Fran's Daughter

Just a short one since I haven't posted in a few weeks. As readers should know by now, I don't let plot and character development get in the way of the story.

"Sweetie, what happened?" Carolyn Carr asked her daughter as Missy rushed into her parent's home. She embraced her sobbing daughter, patting her on the back with one hand and stroking her head with the other.

"Ben's gone!" Missy wailed. "He had these sent to me at my job!" she cried as she pushed back from her mother before thrusting the envelope into her father's hands.

Frank Carr took the envelope as his wife wrapped their daughter into her arms and hugged her to her breast.

"Where's Benjamin? Does Ben still have him?" Frank asked his daughter. In her state, Missy didn't need to be driving around with her son in the car.

"Yes," Missy gasped between her sobs and tears.

Ben had dropped Kevin, his and Missy's youngest son, off with Frank and Carolyn earlier in the day and asked his in-laws if they could watch Kevin since he had some errands to run with Benjamin. Barely two hours later, Missy had called her parents in near hysterics after being served divorce papers at work. She had driven to her parent's house despite their pleas to let them pick her up.

Frank sat on the loveseat as his wife and daughter collapsed into each other's arms on the sofa. Carolyn was stroking their daughter's hair as she cried into her mother's chest.

Frank extracted the documents from the envelope and read Petition for Divorce across the first document. He shook his head grimly as he read the document. There had been no notice or discussion between his soon-to-be-ex son-in-law and his wife. The asshole had served her at work with no heads up, much to his daughter's shock, mortification and humiliation.

As Frank read the document, he looked up, puzzled. "Missy, he's filing on the grounds of adultery. Did you cheat on him?"

"No! He has it in his mind that I had an affair with a friend from work. It's not true! I would never cheat on Ben. I love him!" Missy wailed the last sentence in a cry that sounded like a wounded animal.

'I will nail his ass to my office wall,' Frank thought to himself. 'Making up bullshit allegations to defame Missy and secure a divorce. The son-of-a-bitch has probably been cheating on her.' As Frank continued to read the divorce petition, he could feel his left eyebrow rising; a sure sign of displeasure.

"Missy, why would Ben think that you are cheating on him?"

Missy glared at her father and then looked imploringly at her mother. "I don't know! I may have hugged one of our salespeople when he made a big sale?" The statement came out as a question as Missy tried to figure out what her husband could have seen and misunderstood.

"And that was it?" Frank asked. "An innocent hug with a co-worker?"

Missy continued to glare at her father in exasperation. "He kissed me at an after-work happy hour. I had too much to drink and as soon as I came to my senses, I pushed him away. But that's all that happened, I swear!"

As Frank continued to read, his eyebrow continued its climb towards his forehead, a tic that did not go unnoticed by his wife.

"What are you getting at, Frank?" Carolyn asked, with an edge to her voice. "Are you accusing your daughter of something?"

"No; or at least not yet. But we've known Ben for what...seven or eight years now? I work with him every day. This is completely unlike him, so I'm trying to figure out where his head is at."

"Up his own ass," Carolyn snapped at Frank as she continued to soothe Missy. She had brought Missy a box of tissues and there was a growing pile of used tissues on the coffee table in front of her. "How can you even consider taking his side after what he did to our daughter."

"I'm not taking anyone's side until I get through reading this petition," Frank said.

"Who is he accusing you of cheating with," Frank asked his daughter. "And why does he think it was an affair instead of an innocent hug and a drunken kiss?"

Missy pulled away from her mother and wiped her face with a tissue. "He thinks I've been having an affair with Andy Hebert, one of our sales reps. I haven't though! He must have seen something and misunderstood it."

Frank nodded his head slowly. "What do you think he might have seen?"

Missy started crying again.

Frank's expression was slowly changing from understanding and sympathetic to what his wife called his "stone-face look" as he continued to read through the documents.

"Ben is asking for a 50-50 custody split of Benjamin naming himself as the custodial parent." Frank looked at his daughter, his expression grim. "He's not asking for custody of or visitation with the minor known as Kevin Andrew Davis. He is further asking that his name be removed from the birth certificate of the minor Kevin Andrew Davis and that Kevin's last name be changed."

Carolyn and Missy both gasped at that revelation. Missy dove into her mother's arms and began sobbing and wailing

"Missy? Missy! Look at me!" Frank said loudly over his daughter's cries.

Missy paused in her crying and looked at her father. Carolyn Carr looked at her husband with agitation at his lack of empathy for their daughter.

"Ben is accusing you of cheating with Andy Hebert. Kevin's middle name is Andrew because you said you'd always liked that name. I'm going to ask you again; did you cheat on Ben with this Andy guy?"

In reply, Missy let out a loud wail and began to sob loudly in her mother's arms. Carolyn looked at her husband in anger.

"Will you please drop this?" She hissed at her husband.

"Did you know?" Frank asked his wife.

"Did I know what?" She asked. Frank could see the rage boiling up in his wife's eyes.

Frank held up a sheet of paper. "This is why Ben is not asking for any share of custody for Kevin. It's a DNA test that says there is a less than.00002% chance that Ben is Kevin's father. So, tell me, Carolyn, how long have you known about this?"

After nearly thirty years of marriage, Carolyn knew her husband better than he knew himself. She knew that her marriage was on the precipice. If she admitted to her husband that Missy had told her that from the beginning stages of pregnancy, she was not sure who the father was, then Frank might very well divorce her. If, however, she lied and Frank found out that she lied, then her marriage would definitely be over. But only if he found out.

Carolyn shook her head and rolled the dice. "I didn't know. I'm hearing this for the first time. I think Missy is as shocked as we are."

"I doubt that," Frank said, dryly. "But there's one way to put my mind at ease. I want to see both of your phones."

Carolyn suddenly stood and angrily pointed her finger at her husband. "You will not be invading our privacy," snapped Carolyn. "You are not going to go through our phones."

Frank looked at his wife and nodded slowly. "They say that people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. I'm guessing you have a lot to hide so let me put this to you very clearly so there is no chance of you mistaking or misunderstanding what I'm saying. Either the two of you unlock your phones and hand them to me right this instant, or I'm filing for divorce tomorrow."

Carolyn looked at her husband through eyes squinted with rage and shouted, "I've never given you a reason to distrust me! We are not giving you our phones and we are not getting a divorce!"

Frank scowled at his wife. "I've caught you in plenty of little lies over the years. I've always let it go because I figured the argument we'd have about the lies wouldn't be worth the hassle. Shame on me for enabling you all these years. For all I know, the lies you've told me were covering up your cheating. Before today, I wouldn't have considered that, but now...seeing your daughter trying to fool her husband into raising another man's child? Fuck that noise. The blinders are off. It's your phones or a divorce. And if you think I'm bluffing, fuck around and find out."

This was a side of Frank that neither Carolyn nor Missy had ever seen. The grim determination brooked no compromise.

"Fuck you!" Carolyn shouted; her teeth bared in a nasty snarl. "I'll clean you out in a divorce. I'll take everything you have and you'll be lucky to live in your car."

Frank rose from the loveseat, tossing the paperwork onto the coffee table. He looked at his wife and daughter and shook his head as he walked towards the kitchen. He returned a minute later carrying a plastic Ziploc bag. He inverted the bag on his hand and using the bag as a glove, picked up a handful of the used tissues sitting in front of Missy. He inverted the bag back to its normal position, trapping the tissues inside, and then he closed the Ziploc seal by running it between his thumb and index finger.

"What are you doing with that?" Carolyn asked as she moved toward Frank, her voice increasing into a shout. She was trembling with barely suppressed rage as she pointed to the baggie containing the used tissues. In nearly thirty years of marriage, Frank had never witnessed this aspect of her personality. He began to wonder if he knew his wife at all.

"I'm going to find out from Ben who he used for the DNA test to find out that Kevin was not his son. Then I'm going to find out if Missy is my daughter or if you have been lying to me for nearly thirty years."

Carolyn let out a screech and lunged at Frank, her fingernails digging and clawing at his face.

Unless it has happened to you, it is hard to describe the effect of having the wind knocked out of you. It is such a commonly uttered phrase but most people have never actually experienced it. Getting the wind knocked out of you induces panic as the air is instantly forced out of the lungs as they deflate. Being unable to breathe or take any air into your body strikes terror into the mind as you think you are about to die. The seconds that it takes the lungs to reinflate feel like minutes as the body struggles to breathe. Frank had taken six years of karate in his youth, and although that was forty years ago, some things you never forget.

As his wife's fingernails tore into his flesh, Frank used a palm strike into the upper region of Carolyn's solar plexus. It was not a hard strike; as a matter of fact, Frank knew that it would leave minimal if any, bruising. But what it did was force all of the air out of Carolyn's lungs leaving her rolling around on the floor clawing at the air in terror and unable to breathe. This caused Carolyn to panic which in turn caused Missy to panic as her mother clutched her throat and tried to breathe.

As his wife rolled around on the floor, Frank strode quickly to the back of the house where his home office was located. He knew that within a minute or so, Carolyn would be back to breathing normally and he wanted to be out of the house as soon as possible. Frank grabbed in MacBook Air and his iPad and he quickly logged into their WiFi router and changed the password to the router. Carolyn could still use her phone to access the internet, but she got frustrated doing anything but scrolling Facebook or Reddit on her phone. Any sort of banking or credit card activity she would want to do from the Windows desktop in her she-shed. Frank quickly threw a couple of changes of clothes into his backpack and left his house, walking past his wife who was sitting up taking in deep, gasping lungfuls of air. And said farewell to thirty years of a mostly happy marriage.

Frank drove quickly away until he reached the nearest McDonalds where he used their WIFI system to log into Safari. Frank logged into American Express, paid off, and closed their joint Amex Gold card. Frank then logged into Chase and paid off and closed out their joint Chase credit card before logging into Chase BillPay and issuing a check to himself, care of the landscape company he owned for half the remaining balance in their joint account. Frank's landscapers took care of his yard and he paid his company a nominal fee to maintain legitimacy so he had long ago set up his company as a payee.

+++

"Frank," Adam Davis said, his flat tone devoid of inflection.

"Hi Adam," Frank said to his daughter's soon-to-be ex-father-in-law. "It's a helluva situation isn't it?"

"Doesn't get much worse," Adam said, opening the door for Frank. "Let's go to the patio and watch the golfers. Bourbon?" The Davis house was on a cul-de-sac that backed up to the country club golf course of which both families were members. Adam's wife had won the club's women's championship for the last four years, a fact of which Adam was extraordinarily proud.

After settling on the Davis patio, with bourbon in hand Frank started the conversation, "How is Ben doing?"

Adam cocked his head at Frank as if asking, 'Seriously?'

"I know; stupid question. What he's going through is just about the worst thing a man can go through. I would say except for losing a child, but that's exactly what he's going through, isn't it? He's losing his youngest child and you're losing your youngest grandchild."

"How could Missy do this to him? What happened to that girl?"

Frank sighed and shook his head. "She was always spoiled, and instead of putting my foot down, I just turned a blind eye toward it. I guess that makes this my fault as much as anyone's."

Adam shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe, but probably not. She's a grown woman fully capable of making her own decisions and taking responsibility for her actions."

Frank nodded his head in agreement before taking a sip of bourbon. "Where's Ben hiding out? I'm guessing he has Benjamin with him?"

"They're at the lake house. He doesn't want to see or talk to Missy and four years old is too young to see his mom having a meltdown. It's good Kevin is not even a year old yet. He won't remember Ben. Can't say the same thing about Ben though. He was so happy to have two little boys."

Frank shook his head sadly with tears in his eyes. "I don't blame him. I don't much want to see her either. Or her mother. Turns out, my sweet, loving wife has known all along that there was a chance Ben wasn't the boy's father and didn't say a goddamned thing to me about it. Now I'm suspicious that I'm not Missy's father and I've left Carolyn."

"Sweet Jesus," Adam said, exhaling slowly. "Just as I was thinking this couldn't get any more fucked up, you said, 'Hold my beer'."

Frank lifted his drink to Adam in silent acknowledgment.

Adam said, "As pissed off as I am, you should see Babe. She scares the shit out of me." Babe Davis was Adam's wife of thirty-two years. A rancher's daughter and a gifted athlete all through high school and college, she had been named after world-famous athlete and Port Arthur, Texas native, Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Like that Babe, Babe Davis (nee Landry) had excelled in tennis and golf throughout high school and college. Babe had even spent a year playing against pros as an amateur in LPGA tournaments before becoming pregnant with Ben.

"If it wasn't for Missy being Benjamin's mother, I seriously think she would shoot Missy dead. I've never seen her so angry," Adam continued.

Frank shook his head. "Keep her reigned in. I don't want her getting in trouble because of those two sluts. It's bad enough I'm probably going to jail."

"You? Jail? What the hell Frank? Does it have anything to do with those Band-Aids on your face?" Frank had stopped at a CVS to pick up Neosporin and bandages for his face before arriving at Adam and Babe's house.

Frank nodded his head as he related to Adam the story of grabbing Missy's used tissues for DNA testing and Carolyn's subsequent attack on him before he punched her in the stomach.

"Jesus Fucking Christ, Frank!" Adam looked at Frank with respect. "Ordinarily I wouldn't go along with hitting a woman, but damn, if there was ever anyone that deserved a good ass kicking..."

"She did, but I know those two are going to come up with a different story, so I figure I'll be arrested soon. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Can you reach out to Ben and let him know he'll need to manage by himself for a while?" His son-in-law not only worked for Frank's landscaping company but had bought into the business and now owned a quarter of it.

"For sure. He's got a burner phone and I'll make sure it's okay to give you the number."

Their conversation was interrupted as Adam's wife Babe walked through the kitchen and entered the den. She looked coldly at Frank and without taking her eyes off the visitor asked her husband, "What's he doing here? And why were the police pulling up just as I pulled into the driveway."

"Relax, hon. Frank's on Ben's side in all this. Turns out Carolyn knew all about Missy's affair and that Kevin might not be Ben's child. Frank's left his home..." Whatever Adam was going to say next was interrupted by the ringing of the front doorbell.

Babe answered the door to the police and at their question, turned to Frank who nodded his head. "I figured this was going to happen," he said as he walked to the door to greet the officers, who promptly had him turn around and submit to being handcuffed.

The officers sat Frank down and asked him for his version of events. When he described Carolyn's attack on him and his defensive actions, showing them the scratches on his face, the officers were sympathetic but unmoved.

"If you had called us right then and there, she would probably be the one being arrested instead of you."

"I'll have Ben get your attorney on it," Adam said. Babe hugged Frank as the police escorted him out of their house.

Six months later and the shitstorm had mostly died down. Missy fought Ben on the divorce; first demanding counseling and then when that was denied, making the terms so onerous that Ben would have to relent and reconcile.

DNA testing revealed that Missy was Frank's daughter; a result of which his feelings were decidedly mixed. He would always love Missy because she was his daughter, however he had no respect for her. They had very little contact with each other and Frank did not anticipate that changing any time soon. She had refused him any contact with his grandson Kevin. Based upon Frank's booking photograph which clearly showed nail marks and scratches on his face, Frank was found not guilty of the Class C Misdemeanor assault upon his wife.

Frank divorced Carolyn. He did not trust her, nor did he respect her. She too, had fought the divorce and her attorneys threw up roadblock after roadblock and would have continued to do so if Carolyn and Missy had not been mugged in the parking lot of a nightclub they had visited together. Although they were unable to describe their attacker, parking lot cameras had recorded a small man dressed in all black and wearing a ski mask wielding what appeared to be a thin weighted rod relentlessly attacking both women. The recording showed the two women repeatedly being struck by the steel rod until the rod was bent and misshapen. From their hospital beds, the pair maintained that they had no idea who had attacked them and that the only person with a motive was Missy's husband who was trying to divorce her, but given his height of 6'3" Ben Davis was immediately ruled out as a suspect.

Although there was an open investigation into the assault, there were no leads and no suspects. The two women, although severely injured with several broken bones and missing teeth, were not permanently injured. Carolyn and Missy stopped going out to nightclubs and with their paranoia about further attacks increasing, spent most of their time in their house sniping at each other. They allowed their divorces to proceed unimpeded.

The custody of Benjamin was decided at 50-50 with Ben being the custodial parent. Neither Ben nor Missy was awarded child support or spousal maintenance. Ben's name was removed from Kevin's birth certificate and a court-ordered DNA test revealed that Andrew Hebert was Kevin's natural father. Andy was ordered to pay child support to Missy. Andy's wife filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery and Andy was required to pay both child support for the three children he had with his wife plus court-ordered spousal support for her since at Andy's insistence, his wife had been a stay-at-home mom since the birth of their first child. This effectively left Andy in a state of penury from which he was unlikely to ever recover.