Another Love: Lost

Another Love: Lost

an alternate ending by GeorgeAnderson

after the original by RichardGerald.

RichardGerald's "Another Love" (https://www.literotica.com/s/another-love-pt-01 ) is one of the more controversial stories on the site. The tale is well-written, and the characters keep the readers' interest, but the decades-long betrayal followed by near-painless polyamorous reconciliation evoked vehement reactions. Many readers saw the wife as selfish and even cruel instead of loving, despite her claims. I found myself wondering what might have happened had the husband based his thoughts and actions on the wife's deeds, instead of accepting her words at face value. Hence this alternate ending.

I have corresponded with RichardGerald about posting this alternate ending.

We begin early in Chapter 3, after Avril's impassioned and tearful plea to Rob that he reconcile with Karen.

"You bastard, what have you done to her?" Karen yelled at me when she saw Avril. She had never called me that before; I'd never seen her that angry. I gently lowered Avril into a chair, and walked away without a word. I had dressed and was ready to go to work when I heard a soft knock at my door.

"Rob, may I speak to you... apologize?" I heard Karen through the door.

"For what?"

"For yelling at you. Avril explained."

"Apology accepted. We can all talk after supper, if you want."

I dressed and headed up the hill to work. I'd been seconded from my normal duties to lead a team that was working with an experimental jet engine. It wasn't developing the thrust we expected, and was consuming far more fuel than it should, according to our calculations. The military had issued us a grant to find and fix the problems. The University had assembled the team and set us up in the old field house, which had been scheduled for demolition.

The team was an eclectic bunch of young geniuses. They did most of the work; I kept them organized and on task, and did troubleshooting. I had a personal assistant named Lisa, who was twenty-five, smart as a whip, beautiful, a licensed jet pilot, and a confirmed lesbian.

The problem wasn't any one system; each component worked, but the engine as a whole wasn't happy. We were missing something. I knelt next to the test frame, hoping that proximity might trigger the idea we needed. I felt a tug at my elbow. Lisa pulled me upright and dragged me into her office. She shut the door.

"What is it, Rob?"

"What's what?"

"What's going on with you? Something's on your mind and you're only half here. We're working twelve hours a day; we need more than that from you. Now spill."

I looked dumbly at her. "It's a long story," I finally got out. She looked at me a moment. She stood, hoisted me by my elbow again, and propelled me out her door.

"Rob and I are going to lunch, we'll be back sometime," she announced to the room at large. Suddenly, the field house was eerily quiet. Something heavy banged onto the floor, the sound echoing in the rafters. Someone whispered, "Shit!" I grinned at what my team must be thinking about their married, never-stop-for-lunch leader heading out for a long lunch with his beautiful lesbian PA. Lisa didn't even turn to look, but marched me out the door.

After we ordered, I told her my story. All of it, from my parents' death right up through Avril's plea that morning. Lisa sat and listened, her face expressionless, and just stared at me for a moment after I finished. Then she softly shook her head.

"Wow. That's... a lot. What do you see as your options?"

Options? I had options? "Well, I guess I could leave, but I don't think I can go back to the life I had before Karen. I don't think I can handle being that lonely again. If I stay? She hasn't even said she's sorry. I don't know if I can live with that, either."

"What about finding someone else?"

"You mean, for revenge?"

"No, we both know that wouldn't solve anything. I mean finding someone new to love, someone you can trust."

I just shook my head. The idea was ridiculous; I never had any luck with women. Lisa looked at me strangely.

"Rob, have you ever noticed that you never, and I mean never, confront women? About anything? Even on the job, when you have to get on a woman's case, you make me do it. How come?"

I didn't really know why, but for some reason, I'd never felt comfortable arguing with the women on my team or in my life. Maybe it was a good thing we didn't have a daughter.

"I want to try something. I'm going to tell you what I think, then I want your honest, unvarnished opinion of it. You can tell me it's a brilliant idea, or that it's nuttier than a fruitcake, but I want your true thoughts. Okay? This is practice, all right?"

I grinned a little. Once Lisa gets an idea into her head, there's no stopping her.

"Okay, try me."

"Apollo 11 was a fake, it was all done in Hollywood."

"Well, Lisa, that's an interesting..." I watched my assistant's shoulders slump and her eyes roll before I started laughing.

"That's total bullshit. Is that better?" I asked.

"See, you can do it!" She chortled, then became serious.

"Rob, I'm not going to tell you what to do. Those two women at your house will do enough of that, and your tendency will be to just believe them and go along, rather than risk a confrontation." She was right; that's exactly what I'd been doing all along.

"Here's what I'm proposing," Lisa continued. "What if you went home, and thought through everything they've told you. Evaluate it, like you do with engine data. Come to your own conclusions. Then if what they say doesn't match the data, ask questions. You don't have to confront them, just ask questions. How's that?"

She was looking at me just as earnestly as Avril had.

"So Lisa, let's start with you. Why are you telling me I should do this? What's in it for you?"

The girl absolutely clapped her hands, right there at the lunch table.

"Yes!" she shouted. Then she went on quietly. "There are two reasons. One, you're in a dark place right now, we all know it, and it's affecting your work badly. The team and I need you full force. The bigger reason is, you're a good man, Rob. I know good people get dumped on all the time, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I want to at least try to do something about it."

I'd never heard Lisa speak with that much feeling, and it had been a long time since anyone showed they cared that much about me. I was touched.

"I want to throw in a couple of ideas, while you're evaluating things. First, you won't have any trouble finding someone new. I'm attracted to you, and I don't even play for your team."

This was news. I'd always thought of myself as unlucky with women, until I'd met Karen. The way Karen turned out, maybe I still was. But Lisa had to beat both men and women off with a stick. She was that hot. And she was attracted to me?

"Second, Karen had two bad periods in her life. Yeah, they were really bad, but both times, she flat out bailed on you, and your marriage. She didn't put up much of a fight the first time, and she didn't fight at all the second. She just pulled that escape lever and off she went. That's not what she said to you, and it's not what she tells herself, but it's what she did."

That was a lot to take in. "I think you're right about one thing, anyway: I have some thinking to do. I think I'll go do it. Tell the team I'll see them tomorrow."

We shared a warm hug, she patted my cheek, and then she headed up the hill as I headed down. Her last words rang in my head: "That's not what she said to you, and it's not what she tells herself, but it's what she did."

Karen had told it like a love story, a pretty romance, as if I should, heaven forbid, be happy for her. "I met a wonderful man," she had said, "who was there for me when I needed him. First, he helped me sexually when I was in a terrible situation, and then he took care of my children and me when I was left alone." I knew what terrible situation she was referring to, of course. We'd had a rough time in the bedroom for a while after Oscar was born, but I thought we were supposed to face our problems and work through 'terrible situations' as husband and wife, together, not use them as an excuse for an affair.

Then she had talked as if her moving him into my house and my bed while I was in Iraq was somehow my fault. Avril had agreed: "It was her husband who had failed her." So, Karen had kissed her failure of a husband good bye at the airport, driven home, and there was Mr. Wonderful, sorry, M. Magnifique, waiting for her on the doorstep like a UPS package. I'll bet he was in her bed before my flight cleared Newfoundland. And for that, Avril was proud of him?

She said he took care of her children. Hers, not ours. That was telling. Kevin would have been what, six at the time. Why didn't he mention anything about the other man living in their house? He wouldn't have known why he shouldn't... unless Karen had made him promise not to tell me. That had to be it. My 'loving' wife made our six-year-old son lie and conceal to protect her affair. No wonder the poor kid started feeling uncomfortable around me; he must have been afraid he might accidentally spill his mother's secret. No wonder we lost the closeness we'd had before I was deployed. Then Avril had the gall to say, "I am not sorry for that. It is a right thing." Really? Not only stealing my wife, but ruining my relationship with my sons, makes him "that rarest of creatures, a truly good man?" No. Just no.

So what about Ms. Avril Du Monte? "I worshiped at his altar," she had said of her husband. She still talked about him as if he were some kind of demigod who could do no wrong. She offered him an open marriage rather than "strangle the life of our love." Or was it fear? Fear of being rejected by her deity, or fear of being a single mother with no income and two young daughters? The way she told it, she loved her husband enough to let him have other women rather than lose him, even when one of those other women became a serious threat to her. She probably believed what she said, but it was also true that an open marriage had been her only real choice.

What was it Avril had said about Karen, "I need my sister, she has part of him, and I need that part?" I could see how close they'd become, so that made some sense, but what did it have to do with my staying married to Karen? It occurred to me that painters and artistic types often don't leave much in the way of a pension. Avril, now widowed, had that big house in Montreal to keep going, and little or no income to do it with. Was she thinking that if I stayed with Karen, she could move in here? I would provide her room and board, and she could sell the house in Montreal for a nest egg. Nice for her. To give credit where it's due, I was sure she and Karen loved each other. She might also feel guilty because it was her bringing the painting here that finally gave gullible Rob a clue that even he couldn't miss, putting her friend's marriage in jeopardy. Still, she couldn't deny that my staying married to Karen would work out very nicely for her.

After I ate and cleaned up my dishes, I went downstairs to the living room. I dreaded the upcoming conversation as much as I'd dreaded anything on the Ike, and I was as nervous as I had ever been in my life. Just as on the Ike, however, there was no choice. Karen and Avril lay in wait for me on the love seat in the living room.

"Have you thought about what I said this morning?" Avril began.

"Yes, I have."

"Mais non, you have not. If you had, you would look on your beautiful wife with love, not this face you make now."

I shrugged and waited for what I was pretty sure was coming. Avril didn't disappoint me.

"Karen loves you. She has always been a good wife to you. I have seen it always, Philippe saw it, everyone knows. Why should you live your life alone, with your bad dreams, when this beautiful, good woman loves you with all her heart? All you need to do is accept who she is, accept what she has done out of love."

That one was so easy, even I could handle it without thinking. "Love for whom?"

Karen changed the subject deftly. "Rob, we need to think about Avril for a moment. She's lost her husband; you saw this morning how she is suffering. I feel I owe her. She's putting together an exhibition of Philippe's work: a memorial to him, to get him the attention we feel he deserves. We want to open in New York in mid-January, with about 150 pieces. I want her to live here while we work on it together. If that hurts you, I'm sorry, but Avril needs this, and it's what I want to do."

A quote from Robert Heinlein popped into my head: "Women and cats will do as they please; men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea." I knew how he felt.

"All right, I can live with that," I said, pretending that someone had asked me something. "I won't bother you or get in your way, but I expect the same from you. No pounding on the door with 'we need to talk,' no ambushes on the balcony," I looked pointedly at Avril. "We live separately."

"I guess that's fair, but Rob, we can't go on like this forever. We have to find a way to move forward. Maybe can we, just for a while, try to pretend this didn't happen? Maybe just until January, while we work on the exhibition, then we can go for marriage counseling or something?"

For one of the first times I could remember, I challenged something Karen said.

"You don't really mean that, do you? What you mean is, I'll pretend it didn't happen. You hope after I've pretended for a few months, I'll be over my hurt feelings and will have convinced myself your affair doesn't matter, and we won't even need counseling. Is that the plan?" I was surprised to hear myself reacting as decisively as if I were on the flight deck. I'd never done that with Karen before. She looked surprised, too.

"Well, I do think that would be best, for everyone." Karen looked at me pointedly as she said 'everyone.'

"All right then, it didn't happen." Both women looked at me wide-eyed. I addressed Karen. "It didn't 'happen,'" I used air-quotes, "because you did it. Choice after choice, lie after lie, year after year, you did it."

"Rob, I didn't do any of this to hurt you, and I never stopped loving you. I never will. It kills me to see you hurting so badly, and to hear you screaming in your sleep. I'll do almost anything to help you, but I can't apologize for loving Philippe, nor wish it hadn't happened, because I won't lie to you any longer. I'm by far a better woman and wife for it, and you're better off too, if you could only see it."

"I believe you didn't set out to hurt me. You just didn't care; at least not enough to not do it. I think that might be even worse."

Karen was about to reply, when Avril interrupted.

"You stupid, stupid man! Why cannot you understand? She did everything, everything, out of love. Yes, love for Philippe, but also love for you! She loved you both! Is that so hard to comprehend?" She heaved what I imagined was a Gallic sigh. "If only Philippe were here. He could explain, and you would understand."

"If Philippe were here, I believe I would do the explaining, and he, the understanding." I spoke quietly and coldly, not bothering to conceal my anger.

I could see Avril bite back an angry retort before she replied softly. "Please believe, I understand your hurt and your anger. I do, but there is only one way out of your pain, and that is love. Your beautiful wife, and I too, will help you if you will let us. What I told you this morning is the truth."

"Really, Avril? You said this morning that we had much in common. The truth is, we don't. Yes, our spouses had an affair, but you were told the truth; I was lied to and deceived. You gave permission beforehand; I was never even asked. You were invited into their affair; I was kept on the outside."

"You must believe, I thought you knew, and that you approved."

"Why did you think that? Did Karen tell you?" I saw a worried look pass between the two women.

"N-non," Avril began. "Je..." Her voice trailed off in confusion. Neither woman could meet my eye.

"I see." So Karen had manipulated Avril as well as me, to maintain the illusion of her perfect love story.

"There's one more thing I want to say tonight. You both say Karen has always loved me, and still does. I think that's true, but it is also true that from the very first, Karen's lover displaced me in her heart." Both women denied it loudly; I waited for them to quiet down. "Karen, how many hundred, or thousand, lies did you tell me so you could be with Philippe? How many of the promises you made to me, did you break for him? It was never the other way around, not once in twenty years, was it?"

"Rob, I always came home to you, and I always will."

I shook my head. "You came home to me, secure in the knowledge you would soon leave me again for him. Since he died, you don't have that any more; that's why you had to get away. You don't leave your number one for weeks, to go mourn your number two. You did leave your number two, to mourn your number one." I stood and left the room.

I closed and locked the door to my apartment, then fell back against it, shaking all over. My heart was pounding rapidly, just as it had so often after crises on the carrier. No surprise, really: it was a crisis, and the flight deck of the Ike was far closer to my comfort zone than a living room confrontation with two women. Still, I had survived it, and now knew that I could survive it again. Once my pulse rate settled to normal, I was surprised to feel refreshed: as if the air I was breathing was somehow fresher and newer, though bitterly cold.

I needed to contact my sons, to tell them that I didn't hold their keeping their mother's secret against them. It wasn't their fault, anyway, and maybe, now that I knew, we could regain some of that closeness that had been wrecked by their having to conceal Karen's affair. I still loved them, and they needed to know that.

Kevin appreciated my call, I think. He thanked me, anyway. He said he'd gotten so used to his Mom's secret that after a while it felt normal. He just didn't think about it much any more. He didn't seem to notice how guarded he'd become around me; I guess that had become part of his 'normal.' He didn't think I should blame Karen so much; after all, what else could she have done?

"End her affair, maybe?"

"Dad, you don't understand. They were... well, they were family to us, when you weren't there. They still are." I had known this was coming, but it still hurt.

"Look, you're still my Dad, and you always will be, but the Du Montes are an important part of my life, too, not just Mom's. Now that you know about... well, I hope you can come to accept that we're all connected with their family, and it's a good thing."

My talk with Oscar was harder. He seemed defensive about something, I didn't know what. Karen said he had a roommate named Mark, whom she met while she was in California, but she didn't want to talk about him much. He didn't see anything wrong with having to keep his mother's secret.

"She asked me to; it was her secret; I kept it. What's the big deal?"

I tried to talk about his studies and other things, but after a few uncomfortable silences, I gave up. I was glad I'd made the effort to talk with my sons, because it was the right thing to do, but it obviously changed nothing.

Lisa wanted to know how things had gone, so we went to lunch again. This time we drew a few catcalls from the crew; I could see the corners of Lisa's mouth twitching upward as my ears turned red. She said she could already see I was doing better.

Things seemed to settle down for a while. I heard nothing from Kevin or Oscar, but that wasn't unusual. Avril had moved in and wasn't going anywhere soon, if ever. Karen knocked on my door every now and then and asked me if I wanted to join them for dinner. I would say no, and she would sigh and go back downstairs.