My thanks to
blackrandl1958
for
her invitation to participate
and her editorial work and my beta readers plus my thanks to Literotica for being there for us authors. Incidentally, Esq is the correct term for all lawyers in America, male or female
Learning that your entire life of the past 20 or so years was nothing but a series of big, fat lies and that all of the people who mattered to you in your life had either participated in the lies or condoned or tacitly agreed with the lies would be a tough burden to bear, right? As it was for Andrew Masters.
Andy was sat at his desk in his office feeling let down and a little sorry for himself. Justifiably, really, because he was supposed to have been in the middle of a very special luxury December and Christmas cruise with his wife, their two daughters and his wife's parents. But the week before the flight to the embarkation port his father-in-law, Marvin Monk, had called him in for a meeting in his plush executive office.
"Look, Andy I'm obviously aware of how much you are looking forward to the cruise with the family, but some workplace matters have come up and I really need you to be in the office throughout the whole month of December.
"Of course, it'll make the family cruise less of a family event without you being there, but please rest assured that I will make it up to you in your remuneration, plus there'll be a special luxury vacation organized for you, Katy and the girls sometime during next year, which the company will entirely pay for, of course."
Andy argued with Marvin but the older man seemed implacable for some reason and Andy spoke with his wife and daughters that evening over their meal at home.
"Oh, no!" said Katy. "Dad knows how important the Christmas vacation is to the family. It just seems so unfair that you'll have to miss out on it. Do you want me to have a word with Mom, see if I can get her to change his mind?"
He shrugged, "Well, yeah, that'll be helpful, honey. Thanks."
Their twin daughters, Cassandra and Emily had piped up: "Yeah! Please, Mom! We can't have Dad missing out on the family Christmas vacation! That wouldn't be right!"
Although Andy regarded Cassandra and Emily as his own daughters They had been barely two years old when he had met their mother, Katy, a then recently divorced single mother. She had still spoken well of her ex husband.
"Bill wasn't, isn't, a bad man. Not really. It's just that we probably married way too young and I think we both had wildly different aspirations. We drifted apart and he went off to photograph and paint wildlife in different parts of the world on a two year assignment and we decided that divorce would be a better option for us. I didn't want alimony and he paid his child support regularly, so all was good."
At the time Andy had met Katy he had just received his MBA in management and business communications and over a dinner conversation with Katy's father, Marvin, he had stunned and impressed the latter with his in-depth knowledge of business and especially Marvin's own industry.
By the end of the evening Andy had agreed to have a meeting with Marvin the next morning to discuss taking up a position working in the C Suite of his rapidly growing business empire.
Andy continued dating Katy and found himself loving the twins as if they were his own daughters.
After a year of dating he proposed to Katy, she accepted, they married and Andy continued working with Marvin, eventually stepping up into the role of Marvin's Executive Assistant.
He was the perfect employee, the perfect husband and the perfect father figure to the girls and the perfect son-in-law to Marvin and Claire.
He, it was, who dealt with the monsters under the beds of the girls and the monsters in their closets, took turns in getting up in the night and comforting them when they were ill. Helping them with their homework, commiserating when dates didn't go to plan, etc. He made sure that he treated the girls as if they were his princesses and their mother as if she was his Queen.
Katy didn't work, she was heavily involved in several charitable organizations funded by GWS the company operated by her father. She was quite the Queen of the local social scene.
Sixteen years later he suddenly felt as if he were a dinosaur in one of the cartoons as the dinosaurs are pictured, food dropping from their mouths as they look up, astonished, and watched as the six mile wide asteroid known as the Chicxulub impactor shrieked and burned its way through the sky, ending life as they knew it.
It was December, several days before Christmas and he was missing his wife and daughters terribly. He was grumbling to himself about having to remain at work whilst they were all enjoying their month-long Caribbean cruise with the rest of his family. He wasn't sure why he'd had to remain at work and the bed at home felt mightily big and empty and the house echoed with the silence. For want of a better expression.
His own personal Chicxulub impactor came crashing down on his hitherto perfect life when the Personal Assistant of Marvin, Julia Weston, nervously knocked on his office door. "Andy, can I have a moment of your time, please?"
"Of course you can, Julia! Please shut the door and take a seat. You seem a little anxious. Is there anything I can help you with?"
At that point Julia began crying. It was then that Andy noticed she'd come to his office armed with a packet of tissues which she was using to dab her eyes.
"Thank you, Andy. That's so kind of you. About what I'd expect from a wonderful, stand up guy like you. But I'm coming to you not with a problem that relates to me but with information with a problem that relates to you."
"Please go on," said Andy, knowing that whatever she had to tell him, he wouldn't be liking.
"That family month-long December and Christmas cruise that you were apparently excluded from at the last minute?"
Andy nodded, silently.
"I helped Marvin book the cruise, I never realized what was happening with it, until he told you that you were being excluded at the last minute. Andy, the truth is, you were never booked on that cruise in the first place. Your place was already taken by Bill Baxter, your wife's ex-husband. He's listed as sharing a luxury cabin with her. I'm so sorry to be the person to tell you this."
Andy felt devastated by this news. He thanked Julia for her help by giving him the information. "Why are you telling me this, Julia? And I don't want to sound like an asshole, but do you have any proof, please?"
"I have emailed the booking paperwork to you. Also, why did I do it? Because I know what a great person you are, I have seen how much you love Katy and the girls. I knew that there was no way I could allow them to do this to you. Allowing Katy's ex-husband to take your place on that cruise was nothing short of an asshole move by all of them.
"I've worked with Marvin for 25 years, known Claire, Katy and then the twins, since I left college and I'd never for one moment thought of him as being capable of being so duplicitous and, for want of a better word, so damned evil."
"What are you going to do, Julia?"
"I'm taking immediate early retirement from GWS and I'm moving to Florida to live with my daughter and son-in-law. They're launching a business and I'm going to move my 401k plan to their newly-formed corporation. Since my husband died 10 years ago I've become increasingly restless and with my daughter and Dan often asking me to go live with them and with how Marvin crapped all over you, I thought: "If Marvin will pull a shitty stunt like that on his own son-in-law, what chance would I have if he decided to pull something like that on me?"
"I see what you're saying, Julia, I really do. However, please reassure me you're not not just quitting because of what's happening with me?"
Julia shook her head. "It's certainly helped me make my mind up, Andy. But no more than that."
They both stood up and he hugged her. "Thank you for putting me in the picture. Obviously my so-called family is up to something rotten. I'll let you know what's happening. We'll keep in touch."
She left his office and Andy realized that he had a lot of thinking to be doing. After what Julia had told him, Florida seemed to be a good option, he thought.
Several days later on Christmas morning he was sat, alone, in the house he had shared with Katy and her girls. He realized that the way he thought of them was changing. "The house he had shared with them, but now no longer shared with them" and Cassandra and Emily were no longer his daughters Cassandra and Emily, they were now relegated to "her girls.'' Was this why Katy had always balked at the idea of adoption, he wondered? And what he had thought of as "home" was now merely a house., if that.
Even before he had known that he was being replaced by Bill Baxter, Andy hadn't been too keen on the idea of finding someone to spend Christmas Day with. But now he knew about Katy and the girls taking a fucking month long family cruise with her ex-husband, he realized he had no stomach for socialising with any of the friends he had made after he got together with Katy and the girls. After all, most of them were Katy's friends first, then Andy's friends afterwards, so how many of them knew that he was Katy's Clown, or Katy's cuckold? No. Best keep away from them.
He had been an only child and his parents had died when he was relatively young so he had no family of his own to visit, so he had decided to not celebrate Christmas at all that year.
He'd thought about getting some Christmas dinner foods in. Walmart had an entire range of instant Christmas meal items from Kraft Deluxe White Cheddar Easy Microwavable Macaroni and Cheese Cups to Stouffer's Roast Tender White Turkey Frozen Meals.
He realized that if he'd bought any of them, he'd have looked like the world's biggest loser, so he decided to avoid anything that even reminded him of a Christmas meal.
And then, on Christmas morning, his phone rang. It was showing up as Katy's phone. He decided to take the call. "Happy Christmas, Daddy!" It was Cassandra using her mother's phone.
"Happy Christmas, Cassandra and to Emily and Katy" he replied, evenly.
"Who are you celebrating Christmas Day with, Dad?"
"Nobody. In fact, I'm not celebrating Christmas at all. After all, Christmas is a time for people with families. And as I don't actually have a family, I decided to not bother."
Katy interjected "Oh, you're feeling neglected, honey? I'll make it up to you when we get back. Plus Daddy told me the company will arrange a nice vacation for you, me and the girls sometime next year."
