When I finally walked into our bedroom, it looked empty. I couldn't really put my finger on anything that was missing I just knew things were gone. The bathroom was the most difficult. All of Steph's shampoos, rinses, and soaps were gone. The shelf above the sink where she kept her cosmetics was almost bare. I took a shower as fast as I could and went to bed.
* * * *
By Monday, I could think straight and my stomach had stopped hurting. I had allowed the children to skip church on Sunday morning. I didn't want to risk Stephanie trapping me in front of a group of people who might hear what I would tell my wife.
Mid-morning Monday, I took an hour off work to go by the bank. I had my name removed from our joint accounts and moved most of the money in the checking account and all of the savings to new accounts which had only my signature. That included the automatic debit of the mortgage payment on the house and the other payment on the land.
I also asked for a six month print out of every check and debit from the checking account. I'd spent some time on our computer trying to figure out the bank balance, but Stephanie wasn't very good about noting to whom a check was written. She used abbreviations or left the payee blank. I had to assume the amounts were correct because they always balanced with the paper statements in the drawer, but copies of the checks were not attached to the statements. I couldn't determine where some of my income was going. My mental calculations showed that each month the balance was between two and three hundred less than I thought it should be. For almost a year, I'd been asking Stephanie if she was paying extra principal on the bank loans, but she had been telling me there wasn't enough to make extra payments.
I called the two credit card companies and argued until they finally relented when I agreed to transfer the balances to new accounts in my name. What I was doing might not have an effect on our credit report, but I was trying to send a message to my wife.
I had always been proud that Stephanie wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. It never bothered me that she didn't have an income because I felt comfortable with her pride that her full-time job was taking care of our home, our children, and me. However, if I was going to devote my time and energy working for our family and my wife, and make a good home for us to live in, I expected the same from her. The only time I was not working at my job, or at home, Stephanie was with me. We seldom went out at night. I did not stop on the way home for a drink with the boys. I did not go to lunch with the gang. I took a lunchbox with me every day. The money I saved went to extra things for our family.
We didn't drive new cars, we ate healthy meals, and we had a lot to show for our efforts. We might have take-out meals two nights a week but that was because Steph said there wasn't enough time to take the children to all of their functions and cook a large meal. I felt we had at least as much, if not more than, her sisters or her brother, all three of whom lived in double income homes. Her sisters had two children each and her brother had one son. All five of those children spent their days in daycare facilities, or after school programs, which meant they were with babysitters for more of their waking hours than they were with a parent.
I really loved my wife. I may not have told her as often as she wanted to hear it, but she had to know that so much of what I did was to make her happy. I'd heard her tell her sisters or a friend how happy she was or how great our marriage was. I wasn't overbearing, most of the decisions made for our family were the result of a discussion and an agreement between both of us. Sometimes the children helped make those decisions, similar to the discussion the girls and I'd had Saturday.
Cindy would be a junior in high school next year. She already understood how important good grades were. She'd been taught that college was a necessity and much easier with a scholarship. Troy would be a sophomore and understood that a sports scholarship might be a possibility, but good grades would earn him a better scholarship than he could get from sports, even if he managed to get through high school without a sports-ending injury.
There was no way I could understand what Stephanie had done, or why she had done it. As much as I could, I concentrated on my job during the day. I worked around heavy machinery, tall stacks of merchandise, and sharp farm implements. Inattention to my surroundings was dangerous.
In the evenings, I went over the print-outs from the bank. I had to know where all of my income went. If I was going to do what was best for my family, I needed a budget and from the weekend's examination of the bank statements, I'd learned there was very little wiggle room. The only extra expenses I could find that Stephanie had managed to put into our budget, which I knew nothing about, were her on-going golf lessons and the things she paid for in the golf pro shop. However, this included a rather expensive set of golf clubs and some clothing. There was also at least one monthly expense to one of the local women's lingerie shops, but I'd never seen her in anything other than the modest underwear she had always worn. All of this explained why there was nothing extra to pay on the bank loans.
I could not understand what Stephanie had done. I know she had mentioned that she had no excitement in her life. I really didn't think golf lessons and sexy panties could give her that much excitement. Did she believe she had to flaunt her body to attract a man, or had he encouraged her to be that kind of person? For myself, I always preferred her wearing absolutely nothing when she allowed me to stroke every inch of her luscious body. She knew it, too. All she needed to do was walk out of the bathroom wearing nothing more than her skin and I was instantly erect ready to satisfy her until she and I were both exhausted.
At night now, I was miserable. One night I was so angry with Stephanie I wanted to do something that would hurt her as much as I was hurting. The next night I missed her so much I had all sorts of arguments with myself trying to convince me that I could live with what she had done to us and to our family. The following night I drank the rest of the beer in the small refrigerator in the shop. I didn't refill the beer supply. Alcohol wasn't going to solve anything, and I didn't want to compound the problems I already had.
The kids helped me keep up with everything at home. They did their homework and regular chores and then helped start some kind of meal for our supper. We weren't eating as well as when Steph was there to prepare meals, but we weren't starving, either. I was careful to let them know the reason their mother wasn't at home was a personal problem between her and me. They hadn't done anything to cause the problem. I was just giving Mom and me a chance to cool down before we talked about a solution. I don't think they were overly concerned. They knew where she was and could call her anytime they liked, and they were busy with the last week of school.
I thought about calling our pastor, but he would only hear my side of the story and tell me I had to talk to Steph before we could begin to find a solution. I considered going to a lawyer, but I really didn't know one and I didn't feel I was ready for that. If we decided a divorce was best, lawyers and their fees were something I would tackle when that time came. I considered going to see my brother's wife. Gail was a counselor, but her specialty was alcohol and substance abuse. I wasn't ready to talk about what Steph had done and I hadn't heard her side of the story yet.
Basically, I did nothing but worry, until Thursday night after the kids went to bed. Friday would be their final day of school before their summer vacation. The girls were going to end-of-school slumber parties on Saturday night. I'd called Charles Jerome to make sure Troy could spend that night with Dillon. I didn't want the conversation between Stephanie and me interrupted.
Unlike Stephanie, I hardly ever sat down at the computer unless I was going to send an email to my brother. I'm not the best typist, but I do better than hunt and peck. I should have had a good spell checker for all of my school work. My poor spelling skills were probably the reason my handwriting was so sloppy. Half the time I wrote something, I couldn't read it a few days later. I wanted this typed so there would be no doubt what I was thinking. After making some mistakes, I found something that approximated the marriage vows Stephanie and I had said at our wedding. By trial and error, I got it copied to an email message because I wasn't familiar with creating a document in any other program.
After each of the phrases, I inserted what each one of them meant to me and explained how I felt I had honored that vow, or failed to do so. Then I changed the color of the type to show how well I felt Stephanie had kept her vows to me, or failed to do so. It took me a long time, but I finally saved the message and went to bed a little after midnight. For the first night since I'd told Steph to leave, I slept until the alarm.
Friday night as soon as supper was over, I returned to my email message and read the whole thing. Then I added anything I'd thought of during the day. The last thing I did before I went to bed was print the message. It was five pages long. I wasn't showing myself as a faultless, shining angel, I knew I had some faults, but I wasn't that bad, either. Stephanie was a good person, a wonderful mother, and an interesting and captivating companion. Yet I saw some things that I did not like. I didn't realize how strongly I felt about those marriage vows. I knew they almost brought me to tears when I attended a wedding. I wasn't sure if they were as important to my wife. I was hoping to discover how she felt the next evening.
* * * *
The three Saturdays each month I work, are the longest, hardest days of the month. The only good thing about working on a Saturday, aside from the overtime pay, was having Sunday and Monday off. During the hottest part of the year, the warehouse felt like an oven with temperatures hovering near triple digits. It had taken several years, but I'd finally convinced the owner that some kind of air movement would help. An extra set of doors on the back end of the building was helping some, but it was still taking a lot of time to create an open isle down the center of the warehouse. I'd mounted thermometers on the support posts to keep track of how well my efforts were working. The owner, Brad Wilson, had even begun to check the thermometers when he walked through the warehouse to the employee's parking lot, on his way to lunch.
Friday, when Brad returned from lunch, he stopped me as he was walking through the warehouse. "I need to talk to you, Paul."
