Lost at Sea

The director then turned him over to a specialist to advise him on Meredith's benefits. The first order of business was to look at Meredith's 401K account. Frank had regularly seen her annual statements, so he wasn't expecting any surprises. When he saw the final total, however, it was quite a bit higher than he had expected. Apparently, during the last year Meredith had upped her contributions to the plan, putting in more even than the company would match. "She was really trying to provide for her family," the specialist commented with admiration.

The specialist went on to advise Frank to withdraw the funds as soon as possible and roll them over into his own IRA so that he could more easily manage the funds.

The other surprise Frank got was the sheet he received outlining the life insurance benefit he would receive as Meredith's beneficiary. He learned that Meredith had opted for the maximum amount of insurance for which she was eligible. With the accidental death multiplier, Frank was amazed to realize that he would receive almost four years' worth of Meredith's income! "The insurance company will pay that out in annual installments," the woman explained. "Otherwise, the taxes would eat you alive!"

Payment of all of the benefits, of course, was contingent on the company's receiving a copy of Meredith's death certificate, but, after the visit from the two GBI agents, Frank felt confident that would be forthcoming soon.

Frank left the office building much relieved. He had thought he would have to begin an immediate search for another job; now, he realized, he had a significant grace period to get his life together. "Thank you, Merry," he whispered fervently.

Frank was making dinner for the family late one afternoon several days later when the doorbell rang. When Frank went to answer, he found Special Agent Murray on his doorsteps again. After he'd asked her in, she explained the purpose of her visit. "Mr. Parker -- Frank -- I wanted to let you know in person that our investigation has been completed and that your wife's death certificate has been issued. You should receive a copy from the court by certified mail in the next few days."

Frank heaved a sigh of relief. He had believed there would be no problems, but it was a relief to know this important task had been accomplished.

Just then, a panicked scream came from the back of the house, and Frank was horrified to hear Lori's voice yelling, "Help me, Daddy, help me!"

He turned and sprinted for Lori's room. Celia Murray was right on his heels, her hand reaching for the service revolver in the shoulder holster under her jacket. When Frank burst into Lori's room, he found his daughter staring at a large red bloodstain on her jeans. "I'm bleeding, Daddy," she wailed.

Frank was terrified. "What happened, Lori? Did you cut yourself?"

As he started for his daughter's side, a hand caught his elbow and pulled him back with surprising strength. "Let me handle this," Celia said firmly, and pushed him toward the door.

"But I . . ." he protested, but the young woman would not be moved.

"I'll handle this, Frank. Just go out in the living room and wait."

Something about the authority in her voice made him pause, and with the determined young woman blocking his way, he tentatively stepped back into the hallway. Celia calmly closed the door in his face!

After fifteen anxious minutes, the door opened and Celia came out. Before Frank could ask a question, she grasped his arm. "Lori is fine. You need to go to the store right now and buy a package of sanitary napkins. Get the smallest size they have."

"But Lori -- Bobby. . ." he began to protest.

"I'll take care of Lori, and I'll let Bobby know what's happening. You just need to go to the store and get back here as fast as you can," she said.

As Frank drove to a nearby convenience store, the realization hit him, and he began to berate himself. "She's started having her menstrual period, you idiot! You should have realized that immediately."

On the return trip he continued to curse himself for never talking to his daughter about the maturation into womanhood. "Oh, Merry, I need you more than ever," he thought in self-pity.

When he got home, Celia met him at the front door and snatched the bag away from him. After looking at the package, she smiled. "You did good, Dad." Then she disappeared back into Lori's room.

After thirty more minutes, Celia reappeared with her arm around Lori, who hung back somewhat shyly. Frank fell to his knees and hugged his daughter when she came to him. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. I should have talked with you about that a long time ago. I just didn't think about it."

"It's OK, Daddy," the girl spoke up, "I just didn't know what was happening, and I was scared. Celia explained it all to me. I know what to do now." As she spoke, she slipped her hand into Celia's, and Frank realized his daughter had made a new friend.

He stood and turned to Celia. "Thank you so much. It's a good thing you were here -- I guess I panicked for a moment." He looked down at his daughter. "I'm afraid I'm not so good with girls."

Celia smiled, but before she could speak, Bobby popped around the corner. "Just because my dumb little sister has her first period, does that mean we're not going to have any dinner tonight? I'm starving!"

"Bobby!" Lori shrieked, but Frank grabbed her before she could attack her big brother.

"Bobby, if you talk like that to your sister again, I guarantee you'll be going to bed hungry!" Frank warned his son. But before his threat could sound too ominous, he went on, "Now, go wash your hands and set the table!"

Then he turned back to Celia. "The least we can do is offer you a meal for all you've done. It isn't exactly gourmet cooking, but there's plenty to eat."

The young woman was clearly embarrassed. "Thank you, but I can't intrude." Her protestations were halted, however, when Lori tugged on her hand. "Please, Celia, please stay and eat with us."

Gazing at her new friend, Celia smiled and said, "Alright, Lori, just for you." Looking up at Frank, she smiled again. "Thank you. I'd love to have dinner with your family."

The four of them sat down to eat, and Celia found herself the target of numerous questions from the two children about her experiences in law enforcement. Frank ate and listened, both in amusement at his children's curiosity and in admiration at the easy way Celia handled their questions. He suddenly realized that this was the first time the two of them had really seemed to come out of the shell of their sorrow.

When dessert was over, Frank shooed Bobby and Lori off to do their homework, then offered Celia a cup of coffee. As the two of them sat at the table, Frank got a chance to ask his own questions. "You certainly seem to be comfortable with Bobby and Lori. Do you work a lot with young people?"

She smiled. "Actually, I come from a big family: two brothers and three sisters. I was the oldest, so I guess I was second Mom to the rest of them." She paused to take a sip of her coffee, then went on, "That's why I knew what to do with Lori this afternoon. I got to walk each of my sisters through the trauma of puberty."

She looked at Frank and smiled again. "For what it's worth, my Dad was just as helpless as you were today."

Frank grinned sheepishly. "Well, all I can say is I'm glad you happened to be here. Even when I finally realized what was going on, I still wouldn't have known how to get Lori calmed down so quickly."

She smiled to acknowledge his thanks; then her expression grew more serious.

"How are they coping with the loss of their mother?" she asked.

Frank sighed. "About as well as can be expected, I think. Lori has been very clingy -- I think she's really missing the female influence. As for Bobby, it's hard to tell. He's been sullen and somewhat withdrawn, but I don't know whether that's the result of Merry's death or just the fact that he's a teenager now."

Celia looked at him sympathetically. "From what I've seen, I think you're doing a great job with them. It's just going to take time, for them and for you."

With that, she stood and said, "I really enjoyed the meal, Frank, but I've intruded on your family far too long. I need to get going, but if it's alright, I'd like to say goodbye to Lori and Bobby."

When Frank nodded, she walked down the hall, and Frank heard her say goodbye to Bobby. Then she spent a few minutes in Lori's room, and when she returned, Lori came with her, her arm around Celia's waist. "She really has made a new friend," Frank thought in wonder.

A couple of days later, a package arrived in the mail for Lori. When his excited daughter tore open the wrapping, she found a pink stuffed elephant, along with a note from Celia. Frank was gratified by the thoughtfulness but bemused by the selection. "Lori's too old for stuffed animals," he thought, but he was surprised to see the toy given a prominent place on Lori's bed. "I guess there's still some little girl left in her yet," he conceded.

He called Celia's office the next day to thank her. "I would never have thought of that," he admitted, "but somehow it was just the right thing for Lori."

Celia was delighted that his daughter was pleased with her gift, and made Frank promise to keep in touch and let her know how Lori and Bobby were doing.

A couple of weeks later, Frank was paying bills one morning when he got a call from Bobby's home room teacher. "I'd like to meet with you to talk about your son," the teacher told Frank. "He's having some discipline problems in school."

Frank agreed to meet with her the next day, but he decided not to say anything to Bobby that night. He wanted to wait until he learned what was happening before confronting his son.

The meeting was set for the following day after classes, while the kids were at Phys Ed. Mrs. Soldana, the home room teacher, told the concerned father that Bobby's behavior in class had grown worse over the last few months. "I didn't want to say anything at first because I know he's been through so much," the teacher explained, "but it seems to be getting worse. He's become increasingly disengaged from his classes, he's not doing his homework, and his other teachers tell me he's not paying attention in their classes. He's always done so well up to now, but his grades are really going to plummet this semester if he doesn't do something to turn things around."

Frank was troubled. "How much do you think being a teenager has to do with this, Mrs. Soldana?"

"There's no question that's a tough age for kids, especially boys," she told him, "but we're used to that. I think his mother's death is affecting him more than he may have let on to you. You may want to consider getting counseling for him."

Frank thanked the woman and returned to his car to wait uneasily for his kids to finish their gym classes. He was upset to learn about the problems Bobby was having, and was determined to have a long talk with the boy.

When Frank got Bobby and Lori home, he sent Lori to her room to get started on her homework, then led Bobby into the master bedroom. The boy's face darkened -- he knew he was in trouble.

Frank recounted his visit with Bobby's homeroom teacher and cited some of the examples she had given him. "What's going on, Bobby? Why are you acting this way?" Frank demanded.

"No reason," the boy replied sullenly.

"Come on, you're smarter than that," his father shot back. "Don't you care about your grades?"

"Not really," Bobby mumbled.

Frank was frustrated by his son's unresponsiveness, and in anger he tried to shame his son into a reaction. "What would your mother think if she knew you were screwing up?"

"Who cares?" Bobby shouted back angrily. "She was such a whore!"

In shock and anger, Frank grabbed his son and yelled at him, "Don't you ever speak of your mother that way! How can you say such a thing?"

In fear at his father's rage and pain at his strong grip, the boy blurted out, "I saw her. I saw her fucking that man!" As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he slumped to the bed and began to sob.

In astonishment, Frank sat down on the bed beside his son, put his arm around him and held him as though he were a small child. "It's alright," he kept repeating, trying to calm the boy's obvious anguish.

When Bobby's crying had subsided, Frank lifted his son's head. "It's alright, Bobby. I'm not mad at you. Just tell me what you saw."

His son looked at him tearfully. "It was last fall. You let me ride my bike to school one day, but I forgot my math homework, so I sneaked out at lunch to come home and get it. While I was looking for it in my room, I heard Mom come in. I didn't want her to catch me so I hid. That's when I heard the man's voice."

"What man?" Frank asked, a little too quickly.

"I don't know," Bobby said, "some guy. I never saw him before."

"That's okay," Frank soothed him, "just tell me what happened next."

"They came in here, and then it got quiet, so I thought I could sneak out. But then I heard Mom make a funny sound and I was scared and I looked in and they were on the bed . . . and they were fucking!" The words poured out of his mouth faster and faster as though he was desperate to spit them out, and when he finished he began to cry again.

"Why did she do that, Dad? How could Mom act like such a whore?"

As Frank listened to his son's story, he felt himself go numb. But he had no time to deal with his own emotions; his son needed him.

"I understand, Bobby. It's OK. I'm sorry you had to see that, but I'm glad you told me."

He took his son gently by the shoulders and turned him around to face him. "Sometimes people we love make mistakes or do something we don't like. That doesn't mean we don't love them any more, it just means we don't like what they did. I don't know why your mother would do that, son, but I know she loved you and Lori very much. It's the good things she did that I want you to remember about her."

He held his son and continued to talk to him for a while longer. When he felt that the boy had calmed down sufficiently, he gently urged him to start on his homework while Frank went off to the kitchen to get dinner started. Before Bobby left, Frank enjoined him to say nothing to Lori. The boy promised, and Frank felt fairly comfortable that he would keep the disturbing news from his sister.

The rest of the evening passed without further incident, but once the kids were in bed, Frank's emotions began to erupt. His first reaction was to deny what Bobby had told him: his son had to be mistaken or to have misinterpreted what he saw. But he couldn't maintain that rationalization very long: his son had been too upset by the experience, and, Frank had to admit ruefully, a teenager these days would certainly recognize sex when he saw it.

With that admission, Frank's thoughts turned bitter. How could Merry have betrayed him? He had thought they had a good marriage; how could she have been screwing someone on the side? For that matter, who was the other man, and how long had the affair lasted?

"It's hard enough to lose your wife in a plane crash," he thought in despair. "It's worse to learn you lost her long before that."

Sleep was slow in coming that night, and the next day Frank was in a black mood. It was Tuesday, a day he would normally go to the gym, and after the kids were off to school, he decided to keep his routine. For a while the exercise helped divert his attention, but when he hit the treadmill his mind returned to his wife's infidelity.

"How could Merry have done that -- and in our own bed?" he asked. Somehow the location made the betrayal even worse. "For that matter, how could she know I wouldn't be home?" But the answer hit him immediately: "It must have been one of the days when I went to the gym. I'm such a creature of habit, she would have been pretty certain the house would be empty."

But the answer to that question immediately raised others. "If she planned her little assignation to fit my schedule, that doesn't sound like it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. How often did she meet 'him' there? It couldn't have been every week; her travel schedule would have interfered."

Every question seemed to raise another; each only added to his anguish.

He did his best to act normally around Bobby and Lori, but over the next few days, he continued to suffer. He found himself making a trip to the drugstore to buy antacids; he'd never had stomach problems before.

Compounding his misery was the lack of anyone to talk to about his discovery. He certainly didn't want to involve his parents or Meredith's -- he knew the news would be devastating to them. Likewise, he didn't want to talk to his friends and risk becoming the subject of gossip in the neighborhood. "And," he thought, "I certainly don't want to risk having any of schoolmates teasing Bobby or Lori." He felt trapped.

He was working at his desk one evening when he noticed Celia Murray's card. "She told me to call her if I had any additional information," he remembered, but in truth he was desperate for any excuse to share his news with someone and get another perspective.

He called the cellphone number she had hand-written on the card, and when he identified himself, Celia seemed pleased to hear from him. But her tone changed to one of concern when he told her he needed to talk with her. "Are Lori and Bobby OK?" she asked anxiously.

"They are, but I'm not," he replied. "Could you possibly have lunch with me tomorrow? This isn't the kind of thing I want to discuss over the phone."

She quickly agreed and suggested a place near the GBI offices where she worked. "It's a quiet little place -- we should be able to talk," she assured him. When he hung up, Frank found himself feeling a bit better at the prospect of unburdening himself.

Celia was waiting in the restaurant when Frank came through the door. She smiled in greeting, but her smile quickly disappeared when she saw the pained expression on his face. After they were seated and had placed their orders, she could stand the suspense no longer.

"For heaven's sake, Frank, what's happened?"

"You told me to let you know if I had any more information about my wife," he said. "Well, I don't know if this is relevant to your investigation, but I just found out that Meredith was cheating on me." As he said that, he was ashamed to feel tears flood his eyes and run down his cheeks.

Celia reached across the table and grabbed his hands. "Oh, Frank, that's horrible! Tell me what happened."

The whole story of the meeting with Bobby's teacher, the confrontation with his son and Bobby's anguished revelation came spilling out, interrupted only by the arrival of their food. Celia listened quietly, letting him tell the story at his own pace. Only when he'd reached the end did she speak. "Poor Bobby," she said, "it's no surprise he's been acting out in school: this must have been eating away at him ever since it happened. And then with her death -- it's no wonder he's been so conflicted."

She'd released Frank's hands when the waitress had brought their order, but now she leaned across the table to reach for him again. "I can hardly imagine what this had done to you, Frank," she said quietly, and Frank could see the sympathy in her eyes. "Was there any indication that something was wrong, Frank? Now that you look back, did you see any clues?" she asked.

"No," he said, "I can't say I saw anything. You know what they say: 'the husband is always the last to know.'" He looked down at his untouched plate for a second, then back up at the woman. "Ever since she got her big promotion, our sex life had fallen off pretty sharply. But between the pressures of her new role and her travel schedule, I figured it was understandable. I didn't like it, but I felt like I had to accept it for our family's sake. She kept telling me things would get better once she move up to the national level, but," he paused, "I guess that wasn't to be."