Tom Granger

"Get the fuck out of here and don't come back." I said to her.

"Fuck you, Tom. " She said but with a lot less conviction in her voice. This time she had tears in her eyes.

I watched her drive away and I turned back to the wreckage of my life.

I was up six hours later and I pulled the curtains back allowing a flood of bright sunshine to fill the room. Ellen hadn't stirred yet and I had no idea what her condition would be when she did. I needed answers, a lot of them but quite frankly I really just wanted to get something to eat and try to contemplate what my next move was going to be. She was supposed to be in Richmond, not coming home at midnight in a yellow miniskirt having her panties pulled off her ass by a fucking drug dealer in our living room.

With a pot of coffee brewed and breakfast fixed, Ellen shuffled into the kitchen and sat at the table, almost catatonic.

"So, Ellen, what are you going to tell me about last night? I asked her while peering over my mug.

She glanced up at me without immediately answering and toyed with her food a bit.

"I don't know. I can't remember anything beyond having a couple Long Island Teas with Jennifer. I know it doesn't make sense but I'm telling the truth. We were at Cannonballs having a drink after I got back from Richmond. From there it just gets hazy. All I know is my head is killing me."

I could believe what she said about not remembering what happened. She was out of it when I put her to bed but there were larger questions that needed to be answered.

"You told me you were staying in Richmond until Friday. How did you happen to be back here to go partying with Jennifer? Not only that, dear, but what the fuck were you doing dressed like you were and out without your husband? Too many questions and no answers."

"Tom we finished earlier than we thought and I drove back. There was no need to stay the night."

"Ellen, who watered the garden yesterday morning?" I asked her.

"What? What are you talking about?" She replied and quickly looked away.

Even if she was plastered and out of it last night, everything about the situation was wrong and there was serious trouble in the Granger household.

"Ellen, I'm going to spend the day over at Bill and Shirley's helping him with setting up a new workshop. When I get home this evening, you need to have some honest answers to a lot of questions. I threw Jennifer out of here last night. I think you better start by asking how in hell you ended up flat on your back with some nasty looking bastard stripping your clothes off in our living room."

The color drained from her face when the enormity of what I stated hit her and her hand went right to her mouth. I just finished my coffee and rose from the table grabbing my keys on the way out the door. I didn't really have any work lined up with Bill but I couldn't stand being in the house with her at that point so I pointed myself toward Skyline Drive and headed up into the mountains.

I had a call from her later in the morning but I didn't answer it and instead just drove around for a while before grabbing a sandwich and beer over in Waynesboro. I thought things were really OK between us so I suppose getting blindsided like that really screwed with my mind. I had never cheated on Ellen even though I'd be lying if I said I hadn't come real close to it a couple times. Even with the wasted factor last night removed, she was still dressed for the meat market and that is exactly what the Cannonball is.

I used to go to the Cannonball before I got married and there was only one reason for doing so; pussy. I'd seen my share of short skirts, yellow or otherwise in those days and if Ellen was there with Jennifer, it was not good news by any stretch.

I finished up my lunch and checked my phone. I had half a dozen calls from Ellen and a couple from Jennifer and I paid no attention to any of them. Somehow a couple hours later I ended up back at the Mousetrap. Shirley was tending bar again and I unburdened myself on her. She was a good listener.

"You really think she knew what she was doing last night?" Shirley asked me.

"Shirley, I don't know if she did or not but it sure doesn't sit well with me knowing she was shaking her ass at the Cannonball. Add to that she was with those two creepy pricks we saw in here yesterday afternoon and there is some serious Lucy shit going on here."

No sooner had the words left my mouth when Jennifer came running into the place. She grabbed me and pulled me to a table.

"Tom, don't say anything yet. I know I'm deep on your shit list right now but listen to me. Ellen is in trouble. I know everything we did was wrong but she's over her head now and needs help. One of the guys from last night, Jimmy? He headed out to your place after I told him you walked out on Ellen. He was mad as hell after he didn't get whatever to hell he thought I had promised him and said he was going to collect."

I looked at her and was ready to explode.

"He's gone to my house now? What the fuck? Why didn't you fucking call me!?!" I exclaimed.

"Tom, I tried but you didn't answer." She replied.

I stood up and looked her right in the eye and told her.

"If anything happens that hurts her, I'll fucking kill you stone dead." And I turned and rushed out of the bar. I heard her yelling back at me but I didn't pay any attention. The bitch was front and center on this and I'd deal with her later. I fired the ignition on my truck and roared towards the farm. She tried to keep up with me but by the time I hit the dirt road she was a quarter mile behind me.

My marriage might be toast but I still loved the woman and if she was in harm's way, I'd kill a string of arrogant pricks before I'd willingly let anybody harm her, even if she did bring it on herself. There was an unfamiliar vehicle in the yard when I pulled up next to my work shed. I didn't pay much attention to it and I tucked my sidearm into my pants and entered the house. Reality didn't pay much attention to me once I crossed the threshold.

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There was a faint din in the background and every once in a while my mind was slightly roused with an electronic beep or two and then everything would go silent. There wasn't any passing of time or any sense of it at all. At times there would be a feeling of light, not the sense of any real light but a feeling that light was there and I just couldn't see it.

I don't know when or how I came to hear it but I could hear whispers about the same time my eyes sensed the real light. It was like a kaleidoscope of varying shades of white and pastel blues and the whispers became louder and were punctuated with the electronic sounds of scurrying or busy machines. Somebody seemed to be calling for a man named Tom but they were still far off somewhere. Then I could hear it off to my left or what I thought might have been my left side. I couldn't tell.

"Tom, come on back to us ... come on, Tom" She said several times.

I didn't know who Tom was but he needed to reply and then I realized I was Tom; I realized I was actually alive. The whites and blues gave way to further colors albeit blurry and lacking definition. I could hear her again calling out to me yet my lips wouldn't respond. It was as if I didn't know how and then I heard a soft unintelligible moan or grunt and felt my mouth move.

There was a rushing of people and a bright light lowered to my face. I could hear them now and see their images moving about. The realization woke me even more. I was in a hospital room of some sort and then I remembered the dark grey envelope that consumed me. I had been shot while stepping into my house.

A nurse tended to vital signs and when she finished I felt a hand take hold of mine and caress it gently. She bent down close to my ear and told me.

"I love you, Tom. Please come out of it. I love you so much." Ellen said.

I knew the voice and it was the most comforting sound I knew short of my own mother's soothing security. I could see her shadowy form along with another one next to her and I drifted off to sleep shortly after that.

When I awoke there were two cheery nurses with me. I could see clearly now and hear them as well.

"Good morning, Mr. Granger. The doctor will be in with you in just a bit." One of them smiled.

A couple minutes later a doctor came into my room, checked some vital signs or some such and pulled up a chair next to me. After the formalities he told me what happened. I had been shot at fairly close range with 12 gauge shotgun loaded with bird rounds. If it had been buckshot I would have been DOA. As it was I was almost DOA. The man who had shot me was himself shot dead at the scene by a single shot .45 APC round. The doctor told me he wasn't supposed to share this information but since he knew my grandfather from many years ago he thought I deserved to know. Apparently it was a woman who shot him.

The most surprising thing to learn was that I had been in an induced coma for almost three weeks. My injuries were to the upper chest and throat but I had struck the back of my head when I fell to the floor and connected to the cannonball doorstop that sat next to the front door for the last 100 years. That was the most serious issue and why I was almost DOA.

There would be some convalescence time needed at an intermediate facility but I should be home in about a month, maybe less. I might have to relearn how to do certain movements and patterns due to where I was injured but it should all come back in time with good therapy.

Ellen came to see me later and stayed until the evening. For reasons the doctor couldn't explain to my understanding, I couldn't recall much of anything that occurred during the few days leading up to the injury. He told me it might come back to me all at once or maybe only pieces of it would ever come back. Only time and my recovery would tell. I spent the next three weeks recovering at a convalescent home with physical therapy twice a day. When I was ready to go home, Ellen was there along with Jennifer. For whatever reason, Jennifer was pleasant, totally out of character for her around me. Ellen was just crying.

I was walking with a cane into the house because of balance issues associated with my injuries and stopped at the threshold. It was as if I was anticipating something but didn't know what and when I entered my eyes went to the couch and to the left. When I talked with the police officers they told me that Ellen was in the house that afternoon and there was one man, James Fitzgerald the deceased. Fitzgerald had been shot and killed in self- defense by Jennifer. I just couldn't remember any of it. I didn't know the man or any connection of him to me or Ellen. Everything was a blank at this point.

Memory was indeed a problem for me. I could remember my boss in Knoxville calling me into the office for something but everything after that was as if there was a great void until I woke up in the hospital. Occasionally I would have a memory glimpse of flying back to Charlottesville but they were merely fleeting recollections.

My boss did call me to see how I was doing and to remind me that I was now a regional manager in Charlottesville when I was ready to go back. Ellen had called the company after I was shot to keep them informed. While the promotion was a great surprise the conversation didn't trigger any new memories for me. I was still stuck with that big void.

While I might not have been able to remember anything of that period, I did have the knowledge of both the police and my doctor with regard to what supposedly happened. My friends Bill and Shirley were also helpful cluing me in on Jimmy Fitzgerald and what I was doing that afternoon. A couple things stood out from the revelations. Jennifer was more involved with these matters than just shooting some intruder in self-defense.

Second, Ellen might have been having an affair with some bastard based on what Shirley shared with me about our conversations prior to the shooting.

It was time for a discussion or a come to Jesus meeting and we had it that evening with both Ellen and Jennifer present.

"OK, I need some answers to several questions." I said as I looked at both women on the couch.

"So, first question. Who is or was Jimmy Fitzgerald and what was he doing in my house alone with my wife?

I really didn't care which one of them answered. Jennifer spoke first.

"He was a creep who was harassing Ellen when you were gone that week and he broke into the house when you weren't there." She said.

"OK, so why was he harassing Ellen? I mean. What do you mean, he was harassing her? Ellen?" I said as I looked to my wife.

"He kept hitting on me when Jennifer and I were at the Mousetrap and didn't like hearing no, so he wouldn't stop." Ellen said.

"Why didn't you have Bill put him in his place?" I asked.

"He wasn't working but some other guy tossed him out of the place and he was mad as hell." She answered.

So far it sounded like a miserable cretin hit on my wife, was rejected and thought he'd make do later. It was scary shit if it was true but I had more questions.

"How did I happen to walk in my house and get shot in the middle of the afternoon? Shirley told me I was having a conversation with you, Jennifer. What was that all about and how in hell were you there to shoot the bastard, not that I'm complaining mind you?"

The women darted glances at each other before Jennifer spoke up.

"Ellen sent me a text telling me that the guy showed up at your house and she was scared and couldn't get hold of you. I couldn't either but we knew you were back from Knoxville so I called down to the Mousetrap to see if you were there and one of the waitresses said you were. So, I made a beeline down there and told you I thought Ellen needed your help.

"You tore out of the place and headed here and I jumped in my car and followed you out. I was just a few moments behind you went you walked in. Then the creep shot you with a shotgun and started to level it at me too but as soon as I heard the shot I had my handgun out. So, I shot the fucker, right between the eyes.

"We both thought you were dead until we got a pulse and called 911. They were there in about ten minutes."

Ellen was sitting there sobbing at this point and Jennifer just comforted her in her arms.

"OK, so what were the two of you doing with him the night before, him and some other guy?" I asked both of them.

"What are you talking about, Tom?" Ellen asked.

I know Ellen's expressions and mannerism like my own. I don't think she had a clue what I was talking about yet it just seemed at odds with what Shirley had told me concerning our conversations. Jennifer on the other hand looked nervous as hell so I decided to lie.

"You all were seen together that evening at a club" I replied.

"Tom, I remember the guy from the night before. He was the same guy from earlier that afternoon who wouldn't leave Ellen alone but he wasn't with us. He was probably stalking Ellen." Jennifer offered.

It all sounded like bullshit to me but I didn't have anything to run with. Shirley was pretty certain I thought Ellen was cheating on me but I didn't have a clue as to why I thought that.

"Well, in any event, I'm appreciative of you wasting the fucker on my behalf. Maybe the memory will come back in due course." I added at the end of our discussion.

My injuries continued to heal and my health was back to 95% so I went back to work since my short term disability was getting ready to run out anyway after 90 days. With the new job, I only had to travel every other week or so. One thing I couldn't wrap my mind around was Jennifer's completely new attitude toward me. It was as if somebody had sucked the witch right out of her and replaced it with a human being. I couldn't make up my mind if she was just mind-fucking me or she had undergone a true conversion to somebody half decent.

Over the ten years that I had known her she had never had a serious long term relationship with anybody. Oh she liked men, of that there was no doubt. She liked them a lot but she had never settled into anything that might have sustained a long term relationship or marriage. I asked Ellen once if she was gay and she just laughed at me.

"No, she really likes dick!" was her reply

Whatever the case, if she had an epiphany and was able to get along with me, I was content to leave it at that.

One morning while Ellen was out shopping in town, I had a burst of unexpected energy and decided to move the furniture around in the living room. I pulled the couch and love seat around and cleaned up around them. Before I pushed them back to where I wanted them I removed the seat cushions and made a discovery.

"It is 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, MDMA otherwise known as Ecstasy" He told me as he handed the little blue pill with an imprinted butterfly on it back to me.

He was Donnie Chase, a long- time friend who was an anesthesiologist at UVA and who was also admittedly nervous about having this in his possession

"Kids like it today because of the euphoria and because it really clobbers the inhibitions in people. Some people think it's a female kind of Viagra but they are wrong. It just lowers inhibitions, sometimes dramatically.

"This one is gamma hydroxybutyric acid, GHB, liquid ecstasy. It's rather common 'date rape' drug and if it's used with MDMA, a woman doesn't stand a chance. It is bad stuff in some of the clubs, more so over in Richmond and DC than here but it shows up often enough."

Donnie handed the small vial back to me and I slipped both back into my pocket.

"So, this raises the question, Tom. How did you happen to come across this stuff? I know you are purely a Craft Ale guy." Donnie asked me.

I told him the story of finding it in the seat cushions. He knew about the shooting and the dead perpetrator. I had a bag of around 500 hundred of the ecstasy pills and a dozen vials of the liquid; serious illegal stuff

At that point I was concerned there might be more of the drugs at the house so I needed a meeting, that night.

"How long have the two of you been eating ecstasy?" I asked both of them across from me.

Ellen had the doe in the headlights look. Jennifer was fidgeting in her seat. Neither one answered.

"Again, how long have you been taking the drugs?" I asked again.

"Tom, I don't understand. I've never done drugs of any kind." Ellen offered.

I pushed a single blue ecstasy pill into the middle of the table.

"Ellen, I believe you, at least I know you wouldn't willingly take it. Jennifer?" I asked.

At that point I grabbed Jennifer's handbag and dumped the contents on the table. I was shocked at the assortment of condoms and toys in there but more important was the small baggie of blue pills, the same as the one on the table with the butterfly imprint on one side. In addition there was a single small vial of a clear liquid, identical to what Donnie had tested for me.

A flash of recognition crossed Ellen's face.

"Oh my God, did you drug me that night? Jennifer, did you?" Ellen asked her long- time friend.

I didn't have any recollection of what she was talking about so I just waited for Jennifer's response which wasn't forth coming. She just sat there with tears in her eyes.

"You did; God damn you. Get out of my house. Now I know why I can't remember anything. Why in the hell??" Ellen cursed at her friend.

Jennifer just kept shaking her head no and she gathered up her purse and contents and left the house in tears. I just sat there across the table from my wife and told her.

"Ellen, we've been together for ten years now. I don't remember the events of much of that week but if we are going to stay together, I need you to tell me the truth. I don't know if my memory of those days is going to come back or not. Maybe it will or maybe I'll never recall it but I need to know the truth here. Can you give me that?" I asked her sincerely.