Too Late to Say Goodbye

"What do you mean?" asked the therapist.

"When I first met Lori, she was in a relationship with a guy who constantly cheated on her," I said. "I just found out that she married me while still holding onto that relationship. I never started having sex with her until shortly before we got married. Apparently, she never stopped screwing him. I'm fine with it. They knew each other and were a couple for a long time when I met her. The only thing I regret is supporting her for all of these years. There are so many things I need to get."

"Like what?" asked the therapist.

"Like I'm pretty sure now that I need a DNA test for my daughter," I said. "Certain aspects of her personality don't seem like they come from someone with my genes. But I also have get my lawyer to handle things completely differently. I'm suing Todd for his part in ruining my marriage, but if Katey turns out to be his child, I'll also sue him for all of the expenses of raising her and everything else. But at least now I can just ask a judge to give me an annulment or throw the whole marriage out based on fraud. Lori married me and took all of those vows under false pretenses. It should pretty much be an open and shut case. Lori and Todd probably owe me a few hundred thousand dollars at least."

I didn't even look at Lori as I left the room, perhaps I should have.

I went to my lawyer's office and filled him in on everything that happened at therapy. He got right on it and that was when the shit hit the fan.

Within two days I became both really popular and really hated with a lot of people. My father in law was livid. My mother in law was also upset. My daughter was upset. Todd called threatening me and some woman that I'd never met wanted to set up a meeting with me as well.

My father in law showed up at my office. "God damn it Mark," he screamed. "What's happened to you?"

"Uhm I fell in love and got cheated on," I said.

"Forget about that for right now," he said. "Lori is in the hospital. Don't you care?"

"Lori cheated on me for twenty-five years," I said. "She was never mine, from the beginning. I loved her with everything I had. My fucking heart is shattered. Don't you care? I'm the victim here so don't start whining to me because Lori is upset. Lori is the one who did this shit. I'm probably not even Katey's father. Don't you care?"

"Trust me," he said. "Katey is your daughter."

He sat down in the chair opposite me. "Do you have anything around here to drink?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Oh yeah, you don't drink," he said. "That's another thing I liked about you from the beginning.

"I didn't think you liked me at all from the beginning," I said.

"Mark, don't be stupid," he said. "When I first met you, I was just shocked because everyone in our town expected Lori to marry Todd. I'd heard that fairy tale for so long that I went along with it too. They built their entire existence around that whole scenario. But when I met you, I had to at least figure out why the fairytale had gone off of the rails. When I saw what Todd had become, I was glad that she was marrying you instead of him. All I've ever wanted was for my little girl to be happy. It took me less than an hour to see that she was much happier with you than she'd ever been with him."

"Mark, if I had known for even a second that she was still carrying on with him, I'd have made her stop," he said. "But despite your differences, I do know two things. I know that my daughter really does love you. And I'd be willing to bet that Katey is your daughter." I just looked at him.

"Shit, you don't need a DNA test to figure that out," he said. "Todd is way too stupid to be her father." I smiled a bit and nodded.

"It really doesn't matter who her biological father is," I said. "I raised her. I thought that she had my values. No matter what I do, I can't take back the memories and all of the happiness that little girl has brought me. But I'm finding that I can't trust emotions, so I have to rely on what I do know. I'm a business man. I deal in dollars and sense. So if Katey does turn out to be Todd's kid, Todd is going to have to pay me. Todd is already going to have to pay me for ruining my marriage."

"You just don't understand this son," he said. "Todd didn't ruin shit. You love Lori, whether you want to admit it or not. Lori loves you. All of the memories the two of you built over the past twenty-five years were real. Todd just ran a con game on Lori and manipulated her using guilt. The two of you have that beautiful house, a daughter you love and a great life together. You also have each other. All Todd got out of her was a few dollars and he'd call her once or twice a month and they'd have guilt sex."

"It doesn't matter if it was once or twice a decade," I said. "It was still wrong."

"I agree," he said. "But there are degrees or right and wrong. Reasonable people understand that life isn't always black and white. There's a lot of gray involved. Shit there's red and yellow and a whole spectrum of colors in life. Just give it some thought. Meanwhile your wife is in the hospital. After twenty-five years, doesn't she rate a visit?"

When I got ready to leave that evening, Katey was waiting for me. She was sitting on my car with tears running down her cheeks.

"So, I'm not your daughter huh?" she asked. "I'll take your fucking test. But I've never even met that bastard. How could you think I was his?"

The next thing I knew she had run over and threw herself into my arms, crying her eyes out.

"Katey, you'll always be my baby no matter what," I said. "This has nothing to do with you and me. This is just another way to make that asshole pay."

"Daddy, what exactly is he going to pay?" she asked. "I got so angry that I went and saw mom and spoke to her about all of this. He's a fat old bum with a shitty attitude. He's married to a fat old woman with no teeth and bleached blond hair. He hasn't ever had a steady job in his life. He cheats on his wife and not just with Mom. He doesn't have any children and never has had with any of the women he's been with. According to Mom she always made him wear a condom. There's no way I'm his." She looked at me then.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "What did I say?"

"Katey, it's not you," I said. "Your mom and I have never used condoms. Once we decided that all we needed was you, she went on the pill. So her running around buying condoms to use with him just proves that she made a conscious effort to cheat on me. The more I hear, the more it hurts."

Against my better judgment, I went to see Lori in the hospital. They had her hooked up to all kinds of machines but she seemed alert. As I walked into the room, she looked over at me. Her face lit up and then fell and darkness and anger colored her expression.

"I guess you've come to kick me while I'm down huh?" she asked.

"I can leave," I said. "Your dad thought I should stop by."

I sat down on the edge of her bed and looked at her. "Why do they have you all hooked up to all of these things?" I asked.

"When you left, I nearly had a heart attack," she said quietly. "It turned out to be a really huge panic attack, but my blood pressure went so high that they were really worried I might have a stroke."

"I've only loved two men in my entire life," she said. "Despite the fact that you keep calling me a whore, I've only ever had sex with the same two men. So if I'm a whore, I'm probably not very good at it...I didn't defraud you Mark. This wasn't some grand scheme designed to hurt you or fool. It's just a really weird situation."

"When I met you, you knew that I was with Todd," she said. "You knew it and you still came after me. I didn't lie to you ever. Every God damned time that you asked me why I was with him when he treated me like shit, I was truthful. I told you that I was with him because I loved him. I told you that every God damned time."

"But you kept coming back anyway. And every time you looked at me...The way your eyes lit up when you saw me, it was magic, Mark. It made me feel so good. And you treated me like some kind of princess. You made me feel so special. After a while, I realized that I loved you too. I also realized that I liked you. And there is a difference. Just because I loved you too, it didn't mean that I stopped loving Todd. But between the two of you, I liked you more. I hated the way Todd treated me, but I'd loved him for so long that it just wouldn't go away. I wished that he'd stop cheating on me and spend more time with me, but I couldn't stop loving him. We had our whole lives planned out before you ever showed up."

"And the next thing I knew, I was cheating on him with you. Sure we didn't have sex, we just kissed a lot. But if you had ever pushed me, just a little bit, we would have and you know it. You were just too nice a guy to push me. Then the wheels fell off of the dream. I guess I panicked. My life wasn't going the way I wanted it to. I hated my life with Todd. I hated that shitty little apartment and he never stopped cheating on me. Mark, it hurt me so bad. When I'd been in college, if he cheated on me, like he always did, I had you to make me feel better. So Mark I called you."

"And Mark, you came. You came and you rescued me and you treated me like a God damned princess all over again. And I wasn't lying, Mark. I never lied to you. I did love you. And I still do. I will love you until my last breath is expelled from my lungs. When I heard your step-mother say that you should marry me. I wanted you to ask me. And when you did, I accepted. Not because I was trying to defraud you, but because I loved you. And I wanted to live out the rest of my life with you. I wanted to have sex with you and make babies with you and grow old with you and all of the things that you want too. And Mark, I still fucking do. With every fiber of my being I want you, Honey."

"Don't look at me like that, I can call you whatever the fuck I want. We're still married so you're still mine," she snapped. "I was truly happy Mark. I planned out our wedding and it was going to be the biggest and best wedding ever. Then he called me. He apologized and he told me that he was going to get help. He told me that he'd fallen into a depression and he just couldn't handle the way his life had turned out. He was so disappointed that he hadn't made the pros that it made him feel like he wasn't a man. He'd had one goal in life, one dream and he had failed. All of the other women were just him acting out. But he was going to get help and we'd be fine."

My eyes hardened then as she spoke.

"He wanted me to leave you and come back to him," she said. "Mark, my heart broke for him. He was so apologetic and so contrite. He was fighting so hard to put the pieces of his life back together. All of the love I had for him came back. It didn't mean that I loved you any less. It just meant that I was back to square one. I was still torn between the two of you. I told him about you and he got upset and hung up the phone on me. But a few days later he called me back and told me that he understood. He also told me that since I'd been falling in love with you while I was engaged to him, the least I could do would be to allow him to try to fight for me, the way I'd let you take me away from him. He kept calling me and then we were seeing each other. And the next thing I knew we had sex. I didn't really like it. And I need to tell you that I don't have sex with him because I like it. I do it out of guilt. I beg you for sex, Mark. He begs me and guilt trips me into it."

"I guess I should have realized that I was wrong, when he didn't seem to care that I was still going to marry you. He seemed to get a kick out of it. He even told me that if it was fair for you to steal me away from him while you were supposed to be looking out for me for him, then it was fair for us to be in contact while I was married to you. I know it sounds stupid but, I really couldn't give either of you up, Mark and that was the easiest way to keep you. And you have to understand that although deep down inside I always loved you more and I liked you, I felt sorry for him. You have a great life and you have a lot going for you. Todd just seemed to get knocked down again and again."

"There were times when you'd give me hundreds of dollars to go shopping and never even ask what I bought. A lot of the time I'd buy one dress and model it for you before we had sex and give the rest of the money to Todd so he could eat or make his rent. I felt so guilty about it but he had a way of laying even worse guilt on me. He said such awful things. Like he often told me that I was a user. I'd stayed with him while I thought that he was going to be a rich pro athlete, but as soon as he crashed, I'd left him. I started to break things off with him several times but every time he managed to guilt trip me back. "

"I know that you think that I was constantly having sex with him, but I swear to you it was only once and rarely twice a month, never any more. And I always made him wear a condom. There was never a time that he didn't. So you thinking that your daughter could possibly be his is ridiculous. But please, go get the results of your test. I want you to get them and then apologize to her."

"There's something else you need to know. After Katey was born, I did stop with Todd. It was around that time that I found out what he really thought about me..." She wiped her eyes.

"Mark, Todd never loved me. Not from the very first day that we met. He loves blond women, regardless of what they look like. He'd only picked me out because I was smart enough to get him through high school and then through college. After that he got back with me because I gave him your money. I felt like a damned fool. I'd gone to see him in that same shithole apartment of his and I got there early. I'd taken him some money and I was hoping to just leave it under the door and get away. Like I said, I'd had Katey a few months before and hadn't had any kind of sex or anything with him while I was pregnant because he thought I looked like a whale. I heard him talking about me."

"Look I'm only dealing with the bitch because she's bringing us money," he said. "She's never been my type."

"He went on to describe me as stupid, overly emotional and a dead fuck. But he needed the money I brought him to pay for their apartment. He reminded the person that he had, in fact, married her and not me. A few moments later, the door opened and that same fat, toothless woman came out of the apartment. I was so shocked that I just stood there. She recognized me instantly and just smiled at me while she went past. I was still standing there feeling really stupid when he came out."

"For a few weeks after that I didn't take his calls or anything, but then he started to get nasty. He started telling me that he'd tell you about what was going on if I didn't show up. And after that I had to go because I couldn't risk losing you, Mark. I loved my life and our family too much to ever risk it. Years went by and I guess having sex with him once a month just didn't seem like anything terrible. It was just sex. It wasn't like what you and I do. I guess I started thinking about it like it was a tax. For every ten or twelve times that you make love to me, I have to give Todd some pussy. Most of the time, I just lie there and think about my grocery list. I usually go while you're at work. Then I leave him and do the shopping. By the time you get home, I'm cleaned inside and out and ready to fuck your brains out. I give you much more and much better than I have ever given him. I guess that though I love you with all of my heart and soul, there's still just a tiny piece of me that wasn't ready to give him up either."

"So now you know all of it," she said. I walked out of her room and left her screaming for me to come back and talk.

Twenty five years is a long time. But I remembered vaguely where that shitty old apartment building was. I wandered around and wasn't sure until I saw Todd or what was left of him sitting on the step in front of the building.

The years hadn't been kind to Todd. He was still a big as a house, but it was all fat now. I wondered how a guy without a job could get fat, but he'd managed. I noticed something else. He walked with a limp and he had spots all over his arms and his fat belly. He was also dirty and unshaven and holy shit, he had one of those little oxygen tanks that he rolled around behind him.

As I got out of my car, I called him. He turned to look at me and I saw recognition flare on his face.

The woman beside him looked confused.

"So how's OUR girl?" Todd asked smiling. I noticed a bunch of missing and graying teeth in his mouth and I just launched myself at him. I punched him as hard as I could in his oversized belly. His breath all escaped in one huge gasp and he started to fall. As he fell, the tube from his oxygen tank disconnected and he started sniffing and gasping. I didn't give a fuck. I just started kicking the shit out of him. He gasped with every kick. I think he was trying to scream but he was too short of breath for anything other than gasps. Then everything went black. When I woke up a paramedic was holding smelling salts under my nose. I was handcuffed.

Todd's wife had knocked me out by hitting me in the back of my head with a two by four from the rotting porch. The cops pulled me to my feet. I told them that I didn't need to go to the hospital but one of them had to drive my Mustang to the police station. I told them that if my car was stolen or damaged, they'd be responsible for it. They ended up handcuffing me to the steering wheel and letting me drive it while one of the cops rode with me.

On the way to the station, the cop looked at me like I was a piece of shit. "What kind of guy attacks a fucking diabetic invalid?" he asked. While I drove, I told him the entire story including Todd's blackmailing and guilt tripping Lori.

"Tell them that story and you'll probably get off," he said.

I called my lawyer and was out in two hours with no charges pending. The only thing I had to agree to was a talk with Lori. Once I told the DA the story he agreed to a plea bargain. I could go for simple assault instead of aggravated assault. I got my lawyer to charge Todd with blackmailing Lori and extorting money from me through her. The DA said that I'd need proof for the charges. My lawyer got Lori to admit to it.

Todd agreed to drop all of the charges if I dropped mine. That meant that I couldn't sue him for fucking up my marriage but I realized then that suing Todd would be a waste of my time and money. Todd didn't have anything. And in his condition he wasn't going to last for more than another year or so at best.

Lori had agreed to help me against Todd in exchange for a chance for us to talk again when she got out of the hospital. They wanted to hold her for another week or so. I agreed and went back to the cabin. Her dad kept calling me to talk about dropping the divorce. He told me that Lori was feeling better every day and looking forward to our chance to talk. He'd seen Todd and reminded me that Todd was no threat to either me or my marriage.

Lori actually called me from the hospital and asked me if I could come back to the hospital instead of waiting a week.

As I walked into her room again, she looked almost as good as she had at the lawyer's office.

"Hi Honey," she said. She was smiling from ear to ear.

"What are you so happy about?" I asked.

"Well, I was able to help you," she said. "And two, you've seen Todd. He's no threat to us. I also have some interesting news for you about YOUR daughter," she smiled. "She IS your daughter. Or in the words of Maury Povitch; "In the case of twenty four year old Katey Brown, YOU ARE the father." So you see things are going to work out for us."