February Sucks - Linda's Choice Ch. 02

"Andy looks good," I said, joining her laughter."But like you said. It will never happen."

She scoffed at my comment as if she thought it should. I wasn't sure. While the group's men were all good looking, I wasn't certain how they would behave if we all started screwing each other's spouses. More than that, how would I handle seeing my husband fucking other women? The nerve of me after I had cheated on him. Right?

"So we are left to cheat and take chances on ruining our marriages?" Dee said, snapping me back to reality.

"Dee, I don't want to lose Jim. I love him. It's just that he is in another world these days. He has been for over four years. I just got tired of waiting. And when Mark came along. Well, you know the rest."

"Well, boyfriends on the side need to behave if they want to stay. I would never tolerate what he did to you. I know you like the dick. I had a guy that big, and it was fun while it lasted. But stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And you know where you are."

"Yes, I do. I guess we should get back. Now I'm going to be thinking of all of us naked," I laughed at the thought.

"Not until you heal up," Dee laughed along with me.

***

It was the worse Christmas and New Year's in years. I was healing, taking meds, and having to act all fine for everyone. Jim accepted the infection story and the no sex. He was actually very supportive and kind about it. He did everything for me, including help me take a bath and keeping the kids entertained as I rested.

Jim verified all the feelings I had during my affair. Selfish feelings that I can have a lover and keep my family. But deep inside me, I was confident that Jim, my Jim, would be there for me when I needed him. And here he was. Still, he was distant as before. There was this invisible wall between us that I could not breach. And after this affair, I felt like I had added to it.

On Christmas Day, we went to my mother's house for dinner and for the kids to get their gifts. When we came out, I thought I saw a dark SUV that looked like Mark's parked up the street. It had the same heavily tinted windows, but it was too far to make out the license plates. I helped Jim strap the kids in the back seat, but I stole glances at what I thought was Mark's vehicle. Was he stalking me? And on Christmas of all days?

After we drove off, I would use the excuse of looking back at the kids to see if we were tailed. Not seeing the SUV follow, I relaxed. But the whole incident had unnerved me. I felt vulnerable.

Jim was off the day after Christmas, but I had to go into my job for the next two days before the new year. When I came out, the black tinted SUV was there down the street. Once a coincidence, I thought. Twice is a trend. Turning around, I asked Jim to take me to work, telling him that I was still not up to driving.

"Sure thing, Linda," he said cheerfully. "When are you coming home?"

"I'm not sure. Probably no later than lunchtime."

"Maybe we can go get something to eat after I pick you up."

"Sounds good," I replied, taking out my makeup mirror.

Feigning checking myself out, I looked behind us. And sure enough, the SUV was following us. Shit!

Jim dropped me off at work. I had him walk me to the door and made a show of kissing him before I went in. Just then, the SUV driver gunned the engine and drove past my office building. It was Mark alright. I saw his personalized plates. 22MarkLV. How original.

I had a problem.

Ten minutes later, I received a call at work.

"Linda Johnson," I answered.

"Miss me?" It was Mark.

"No," I replied. "I'm moving on with my life. And so should you. You have a family."

"Don't patronize me!" he scowled.

"How about you don't stalk me, Mark!" I replied, trying not to raise my voice but failing. "I saw your black SUV by my mother's on Christmas. And you followed me with my husband today."

"So that's the cuck you're married to. He looks like a loser."

"What did you say?" I snapped back.

"You heard me," he replied in a snide manner. "If he were taking care of business at home, you would not have come to me."

I was overwhelmed by anger at his arrogance and because he was right in a way.

"Let me correct you, Mr. LaValliere," I snapped back. "I went to you for a small adventure."

"It wasn't small, was it?"

"If you are talking about your dick, it's wasted on a small mind."

He was quiet for a second too long.

"Do you want me to explain it to you, Mark? You fucked up. Called me names for no reason after I was generous to you, and then you hurt me. So take it like a man, and move on."

"I'm more man than your husband..." he spat out, but I had enough.

"He is none of your concern, Mark. And neither am I. I bet you have a list of women who would spread their legs for you. Go fuck one and leave me alone. Do you understand?"

"You'll change your mind. You'll miss the big dick. I know you, Linda."

"You know shit, Mark. And one more thing."

"What?"

"I chose the better man. Bye."

"We're not done, Baby Girl," he growled as he hung up on me.

I slammed the phone and tried to salvage the rest of my morning. Still unnerved, I managed to get some work done. But by eleven-thirty, I was mentally drained and needed to leave.

In subsequent days, Mark called and left messages as I no longer took his calls. He also sent messages on my second phone that I had off most of the time. I contemplated closing the account but thought I might need it and kept it active. Most times, it was locked in my office desk and had a PIN lock for security. But I always checked the messages on my company phone. I had to hear them and delete them as soon as possible. Mark was nothing if not persistent and repetitive.

Things with him did not let up. He would call at least once a day. Something that went on for the next two months! This was turning into another situation, like when my high school boyfriend had stalked me. Only then, I had Jim to rely on. This time I had to deal with it alone. If Mark came after me physically, and I called the police, everything about us would be exposed, and Jim would find out. Why was I attracting these obsessive types?

I didn't think Mark would ever physically try to attack me like Don Snider had tried years ago. But then, I didn't believe Mark would ever hurt me while we were in bed like he had. Or that he had so much anger in him when he called me all those names. But the stalking and incessant calls forced me to revise my view. Having misjudged him once, I didn't want to be unprepared. If he took it further than messages and stalking me.

Knowing I had to defend myself. I signed up for a weekend pistol course. It would take me some time to become proficient, but I had a concealed carry permit and purchased a firearm for the first time in my life. But I followed the instructor's best advice. The best defense is making sure you avoid a situation that you have to use the firearm. And that advice suited me perfectly, as in not getting into a confrontation with Mark, I would keep our affair secret, safe.

Thus, I started thinking out my every move outside the house and carrying my firearm in my purse. The hardest part of this was convincing Jim that it was necessary. Searching through the news of crime in our area, I found enough articles of rapes, break-ins, and shootings in our metropolitan area to convince him that we had to be careful. I even convinced Jim to get his concealed carry permit and buy a firearm. The clincher to Jim agreeing to this was mentioning my now dead stalker from years ago: Don Snider. As soon as I brought him up, Jim stiffened and stared at me coldly. That scared me, but right after, he agreed to the security measures.

The stalking by Mark in the black SUV continued. Worried that my husband would notice, I took one of Mark's calls to my office phone. As soon as I picked up, he knew.

"I knew you would miss me and pick up one day."

"Not even close, Mark," I replied. "You need to stop stalking me."

"What are you talking about?"

"Stop stalking me in your SUV, Mark. I know your license tags. Two-two-Mark-L-V. It's you. Stop playing games."

"Just come see me, Linda," he said in his polite seductive tone. "We were so good together."

"Mark, if my husband notices, and he will, he will call the police. Even with the people loving you all over town, one of them will see dollar signs and will leak the report to the press. Do you want to take the chance of that?"

"Are you threatening me?" the vengeful Mark returned.

"No, dammit!" I snapped back, losing my patience. "I'm trying to warn you. Neither one of us can take the chance of this coming out. I don't want that, and neither do you. So back off."

Again, there was silence.

"Mark?"

"I hear you," he spat back. "You're right."

Before I could reply, he hung up.

From that day on, I stopped seeing the black SUV outside our home, my job, or anyplace else.

***

Life continued for our family despite our awareness push. Work, home, and some sex at nights. But issues in that area persisted. Finally, I told Jim that we had to go to counseling by mid-January or else. I made the appointment and dragged him there despite protests. On the first night, it was a rehash of our issues. Jim stayed quiet most of the night, refusing to talk while I was there. Eventually, the therapist told us we had to come on separate evenings, and surprisingly, Jim agreed.

When it was my turn, I told the therapist pretty much everything but the Mark situation. The way I saw it, our issues had started before my affair, and it had no bearing on what had started before it. In the meantime, Mark continued the messages on my phone. Some days he acted like we never broke up, and others, he became angry. But I never felt Mark was making direct threats. And the stalking had stopped.

Then one day, another incident happened with unintended consequences.

***

Ghost of Don Snider

It was a Saturday morning, on the third weekend of January. The temperature had dropped as a cold front moved in from Canada ten days before. Snow that fell prior to the cold front turned to ice. Then more snow fell and yet another cold spell. A winter hell, the TV weather people called it. The worse winter in years, they said. All that, with February and early March still to come.

But we endured, managing to get the kids off in cold mornings, as well as ourselves to work and back. Jim and I still went to our marriage counseling sessions. Each separate from the other. But we were going. I hoped the therapist was helping Jim because we still had distance between us. She wasn't doing much for me as I was not sharing the Mark story with anyone but Dee.

So. Saturday. Cold. And Jim received a call. There had been a flood in his building at work, jeopardizing some files. Jim was required to rush over and remove the servers with the files then stored in-house. I saw Jim lower the cover of his laptop, put on his winter shoes, and grab his coat.

"I have to rush to work. See you when I can. I'll call," was all Jim said as he rushed to his truck and drove off like a madman.

After I settled the kids, I went back to the kitchen, where I noticed something that Jim had never done before. His laptop screen was not down all the way to effectively lock it. It had work sensitive documents that no one was privy to as his company worked on sensitive military contracts.

I reached to close it, but my curiosity got the best of me. Checking on the kids to make sure they were occupied, I opened the laptop and looked at the email programs. He had one Outlook for work and a separate one for MSN. A Hotmail account. I left the work account alone and searched through the Hotmail e-mail. It was mostly stuff from the guys in our five couple group. One from Gus had a picture of a hot big tit redhead in a US flag bikini. Usual stuff.

Then I decided to look at his File Explorer. There were some locked folders labeled with names of military hardware companies and one that said defense department. Leaving those alone, I look through the others. One was labeled MISSC for miscellaneous? But it was misspelled. The abbreviation for such folders was MISC. That told me that Jim had named it. He tended to misspell things when rushing so that tag had his proverbial finger-prints all over it.

Opening the MISSC folder, I found three subfolders and froze cold. One was named family; it had pictures of us in it. The other was tagged resume. Jim kept an updated resume in it in case he needed it. It also had a copy of the resume he used to apply for his current job. I didn't see what was in the other folders until later. Because the third was tagged, Don Snider. My dead highschool boyfriend. The one who had killed himself with drugs and alcohol almost two years ago.

I quickly ran and opened my laptop bag and took my HP out, then a transfer cable which I used at work. It allowed me to move files from my laptop to my desktop and back. Plugging it in, I connected both laptops and copied the entire content of the Don Snider folder. I also copied every Hotmail email on his computer to mine. Then I went to the internet account and copied all his mail from there and send it to myself. Then I erased any trace of what I did from his sent and deleted files. MSN could still retrieve them, but Jim would have to know what I did and request them.

Once done with the transfers, I checked the folder I had found after running a virus program on it. At my job, I run operations. It includes the MIS department. You know: I.T. The geeks who run and service the company computers? There is a funny British TV show about them. You should see it. It's called the IT Crowd. Only my geeks are not stupid, and I, as their boss, know a lot from listening and asking many questions. And I remember. But while my mind was sharp, my hands were trembling.

Why did my husband have a folder with Don Snider's name on it? The man who had made my life hell some years back and broke into our home. And what was in it? Not able to wait any longer, I right-clicked and chose open. The folder had many outlook emails stored separately from the outlook program. Checking the dates, I noticed that they were from the time I was pregnant with Tommy and ran up to the day of Don's death. I opened the last one using my outlook program and got the shock of my life.

"Hey Cuck,

It's me. The guy who put the meat pipe to your wife's pussy. It was nice, tight, and juicy. Just as I like our girl Linda..."

What the fuck? I had never let that sleazeball fuck me. We had done some petting and kissing in senior year and just after graduation. But I had chickened out and not given him my virginity on prom night. He had never forgotten it and kept asking me to "give him one" as "I owed him one." I owed him nothing. The fucker had put me through hell with his stalking and threats. Now that bastard made Mark seem tame in comparison. Why had he told Jim that he and I had fucked?

The more I read, the more I realized what a sick man he was. Man is too nice a tag for him. He was gutter slime to me. In a two and a half year period, he had sent Jim close to three hundred emails that were one more disgusting than the other. In them, he described in pornographic fashion his fantasy sex with me. He taunted Jim and called him a stupid cuck, a cuckold. Someone who lets his wife screw other men and either watches or waits for her, knowing what she is doing until she returns. Don had proceeded to tell Jim he had fucked me through senior year, the summer before college, and used to come up to college to fuck me. Up to and including the time Jim and I dated before graduation. Oh, my God!

No wonder Jim was messed up. And seeing his responses to Don was painful as I saw a confident Jim tell Don to fuck off at first. Then as time passed, Jim had weakened. In a couple of return emails, he had actually asked what my mythical self and Snider had done together.

May the bastard rot in hell; Don told Jim how I liked it hard and moaned like a banshee when I did. The son of a bitch had filled my husband's head with this garbage and weakened Jim's resolve and trust in me.

At first, I was angry with Jim for believing Snider. Then I realized that he had to endure email after email telling him in graphic detail of my indiscretions. No matter how fake they were, Jim had been subjected and taunted by Don with them. I wondered how I would have reacted if I had been the recipient of such treatment. Poor Jim!

I had to think about it first, but it didn't take me long to know precisely what I had to do. Jim and I had to discuss these emails. Before when alone, and with our marriage counselor. While we still had a marriage, that is. I shook my head at the unfairness of it all. How that bastard Don had fucked with my husband's head and emotions. And worse than that, all this could have been avoided. All of it.

You see, I had my own particular folder on my laptop about Don. It had the protective order and all the court documents of his arrest, conviction, and incarceration. Most of the work by the police on the case had been done by a Sergeant Maya Dawson. A prematurely jaded but diligent police sergeant. She was an African American Army Military Police veteran who was methodical as hell. If anyone could help me, it was her.

Sgt. Dawson had given me her card and offered to be there for me if I needed her help. But I never did because I didn't think the police would be able to help the wreckage of my marriage. Yes, the dates of our problems overlapped with Don Snider's stalking, incarceration, and death, but I thought Jim and I needed marriage counseling, not the cops.

Looking up the police contact numbers on the net, I found the non-emergency number from our local precinct and called asking for her. I found out that Lieutenant Dawson was on duty. Then I was asked what I needed to talk to her about. I gave them my name and number, then asked if there was any way I could come to the station and speak to the good Lieutenant. Five minutes later, I received a call with an invitation to drive over to see Maya Dawson.

Calling Mom, I had her come over and watch the kids as I hightailed it to the police station. Lt. Maya Dawson gave me a beaming smile and a big hug.

"I remember you, girl," she said, rocking me back and forth. "How you been?"

"I'm surviving," I replied.

"That good, eh?" she scowled, tilting her head. "You just sit and tell cousin Maya all about it."

Cousin! Do YOU have a police Lieutenant who's your cousin? You don't! Too bad. Cause I do. Anywhoo... where was I?

Yes... I told cousin Maya the whole story of the emails Don the scumbag Snider had sent to my poor husband and how it had messed him up. She shook her head through it all in disgust. Saying a few "oh no's" and sighing more than a few times.

When my story was over, she closed her eyes as her lips moved, and she held the cross around her neck. I sat in silence until she opened her eyes. Then she took a breath, and her demeanor changed.

"That mother, fucken liar!" Maya said, shaking her head. "We need to fix this."

"Lieutenant..."

"You can call me Maya, baby. We Dawson cousins do that."

"Thank you, Maya," I managed to say.

"No, Linda baby, I need to thank you. Do you know how much... I owe you?"

"Owe me?"

"Uh, hum... yeah you sugar," she said, doing a head tilt and finger wave. "I'm a lieutenant because of that case. Working it and getting that conviction helped get my promotion. So yeah, I owe you. And now I realized that I also failed you."

"How?"

"Because I now wish we had gone after him more than we did."