Inheritance

Bryan's fortune had grown to $56.13 million when the unexpected heart attack struck. The autopsy showed Bryan had an enlarged heart but was in otherwise great condition for a 45-year-old man.

The whole Robbins family was devastated. After the funeral was over, a man who identified himself as Bryan's attorney told Brady that he would be in their city in a month to read the will, and the family should attend. Brady was too devastated at the sudden loss to really give consideration to the attorney's statement.

Bryan was always a philanthropic guy, and gave away $12 million to various entities. Various bequests of property came next, and then the remainder of Bryan's estate--$44.13 million--went to Ariel, and that's when things went to hell for Brady.

Traci was appalled when she heard the full statement. Bryan hadn't given up the secret during his lifetime, but apparently hadn't really given much thought to dying young, because he certainly hung her out to dry in death. She could only hope that Brady hadn't heard anything beyond the monetary bequest, as the room was enveloped in noise.

Brady was at work when the envelope containing the DNA results was delivered. Although he knew what the results would show, he still harbored the slightest hope that he was wrong. There was no way in his mind that he could brook the blatant disrespect his wife had shown him for the last 21 years, let alone the betrayal.

Traci was just as shocked as everyone else when Bryan's lawyer read the will and announced that Ariel was to receive more than $44 million, but not shocked enough that she didn't hear the complete sentence. She took a quick sideways glance at her husband at that moment, but was not quick enough to catch the look of sorrow on his face before he passed out.

Traci was pleased that Brady never said anything about the bequest when he regained consciousness in the hospital, so two weeks later, she was not expecting a despondent Brady to come home and toss a manila envelope in the middle of the kitchen table. Brady's face told her everything she needed to know. She didn't need to open the envelope to know what was in it.

"How long did this go on? Tell me it still isn't going on, with other men," Brady said in barely more than a whisper. "Tell me something, bitch."

Traci dropped her eyes to the floor. Up until a few weeks ago, she was sure she would never have to worry about this again.

"It was a mistake I made one time almost 22 years ago, Brady," Traci rasped. "In that time, did you ever doubt that I loved you with all my heart and soul? If Ariel hadn't been outed in Bryan's will, you would still think I loved you with all my heart and soul, which, by the way, I still do, even though you seriously doubt it."

"Why would I think you didn't still love me, just because you cheated on me 22 years ago, got knocked up and had another man's child and then had me raise it? What the fuck am I thinking?" Brady yelled.

"God, you men are all about ego, aren't you?" she yelled back. "She's your daughter, not his. Your raised her. She loves you. Did I ever give you any less love? No. I love you. One time 22 years ago. Come on, for God sake!"

"How can you call lying to me for 22 years love? You cheated on me, is that love?

"And as far as Ariel, she's my daughter, plain and simple, regardless of whether Bryan donated her sperm. I raised her. I helped her with her homework. I sat up with her when she was sick. All your fucking lover did was donate the sperm.

"But you and I have a problem. You lied to me. You disrespected me. You broke your wedding vows.

"How many times, Traci? Why? What did I do wrong?"

Traci looked around the room, being careful not to look directly at Brady.

"One time, Bra..."

"Truth time, Traci," Brady interrupted. "You were together an entire weekend. You only fucked him one time?"

Traci sat there open-mouthed. She realized her hesitation spoke volumes.

"Several times. We fucked the whole weekend, Brady. Is that what you want to hear?" she hissed.

"I wanted to hear the truth, even if it is 22 years late," he sneered. "Now how about some more truth? Why?"

"Because I could, Brady. That's why. You were so concerned that something might happen. I decided I could do something, and you would never know. You still wouldn't know if the rich dumbass hadn't died. This had nothing to do with you.

"You've been a great husband and father. This had nothing to do with you. This was about me, and what I wanted. I wanted it. It was good. It was different. That's all it was. He didn't initiate. I did.

"I never loved you less. I don't love you less now. It was one weekend... a weekend out of time... over 20 years ago."

"Because you could do it and get away with it?" Brady asked. "That's a great reason for cheating... and getting pregnant with another man's child."

"Twenty-two years ago! Twenty-two years ago!" she yelled.

"So you're saying that if I killed someone 22 years ago, it should be okay now because it was a long time ago," Brady reasoned.

Traci threw up her hands in disgust, got up and walked out of the room.

It didn't escape Brady that Traci showed no remorse. If anything, she seemed angry with him for challenging her, he noted.

Traci and her attorney fought for counseling and the judge in the case agreed.

Brady was leery when he walked into the first counseling session and Traci was there with a woman about the same age as the couple. Dr. Rachel Winslow asked both to give her the Reader's Digest version of what they saw as the problem with their marriage.

Traci went first and spent most of five minutes explaining that Brady needed to get past an indiscretion that happened more than 20 years ago.

"We had a great marriage for more than 20 years until he found out that I cheated on him for a weekend all those years ago. Now he's freaked out and wants a damn divorce. It was a weekend more than 20 years ago. He needs to get over it. Jeez," Traci verbalized.

The counselor turned to a clearly agitated Brady and told him to give her his side of the story.

"Doesn't matter if it was 22 years ago or last weekend," Brady said as his voice rose in volume. "She cheated on me. She disrespected me and she's been lying by omission ever since.

"If I had known about the cheating for 22 years and lived with it, then I guess I could see her point, but I've only known about this for a few weeks now. It's not old news to me. I'm grieving over this now."

The counselor surprised Brady when she agreed with him.

"Although you've moved on, his wound is fresh, like the incident just took place. At the very least, you have to give your husband time for anger, grief," the counselor said.

Traci was shaking her head while the counselor spoke.

"But he wants a divorce. Can't you make him see that we should stay married while he works this out?"

"Everybody has a different way to work out anger and grief. And make no mistake about it, your husband is grieving. He's grieving what he sees as the death of his marriage," Dr. Winslow said in a flat voice.

"If that stupid bastard didn't give our daughter all that money, Brady still wouldn't know about the affair. Right now he would be thinking that everything was still great in his world. And it is. I never loved him less in all those years and I don't love him less now. He never got anything but my best... always," Traci hissed.

"What about the deception for over 22 years? Is that what you call love? And you had me raise another man's child. Is that what you call respect? You're delusional!"

The counselor raised her hands to stop the bickering.

"Mr. Robbins, for a minute let's pretend your wife hadn't cheated on you all those years ago, and had just done it this weekend. Could you forgive her and move on?"

"Probably not, Doc. And I'd definitely be taking a baseball bat to my former friend's face!" Brady immediately responded.

The counselor's face showed real concern. She asked Brady if he would want to get physical revenge on his wife as well.

"I'd never hit a woman, Doc. It's not the way I was brought up," Brady answered.

While the visit to the counselor went better than Brady thought it would, the reaction of his children to the divorce filing went the other way. Both agreed with Traci that since the cheating was so long ago and he had no clue about it, Brady should just learn to live with it.

"You're still my daddy. Nothing's ever going to change that," Ariel said soothingly. "And now we're rich beyond belief."

"No, Ariel, we're not rich. You're rich," Brady answered. "And I want nothing to do with Bryan's money. You were given that money because your mother spread her legs for a guy I thought was my best friend."

Ariel gasped when Brady said that.

"You're making Mom out to be a whore... a prostitute. You know she never planned on me getting all this money," she said.

"She might never have planned on it, but it did happen. Whether it was actual payment or just a tip because she was such a good whore... She spread her legs for him and you got $44 million. That's not just a coincidence," Brady said.

"That's harsh, Dad. You know she still loves you, and you still love her. If you get divorced that will just leave you two as lonely and bitter."

"I do believe she loves me to some extent, but it obviously is not an all-encompassing love, like I have for her, otherwise she couldn't have done this," Brady said.

Halfway through the third session with the counselor, Traci was still going on with her argument about leaving the past in the past, when Brady finally cracked.

"Do you know she's never apologized to me for cheating, Doc?" Brady said. "She's never apologized because she's not sorry. She wanted to have sex with Bryan and she did it because she was sure she could get away with it. And she really did get away with it, at least until Dickbreath died.

"She told me she wanted to do it, so she did it, just because she could. Is that love?"

"Yes, Bryan, I told you I did it because I wanted to. But it was just sex. There was no love for him from me. You always got all my love. It was just a pleasurable physical act. You don't think there aren't husbands and wives all over the world who haven't cheated on their spouses and were never caught?"

"That doesn't make it right!" Brady shouted. "Not getting caught doesn't make it somehow right!"

As the fourth and final session was finishing, Dr. Winslow told the couple that she was going to recommend the judge let the divorce proceed. The only concession Traci had made during the sessions was to admit that her cheating was wrong, regardless of the outcome, and Brady's only concession was to admit that he still loved his wife to some extent, although he couldn't overcome her deception.

"I understand your anger, Mr. Robbins, but I still don't understand your refusal to try to work through that. You profess to love your wife, but yet you seem okay with throwing out that love with the garbage."

"You don't eat week-old tuna fish salad, Doc. Sometimes it's best just to throw it away."

Brady made sure his daughter had a very good financial adviser in her corner well before she turned 25 and the trust was turned over to her. He also let her know that he wanted absolutely nothing from her financially: no money or gifts that would be over the top for an average 25-year-old.

"Like you would turn down a Ferrari or something?" she asked in a sing-song, offhand manner.

"Actually, yes. I would always know where the money came from and why, and never be able to enjoy the gift," Brady explained.

"But it's my money now, not Uncle Bryan's, and any gift I wanted to give you was from my money," she argued.

"I understand what you are saying, and while you are technically correct, please honor my request by not rubbing your mother's infidelity in my face," Brady said.

Through little fault of each, Brady's relationship with his daughter disintegrated through the years. Ariel naturally wanted to know more about the man who literally gave her a fortune, and her curiosity was like a wound to Brady.

"What was my... biological father like?" Ariel asked her mother one day.

"He was a great guy," Traci enthused. "Witty and fun and your father and I always enjoyed having him around. He could be a real knucklehead sometimes, and he had a thing for the ladies... and they liked him back. Including me."

Traci dropped her eyes at that admission. Giving her daughter details of her affair was not going to be easy, but she owed that story to Ariel, she knew.

"You should really ask your father about him. They were friends from the time they were little kids. I'm sure your father's got a million funny stories. The question is, will he want to talk about him. I probably screwed that up pretty good," Traci admitted.

"Why, Mom? Why did you do it to Dad?" Ariel asked.

"He was handsome, and like I said, witty, funny and a bit of knucklehead... charming when he wanted to be. Your father kept warning me about him, and I guess something inside me just had to know why. It was a whole weekend of wild sex, but it was just that... sex, not love. And I knew we would never get caught, and we didn't. But I made the mistake of telling him about you, just to let him know. And then he dies and leaves you all that money.

"That was the ultimate good news, bad news joke. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess."

Brady wasn't happy when Ariel asked him about Bryan, despite the fact he understood she wanted to know more about her biological father. It was another chink taken out of his relationship with his daughter, he knew.

Still, Brady loved his daughter unconditionally, so he told her everything he could about her bio-dad. Most of it was good, but he filled her in on Bryan stealing a girlfriend when the two were in high school, and then what he knew about Bryan's tryst with Traci. He tried to be dispassionate about the latter, but he still teared up as he told his daughter the tale as he knew it from his perspective.

"She told me she did it simply because she wanted to and could, and thought she could get away with it. That wasn't love then, and it wasn't love to hide it from me for all those years. She hid it because she knew it was wrong, plain and simple," Brady said.

"I know I wound up getting you out of the deal, but... she cheated on me, Baby, and disrespected me for years. I would have divorced her then had I known about the cheating. Just because I didn't find out for years afterward didn't change things. In fact, that probably made it worse. She had to know what I would do if I ever found out."

Brady wasn't thrilled when Ariel had her name legally changed to Ariel Patrick-Robbins. He knew she was honoring her birth father, but still felt slighted. He felt she was splitting his fatherhood with Bryan. She didn't ask for Brady's opinion until after she had done it. When she told him, Brady just turned and walked away, figuring that sometimes silence speaks better than words.

Brady knew that when someone has north of $44 million, they don't need nor care about anyone's opinions or feelings except their own. He had been saving for Ariel's wedding since she was a toddler, but she totally ignored his thoughts on the way to buying herself a helluva wedding a couple of years later. Her fiancé was the scion of a wealthy family from the north shore of Long Island. Brady didn't like him much; seemed like a smarmy playboy, but nobody asked his opinion and he didn't give it. He tried to seem supportive. He walked her down the aisle and kept a big smile plastered on his face. He handed her off to Edward LaFontaine and walked to the far side of the bride's family pew. He and Traci locked eyes for a brief moment as he moved in next to her. He knew that in another time and place, that would have been the time for an emotional hug. Instead, he just walked past and sat down.

******

Brady could barely understand what she was trying to tell him when Ariel called one evening six years later as she was sobbing like a 5-year-old after falling off a bicycle. It was probably the first time the two had talked in more than six months.

"He cheated, Daddy. He cheated on me!" Ariel shrieked over the phone. "I caught the stupid bastard in our bed fucking some blonde bimbo!"

Brady knew the pain she was experiencing and didn't try to calm her down. He just let her vent for more than five minutes before saying his first words.

"It hurts, Baby. I know," he said quietly when she finally stopped yelling over the phone.

The silence lingered for probably a full minute.

"Oh! Now I get it! I'm sorry, Daddy! I never really knew the kind of pain you felt. I thought I did, but it isn't even close to this," she said.

She melted into more sobbing before falling silent again.

"You know I've got a second bedroom here if you and Justin want to hide out for a few days and figure out what you want to do. You don't need to rush into any decisions, you know."

"That sounds good, Dad. Your grandson and I will be over at your place tomorrow. We'll catch a red-eye and rent a car."

"I'll take a few days off and we can just hang, Pumpkin," Brady said.

Ariel carried her 2-year-old son into the apartment and fell into Brady's arms, sobbing. She got her son settled while Brady got them both a cup of coffee after he calmed her down. She gave him the whole story, which amounted to her husband cheating on her for several months with an old college girlfriend.

Brady and Ariel probably spent more time talking than they had since before the reading of Bryan's will. Although the reason behind it wasn't good, Brady enjoyed the closeness he was again sharing with his daughter.

"Have you talked to Mom yet, or Lenny?" Brady inquired.

She shook her head silently.

"I called Lenny on the drive from the airport," she said. "I haven't called Mom yet. I'm not sure I can speak to her just yet."

"Something wrong between you and Mom?" Brady asked.

"You could say that. She did this to you, and now that I know what it feels like, I guess I'm mad at her. Guilt by association."

"Well, I can't say I don't understand how you feel, but you need to talk it out with her. She's still your mother, and what she did, she did to me, not you," Brady said.

"Yeah, but the fact that she could do that at all. To you. To anyone. Dad, right now I want to kick the shit out of Eddie. I don't even have a clue as to how you haven't killed her. And Lenny and I thought you were being unreasonable because it happened so long ago. But you didn't know until then, so it was... new to you... and just as painful as mine is to me right now.

"Damn, Dad, I'm sorry for not being more understanding."

"It's okay, Pumpkin. It's tough for someone who hasn't gone through it to totally comprehend. It's a searing pain, isn't it?"

Ariel slowly nodded her head in understanding.

Traci called Ariel midway through the afternoon. Since Ariel said she hadn't told her mother yet, it was obvious Eddie had called his mother-in-law and asked her to intercede on his behalf. Ariel put the call on speaker but didn't tell her mother.

"I know you're hurting right now, but calm down before you make any rash decisions, Baby," Traci said. "You don't want to make an asshole decision like your father did and tear your family apart."

"Like you had nothing to do with that, slut!" Brady called out.

"Shit! Where are you right now, Baby?" Traci hissed.

"I'm at Dad's. He's the one with the experience in unfaithful spouses," Ariel answered.

"Just don't go off half-cocked, Baby. I know Eddie's sorry for hurting you. You two need to talk... better than your dad and I did," Traci sneered.

"Yeah, leave it to one cheater to defend another," Ariel said.

"Don't smart off to..." Traci started to say before Ariel ended the call.