" she finally asked.

"Did I say I wanted anything?" I asked.

"I mean, what do you want me to do?" she said. "What do I need to do to get you to come home? What do you want me to do so I can see the girls."

"Hey, I have no control over you seeing the girls," I said. "This was their choice."

"What did you tell them?" she accused. "You told them something. You've been poisoning them against me. I read about this."

"Are you sure Marcy didn't tell you that?" I asked.

Her eyes dropped. Obviously, Marcy was the oracle of all wisdom. "What do you want?" she repeated.

"You know what the funny thing is?" I asked. "The funny thing is, I haven't said one word to them about you. The only thing I told them was I was leaving you and they needed to decide who they wanted to live with. You want to know who told them, Amanda? You did. You're the one that told them."

"What do you mean?" she asked. "I haven't said anything! When would I have said anything?"

"Remember that night in the living room when you threatened me?" I asked. I could see she did remember. "They were sitting on the stairs. They heard every word you said."

Her face went pale and she started sobbing. "I didn't mean it," she sobbed. "I was just... just..." She couldn't continue.

"Well, they think you did," I said. "As a matter of fact, I think you did, too. I guess the majority wins."

"What can I do?" Her pleading was pitiful. Mine had been pitiful, too.

"With them? I have no idea, and I don't give a damn," I said. "You fucked it up, you fix it."

"What can I do with you?" she asked.

"Well, you could file for divorce," I said.

"I don't want a divorce. I just want you to come home," she said.

"I am home," I told her. "I don't live with you."

"I'm sorry, Corwin. This was all a big mistake," she said. "I never should have forced you into this. You didn't want it, and I should have just accepted that. I do accept it now. Can't you just forgive me and we can just go to that marriage counselor? I'll go see a therapist. I'll do whatever you want me to."

"I'm sorry, too," I said. "The problem isn't that I didn't want it. The problem is that you did. What I want you to do is file for divorce. I'll give you a little while. In a few months, if you haven't filed, I'm going to. I want nothing to do with you, Amanda. Since you're the kind of person who could do what you did, we're done. You thought you could hold the kids over my head and force me to be a cuckold. You thought you could hold me hostage and do whatever you wanted to do. Now you've figured out that you can't do that, and you've given up. Too late, Amanda. File for divorce."

"You bastard," she exclaimed. "You stole all our money! You sold the business and our bank accounts have maybe 50,000 dollars in them. Half of the money you took is mine!"

"I never touched a dime of your money," I told her. "I sold the business at a huge loss because I had to do it quickly. I took only the money I earned. You know what? I don't have a dime of it left." That was all very true. It was safely stashed away in an offshore account. I had figured out that the time to do that is before the divorce. The records showed that I'd sold the business to a Danish company for less than I owed in taxes. I'd also seriously overpaid the IRS, and they were keeping the money to go against future tax bills. Our brokerage accounts hadn't been touched and I knew I'd have to give half of them up. I'd started trusts for the girls, and they were going to be sitting pretty.

For three months, I'd been hitting every grocery store, Walmart and convenience store in town. I'd used my debit card and every time the machine asked me if I wanted cash back, I said yes. Sixty and eighty dollars a pop at all those stores, with three people doing it at every place in town we could, had added up pretty quickly. The great thing was, all those transactions were legit. I had a huge stack of cash in an old chest in a storage building. Once the coast was clear, I'd start using it.

"Amanda, you have the house," I told her. "We have enough equity built up for you to sell it, get out of the mortgage and do just fine for a while. Maybe after you sell the house, you can move in with Mr. Bill. I wonder how his wife would feel about that?"

She gasped. "I didn't know he was married," she said.

"No, you didn't care that he was married," I said. "You wanted an 'open' marriage. Maybe he has one. It's time to move on, Amanda. File for the divorce. We're done."

I stood up and walked to the door. She followed, wringing her hands and crying. She stopped at the door and looked up at me. "Tell the girls I love them and I'm sorry. Will you please do that for me, Corwin?"

"Yes, I'll tell them," I said.

"I'm not going to give up, you know," she said. "I'm not filing for a divorce because I don't want one. I want you back home where you belong. I wish you were a little more open-minded, Corwin, but I see that's not possible. I never intended it to be like this. I never thought you were serious about not even trying. I still think if you would have just tried, you would have found out that you liked it, but I see now that you can't even try. I still love you in spite of that, and I'm going to keep trying."

I was too tired to argue with her. I saw her out the door, took a minute to collect myself and called Seabra. She brought the girls home, but she didn't come in. Audra and Olivia were very upset and even angrier with their mother than before, if that was possible. I knew they wouldn't be at all receptive to the message from Amanda I had for them, so I decided to just sit on it for a while.

Two days later, Amanda showed up about 4:30 with dinner. She'd made a chicken tetrazzini with French cut green beans and a big basket of garlic bread. Olivia opened the door. Amanda tried to hug her and got a stiff arm for her troubles.

"Hi, baby," Amanda began.

"Dad!" Olivia called loudly. "You need to come out here!"

"Olivia," her mother started. "I'm so sorry, baby. I... I... I love you and I've missed you so much. I just want to ..."

Olivia shut her down. "I don't want to hear it!" she yelled. "You don't do what you did to people you love. Stay the hell away from me." She stalked away and Amanda nearly collapsed. I rescued the basket with the food in it she was carrying and pulled her over to the sofa.

She sat down and buried her face in her hands. "What have I done," she sobbed. "They hate me, Corwin. They won't even give me a chance."

"Well, what you did to them was pretty hateful," I told her. "I doubt they'll ever trust you again, Amanda. It may be possible for you to build some sort of relationship with them. I won't stand in the way, but this is on you, not them or me."

"I made dinner," she looked at me pleadingly. I felt sorry for her. She did it to herself, but she was hurting. I've never been one to kick stray dogs.

"Let me go talk to them," I said. "Find the dishes in the kitchen and we'll see what happens."

"Thank you, Corwin, I need a tissue," she said. I got her a box and went up to talk to the girls.

They were steaming. "I can't believe she just showed up here," Audra said. "What, did she think, she could feed us and then everything would be okay? She destroyed our family!"

"I know, Kitten," I told her. "Here's the deal. She tossed in the hand grenade and now she has to deal with the shrapnel. She still doesn't get it. She still thinks I'm the one with the problem. That's okay. I can live with that. I'm not going back to her. I want you to stay with me, but if you want to be with her, that's okay. Nothing will ever change how much I love you two."

"I'd rather hang myself," Olivia said. "We're staying with you, Dad."

I hugged them up. "Do you think we could go down and eat with your mother and be civil to her?" I asked.

"Do you want us to?" Olivia asked.

"Yeah, I do, baby," I said. "Just don't say mean things to her, okay? Let her know how you feel, but don't be mean. You think you can do that?"

They both agreed they could, and we had the most awkward dinner in history. Amanda tried to engage the girls in conversation and they answered, but they gave her the short version. We cleaned up, packed Amanda's dishes and she got ready to go.

"Audra, is it okay if I hug you?" she asked.

"No, Mom, it isn't," she said. "I'll talk to you if you want, but from now on, you're not my mother anymore."

That just destroyed Amanda. It was thirty minutes before she could compose herself enough to go home. She was pitiful, and I pitied her, but it wasn't my fault.

She continued to come over about once a week and she eventually reached enough of an understanding with the girls that they would occasionally go places with her. She didn't file for divorce and continued to try to talk me into moving back in with her. After six months, I filed. There was a certain dusky love volcano in my life and I wanted to see where this would go. If it went where I wanted it to go, I needed to move on as a free man.

When the divorce was final, I think Amanda finally realized that we were through. I certainly hoped she found someone that suited her. I sure had. I was going to ask Sea to marry me. If she wouldn't, I'd have to take desperate measures.