No Place to Go

The doctor came and went; I explained to the kids that we were testing them for health reasons, to see if they had the same gene as their mother. They mostly just shrugged their shoulders and went along with it. It was foolish, but I know that I held my breath for just a moment when Matt and Paula were swabbed.

The results were back a few days later, and Marcus returned to my home with four new objects that would determine my fate, four sealed envelopes that contained our results. The bottle and tumblers were out again, but this time we didn't know if the news was good or ill; still, a small drink ahead to steady my nerves seemed appropriate.

We talked a little bit about nothing before the main event. I was stalling. I knew it, and he did, too, but he didn't push. Finally, feeling foolish, I tore open the first envelope, the one that contained my results. I was clean, with no sign of the genetic abnormality that Lynn suffered from.

Jenny was next. Her envelope was opened with similar speed; I had already known that she might be at risk, and if Lynn had lied to me about when she had started cheating, or if she'd taken more than one lover, I'd rather find out quickly than not. Jennifer was my daughter in every way. I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. But then I saw the other result, that she shared the recessive version of the abnormality with her mother. She would need to have more frequent cancer screenings for the rest of her life; a small price to pay for more of it, though.

My hand hovered over Matt's envelope, but I shifted to Paula's. Cowardly, perhaps, but he was my only son. Finding that either of my children weren't biologically mine would be devastating, but that would somehow hurt just a little worse. Sexist and patriarchal? Yes. But we feel how we feel. When I opened it, I found that my baby girl was mine, and that she, like me, was free of the taint that had taken her mother's life.

I wavered. I almost asked Marcus to open it; but I couldn't. Wouldn't. This was my life, and my son's, and I would face the truth head on. I ripped open the paper and scanned the results therein. My eyes flooded with tears, and I began to sob.

Marcus spoke. ""Kurt, I'm sorry. He-- "

My voice croaked, "Mine. Mine, he's mine." Any more words were lost in the emotion that I couldn't control. He was mine, and he was untouched by the abnormality. My children were mine in every way, not just by right of my having raised them, but by right of blood.

There might be those who thought that foolish and old-fashioned, that it wouldn't matter if they shared my DNA or not. In some sense, they were right. But it wasn't the DNA I cared about. It was that my love for them was completely free of the corruption of their mother's lies. She had let me believe they were mine without knowing for sure. And now I knew. Irrational in a different way, but somehow the most important thing in the world to me at that moment.

Marcus waited for me to collect myself, sat and sipped his scotch while I went to the guest bath and washed my face. When I returned, he said, "Have you decided what to do with the money?"

"I don't want it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Don't want the money, or don't want to accept it because of where it comes from?"

"Don't be pedantic."

Marcus smiled broadly. "I'm a lawyer. That's my job." He shook his head. "I understand that you might not want the money yourself. It feels tainted. But what about for your children? For college, or as a nest egg starting out? I could have it put in trusts for each of them, and we could tell them that it came from a life insurance policy. They would never have to know."

"I'd know. And... Look, even if I did that, it's money. It's fungible. That's the whole point of money." He chuckled. "If I use it to pay for their college, I'm not paying for their college. My money goes towards something else. In a roundabout way, I've still received his money. If I give it to them in trust as a nest egg, I'm not giving them that nest egg, so I am using his money in place of mine."

He cocked his head. "Maybe. But I think you're looking at it wrong." A grin spread across his face. "I'm afraid this will require more pedantry, but perhaps you'll have a better appreciation for us 'shysters' when I'm through." I winced as I remembered how I'd shouted at him in our first meeting.

His manner changed, the seasoned orator coming out to play. "There used to be suits that were called 'alienation of affection' suits. There still are in some states, although this isn't one of them. They were intended to punish the affair partner, a way for a husband or wife to receive damages from the person that seduced their spouse.

"They've fallen out of fashion for a number of reasons; no-fault divorces are the norm these days, and the suits were simply never that effective in the first place. If the person had enough money to make the suit worthwhile, they had ways to hide the money. They were hard to prove. Overall, they just weren't worth pursuing.

"But we still have all sorts of other ways to take money away from people for their misdeeds. Pain and suffering, emotional distress, a variety of reasons. Now, even if Jeremy were still alive, you'd never be able to sue him and get the money from him. If Lynn were alive and you had divorced her, you likely wouldn't have gotten near what you should have out of this account; it might not have even showed up during discovery.

"But it's here now. You have access to it. You need to stop thinking of it as though it were a gift from Jeremy to your wife and instead see what it can be to you: a settlement. It's a payout from a suit that you never had to lodge and never could have won. You hate her? Fine, she's dead and her treachery has been exposed to you. You hate him? Fine, he's dead, he really was the last scion of his line, and you can take his money and do whatever you want with it, up to and including living the idle rich lifestyle that he hated.

"They hurt you, both of them. With their selfishness and their deceit, with Lynn's cowardly post-deathbed confession that prevented you from venting your spleen at her. I am with you on all of that. Where we part ways is this: the money as you say, is fungible. It's out there. It's going to go to a charity, or it's going to sit and accrue interest, or it's going to eventually get stolen by some very clever kid in Eastern Europe with a laptop and a dream. Or, it can give you and your kids a better life."

I growled, "I'll know where it came from!"

"Good! Then every time you use it, you can imagine you're pissing on their graves. They were selfish. You're allowed to be selfish, too. Your wife has heaped so much more on your shoulders than any husband should ever have to deal with: her infidelity, the fear that you were cuckolded, the fear that your children could die early, having to hide what she's done from your kids, all of it!"

He shook his head. "I liked Lynn, for the time I knew her. I do believe she was sorry for what she'd done. But sometimes sorry isn't enough. She hurt you. They both did. Don't hurt yourself further to spite two dead people. Take the money, Kurt. Give some of it to your kids; tell them it's from investments you've made. Cash out of your company, or invest it into your company if that's what you'd prefer. But leaving it on the table? No. That might feel principled, but it's not. You're not taking a bribe. You're getting your own back."

I snarled, incensed at the notion that any amount of dirty money could even begin to help me cope with this pain. "Is that what you did in your own divorce? 'Get your own back?'"

His face fell and his body sagged. "No." I opened my mouth, but he softly said, "No. I cheated, Kurt. I... I was the one that deserved my comeuppance."

He turned his face away. "Lynn wanted someone who had cheated to... to be here for you. Someone who had destroyed the ones that he loved for his own selfishness. I cheated on a faithful spouse for years with a younger woman, because I could. Because I felt it was owed to me, as a man, a successful man." The disgust he felt was almost palpable. "'Man.' I was a callow boy. Stupid and self-centered. I had everything I--"

He poured himself another drink and drained it within seconds. "Sheila found out. The affair was over, but she found out because of some little slip up. She wouldn't say what. It doesn't matter. She found out, and the whole thing unraveled: my marriage, my relationship with my kids, my friendships, everything that really mattered in my life. I wanted to try to make amends, and she wouldn't accept anything from me, wouldn't even try to work with me to..." He shook his head.

"There was nothing I could do for her. She divorced me. Took everything. I gave her more than she asked for. Not so that she'd forgive me; I knew that was not something she'd ever do. But so that maybe... maybe she could get past it. But she didn't. It ate her alive, the anger. She raged for the last year of her life at the indignity of it, the unfairness. She had every right to feel that way. But it killed her. I killed her. Her heart gave out. I killed the love of my life with my selfishness."

He stared down into the empty glass. "My kids... it's been ten years, and they've just started talking to me again. That they let me in their lives at all, I'm so grateful. I just got to meet my five year old grandson last month. I missed all of that."

Marcus shook his head again, trying to clear it. The lawyer mask went back on, but it hung off-kilter, unable to completely hide the pain. "Kurt, take the money or don't. I think you should; it's not... you're not forgiving either of them by doing that. There's no court in the world that would require a plaintiff to forgive the party that wronged them as part of accepting a judgment. But even if you don't take the money, you have to find a way to... to not hate. Eventually."

He looked at me, eyes moist. "I gave a-- a lot of thought to what you asked last week. 'What's hate with no place to go?' And I thought rage, but that's... that's just a point along the journey, like the five stages of grief. When hate reaches the end of that path, when it really has no place to go, it... it ends in death. Hate with no place to go is death. It will kill you. Maybe not your body like--" He sniffed and his voice cracked. "-- like my poor Sheila. But it'll kill your soul. Turn you into a person that can only mark the time until their passing, alone even with others."

He looked up at the ceiling. "It killed my Sheila. It's killing me now, the hate. I hate myself. Lynn hated herself, too, at the end. I envied her, envied that she would get to stop living with it soon. Because I haven't been able to let go of it. For ten years, I haven't been able to. But I finally... my little grandson, I-- I can feel the hate of myself starting to die away. Just a little. I can only pray to God that it's soon enough to save me."

His face turned to me again, tears streaking it. "Don't be me, Kurt. Or Sheila. Find a way to let the hate go."

Epilogue, ten years later

"Hey Lynn."

I smoothed a bit of dirt off of her gravestone; no one had visited in some time. The kids had moved out of state; Jenny was married with two children of her own, and Matt was expecting his first. Paula was... well, Paula was trying to figure out her place in the world. I had to believe that she'd get there eventually.

I put the flowers down on my former wife's grave. Lilies. Her favorite. "I know that I haven't visited. I won't apologize; I don't owe you anything. Our ledger will never be balanced. But I needed to talk to you one last time."

The cold air made me more alert, but also uncomfortable. There were aches and pains at fifty four that hadn't been there a decade previous, and the cold made some of them worse. It didn't matter. This wouldn't take long.

"I hated you for a long time. I loved you, too, a little bit. Still do; you were, for your many faults, a good mother. After your affair, you were even a good partner, in your way. The lies were..." I sighed. "It doesn't matter. I tried to kill the love I had for you, tried to drown it in hate and anger. But I never did entirely. I guess I never will."

I looked at the gray sky. It would snow again soon. "I needed to thank you for one final thing. Not the money; Marcus finally did convince me that I was owed that for what you'd put me through. It wasn't any kind of gift. It wasn't even a bribe. It was reparations for what you'd done."

"No, it was for Marcus. You saved my life when you picked him. He convinced me to let go of my hatred of you. It took a long time, and, like the love, there's still a seed of it at the core of my heart. But if it hadn't been for him, I think your betrayal would have killed me. So thank you for your choice there. It did save my life."

I nodded to myself. There was nothing left to say. I walked a few rows down and a few further back, then sat on the ground and opened up a leather satchel.

"Hey Marcus. It's been a while." After pulling out two tumblers and a bottle of scotch, I poured each of us and saluted his marker.

"I'm sorry I haven't been by before. I only heard about your passing through a mutual friend; I would have come to the service if... if we'd stayed in touch." The whiskey burned a little going down. "I'm sorry about that, too. I wish we could have been friends. You got me through the darkest time in my life. But... hell, it was you that realized it. Being around you, I was always going to be reminded of Lynn and what she'd done."

I chuckled. "Just another thing she's fucked up in my life." I patted his marker. "Thank you, Marcus. You should have been my friend; I'm sorry that didn't happen. But you saved my life. I can never thank you enough for that. I talked to your son, and I'm glad you were able to find your way back, too."

I finished my drink and left both tumblers on the stone. Once I'd stood, I opened the bottle and poured the contents onto his grave; a woefully inadequate tribute to a great, flawed man that I'd never be able to thank enough.

Once back in my car, I called home. "Hey hon. Yeah, I'm done here. You feel like going out tonight? I kind of want to celebrate. Celebrate what? Take your pick; I'm gonna go with the gorgeous dame that I married. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I love you, Deb. Be there soon."