This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, merchandise, companies, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All characters in sexual situations are 18 years or older.
Chapter One
Suspicion
I wasn't the most tech savvy person in the world. My husband Graham bought an Audi Q8 for me, an all-electric vehicle with a short and concise 384 page owner's manual (that I never read). I didn't pretend to understand all of the touch screen commands and considered myself lucky if I could get the car backed safely out of the garage. If I had a technology based question I did what every middle aged mother would do -- consult her teenage son or daughter.
In my case, it was Cameron, a precocious eighteen year old girl/woman going on thirty-five. Graham wanted to use a name to honor his family's Scottish heritage so we picked Cameron, figuring we'd use it whether we had a boy or a girl. Cameron got her cornflower blue eyes and reddish blonde hair from her father and her big bust and curvy hips (and I would claim her good looks) from me. She had to fight off the boys in high school and her upcoming enrollment at Michigan State University would prove to be a much bigger challenge. She was tall like her father and could swim like a fish. She was the captain of our swim club's team and also played water polo for her high school. She was built like a rock and like me was as stubborn as a mule.
I eschewed a promising career in business to become Cameron's unpaid chauffeur. I often wondered what my life would be like if I didn't have to drive Cameron all over creation, but didn't really want to find out. It would happen soon enough, in two months to be exact, when Graham and I would be empty nesters. Cameron was my baby - my sunshine - and I was still coming to grips with what I'd be doing living in a big empty house.
Graham was recently promoted to Managing Partner of the Detroit office of one of the Big Four public accounting firms. He was making the big bucks and we bought our behemoth of a house, all 6,000 square feet of it, in the toney suburb of Bloomfield Hills. In addition to four bedrooms, five bathrooms and a four car garage, we had a room dedicated to my pilates and a wine cellar with a 1,000 bottle capacity. I felt like I was living in a cavern.
In a way, I was a "kept" woman. I bore Graham a beautiful daughter and graced his social events as his glamorous arm candy. Beauty did come at a cost, and dropping $5,000 on a new purse or $1,500 for a new pair of heels was a routine expenditure for me. There were plenty of expensive toys but, other than Cameron, little emotional satisfaction.
I know. I deserved no pity. I lived a lavish lifestyle. It's just that there was an emptiness to it. I met Graham in college when we were young and horny. We liked to party and had fun for the first few years of marriage. Then Graham's career skyrocketed when he was promoted to Audit practice leader and then to Managing partner of the Detroit office. He was always away at one meeting or another, not only in the U.S. but at multiple international destinations. I barely saw him.
When we were married I really loved him. And I thought he felt the same way about me. But whatever love we had between us faded with the passage of time to barely a flicker. I wondered if my soul was becoming a cold and lifeless planet.
I was able to keep myself busy with Cameron's schedule, pilates and pickleball. I worked hard to stay fit and had enough time and willpower to keep close to my college weight, though some of that extra poundage went to my boobs. I thought I was still pretty good looking but that only made me bait for teenage boys and married men who were looking to stray from their wives. I never thought about cheating on Graham and Graham was rarely home long enough to have sex with me.
At age forty-two I was too young not to satisfy my natural urges. I accumulated a number of toys and learned the art of self-pleasure. I liked to read trashy romance novels and masturbate to porn. None of it was as good as the occasional sex with Graham.
Because Graham was out of town so much, I spent a good part of my time with Cameron, her friends, and her friend's parents. Her best friend Allison was also going to State, and they planned to room together in one of those mega-dorms on campus. Allison had already come out as a lesbian, and her girlfriend Gemma was an accomplished horse rider, having already participated in the Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event, the most prestigious competition in the United States. Gemma and Allison planned on spending five days of their summer vacation at a dude ranch near Fort Collins, Colorado. For some reason Cameron warmed up to the idea and decided to go with them, though she, like me, had a paralyzing fear of horses.
It was about a week before Cameron's departure date to Fort Collins when my life careened out of control. It was late morning and Cameron was in the garage waiting for me to take her to a girlfriend's house. As usual, I was running behind and when I arrived she pointed to her watch with a stern look on her face to remind me she was going to be late. I got into the car and searched through the jumble of crap in my purse to find my phone.
"What are you doing Mom?" Cameron asked me. I could tell she was impatient from the tone of her voice and the expression on her face.
"I'm getting Kayley's address so I can put it into the GPS," I explained, fumbling with the commands on the screen and showing frustration.
Cameron gave me an exaggerated sigh; the kind of sigh that says she can't believe I got this far in life with my limited mental capacity. Her fingers were a blur and then the screen displayed the last five destinations input into the car. My darling daughter rolled her eyeballs and pointed to the fourth destination:
"Hit that one Mom. That's Kayley's house."
There was an address I didn't recognize that was input the previous day, 4672 Sycamore, that caught my eye. Graham had borrowed my car the previous day to go to work. I filed the anomaly away as a curiosity and set about delivering Cameron to Kayley's house for an overnight stay.
The ten minute drive was uneventful, but the whole way there it bugged me that the car had gone somewhere I didn't know and when Graham was presumably at work. I dropped off Cameron and on a whim recalled the screen that Cameron had pulled up and selected the mystery address as my destination. It came up as a short drive from where I was so I decided to drive by to see if it jogged my memory. On my way there, I passed the Bloomfield Hills Swim Club, the club where Cameron swims. The address entered into the GPS was only a half block from the swim club. Cameron must have taken the car there and I'd just forgotten. Relieved I put it out of my mind.
* * *
Graham was home when I got there. He'd just come back from the office early. He had an 8 a.m. flight the next morning to Dallas and had to pack and get ready for the trip. He was going through the mail at the kitchen island in his suit, though his tie was loosened and the collar of his white dress shirt was unbuttoned. He was still a handsome man, graying at the temples, and was an avid tennis player that kept him in shape.
"Hey Nicole, where were you?" he asked me.
"Dropping off Cameron at a friend's house for an overnight," I answered. "Did you want to go out to dinner?"
He shook his head. "I've got to pack and then finish a presentation I'm making at the conference. Sorry, but it's going to be another late night."
"Takeout?" I asked.
"Sure, whatever," he said, going back to the mail.
He seem preoccupied so I wasn't going to press him. We had a favorite Thai restaurant nearby that delivered. I called them and ordered and then went through the messages on my phone.
The food arrived thirty minutes later. They had good pad thai noodles that Graham and I divided evenly and then a couple veggies on the side. We sat at the island to eat, though Graham seemed more interested in the football game that was playing on the wall mounted flat screen in the kitchen than talking to me.
"Hey, I saw an address in the GPS that I didn't recognize... 4672 Sycamore... that was input yesterday in the Q8. Was that you?" I asked.
He barely gave me a glance. "Nope," he said. "I was at work all day yesterday."
"OK," I said. I needed to drop it though if you knew me, the stubborn mule, you knew I couldn't.
"Are you sure?" I asked him.
He detached his eyeballs from the television screen to give me "the look."
"No Nicole. I told you I was at work yesterday, It wasn't me."
His emphatic denial did nothing to quell my suspicion.
He didn't seem troubled by my question and finished his dinner and put his dirty plate in the dishwasher.
"See you later," he said, retreating to the bedroom to pack.
There was no goodnight kiss and definitely no sex that night.
* * *
Graham went off the next morning bright and early at 5 a.m. to catch his flight out of Metro. I slept in until about nine. Cameron was at the beginning of summer vacation so she probably wouldn't want to be picked up until at least noon. That gave me enough time to get in a full workout on my rowing machine and then a luxurious bath after.
"Not bad for an old lady," I said to myself, looking in the bathroom mirror after drying off. I pulled back my long, dark wavy hair into a ponytail and used a hair tie to secure it. I turned sideways to see the slight sag in my full breasts and the beginning of a paunch on my belly. The skin was still tight on my face, with no visible wrinkles. I wondered if I was still hot. Graham barely noticed that I had worn a sheer teddy to bed with no underwear.
I dressed and got to Kayley's house a bit before noon. Cameron was already standing on the sidewalk, immersed in her phone. She looked up when she saw my car.
"Hey Mom," she said when she got into the passenger seat.
"How was it?" I asked.
She was never generous with details and this time was no exception.
