With a Feather

It turned out that Jerry had disappeared on the same day that Alice left to visit her sister. This seemed to be more than a coincidence. Julie didn't mention that to Mary. She did, however, mention that Alice was visiting her sister in Dallas.

At that point, Julie called Aunt Freda. It turned out that Freda hadn't heard from Alice for a month or more. There had been no conversation about a visit.

Upon hearing that, I called Nathan for advice. He advised me to call the police and report that Alice was missing. Explain that she had left to visit her sister but had never arrived. He advised us to refrain from volunteering any additional information at this time.

He suspected that we would receive a visit from one or more detectives. Inevitably, they would tie the two disappearances together. They would find out about the school program. We should answer their questions truthfully about everything, except for the affair. We must not admit to having any knowledge of an affair.

It went pretty much as Nathan predicted. A few days after filing the "missing person" report, two detectives called on us. They pumped us about the relationship between Alice and Jerry. We told them it was a teacher/student situation. They wanted to know how each of us had spent our time in the days immediately before and after Alice's trip. Luckily, all of us could account for our time. None of us was charged with anything, but we were each listed as "a person of interest."

We had some follow-up visits from the detectives, but they admitted that they were making no progress. The facts were that Alice and Jerry had both disappeared at the same time; but their cellphones had not pinged any towers, Alice's credit cards had not been used, and APBs had been issued, but there had been no sightings. There was no indication of foul play. For all practical purposes, they had vanished. There was no proof that they had disappeared together, but it was a definite possibility. After seven months of fruitless investigating, the case was relegated to the back-burner.

Epilogue:

It has been nearly a year since the disappearance. Everyone has a pet theory about what happened. Mary and Julie think Alice and Jerry are living together in some third-world country.

David thinks that they are living in Aunt Freda's huge garage. He reminded us that there's a mother-in-law apartment in that building. We had stayed in it a few times. When he visited Aunt Freda three weeks after the disappearance, she said the garage was only being used for storage. It was locked up tight, so he was unable to check it out.

Nathan thinks that it was a murder-suicide. He said, "She finally admitted to herself that it was a sordid affair. She realized that she had created her own personal sex slave. She probably convinced herself that the affair would not remain secret since Larry knew about it almost from the start. Then there were the recordings that might still be lurking somewhere in the cloud. She knew what their discovery and release would mean for you and her children. With both her and Jerry gone, her family would be much less likely to suffer any harm from the affair. She took him with her because of love. Not love for him, but love for you and her children. Remember, the last words she gave in her statement were: 'Now, all I can do is whatever it will take to give you your life back and give you a new chance at happiness. That's my only goal now.' Her last duty to her family was to destroy everything that could end up destroying them. Someone will probably find her car in a lake or a river someday with two bodies inside."

I don't know what to believe. I don't believe that Alice has the skill required to pull-off a disappearance that equals being in the witness protection program. I'm too confused to think straight. I'm leaning toward a simple explanation. I'm going with: "They were abducted by aliens!"

Nathan contacted me as we neared the one-year mark. He reminded me that I could file for divorce on the grounds of abandonment after a year. He thought it would be a good idea since it would give me a degree of separation from anything that might ensue in the future. I agreed and told him to file as soon as he could.

Then he told me that he had one more thing to cover. He asked, "Do you remember back when I retained a PI to go to the Teresa Remedial Academy to question the faculty and students to see if there was any hard evidence of the affair between Alice and Jerry?"

I told him that I remembered.

"Well, I never told you about his report. It wasn't of much value after the disappearance. It might, however, be of interest to you. It certainly blew me away. The PI was able to ascertain that there was no existing hard evidence of the affair. During his fact-finding mission, he interviewed most of Jerry's classmates. They all said that Jerry was a habitual liar. They knew that he had made many false claims about having sex with his female classmates. They were convinced that his stories about Alice were just more of the same bullshit.

"Here's the most interesting thing in his report: One of the students that he questioned was Jenny Clayton. She stated unequivocally that she had never dated Jerry at all. The whole kissing story was a fabrication! Jenny's roommate confirmed what Jenny said. The roommate swore that Jenny despised Jerry. She said, 'Jenny thought that he was a major creep. She wouldn't give him the time of day, let alone date him. She most definitely never kissed him. She would die first.' How about that? Do you realize the implications?" Nathan asked.

Yes, I did! I was flabbergasted! The story that had been the motivation for my wife to cover those "personal matters" with Jerry had been nothing but one of his whoppers. There had been no date with Jenny Clayton and no kissing fiasco! The story that ultimately led to her affair, her adultery, the ruination of her marriage, the loss of her family, and probably the death of both her and her lover; was all based on a lie!

Alice had launched herself and her family on a hellish trip that ended in outer darkness; all because of an untrue story about a non-existing kissing problem. Go figure!

So here I am, knowing more and understanding less. Now, I wonder if Jerry took advantage of Alice's proclivity to help people like him. Did that mentally-deficient boy maneuver a good and decent woman into becoming his personal whore? The question is: who used whom? Who was the fiddle and who was the bow? At this point, does it even matter?

All I can do is end like I began: "You could have knocked me over with a feather."

The End