"I, Robert Denton, being of sound mind and body, do declare this to be my last will and testament.
To my wife, Mildred Elise Denton, I bequeath nothing other than the title of Despicable Traitorous Whore to be borne by her for the rest of her, what I fervently pray, will be a rotten and horrible life.
To Marie Estelle Dalton I bequeath nothing other than the title of Ungrateful Bitch to be borne by her for the rest of her life.
I leave everything else I own to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in honor and loving memory of my only true and faithful friend Rusty, my Red Siberian Husky.
Signed on this day, June 9th in the year of our Lord 2016."
I signed it and my signature was notarized by Evie, one of the notaries employed by the bank where all of my accounts are held. I then made copies for the two aforementioned females and placed them in my briefcase. I'd mail them as soon as I had all my ducks in a row. I took the original and gave it to my attorney and kept a copy for my records at home.
Home being a condo near my business. Home used to be the house that Mildred and Marie still lived in. The house was mine and had been left to me by my parents before I even met Mildred. I considered selling it and putting Mildred and Marie on the street, but then reconsidered. It would no doubt push Mildred into going for a divorce and I didn't want that. At least not yet.
I wanted to wait at least another month before I wanted that to happen. When the divorce did happen Mildred would find out I no longer owned my business and that I'd been forced to sell because it was losing money and that the money I'd gotten from the sale had gone to pay creditors.
I was retained by the new ownership, a company in Denver owned by a corporation in Delaware, at a wage slightly less than what Mildred made working in real estate
It had taken me some time (and a few dollars) to make it all happen, but the money the company made was out of Mildred's reach and my making less than she did should keep me from having to pay her any alimony.
Of course Mildred didn't know divorce was in her future. She has probably guessed it by now, but she doesn't know for sure because I haven't served her with papers.
I suppose some background is in order here. I met Mildred Harris during my freshman year at State. She as a junior, but even though I was two years behind here I was a year older. I'd gone into the Army right out of high school.
I met Mildred in the student cafeteria when she accidently dumped her tray of food all over the front of me. She was apologetic and upset and she told me she would pay for the dry cleaning. She was a good-looking girl so I told her I would take care of the cleaning, but she would have to go out on a date with me in return. She said yes and that date started a relationship that ended in marriage six months after she graduated.
We hadn't planned on marriage until I graduated, but Mildred's birth control pills failed to do their job and with Marie on the way waiting for me to graduate wasn't going to work.
Things were tight financially for a while, but with Milly's job, my part time job after school and the money I still had from my parent's life insurance we got by. The fact that Milly had health insurance through her work also helped. Complications when Marie was born meant that she was going to be an only child.
By the time Marie was three I'd graduated and was doing well at my job, Milly was back to work and Milly's mom was watching Marie.
By the time Marie was ten Milly and I were living the American Dream. Four-bedroom house in a nice subdivision, two fairly new cars in the garage and a wide circle of friends who we socialized with.
It was shortly after Marie's tenth birthday that I went into business for myself. It started out slow, but picked up steam and by Marie's sixteenth birthday I was bringing home twice what I had made at my old job.
Even though I worked my ass off to make a go of my business I still found time to be there for all of the events in Marie's life. I never missed one of her piano recitals, basketball games or any of her other major events.
Milly and Marie were close. When I was working on weekends they went places and did things together. Once or twice during the week they even went out to shop or whatever.
In our wide circle of friends were a dozen or so classmates from our college days. One couple were Tom and Roxanne Miller. Tom was one of my close friends from my freshman year in college and he met Roxanne at the wedding reception Milly's parents threw for us. Roxanne was one of Milly's cousins. They met, hit it off and were married six months later.
As tight as we were with Tom and Roxy I'd noticed a cooling off between Milly and Roxy. I asked Milly about it and she told me that Roxy was pissed that Milly had forgotten Jason's (Tom and Roxy's son) birthday. I put it out of my mind. It was minor and I figured it would fade in time.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It was at a Saturday BBQ at our place when my world came apart.
I was working the grill when Roxy came up to me and said:
"You're a nice guy Dave. Is that why you put up with Milly cheating on you?"
"What? Are you out of your mind? Milly would never do that to me!"
"I've seen it with my own eyes Dave. I saw her go into a hotel room with a man. A man who wasn't you."
"You can't be serious. Milly would never do that to me."
"If you say so" she said and then walked away.
As I stood there grilling hamburgers and hot dogs my mid was all over the place. Milly wouldn't do that to me. She wouldn't. I just knew she wouldn't.
But a seed had been planted.
I made it through the rest of the weekend with what Roxy told me rattling around in my mind. As sure as I was that Milly would never cheat on me the fact that Roxy had no doubt that she had bothered the hell out of me.
A couple of times I was going to bring it up to Milly, but decided not to. A "You don't trust me" or an "How could you possibly ever think that of me" would have turned our house into an icebox and only God could know how that would damage our marriage.
On Tuesday I finally broke down and gave Roxy a call and asked her to meet me when we got off work that evening. She agreed to meet me at the Landing Strip Lounge at five-thirty.
She was already there when I got there sitting in a booth in the back. I sat down opposite her and found that she had already ordered me a PBR. I took a drink and then said:
"I'm guessing you already know why I asked you to meet me."
"Iļæ½m pretty sure I know."
"I'm also guessing that you approached Milly before you dropped it on me."
"How on Earth do you know that?"
"I noticed things were a little cool between the two of you and I asked her about it. She said you were upset with her for forgetting Jason's birthday. Now I'm guessing the real reason is you talked with her about what you saw."
"I did. I asked her how she could do that to you and she said that you knew and didn't care. She told me you got a charge out of hearing her describing what she was doing."
"And you believed that?"
"Why wouldn't I? She was my cousin and I've known her all my life and I didn't know you hardly at all. But it bugged me and I finally told Tom. He told me that you were not that kind of guy and that I needed to let you know what I knew. It took me a while to get up the nerve and I finally decided to do it at the BBQ, but you blew it off so I backed off and didn't go into detail."
"Well I'm ready to hear those details now."
"It a Wednesday around noon. I was sitting at a window table at the Village Inn having lunch. The restaurant was next door to a Quality Inn and my window seat gave me a view of the Inn's parking lot. I just happened to glance out the window in time to see Milly get out of her car, kiss some guy who walked up to her. I watched them walk hand in hand into room 107.
"I had to get back to work so I wasn't able to stick around to see how long they were in there, but a rough guess would be about an hour. I'm guessing she was on her lunch hour, but for all I know she could have taken the afternoon off from work."
"Can you describe him?"
"No. All my attention was on Milly. Is Mr. Nice Guy going to go all caveman on me?"
"What?"
"Is my telling you what I saw going to cause you to go home and do great bodily harm to Milly?"
"Of course not. Before I go caveman on anybody, I've got to know what is going on. It isn't in me to hit a woman unless it's self-defense."
"What will you do?"
"Do what I can to find out what is going on. Once I know I can make plans, but right now it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that there is a divorce in my future."
"That kind of makes me sorry I opened my mouth to either of you."
"Why is that?"
"Because I like both of you and because I now carry the cause of your divorce on my shoulders."
"Don't think that for a minute sweetie; cheaters always get found out. If it wasn't you it would be someone else or something Milly said or did that would have triggered my suspicions."