I stand corrected on a gross error in chapter one that definitely should have been caught in proof reading. Hutch's football position in college was a fullback, not a linebacker. I have watched enough football in my life to have known the difference.
To the other comments - Truth is always stranger than fiction. Yes, Hutch could have nipped it in the bud. However, he knew his wife well enough to wait. The results have proven to be much more desirable. Basic Behavior Science tells us that values control attitudes and behaviors. What Ken did to Lorna and was trying to do to Kathy, was what men have been doing to women since the beginning of recorded history. He first managed to instill a temporary change of values. He would have made those changes permanent had he been allowed to continue.
Two AM Sunday morning - Third week.
A slight hangover beginning to set in and guilt rampaging through her heart and mind, Lorna slipped on a full length, quilted robe with matching booties. She then stumbled into the master bath for some Alka-Seltzer. Feeling much better, she went into one of the bedrooms that faced the front yard. Noting that there were two police cars, she was able to count three police officers and two media vans across the street. Now quite sober and very wide awake, she descended the stairs, thinking, "Don't those media people have better things to do then pester us?"
In the kitchen, Lorna started the thirty cup coffee maker. While it did its thing, she went into the cupboard and found a cake mix aptly called "coffee cake." Reading the instructions, she determined that her conviction air oven would have the cake finished about the time the coffee was ready. With the cake in the oven, she drew out two pump canisters and a picnic basket.
Two canisters of coffee in one hand and the picnic basket full of cake, cups, cream and sugar, in the other hand, Lorna walked down the drive way to join the officers, not noticing her son, Randy's car parked on the far side of the garages. He had arrived from West Point after Lorna and Ken had gone up to the master bedroom and before the changing of the police guard. So, the current shift of officers were unaware of exactly whose car it was parked by the garages. She approached the group of officers, noticing one was female, and announced, "Lady and gentlemen? I bring coffee and goodies." She glanced across the street and breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed no activity among the media vans.
Once they all had a cup of coffee and a piece of cake in hand, Steve Jenkins, the corporal in charge, asked, "How's it going, Missus Hutchinson?"
Recognizing him, Lorna answered with, "Oh Steve, you can call me Lorna. Ah, to answer your question, like shit, Steve, like shit... Over the last few weeks I have said and done all the wrong things at the wrong time and for the totally wrong reasons. I'm afraid that I have managed to make a mess of our twenty five year marriage. I don't think I even know who I am, for sure, anymore. Ah, I've made such a mess of things, I don't even know where to start to fix it."
Steve stepped a little closer to Lorna and said in a gentle but authoritarian tone, "Lorna? I've known you and Hutch for quite a few years, now and it's not hard to tell that you two belong together. So, I'd be willing to bet that if you'll eat a little crow and step to the center, well, I'll just bet that he'd eat some, too and meet you there."
Lorna took a big draw on her coffee, then said, "Yeah Steve, I think you are right about that. I'll give what you said some serious thought." It was becoming very clear to her that filing for divorce was a rash, ill-conceived decision. She changed the subject, going on to talk to the officers about their wives, girl friend and boy friend. Then about three am she left the remaining coffee with the officers and went back to bed in the guest bedroom. She had taken the first step back to Hutch by getting the focus off of herself. However, for Lorna, the very worst of it all was yet to come in that new and dawning week.
Later on Sunday morning - Third week
About eight thirty that morning, after a couple of hours of sleep and a long shower, Lorna made her way down the stairs toward the kitchen to make some coffee and start breakfast. The first thing she noticed when entering the kitchen was that someone had already made the coffee. She looked toward the breakfast nook in the bay windows of the house's turret and found someone she would rather not face right then, her second child. "Randy!?! What are you doing here???"
Dressed in his cadet uniform, Randy stood up and said in the same posture and tone as his father, "I talked to dad, then Kathy and did not like what I heard. So, I came home to see for myself. Tim couldn't get away, or he would be here, also. What's going on mom? What the hell made you want to file for divorce?"
"You.., ah...You just don't understand, Randy..ah..." stammered Lorna.
"Mahm!! I am not a little boy anymore. I am in my third year at West Point, carrying a three point eight grade average and now a cadet captain. I have finished my first season on the Army varsity football team. I have lived for the last two and a half years or so under a strict code of conduct. I had parents who instilled a value system in us so I could be what I am today and what I intend to be in the future. Mahm? I think I understand, So, tell me, why the divorce?!?"
"Oh Randy. It seems Like I was a single parent so often, Your dad missed Kathy's last open house, she ah, had a lot to see there. He ah..."
"Mahm? There is no doubt in my mind that you were the better parent in a lot of ways, even dad admits that. You were always there at our open houses and other events. But, when we needed him, he was always there for us. Who taught Tim and I how to throw a block, catch a pass or make a tackle? Who taught all three of us how to drive? Then took the time to be there with us when we took our driving test?"
Knowing that she did not have the patience or internal fortitude to teach anyone how to drive and beginning to fold, Lorna said meekly, "But, but, I just felt like I was doing it all by myself. I ah..."
"Mother?!? When I was fourteen I sat out there in the living room and listened to the Army recruiter talk to and you and Tim about West Point. I decided then that the Point was where I wanted to go to school and an Army officer was what I wanted to become. The next day, I rode my bike to dad's office. What? Five or six miles, at that time? His secretary told me that he was in a very critical deposition, but she would let him know that I was in the office. He followed her out of the room and ask me how I got there. I told him that I rode my bike. He said it must be very important to me and led me into his office. I told him what I wanted to do in life. So, he made a call and put it on speaker phone. It was the commander of the State's National Guard, himself a West Point grad. Dad was there with me all the way in preparing my winning application. Over thirty thousand people applied for about twelve hundred openings at the Point that year. Dad's still there for me and Tim. You know very well that dad was instrumental in clearing the way for Tim to get into the Harvard MBA program. His influence put Kathy into Harvard Law. And mother? You know he's always been there for you when it made a difference."
Before Lorna could respond, Kathy strolled into the kitchen area, She was wearing her string bikini with a pool shirt, unbuttoned. "Good morning mom. How's breakfast coming? Do I have time for a swim?" Then she noticed her brother, "Randy?!? How long have you been here?"
Now standing with hands on his hips, Randy answered his sister, "I arrived about one this morning." Then turning his attention back to Lorna, "Mother?? Dad's gone a few of days and you are allowing your daughter to dress like that?!? Her bikini doesn't cover a damn thing! Kathy? Why don't you just do without? Skinny dip like most sluts?"
"Randall?!? Do not talk about your sister like that!!" Lorna exclaimed, realizing that it was Ken that talked her into letting Kathy buy the bikini at Victoria's Secret the previous morning.
Before anything else could be said by any of the three, Ken strolled in and whined, "Ya got anything for a rotten hangover?"
The breakfast nook being raised six or eight inches made the broad shouldered, six foot three Army linebacker look like a giant to the one hundred fifty pound, five foot eleven, Ken. A couple of drinks and a puffed ego allowed Ken to step between Randy's father and mother at the school district's party. However, today he had a huge hangover and his ego was damaged again by failing to complete his conquest of Lorna. He was in no condition the face any kind of confrontation, especially from the giant West Point cadet glaring down at him.
