The Teacher's Husband

Kate had not deleted any of their texts and those texts did verify that they had not yet had sex. I had no illusions. If she had not been found out, she would have slept with him. I was somewhat innocent about matters of infidelity before this, but I quickly became well-versed in the topic. I became a regular visitor to some of the online forums dedicated to infidelity and cheating. I learned a whole new vocabulary and a set of acronyms and abbreviations. The AP is the affair partner. The BS is the betrayed spouse. The WW is the wayward wife and the WH is the wayward husband. The OBS is the other betrayed spouse. Dday-1 is the day that you found out about the cheating. Dday-2 is your second Dday which usually comes because of trickle truth because your WW does not tell you the full story because they are in self-preservation mode. So, you do the 180 which is a form of communication that is 180 degrees from your normal loving communication. No irrelevant chit-chat. House or childcare issues only are discussed. The objective is to see you out of infidelity, either through reconciliation or divorce.

Then there were the other websites. The pro-adultery sites where abbreviations like MM (married man) were used. The secrecy of an affair is kept hidden due to exercising opsec (operational security) as if the stealth and deceit needed to cheat and betray a trusting partner was CIA tradecraft.

But I learned. I had missed the signs in the run-up to Kate's emotional affair (EA) and was thankful that it had not progressed to a physical affair (PA). I remembered that in the weeks leading up Dday, she had taken to turning the phone away from me when she texted. She also took her phone into the bathroom with her and slept with her phone under her pillow. All these signs are glaringly obvious now, but when you love and trust someone...you become an easy mark.

The fallout of her little adventure was that I insisted that she quit her job. If she wanted to teach, she could teach high school or middle school. She also agreed to complete transparency with all electronic devices. No passcodes. No chatting apps other than Apple's native text app. No deleting of text. Location is always on. I provided an older iPhone for her to log into all her apps so I could monitor them. I maintained possession of that phone and put my own passcode on it. If there was any cheating going on, I would divorce her without hesitation. She agreed to everything.

And little by little I began to trust her. I began the policing stage of our marriage by checking the cloned iPhone multiple times per day for messages, calls, and location. I logged into her Apple App Store account once a day to check for downloaded apps that could be used for cheating. Not just dating apps, or social media apps; but innocuous games that had internal messaging capabilities. I checked phone bills and compared the data used to what the cloned phone was indicating.

She also started teaching at the high school. She was the only teacher at the high school with a Ph.D. and having Dr. Katherine Conroy on faculty was prestigious to the school. Kate had hoped to teach at university one day. Her thought was that she could teach a couple of courses a semester and use her office time to work on her novel. Her emotional affair derailed that for her so while she understood it was through her own actions that she now found herself teaching full time in high school with very little opportunity to write her novel, she was also resentful towards me for imposing this upon her. We were attempting to work through her resentment and the aftermath of her affair when eighteen months later we got devastating news: cancer.

During a routine self-examination, Kate discovered a small lump on her right breast. Since it was small, she was not overly concerned about the lump but scheduled mammography and consultation anyway. The mammography led to a biopsy which led to a diagnosis of breast cancer. Both Kate's mother and grandmother had mastectomies as a result of breast cancer diagnosis. In the case of her grandmother, the surgery came too late and she passed away as a result. Kate's mother, Emily had made the decision to have her breasts removed after her mother's diagnosis and after testing revealed that she also carried the BRCA1 gene for breast cancer. Testing revealed that Kate did not carry the gene and so was not planning to have her breast removed since a lumpectomy would suffice.

Her diagnosis, however, shook her to her core.

Kate had been very proud of her body and her breasts. Even after breastfeeding two children, they remained a firm c-cup with no hint of sag or stretch marks. The idea of surgically removing her breast sent Kate into a depressive tailspin that she was almost unable to come out of. She was distant and unhappy with me and our girls. The smallest frustration would unleash a response that was completely out of proportion to the offense. This went on for months until one day, she seemed to wake up and start being the Kate that we loved.

This did bring up memories of what happened after her miscarriage. Depression followed by a sudden return to normal. I had not looked at the cloned iPhone in months, but I pulled it out of a drawer, charged it, and prepared myself for the worst. What I found was...nothing. No texts to strange numbers. No photos or videos were sent to someone else. No sketchy apps were downloaded or used. No dodgy search history. It seemed that through counseling and sheer force of will, Kate had returned.

Of course, now I know I was fooling myself. What I had done, was teach her how to be a better cheater. I had looked for burner phones several times in the past. Pockets of coats pushed to the back of the closet were searched. Shoe boxes and shoes checked. Nothing and nothing. I had checked under the seats of her car, the glove box, the console, and the trunk. Every place that could hide a phone, I checked. The one place I could not check was her classroom at school. If she was hiding a burner phone at school, it was beyond my resources to locate it. Kate did not use her cell phone or computer for anything that I could see or access. As diligent as I was, and as knowledgeable as I had become in the matter of infidelity, I was truly blind-sided when her lover appeared at our house.

The drive from Quanah, Texas to Amarillo was subdued. We were all lost in our thoughts about what had happened that morning. The girls knew that we would be getting divorced. They had caught their mother cheating during her first affair and had begged us to fix the marriage. The second affair was much worse than the first. It had gone on for longer, was sexual, and had led to Kate falling in love with her "fiancée." Christ, just the thought of that enraged me. The fact that she had lied to him about our relationship hurt me in such a profound way that I could barely think about it. She was not only talking to some asshole about me but lying about me in the process. I am a lot of things, but I am not, nor have I ever been abusive, either physically or mentally.

We were not actually staying in Amarillo; we planned to stay at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Palo Duro is the second largest canyon in the United States, the Grand Canyon being the largest. Our plan was to stay at the park for a couple of days and then continue westward along I40 (which encompasses a good section of the old Route 66) going through Tucumcari, New Mexico to Albuquerque with side trips north to Santa Fe, and then back south through the Indian Pueblos before hitting Flagstaff, Arizona. From Flagstaff, it was north to Las Vegas for three days and then continue west to Los Angeles. We planned to spend a week in LA hitting Disneyland, Universal Studios, and all the other tourist sites in LA and Hollywood. From LA it was going to be north along the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. We were going to spend several days in the area, seeing Fisherman's Wharf and (now that the girls were eighteen) Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley. From there, we would pick up I80 through Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, and then through Nebraska and Iowa until our next big stop; Chicago. We planned to stay in Chicago for a few days to check out the shopping on Michigan Avenue and the Cubs at Wrigley. We had budgeted a maximum of five days for Chicago, but if we thought it looked dicey, we were OK with leaving early. From Chicago it was south to Nashville for a couple of days then Memphis for a day or so. I wanted to see Graceland and after seeing the movie Elvis and Austin Butler's performance as The King, the girls were completely on board with that as well. After Memphis, we would continue to head southwest through Arkansas and finish up back at our starting point of Fort Worth, Texas. It was going to be a month-long, epic road trip that would provide a lifetime of memories for the four of us. Ha! As the saying goes, "Man plans, God laughs."

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Kate and I had been to Palo Duro Canyon as kids. It was on a joint family vacation, which pretty much described every vacation we ever took. We toured the canyon and climbed the various hiking trails, including hiking to the Lighthouse, the iconic rock outcropping that is the most famous symbol of the canyon. We had also seen the musical TEXAS in the outdoor amphitheater at the canyon. It was the first live musical that we had seen and we were awestruck. The show is a singing and dancing story of the early pioneers of the Texas Panhandle that concludes with a fireworks display at the end. Seeing that show at an early age had engendered a love of musical theatre for both myself and Kate that existed to this day. The twins had learned to love theatre through us and both of them had participated in high school musicals. Fortunately, they sang like their mother and not me.

After hooking up the RV, we decided it was too late in the day for any hiking so I grilled some hot dogs and opened a container of potato salad. I had started allowing the girls either one glass of wine or one beer with dinner, but only at home or with their parents. They both chose wine and looked at me with somber expressions.

"I guess this means divorce," Taylor said. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. "Why would she do this to you? To us?"

"And why would she lie about you? She told that guy you were abusive...Dad, you're about the least abusive person I've ever met!" Kendal added.

"I doubt that mom could even tell you why she lied," Taylor said.

I took a sip of my beer before replying. "You're right T. I doubt that she could explain it. But I can." I hesitated for a minute before finishing my thoughts but decided that the twins were eighteen and I could have adult conversations with them. They're adults and I would talk to them like adults.

"No one wants to be the villain of their own story. There's a thing called the Triangle of Victimhood. There has to be a victim, a rescuer, and a persecutor. Cheating and betraying me goes against your mother's core beliefs. She sees herself as a good and moral person. For her to justify her actions to herself, she needs to paint me as the villain, not herself. If she's the victim, that makes me the persecutor and her boyfriend or fiancée or whatever she calls him, the rescuer. Your mother knows that I am a loving, loyal partner who has forgiven her in the past. She has to portray me as controlling abusive and manipulative so that I am the villain and not her. Like I said, no one wants to be the villain in their own story."

The girls had thoughtful expressions on their faces. Taylor nodded her head. "For mom to be Snow White and dipshit the prince, you have to be who? The Huntsman? The Wicked Queen?"

I nodded. "One of them. Both of them. I don't know for sure. But soon it's not going to be my problem." I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket. "I'm going to check my messages. You girls stand back in case this thing explodes!"

They both giggled and pulled out their phones as well. As my phone powered up it went crazy dinging, buzzing, and lighting up as the texts, missed calls and voicemails came through. I should have immediately blocked Kate before leaving Fort Worth but I hadn't and was paying for it now. I quickly rectified that oversight. I also deleted her texts and voicemails. That left several texts from my mother, Kate's mom, and Kate's dad. Strangely, there were none from my dad.

My mother's texts began with a concerned tone before becoming increasingly unhinged.

MOM: Pete, call me right away. I'm concerned.

MOM: Pete, call me right back. This is important.

MOM: Peter, I need you to call me right now!

MOM: Dammit, Peter. You need to stop with this BS and call me.

MOM: Damn you, Peter! You'd better fucking call me right away if you know what's good for you!

MOM: Alright, so that's the way you want to play this? This is not going to end well for you, I promise you that.

Wow, I thought. I wonder what her voicemails sound like.

The answer was, just like her texts only increasingly angry and belligerent. Her first voicemail set the tone and they were progressively worse.

MOM: "Peter, your wife is in hysterics. You need to fix this right fucking now. So, she made a mistake. You need to put your ego aside, put your big boy pants on, and take care of your wife."

MOM: "Peter, I am ashamed to call you my son. You left your crying wife with a stranger and went on vacation. You are pathetic and I am embarrassed that I carried you for nine months. "

I was playing the messages on speaker so that the twins could hear them. To say they were shocked was the understatement of the year. They were shaken and distraught.

"I can't believe Mimi said those awful things to you!" Taylor said. Kendal had paled and was openly weeping. "I guess we know whose side she is going to take."

The texts and voicemails from Kate's parents were not as angry or hostile as the ones from my mother, but you could tell they were upset and angry. And it was obvious that I was the source of their anger.

There were no texts or voicemails from my dad. That was odd. I deleted all the texts and voicemails and then watched as the girls deleted theirs without listening to them. We then powered down our phones and stared into the fire as we thought about this shit show of a day.

We had a blast hiking the canyon the next day and going to see TEXAS that night. The girls loved the show and it was every bit as cool as I remembered it. We stayed two days in Amarillo and then picked up I-40 and headed west. We had calculated four weeks for vacation but we were actually gone five weeks. Some of our side trips that we had budgeted as one day, took up two to three days. Eventually, though, we knew that we had to go home. The girls needed to be in Austin next week for their dorm assignments and class registration. The original plan was for the four of us to rent a U-Haul and tow it behind my crew cab pick-up truck and we would get the girls moved into their dorm room. They were sharing a room their first semester so this would be a pretty uncomplicated move. That is until their mother decided to blow up all our lives.

My father was sitting on the front porch of our house as we drove up. I looked around but did not see Kate, her parents, or my mother. Since his motorcycle was in the driveway, I knew that they did not ride with him so he must be alone.

I got out of the RV and stretched before walking to the house.

"Dad," I said.

"Pete," he acknowledged.

"What's new?"

He chuckled. "I'll assume that's not a serious question."

"Not really. You alone?"

"Yep. They don't know about the GPS in the RV and Don is as computer savvy as your grandmother, and she's been dead ten years."

"They don't know we're back?" This shocked the hell out of me. I was braced for war and came home to...nothing.

"Nah, I thought I'd keep it to myself. Y'all's phones been off this whole time?"

"We picked up a couple of burner phones in Flagstaff. The girls wanted to stay in touch with their friends and I needed to stay in touch with work and Terry."

He nodded. "Well, Terry did his job. She was served last week at her parent's house."

"I guess it didn't go well," I said.

"Boy, that's the fucking understatement of the year. Kate's been in lockdown in the psych ward ever since she was served. Her parents are upset and raging at you and raging at the girls and basically raging at everyone but Kate and your mother."

"Where is Mother dearest?" I asked. "After listening to her voicemails, I know that I'm not her favorite person."

"None of you are," he nodded towards the twins. She's so mad at the three of you that she can't even form a coherent sentence. This whole week has been a Tijuana donkey show."

"I'll explain the term later," I said to the girls. I could tell they were about to ask about Tijuana donkey shows and that was not a conversation I was in the mood for.

"Your mother is at her house," Dad said. I gave my father a puzzled look.

"Her house?"

"Her house," he confirmed. "I've filed for divorce as well."

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We paused our conversation after that bombshell to unload the RV and then clean it. Afterward, we grilled burgers for dinner and chatted about our trip. Avoided was the topic of Kate and her lover or my mother and the other set of grandparents. I told the girls that I did not have a problem with them going to see their mother but they declined. They did want to go see what their friends were up to so after dinner they each gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and promised to be back by midnight. I grabbed a bottle of Milam & Greene, two tumblers, and a couple of cigars and met my father on the patio. I poured a couple of fingers of bourbon for each of us and then we performed the cigar-lighting ritual that most men learn at a young age. We puffed and sipped in silence and watched the shadows of the night grow.

"So, what happened?" I asked.

Dad took a sip of bourbon before replying. "She's always been really close to Emily and her family. Sometimes I felt that she was closer to them than to her own family; me, you, and the girls. When the whole thing blew up with Kate, I expected your mother to take your side and be angry with Kate."

"And that didn't happen," I stated.

He shook his head. "Not even a little bit. She was furious at you for reacting by leaving. Furious at her granddaughters for leaving with you. And furious with me because I said I didn't blame you. I didn't see her texts to you at the time, but I saw them later on. I did hear her leaving voicemails to you. I was not happy about what she was saying to you but I didn't say anything to her at the time. There didn't seem to be any point in throwing gas on that particular fire. I know you, and I know after the last time, when she got involved with that other guy, that you were done with her."

"You knew about the other time?" I was surprised at this. I had told no one.

"I heard Kate, Emily, and your mother talking about it a few months after it happened. I know it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it was bad enough. But not nearly as bad as this. After a few days, it was obvious that the three of you had turned your cell phones off. Find my iPhone wasn't working for her and you weren't responding to texts or voicemails. Each day was more of a shit show than the day before. Kate spent hours crying and wailing and carrying on. Her parents were getting desperate and your mother was becoming increasingly angry with you and hostile towards me. After a week, her parents had Kate locked up in the psych ward at Methodist. They were afraid she was going to kill herself. That really set your mother off. Dipshit hanging around didn't help any, either."

"Wait, what?" I asked with what I knew was an incredulous tone. "Her boyfriend was still in the picture?"