"I was too adopted, wasn't I dad?" My youngest came to me obviously trying to back up the wild claim she had made to her friends.
"No, Brenna you weren't adopted. Is your brother trying to pull that stupid 'you're adopted' joke on you again? He's just trying to get under your skin. Ignore him and he will stop."
"Troy didn't say anything. I learned it in school."
"What? They couldn't possibly know if you were adopted. That kind of information isn't on the school registration papers. In fact I think it's against the law to even ask."
"No Daddy. They didn't just tell me I was adopted. We are learning about genes. You and mommy have blue eyes and mine are brown. That means I was adopted, right?"
"Well, we certainly didn't go find you in an orphanage or anything. You were born in a hospital. You came right out of your mom, and that right there means you weren't adopted."
"Okay Daddy."
Satisfied with my answer Brenna bounded off to play with her friends, leaving me to wonder about the short, yet strange conversation we just had.
Moments later, it hit me... "Well out of the out of the mouths babes," I mumbled to myself. I wasn't born yesterday. I know a thing or two about how genetic traits are passed. Could it be that Brenna was right?
Before that day, I never once stopped to consider what my daughter had said, but dammit if she didn't have a point. In fact, both of my children have brown eyes, and my eyes are blue. So are Sondra's. If the crap they were teaching at my daughter's school were true, Sondra would have some serious explaining to do.
For the next few minutes, I couldn't wipe the horrible thoughts from my head. It seemed that there was a chance that my kids weren't actually mine. I repeatedly shook my head to clear it, because none of what I was thinking made any sense. Sondra was as dedicated of a wife as there ever was.
Cheating was the last thing anyone would expect from Sondra. She couldn't even make herself say a dirty word. I couldn't imagine the quiet reserved woman I fell in love with becoming one of those women that always wants sex. Besides, I'm sure I'm enough for her. I've always made sure she gets an orgasm when we have sex. There's no way Sondra would cheat on me.
Brenna had to be mistaken. What she learned in school just had to be wrong. At the very least, there had to be more to the story. Still, that nasty little seed had been planted in my head, and I couldn't stop thinking about how Sondra might have wronged me. This was something I damn sure needed to know. Did my wife fuck around on me or not?
Off to the Internet I went... Not to use some shit ass social media thing, but to do some good old-fashioned searches on gene traits. What I learned didn't completely ease my level of anxiety, but the information I found did explain a thing or two.
It turns out that Brenna's teacher was only partly right. It is true that two blue-eyed parents are likely to pass on the blue eye gene on to their children. The part my daughter's teacher seemed to have left out was that brown eyes come from what is called a dominant gene. This gene can crop up at any time, but the fewer brown-eyed people there are in one's linage; the less likely it is to happen.
The next time I saw Brenna, she was zipping passed me carrying a couple of naked dolls dangling by their hair. I stopped her for a moment to continue our previous conversation. "Brown eyes come from a dominant gene." I confidently explained. "You probably have one of your grandparents to thank for those pretty brown eyes of yours."
"I know that Daddy." Brenna smiled innocently at me. "We learned that in school too. Then we took turns at Mrs. Dant's computer looking up our ancestry to see if we could trace our genes."
"Oh, okay. I guess I stand corrected young lady. You kids today have access to far more information than I ever did. You know, back in my day they hadn't even invented DNA yet."
"Come on Dad. No one invented DNA. They discovered it. Like Columbus discovered America."
"What are you... in the fourth grade... and they are teaching you about DNA already?"
"Of course they are daddy. That DNA stuff is all over the place. Don't you ever watch cop shows?"
Well she had me there...
With that, Brenna was off with those naked dolls to play in whatever imaginary adventure she had conjured up with her friends. My feeble man-brain immediately thought that those naked dolls were probably about to hook up with a Ken doll, and I wondered if that wasn't why they were naked. Then I snickered when I imagined that the Ken doll was probably gay and probably couldn't care less about the naked Barbie dolls Brenna had in her hand.
That snicker had barely left my head when all of the sudden I thought... what if those dolls weren't going on a date with Ken? What if my innocent little girl had gotten into her brother's GI Joe collection again? Then I couldn't stop trying to remember the stupid eye colors that were on my kid's toys. What a twisted world we live in.
It wasn't until later that day when what Brenna had said about looking through the genealogy database at school sparked a thought in that feeble head of mine. As hard as I tried, I couldn't recall a single relative of mine that had brown eyes. I descended from a long line of Nordic people, and as far as I knew, so did Sondra. In fact, nearly every family photo I've seen resembles a white picket fence wearing sweaters.
It was time to go back to the Internet. This time to join one of those find-your-ancestor sites so I could figure out who on Sondra's side of the family carried that brown eye gene. I scrubbed through two entire sites at the cost of more than three hundred dollars, and I didn't find a single brown eye in the bunch.
At this point here is what I knew. A family full of blue-eyed, blonde-haired Norwegians could produce a brown-eyed baby every now and then, but the odds were definitely against it. The odds of such a family having two of these brown-eyed children from the same parents were astronomical.
My kids weren't adopted... I knew that for a fact. Hell, I was in the delivery room when both of them were born. Still, one fact remained. Both Brenna and Troy had brown eyes, and there could be only one explanation. At that point, I knew what Sondra had done. I also knew that paybacks are a bitch.
Over the next couple of weeks, I could hardly look at Sondra. Every time I did, the pain of jealousy slowly burned a hole in my heart. That jealousy also set my mind on fire. As hard as I tried, I couldn't stop imagining her getting it on with another man.
Of course the man I was imagining her getting naked with was a fit, dark-haired, handsome man with a big dick. In my mind, she found this man so incredibly sexy that she just couldn't resist him. I imagined that she would do anything to please him, and took great delight in doing naughty things for him that she would never do with me.
I had so many questions. Did she love him? Did she ever love me? How could Sondra have been so cruel? How could she have done this to me? And the biggest question of all... Was she still seeing him?
I guess my moping about the house was pretty obvious, and Sondra finally called me out on it. "What's wrong with you?" She asked. "Don't think everyone in this house hasn't noticed you giving me the evil eye for the last two weeks. Have I done something to anger you?"
"I don't know... have you?" I sneered. I didn't exactly expect her to blurt out that she had cheated on me, but there's no rule that says I couldn't lay it out there and hope for a quick confession.
"This isn't about that dent in the car is it? I told you that wasn't my fault. That young guy rammed into me with his hotrod, and he paid me for it. I just need to get the car on the schedule down at the repair shop. I did nothing wrong."
"So you got paid to let some young guy run his rod into you?" I asked hoping she would slip and tell me what she had done.
"That isn't funny. Stop being such a pig. I've never done anything like that and you know it."
"Do I? Can you look your children in the eyes and say that?" I asked leading her along. I knew I had her there... and she had to know that I knew. She came from the same kind of all blue-eyed family that I did. She had to know how strange it was that both of our kids had brown eyes.
I expected her to give in and at least argue with me a little, but she didn't even answer my question. All I heard was an exasperated mumble of "What the shit?" as she stomped off to the bathroom.
I had to do something. The longer all of this brown-eyed kids thing bounced around in my head, the worse it got. Every free moment my ridiculous man-brain found, it tried to incite me. If I stopped doing anything, even for a moment, this surreal sex scene started playing over and over in my head.
This sex scene ran through my mind like a bad memory, complete with visions I could have done without. In these visions, I could clearly see my wife slowly peeling off her clothes, enticingly displaying herself to some handsome man. Then I would hear my wife's sexy voice telling him how worthless I am. After that, my wife would slowly drop to her knees and service him.
Whenever that grotesque scene wasn't playing in my head, I tried to figure out where they might have met. I wondered if she was the one to initiate contact with him, or if he pursued her. I wondered where they did it. Did they go to some cheap motel, or did she lead him by the hand to our bedroom and commit adultery in my own bed.
After all of that, came these horrible thoughts. Thoughts that I truly dreaded having, but could not seem to stop. I wondered how long after being with him she would wait before having sex with me. How soon would it have to be to make sure I thought I was the one who got her pregnant? After that, my mind would brutally taunt me with this little tidbit... 'You know you probably fucked her with another man's child inside her'.
That little tidbit from my brain always drove my mind towards two truly disturbing thoughts. I wondered if the times she claimed to be extra wet with excited, weren't actually just sloppy seconds. Worst of all I wondered if she had ever let me unknowingly eat one of his cream pies. Sondra may have been a cheater, but I was sure she would never be cruel enough to do anything that that. Still, I shuddered at the thought.
