Found Money

And just a few small comments she made, made me think she thought less of me for, what she thought was, giving up on my business.

This stung a little bit, but I wasn't looking for another full blown argument.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

(and now we are back to the point in time when I had met with my cousin Mike at The Norseman and heard about the drug dealer in our neighborhood... )

I knew when Mel was in one of these moods it was best to just leave her alone. I kept telling myself that the stress from her work was creating the negativity towards me. She needed a place to vent, I told myself.

And there were times when I almost believed that too.

I decided to do a little work. I knew there was no magical wand I could wave to get her out of her bitchy mood.

Tomorrow was Friday. If I could get a little work done tonight, maybe I could start tearing out the old wood deck.

The French doors I had installed looked great. That made the old deck, by comparison, look even worse.

I did a fair amount of work that night and by noon on Friday I was all caught up with a head start on next week.

I decided to start the hard work of tearing out the old deck. The installation of the new deck is kind of fun. But the unpleasant part is getting the old one out.

Unfortunately they had nailed the old cedar to the pressure treated lumber frame. Removing screws is much easier and far more painless. I began.

After several hours of nail removal and what appeared to me as not much progress, I grabbed my hydroflask and sat in the back of my yard near the neighbors fence. I drank the water and tried to envision my plan for the deck.

And then I noticed one of my crawl space vents was open. Aw fuck I thought. This had happened a few years ago and I had ended up with a family of raccoons living under my house. Four hundred dollars to the exterminator later, they were gone.

He told me the first thing to look for is any access into the crawl space, normally an open vent.

Fuck. If I thought removing nails was a crappy job, crawling underneath the house and looking for rodents was far worse.

I went into the house got my old ski goggles, a stocking hat and a flashlight. I also carried a small shovel, for defense I thought. Ugh. Crawling through bugs, spiders and potential rodents was real close to the bottom of activities I would choose to do.

But I had to. I didn't want to pay an exterminator a few hundred dollars to find out the wind blew open my vent cover.

I took a deep breath and crawled through the small opening on my foundation vent. It was cramped and filthy. I turned on the flashlight and searched for rodents.

So far nothing. Then I saw something, some type of lump directly in front of me about halfway under the house. I cautiously crawled toward it, but nothing was moving. It didn't look like a rodent nest.

As I got closer it looked like a piece of lumber on top of something else. I probed the lump cautiously with the small shovel. No movement.

With the shovel I pushed away the lumber and saw what I thought was a ball of clothes. No, it was a bag, or actually an old backpack. Full of something.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Damon sat in his cell. He felt a quiet anger. An anger at himself. He had been so close to his goal. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and he could have bought his uncle's body shop in West Hattiesburg, building included. A new life for him.

The free lawyer that talked to him, told him he would likely do fourteen to twenty months. He could be out in eleven months if he behaved himself the guy had said. Like this was some type of good news.

FUCK!

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

I slowly shuffled backwards out of the crawl space pulling the mysterious backpack along. I knew the pack had not been under the house less than two years ago when I had the raccoon problem. I never saw this pack there then? Strange.

I brushed the dirt and debris off myself and did a quick inspection to make sure no spiders were on my clothes. I then sat on the old deck with the backpack crammed with who knew what next to me. I removed my gloves and unzipped the tattered red pack.

There was money in it. A lot of money. Worn bills, mostly hundreds and some twenties. Most of it was in banded stacks and there was a small amount loose.

My heart started beating, hard. What was this? Where had it come from I wondered. Then I got nervous. I glanced around, had any of the neighbors seen me? Outside, with stacks of money?

I quickly gathered it all up and brought it inside. I closed the shades and laid the pack out on the kitchen table. I dumped all the money out and inspected the pack. I found nothing identifying the owner or any other telling information on the pack.

I then counted the money. There were stacks of hundreds held together with rubber bands. After inspecting I determined these stacks held one hundred, hundred dollar bills. Ten thousand dollars per stack.

I laid out the stacks and counted them, twenty two stacks. I then counted the loose currency.

The grand total, two hundred and thirty thousand - eight hundred and twenty dollars. Oh my god. I was nervous and excited too. I had never seen near this much cash in person before.

I got to thinking. I need to call Mike. What is my legal responsibility I wondered? I was eight digits into calling him when I hung up. What if he told me I had to give it up?

I kept thinking. And then I thought of the drug dealer Mike spoke about the other night. Could somehow he have hidden the money under my house? That didn't seem likely or logical, but what other explanation was there?

I knew I should tell Mike but there is a greedy side to me. Now, I had the money. It was mine. The moment I hand it over I knew I'd never see it again.

I was contemplating all this when surprisingly Melanie showed up. She's home early on a Friday afternoon. Silently I hear her shuffling around, coming through the door. No call of greeting to me.

She walked into the kitchen, saw all this money, and stops.

"What is all this?" She asked. "Where did it come from?"

When I look at her and there was an excited look in her eyes. It is a look I had not seen from her in quite some time.

"Mel, you're not going to believe this" I said.

I look at her, she still has that excited gaze in her eyes, staring at the pile of money. Then she looks at me, as if to say, 'go on'.

"So I was out in the backyard working on the deck," I tell her and she nods, "and I noticed one of the foundation vents open," I go on, I doubt she even knew we had foundation vents.

I then told her about finding the backpack and discovering the money. I hadn't told her previously about the drug house around the corner. And for some reason I didn't tell her now either.

"There's two hundred and thirty thousand dollars here." I tell Melanie.

"Oh my god!" She gushes, "This is fantastic. What are we going to buy? What are we going to do?" She's saying, staring at the money.

"Melanie, first off," I say, "before we do anything we are going to need to think about all this. Let's wait a while, just to make sure we're safe." I say.

"Safe?" She questions, "safe from what? And wait how long?" She further asks.

I tell her we need to wait a year or so before we do anything with this money.

She's nodding her head but I am unclear how much of what I'm saying she's absorbing. She just keeps staring at the money.

In the meantime I take the money and the pack in to my office. I have an old heavy gray metal file cabinet. The top drawer is lockable. I put the entire contents in that near empty top drawer and lock it.

Melanie's got some energy all of a sudden. She's excited and more affectionate than she has been in months. She talks about trips we could take, and cars we could buy. I'm glad she's happy but I try to temper all that spending enthusiasm.

I tell her we need to wait before we start dipping into the money. Once some time goes by we can plan on what we may do with the money.

Even though I'm being the voice of reason, I'm excited too.

I remember one Christmas when I was little. There was this one big gift wrapped up in gold paper with a red ribbon. It was for me. My parents made me wait and open it last. I didn't even recall the gift that Christmas but I did remember the thrill of waiting, anticipating opening the big present.

I felt a little like that, thinking about the money, knowing we could not spend it yet, but anticipating what we may be able to do with it at some point if we're able to keep it.

And to be honest I was already mentally spending some of the money. My thoughts were more centered around how I could fix up the house, what remodeling projects we could do to improve the house.

Nonetheless, Mel was happy for the moment. That night we made love, for the first time in what seemed like a long time. The found money had energized her.

The good mood stretched into Saturday. I was getting affectionate smiles, friendly touches and a positive attitude from Mel. I had not seen this type of behavior from her since before I had shut down my office,

"So honey," Melanie asked later that Saturday, "isn't half the money legally mine?"

"Melanie," I said with a hint of exasperation in my voice, "the money is both of ours. But we agreed to wait on doing anything with the money. Okay?" I added.

She didn't really answer me. She just walked up and gave me a big kiss. That made me happy. So happy I didn't really notice that she hadn't quite agreed with what I had said.

In the coming days and weeks the positivity of our relationship continued. Our love life improved too. I even got a rare post-wedding blow job. Things were much more like the early days of our relationship.

I told myself that perhaps the idea of this financial windfall had taken the pressure off Mel at work and that was allowing her to be more relaxed and positive about her life and our relationship.

A few weeks later I received a phone call from Isaac.

"JD," he greeted me, "we have an IT boot camp on campus starting a week from Wednesday. It's normally only for direct employees but I have a couple of spots to fill." He told me, "And you'd be paid your day rate." He told me.

It sounded good. In the tech industry you had to stay current or you can be quickly left behind. This would be helpful.

It sounded like there was a group dinner Tuesday night. Everyone stayed at the Bellevue Marriott. We then went all day Wednesday and Thursday. Another dinner Thursday night and then a morning session Friday.

I told Melanie about the boot camp and she seemed uncharacteristically interested. I reviewed with her the days I'd be gone. Though I was only going to be thirty odd miles away, I'd be in a hotel for three nights away from home.

Melanie's positive attitude if anything improved in the days before my boot camp. I was happy she was happy, but there was a small part of me that was curious about this attitude change.

I attended the camp and it was very beneficial. During the time I was in Bellevue I had spotty communication with Melanie.

On Friday afternoon I returned from the Microtec boot camp

and noticed Melanie's car in the garage. I called to her as I entered our house. No reply.

I glanced around the house, all seemed in order, everything was neat. For a moment I gazed out the new French doors on to the nearly deconstructed deck. I started reviewing my next steps on this project.

Wait a minute, where was Melanie?

I ran up the stairs and went into our bedroom. Melanie was in bed. Alone. The lights were off.

"Mel?" I said. "Are you asleep?" I whispered.

"I'm awake," she softly said to me.

"What are you doing? Why aren't you at work?" I asked her.

At this point it's still dark in our room and she is on the bed, under the covers, facing away from me.

"I took a few days off work." She quietly tells me.

I pause then ask her, "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine. I mean I'm in some pain but everything is fine." She says to me.

At this point I'm confused about what's going on.

"Don't be mad at me." She says.

Mad, I think, what am I going to be mad about.

"JD, I had to do it. I know I wasn't supposed to, but I had to." She tells me. "Please don't be mad." She says.

And with that she turns on the bedside lamp and turns toward me. Her eyes are swollen and blackened and she has a bandage across her nose covering a splint.

"What happened?" I ask concerned.

After a moment she says, "I got a nose job. JD, you said you wouldn't be mad." She adds.

"What, how," I stutter I'm confused at first.

Slowly I start to understand.

"Did you use the found money?" I ask her.

She doesn't answer me at first. There are several seconds of silence. Finally she admits she took twenty thousand dollars out of the found money stash and had the procedure done.

"JD, honey," she says, "I promise I won't take any more money until you say so. This is it. I had to do this, it just means so much to me." She begs my forgiveness.

It could have been a huge fight. But I thought through it. I couldn't undo what she had done. There was no point in getting angry. I made her promise to leave the rest of the money alone. And she promised.

As I walked back downstairs I felt an overwhelming emotion. Disappointment. I felt she broke her word. I thought she put her superficial desires before our marriage. Yeah, I was disappointed.

Over the next few weeks things were fairly positive. Melanie had an appointment with her surgeon to remove the splint and bandages.

When I first saw her I was shocked. I had always loved Melanie's looks. Oval face, long dark hair, high cheekbones and an attractive complexion. I thought her pronounced nose gave her character.

But now, after the surgery this was something different. She was beautiful. Classically beautiful. She truly did look like a fashion model or a movie star. She looked that good. No exaggeration.

"The doctor told me it will still be a few more weeks for things to heal." She told me. "He told me I was one of his best patients he'd ever had." She said with a smile.

"Mel," I said. "You look great." I told her.

I was happy for her. But I was perfectly happy before. I wondered how this may change our lives.

There was certainly a small insecure voice in my head whispering 'how long is a woman who looks like that going to be happy with a nerd like you?'

Over the next several months things were good. Melanie's face healed and the results were outstanding. When I said she was beautiful, she truly was.

When we would go out to dinner or even just the grocery store, she got looks, and not only from men. Women eyed her too. I also noticed her noticing all this new attention too.

During these first few months after the surgery our sex life was good. We made love several times per week. I felt like the sex was a reassurance of her feelings for me. At these moments I was proud of Melanie and happy that I had this beautiful woman for my wife.

Looking back I wasn't exactly sure when things began to change. Melanie had always been the one in charge in our relationship for the most part. It was mostly her ideas how we decorated the house. She decided where we went on vacation. It was her choice what restaurant we went to. These type of minor decisions.

She had been driving the car and I was in the passenger seat. She was steering and I was along for the ride, figuratively. But we were doing it together.

Now, ever so subtly, it felt like she was now driving solo. I was left on the curb to watch her drive away. I know these are melodramatic analogies, but that's how it felt.

It started with work events. Conferences, meetings and client dinners. Certainly she had participated in these types of things before, but the frequency increased to three or more nights per week.

And these events now seemed less like the grind of an advertising campaign. Now more like a social occasion. I wondered if the new and improved Melanie was now on display for McClatchy-Reed.

One evening she arrived home at a more reasonable time.

"Oh JD!" She exclaimed, "I have good news." She told me.

"Harrison wants to talk with me." She said. "We're having lunch together tomorrow."

Harrison was Harrison Locke, the executive Vice President in charge of client services. This was the division that Melanie had longed to be part of.

"That's great," I said. But I wondered if this good news would end up being something that was good for me too?

The following day I was curious how her lunch with Locke went. I made dinner and assumed she would be home sometime around six PM.

By seven-thirty I had eaten by myself and her dinner was most likely going to end up as my lunch tomorrow. It was nine-forty five by the time she got home.

She breezed in, her makeup a little smeared, and she looked as if maybe she'd had a glass or two of wine. I expected a detailed report on her meeting, but she didn't immediately offer this.

Finally I asked.

"So how did the lunch meeting go?" I asked.

She hesitated for a moment. "Oh, yes, it actually went quite well." She told me, a slight smile appearing on her face.

But that was all she said. Normally she would ramble on for several minutes giving me the details.

"Mel!" I said, "what happened. You've wanted to get on the client side for years and now you meet with the head of that department and all you tell me is, 'it went well'?"

She sighed and gave me more detail. Harrison didn't have a full time position at this time in his department. He had noticed her positive interaction of late with some of the clients she came in contact with.

He wanted to get her on his team. What Harrison proposed was for her to work directly with him in an associate's role. Kind of his right-hand-person. This would also be a great training ground for her once a full time spot opened up.

"So what would this entail," I asked a little concerned, "as far as your time commitment?"

She said she would need to be with Harrison a lot. That would include evening meetings and occasionally overnight travel.

I thought about all this. I trusted Melanie on most things, though the whole nose job-money thing still bothered me. But I didn't think she had ever cheated on me.

On the other hand I got to thinking of the way she looked at Harrison years ago in that bar down by my old office. And that they would be out at night together and at times overnight together in another city. I was bothered.

"Mel," I said "this is something you and I really need to discuss."

She turned and stared at me. I didn't like the look in her eyes. It was difficult to make her newly sculpted face look negative, but she managed to do so.

"Discuss!?" She replied. "What's to discuss? This is a great opportunity to work with a Vice President. I will learn so much, this is invaluable for my career. And I'm finally in the division where I was meant to be." She stated.

"Melanie," I said now softly and carefully, "But this schedule could affect our lives." I told her with sincerity.

"We'll be fine." She replied dismissively.

And with that she headed upstairs. No further discussion.

I sat for a while downstairs at the kitchen table. I tried to talk myself in to believing that this was a good thing and it will all turn out well.

I wasn't very successful.

Over the next few weeks she transitioned in to working with Harrison. She was rarely home until the mid evening.

I have to say she was in a much better mood most of the time now. Gone was that black cloud of workplace frustration. She seemed far happier.

Unfortunately the happiness didn't seem to have anything to do with me. If someone were to paint a portrait of us as a couple, Melanie's image would be sharp, vibrant and detailed. Mine would be faded and you may have to squint to recognize me in the portrait. I was overshadowed.