Revelations Ch. 03

"YOU shared what was ours, word-for-word," he shouted out like an enraged bull. He clambered off the bed and lurched out of their bedroom. Vanessa rolled to one side and curled up like a foetus, her hands covering her breasts, tears of pain and sorrow flowing down her cheeks.

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The next morning Victor got up early. As a consultant, Monday was one of the days he paid a visit to his old office. He had a splitting headache and he hadn't had much sleep. For the first time in his life he was feeling old and tired, very tired. It was surprising what effect a breakdown of a relationship could have on a person. It was almost as if his body and mind were in the grips of an interminable disease which greedily fed upon him, killing him ever so slowly each passing day.

He left for the office before Vanessa came down. Victor didn't want to see her guilt-ridden face first thing in the morning. This soon became an established routine as he began visiting his old office on an almost daily basis. The management was more than happy to have him back amongst them. In fact, they were hoping he would have a change of heart and make his comeback permanent. They had some new projects coming up and they could use his experience there.

Almost a month had come to pass since the revelation of his wife's affair. For the sake of the thirty years put in together and for the sake of what they had achieved as a family, he had been trying to forgive her action as a onetime aberration. He had given serious consideration to what Paula had said. Perhaps her decision to share her body with Harry was morally questionable but he should not be looking at it as an affair. That bastard did seem to be doing fine after having the affair with his wife. She should have consulted him as it did not involve her alone because after marriage, nobody remains an individual anymore and is responsible to another for his/her actions. But then, perhaps she must have realised that he may not agree to her line of thinking and had hence decided to do what she thought was best for Harry. He had been hurt but he should now be thinking of what lay ahead instead of wallowing in the past.

They had a nice home, a good retirement nest, their children were doing fine in their lives, and they had two lovely grandchildren to spoil silly. They had toiled together hard for thirty years to achieve what they had today.

It was going to be another of those sleepless nights all alone in the guest room. Like many similar nights in the recent past, he had downed a couple of drinks with no one but himself for company. The drinks helped in dulling his thinking capacity because try as he might, he still couldn't come up with a way to assure his battered self-esteem that what his wife meant about some sexual healing was no more than that. He had watched the CD's again to see if he had missed a clue somewhere but apart from feeling ashamed and hurt by the erotic images, there had been no other outcome. And there had been no sex with Vanessa either. There were nights when he would wake up suddenly after dreaming about his wife and Harry doing some crazy stuff. In his dreams the scene would play out as though they were looking at him and laughing and then he would wake up with a start, sweating profusely. He had jacked himself off a couple of times with Paula and not his wife in his mind. Slowly but surely, his life was turning pathetic, and so was Vanessa's as she seemed to be walking on eggshells whenever he was around the house.

He tossed and turned in his bed, the sleep eluding him again. He thought he heard a dog yowl. I bet I'm the only one awake in the neighbourhood to hear his pathetic sound, thought Victor, keeping his eyes tightly shut. Then they floated into his mind. He was naked and chasing his nude, beautiful wife at some beach resort. He was admiring her yummy buttocks as he chased her. He planned on taking her ass...yes...that crack looked delectable. Suddenly somebody loomed into view. It was Harry and...and he was holding Victor's grandson in his arms. His wife stopped and turned towards Harry. They were now together, smiling towards him, smiling with his grandson in Harry's arms. They were not laughing but taunting him. Harry had everything that was his...his wife, his grandson... NOOOOOO! The pain was agonizing.

Victor sat up straight in his bed, breathing hard. Another bad dream...no end to them. He poured himself a stiff drink and sat Indian style on the bed. Heck, he was now even hallucinating about Harry taking over his role of a grandfather and cuddling his grandson.

Grandson! Harry! Suddenly it hit him. Holy Shit! He quickly gulped down his remaining drink and sprang out of his bed and took out the copy of the letter written by Harry to his wife. He feverishly hoped he was wrong. Oh, he hoped he was wrong.

He scanned down hurriedly and turned to the next page and stopped short. There it was! He re-read the line, "May the Lord fill each minute and second of your life with happiness and good health! You love children and I hope the Lord gives you many more cuddly young 'uns."

"I hope the Lord gives you many more cuddly young 'uns!"

The words stared back at him, taunting him with their import. Harry knew about his grandchildren! They were just two and three years old. That meant he and his wife had continued to be in touch with each other long after they had moved to Houston! How else could he have known? They had never met again after moving from Dallas to Houston. At least he didn't recollect meeting him ever in Houston. That meant only one thing. That feeling in his guts and the constriction in his chest were back again.

Then suddenly he began to feel a change within himself. It was as though the dark mist surrounding him had suddenly begun to thin out. There was a new resolve about him as he switched on his laptop. His eyes were grim and steady, without a hint of unshed tears because there weren't any. His mind concentrated upon the immediate task ahead. He punched in the name of his grandson in the password slot and then his granddaughters. No luck. His wife's mailbox continued to be out of his reach. His mind threw up another set of words, words by which his wife's lover had addressed her at the beginning of his last letter to her. Triumph!

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Dawn was breaking when Victor moved out onto the patio with a hot cup of coffee in his hands. It was cold out in the open but somehow he didn't seem to be fazed. He stared into the far distance with his clear blue eyes. A new dawn was breaking, ushering in a new chapter in his life, and he was looking forward to it with confidence.

The two of them had never really disconnected with each other completely after their move to Houston. His wife and her ex-boss had continued to communicate with each other thru regular e-mails. Harry would regularly update his wife about his new lovers. Pics showing him with various women in different positions over the past many years clearly showed his ravenous appetite for sex. And all along, he would never fail to tell his wife that she was the special one, his life saver. It seemed it never occurred to his wife that he perhaps had her also on CD. She seemed to have lapped up his praise about how she pulled him out of his despair. She had, in return, sent him pics of her masturbating...with her fingers, with different dildos, and even with vegetables. She had even attached some MMS showing her masturbating and calling out his name in a lustful tone. This wild, adventurous side of his wife was something new to him. And yes, she had also shared the goings-on in their private lives, the going out of their children, them settling down in good jobs, their wedding pics, and of course the coming of their grandchildren.

Somewhere along the course of her so-called sexual healing of her boss, his wife had fallen in love with her subject. No doubt about that. Perhaps she never saw it that way and that's why she kept defending her actions by talking about the body and spirit healing bit. There were no direct references in the mails to their having sex after their move to Houston but there were mails which hinted that they had met later on a number of times. If he were to ask his wife, he was sure she would deny any fucking sessions post Dallas, but he was a mature man and had read and understood enough.

Perhaps that doctor's wife had also fallen in love with her subject, namely the now disgraced General. Many journalists had labelled the disgraced married woman as an opportunist who slept with the General so as to ensure she got some good writing material for the biography she was writing. But perhaps it was possible for some person to be in love with more than one person at the same time.

Perhaps he had not noticed it in their thirty years of marriage but Vanessa had changed. Well, maybe he too had changed. They say the only thing we can count on in our lives is change. Our life continues to evolve, change, transform, grow, and move in directions we often cannot understand. It is often best we don't understand because our minds and hearts may never be able to reconcile what we hear and see with the emotions that have the power to make us do things we would never ever consider.

His love for Vanessa was still there, it was just haunted now by the feeling he could not trust her to put her family first. No, it was more than a trust issue. He suddenly felt like he simply did not know her and she did not know him. Had she really thought he would be OK with her spreading her legs for Harry? No, he just was not supposed to ever know what she was doing, was he? In fact, it had turned into an all-out affair. If he were to quote his wife then it was an affair of the heart, fully consummated by the two lovers.

But as far as he was concerned, it didn't matter who you were or what your philosophical persuasion was, if you go outside of your marriage for any reason, you give away a part of that marriage. Vanessa and her lover had taken away his self respect and his marriage. Perhaps that doctor husband of the woman in the news, because of her affair with a famous General, might think differently but as far as he was concerned, he would rather die than live a life of dishonour. He really couldn't think of getting up every morning and sharing a cup of coffee with Vanessa and saying "Good Morning" to her. One look at her and the painful memories of her deceit and dishonour would rush back, killing him softly and surely every minute of every day. No, he didn't want to die a day earlier than the Lord planned because of what another person did to him. He was a person with his own personality traits. As per the norms of the society he lived in, he married a woman he loved, raised children with her, and perhaps would have preferred to watch the sunsets with her in the coming years. But no person, including this woman, had the permission to take his life for granted. No, Sir, he would survive and survive well. The Lord had many more years planned for him and he was going to live every second of those years proudly and with due respect and care for those around him.

He looked down at the white patch on his finger where his wedding ring had been. It was now placed atop the pile of emails sitting on the kitchen table. It had taken him almost the whole night to make the printout of all the emails and pics exchanged between his wife and Harry. The sound of the water running in the bathroom indicated his wife had woken up and would soon be down. Victor nodded to himself and made his way back to the kitchen for what would perhaps be his last cup of morning coffee shared with his wife.

THE END

ALEX

(Dear Readers: The closing of the story is as it developed in my mind during the course of writing. Feedbacks from you guys indicate different possible endings, so if any of you wishes to put an alternate ending, then please go ahead, and yes please do put in your vote).