Her Client? Ch. 02

When I picked it up, I noticed that the page she had been reading announced the death of Buddy Black! It stated that his death had been ruled a suicide. It speculated that he was never able to recover mentally or financially from the failure of his comeback tour. Needless to say, I was shocked.

The page was stained with her tears. My mind formed an unanswerable question: had she executed a suicide pact with him?

I found her phone beneath the newspaper. I picked it up. I was surprised to see that it was unlocked. She had always kept it locked, able to be unlocked only by her fingerprint. Why had she changed that? When I tapped the screen, her messages were displayed. It seems like she had purposely set it up that way. She wanted me to read them, so I did.

The words I read were like a dagger stabbing into my heart. The first message was sent after that first day when Buddy showed up at her office. She was telling him that she had never before been kissed with such ardor. With each message, the sexual content escalated. They revealed devastating details about the multitude of times when she had enjoyed sexual intercourse with him. They fucked in his room, his travel bus, and even in her office. She often compared him to me. He always won. I was always second best. With him it was ecstasy. With me, it was just her perceived duty.

She even texted with him hundreds of times during our special year of family adventures. Those messages mentioned nothing about how much she was enjoying the things that we were doing together as a family but they went on and on about how much she missed him and loved him. I read such messages for hours without coming close to reading them all. I was surprised that her phone memory coupled with her share of the digital cloud could store so many messages. I was beyond being devastated. I was destroyed.

Yes, she had spent that last year with me, but her heart had remained with him. She stayed only so she could spend her last days with her children. I was there only to serve as her caregiver.

They say there's a thin line between love and hate. I can attest to that. As much as I'm hurting and hating, however, I will still strive to fulfill most of her last wishes. I will hang her picture at the foot of Gloria's bed. I will hang her picture at the foot of Dave's bed. Instead of locking her note in the drawer of our bedside table like I promised myself, I will submit to her request and burn it. I will not, however, hang her picture at the foot of my bed as she requested. I will burn it along with her note.

Here's my pledge to Tammy: I will try my very best to be a good father to our children. They will never hear me disparage their mother.

My pledge to myself: I will always remember that thin line between love and hate. I loved Tammy as much as one human can love another, but now, because of what I've learned, I have crossed to the hate side of that line. That thin line has become very thick. So thick that it would be nothing short of impossible for me to ever cross back.

The End (Thanks for reading. You may stop now!)