*Author's Note: any and all persons engaging in any sexual activities are at least eighteen years of age.
Disclaimers: This story has been edited by myself, using Microsoft Spell-Check. You have been forewarned.
*.*.*
Inga's declaration that, while she loved him, she just was not in love with him did not come as much of a surprise to Dr. Claude Ivernek. They had not been intimate for several weeks now. The engineer looked at his wife, still beautiful after twenty four years of marriage and nodded his head in agreement.
When he had met the German born beauty in Cologne, Germany, he had fallen hard for her. She had likewise fallen for the college student. Theirs had been a romance, a marriage to be envied. Theirs had been a love that would be forever, they had both assured the other, even as time and geography had changed.
Inga's next statement did surprise the stoic engineer, though, when she announced that she was moving in with her lover.
"Vut?" he asked, Germanic accent becoming more pronounced. "You haf lover?"
She sneered at him with contempt. After a moment, he simply shrugged his shoulders.
"Ja and Jerome? He not vunt kids," Inga stated.
"But, but, you mean, you are leaving Charles here? Vit me?" Claude asked, referring to their four year old son.
When Inga had discovered that she was pregnant, the pregnancy had been a complete surprise. Their youngest was already fifteen years old, already clamoring for more freedoms, more money. Claude had been delighted, had seen the new child as just more affirmation of their endless love, their romance for each other.
Inga's declaration that she did not love him, had a lover, and was leaving Charles with him did shake Claude. The man shook his head in wonder; in less than one minute, sixty seconds, his entire life had changed.
"Ja, maybe you now haff be father, eh?" Inga snapped, beautiful Aryan features traveling from a sneer to amusement.
"I am father; he come vit me work every day, Ja," Claude snapped.
Since Claude Junior and Heather were twenty one and twenty years old and attending University in Hamburg, Germany, custody of their oldest two children was not an issue. But a rambunctious four year old boy needed both a mother and a father, needed two pairs of hands.
With a final nod of farewell, Inga took her five suitcases, put them into her Mercedes-Benz, and left their home. Claude put his engineering mind to work and immediately checked bank accounts. Inga had already taken out fifty percent so he closed the accounts and transferred the money into a new account. He then cancelled their three credit cards.
The next step was to reprogram the garage door's code and the alarm systems pass code. Then he and Charles went to the Home Depot in Elgee, Louisiana to purchase new locks for all the doors. Charles loved the Home Depot store; he and his father would often buy a new magnet and steel screws and nuts and bolts for the magnet to pick up.
This time, Claude bought a large bolt, a large nine volt battery, and a spool of wire. Arriving home again, father and son sat at the workbench in the four car garage of the Baylor Lake home and Claude showed his son how to make an electromagnet.
"Huh? Huh? Ha ha ha, how about that, huh, Charles?" Claude laughed as Charles was amazed with their invention.
"It can even pick up a wrench!" Charles gasped at the power of the magnet.
After his dinner, after his bath and a reading of a story, Charles lay down for a night's sleep. Claude looked down at his baby boy and sighed.
"Vut kind mother vuld leaf her baby?" he asked himself.
Then he changed all the locks in the house. If Inga wanted to come back for any items she'd forgotten, she would have to contact him.
"And Jerome? Hope you haff plenty money; she spend it fast," Claude said and fixed himself a scotch and soda.
Jerome did not have plenty of money, and decided that a forty two year old woman with expensive tastes and no income to support her expensive taste was not anything he wanted to be saddled with. Being a part-time lover of a beautiful white woman had been fun, exciting. He did not have to keep a clean home, he did not have to listen to her shrill complaints, he did not have to move her drying bras and pantyhose aside when he wanted to shower. He did not have to put the toilet seat down when he was a part-time lover. He only had to fuck her, help her spend her husband's money, then go back to his apartment while she cleaned herself up for her man.
This was especially true when Claude contacted Inga to let her know he would be cancelling her cell phone service and her automobile insurance, as well as the payments on the luxury automobile. Jerome let Inga know that while it had been fun, it was time she had to be going.
Inga now fought the divorce. Nicole Banks, her attorney, did request counseling.
"Time for counseling is before she decided to take up with a lover," Penny Jones, Dr. Ivernek's attorney said.
But Judge Marie Robichaux decreed that there should be no less than eight sessions. Claude shrugged in acceptance.
The counseling sessions were fruitless. Claude did not want to reconcile, and Inga was too proud to admit she'd been wrong. Dr. Sylvia Hooperstein had to admit there was no path forward for this couple.
Nicole then applied for Ingrid to have custody of Charles Jonathon Ivernek. But because Inga had voluntarily left the child, Charles remained with his father while the parents battled in court over custody. Inga demanded full custody, as well as exorbitant child support and the marital home, the child's primary residence. Inga would not agree to joint custody with Claude remaining the primary custodian. Therefore, their custody battle had to go into mediation.
Claude did not smirk when he was granted primary custody. He did not gloat when Inga was not awarded any child support. He did not gloat when he was allowed to remain in the marital home as it would remain Charles' primary residence until the child reached the age of majority.
"You can forget it," Nicole snapped when Inga brought up trying for alimony. "You left the marital home of your own free will, you moved in with a lover. Courts do not reward infidelity, Mrs. Ivernek. The best you will get is fifty percent of assets accrued over the marriage."
Then Nicole did bring up the several thousands of dollars Inga owed for legal representation. Inga did ask why she should pay any of it; Nicole had failed to win one thing she'd wanted.
Shortly after his divorce was granted, Claude was called into Tuff Richard's office. The young CEO of Kendricks Engineering had the schematics of a Whitehead generator on his desk. Both he and Claude looked at the schematics together.
"It can be smaller," Tuff stated emphatically. "Since Marcus died last year? They've not secured the patent on this. They've not done anything but churn out the same old stuff."
"I get back to you," Claude promised.
"I want it smaller, more efficient," Tuff ordered.
At home, Claude and his son played with Charles' toys, his trucks and bull dozers. Then Charles wanted to play with his electromagnet.
"Electro... Ve harness the magnetic..." Claude hypothesized out loud.
"And there's a positive and a negative pole," Charles reminded his father.
"Ja, you genius, boy, you are wunderkind," Claude laughed, kissing his son.
That night, as Charles lay in his bed, dreaming of trucks and cranes and bulldozers and magnets, Claude scribbled frantically.
At seven thirty the next morning, Corliss, his housekeeper came in and found the man still scribbling.
"Oh shit!" Claude laughed. "Miss Corliss, I give you hundred dollars you make Charles breakfast, okay?"
"Grits all right?" Corliss asked.
"Grits okay," Claude agreed.
Tuff looked at Claude's rough sketches and the schematics of the Whitehead generator.
"Did you even look at these?" he asked, pointing to the Whitehead schematics.
"No, no, this is different kind generator," Claude stated.
"I'll say it is," Tuff agreed.
Claude blinked when Tuff gave him a one hundred thousand dollar bonus for developing the KE Charles generator. It also pleased Claude tremendously that Tuff Richards named the new generator after Claude's darling boy.
While Dr. Claude Ivernek was in his office of Kendricks Engineering in DeGarde, Louisiana, trying to decide what to do with his one hundred thousand dollar bonus, Sue Lynn was sitting on a sandy stretch of ground known as 'the bend.' The bend was just a bend in a small creek that ran alongside Stepping Stone, Louisiana. The small community was mainly trailer parks; the only permanent fixtures were the grocery store, the liquor store and the Dairy Queen and the Stepping Stone Diner. Even John F. Kennedy High School was just eight mobile buildings arranged in two rows of four buildings each.
Sweet Gum Paper Mill and the Hearst Women's prison were the two main sources of employment in Penny Parish and right now, neither was hiring.
The eighteen year old girl flicked her ankle length blonde hair back and sighed. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. She'd graduated, barely, from JFK and was now sitting, wondering what to do.
Her friend Nicholas was at work; he worked the loading bay of Sweet Gum Paper Mill. Nicholas's girlfriend Angela was at home, waiting to give birth to their baby.
Joanne was married now, married to another woman. The two lived in Baylor Lake, Louisiana.
Bobby was still in jail awaiting trial. There wasn't much of a backlog of cases, but there was no public defender available.
Eric had joined the Marines. Last Sue Lynn had heard, he was stationed in Japan.
Her very best friend April had decided that there was nothing in Stepping Stone and had hitched a ride with a trucker heading for Jackson, Mississippi. Sue Lynn didn't even know if April was still in Jackson or if the girl had moved on.
Sue Lynn watched as a small branch floated along the nearly dry creek. There'd been no rain for a few weeks now; if this drought kept up, the creek would dry up.
The branch rounded the bend, got hung up on some rocks and bobbled for a moment. Then it broke free and continued along toward a larger stream. That stream would wound its way southeast until it joined the Mississippi River.
On one hand, Sue Lynn was glad she'd quit smoking. It tasted bad, smelled worse, and was so damned expensive. Six fifty for a pack of Salem Kings was ridiculous. On the other hand, she missed having something to occupy her hands, occupy her mind.
With a sigh, she got to her feet and brushed her shorts clean of the sand. With another sigh, she turned and walked home.
"That April girl called here; thought you said she left," her mother snapped when Sue Lynn entered the trailer.
"Did, Jackson, I think," Sue Lynn agreed. "You get her number?"
"Said she'd call back," her mother said, already engrossed in her television show again.
Sue Lynn sighed. Knowing April, that could mean in five minutes or five days. Or, if April had been drunk when she called, it might mean never.
