Reflections

I've never been the kind of man who focuses much on the past. My father taught me from an early age to have what he referred to as a "windshield" mentality. Basically, he taught me that you should focus on the road ahead and not worry about the past. So, while I like to think that I have learned from my mistakes and celebrated my victories, I have always tried to keep myself focused on the task directly in front of me.

For the most part, this has worked out pretty well. Since graduating from college twenty-eight years ago, I have spent my entire career working for the same company. I started out as a staff accountant and over the years I've been able to steadily climb the corporate ladder. My last promotion came a couple of years ago, when I was named CFO of the company I have worked for since I graduated from college. I've never really played corporate politics. I've simply worked hard at being the best at whatever job I was assigned and let the future take care of itself.

At home, I have a beautiful wife who has been a loving and supportive helpmate for the past twenty-two years and three children that I love more than life itself. But there was a time when things were not so great at home and I have found through the years that it's a lot harder to apply that windshield mentality to my personal life.

Things will be great for a while, but inevitably, something will happen that takes me back to that time and I find myself unable to stop reliving those difficult memories. This happens to be one of those times as my oldest daughter, Hannah, is getting ready for her wedding in a couple of days. Experience has taught me that any significant event in Hannah's life will bring the memories of her mother and our last few years together flooding back into my mind.

So, I poured myself a glass of Single Barrel bourbon before sitting down at my desk to stare at the unopened six-inch binder in front of me. I could lie and say that it was a double, but in all truth, it was an eight-ounce tumbler filled to the rim. It was going to take a lot of booze to get me through this little stroll down memory lane.

The binder on my desk was my personal photo album and it contained the memories of my adult life. The pages in this binder told the story of my past thirty years which include college, two marriages, three children, and a lot of happiness and pain. I'm not completely sure why I'm doing this, except that in the lead up to my oldest daughter's wedding, I could feel those old feelings of anger, hurt, and betrayal along with a lot of regret starting to build up inside of me again.

Hannah was only two when her mother passed away. But she and I were pretty much on our own for the last year of Sarah's life. Now, at twenty-five, her only memories of Sarah are from the stories that I've told her through the years. Even then, I've shielded her from the ugly truth surrounding her mother's last year. I guess I just always figured that it was hard enough for her to grow up without a mother and that it would be best if she were spared the hurtful details of our lives before Sarah's death.

I was still staring at the unopened photo album, lost in my thoughts, when I felt my wife's hand on my shoulder. "You're thinking about Sarah again, aren't you?" she asked.

"It's that obvious, huh?"

"Yes, it's that obvious. You always get this pained looked on your face when you think about her. I've never understood why you continue to beat yourself up about what happened with her, but trust me, none of it was your fault. She was a grown woman and she alone was responsible for the choices that she made and the consequences of those choices. I think I'm going to head up to bed, but you just sit here and finish your, uh, drink and try to put those bad memories out of your mind."

She leaned over the back of my chair and kissed me on the cheek before turning to head upstairs. She was almost through the door when she turned and said, "try not to overdo it with the bourbon. This is going to be a long weekend and Hannah needs you to be at your best."

So, I did as I was told and took a big sip of my bourbon. She was right, none of it was my fault. Sarah made some really bad choices and, while I may have some regrets about how I handled things, I can't hold myself accountable for her mistakes. Besides, regardless of the pain she caused, she was my first true love and I will probably love her till the day I die is spite of the pain she caused. Plus, without her, I wouldn't have Hannah and without Hannah, I wouldn't have met Elizabeth, my current wife of over twenty years.

After another sip of bourbon, I finally opened the photo album and started my walk down memory lane. The first picture was of me and Sarah back in college. We were at a fraternity party with drunk, happy looks on our faces. Sarah and I met in college and dated for a couple of years before we graduated and got married. Sarah was a marketing major and I was an accounting major. We met through some mutual friends and just hit it off almost immediately. I fell in love with Sarah because she was smart and funny and she worked harder than anyone I had ever known. Well, that and the fact that she was drop-dead gorgeous and had the tightest little ass I had ever seen.

Unlike most of my friends, who came from upper middle-class families, Sarah came from a broken home and lived with a single mother. She attended school on a scholarship and always seemed to have a bit of a chip on her shoulder to try and prove that she belonged. I naively thought that she would mellow out a bit after we were married, but I soon found out that I was wrong. Sarah's issues went much deeper than I could understand at twenty-two years old.

I flipped through a few more pages with pictures of us and our friends in college before I came to our wedding picture. We were both so young. We were only a few months out of college and we looked like we were on top of the world. I can still remember how happy we were for those first few months. The excitement of new careers and a new life together made us think that nothing could stand in our way.

But it just seemed like nothing made Sarah happy or kept her content for very long. I think she was happy for about a year after we married and then that wasn't enough for her. So, she went off of her birth control without telling me until she surprised me with the news that she was pregnant. I was really pissed off at being blindsided with a child when we had both agreed to wait a few years before having children. But I had always loved children, so it didn't take long for the excitement of a baby to push aside the anger of being deceived.

The next few pictures were of Sarah when she was pregnant. She had always been beautiful, but the glow she had in those pictures made her seem even more beautiful than she was before. Then, I flipped the page to find a picture of Sarah holding Hannah in her hospital bed with me sitting beside her. We looked like the perfect family with these huge smiles on our faces. But I couldn't help but think that obviously looks can be deceiving.

For the first year after Hannah was born, Sarah was a loving stay-at-home mother and seemed to be genuinely happy. But, eventually, motherhood just wasn't enough for her either, so she decided to go back to work. Sarah quickly found a new job at Whitlock Enterprises and began pouring all of her energy into her new career.

By the time Hannah turned two, I was practically a single father as Sarah was working sixty hours a week and out of town on business four or five days a month. When she was home, things were always tense and our sex life was almost nonexistent. Sarah was constantly criticizing me for not being "more ambitious," but, unlike her, I refused to put work before my daughter.

She was always telling me that I needed to be more like her new boss, Richard Whitlock. His father owned the company where they both worked and Richard was always telling her about his big plans to grow the business and eventually take it public after his father retired.

For the next few months, everything seemed to just deteriorate more and more until it all came to a head at the fourth of July picnic that her company held every year at a local park. Soon after we arrived, Sarah left me and Hannah to play on the playground while she went off to "network" as she put it.

Hannah and I were actually having a really good time until she spilled her lemonade down the front of her shirt. We looked around for Sarah to see if she had a change of clothes in her bag, but we couldn't find her anywhere, so we headed to the car to find Hannah a dry shirt.

After a quick change, we were headed back to the playground when I heard my beautiful wife's voice coming from a car parked a few spaces over. "Yes baby! Give it to me! Fuck me with that big cock of yours. Oh God that feels so good!"

Suddenly, the pent-up frustration from months of being ignored just exploded into rage as I spun around and took two steps towards the strange car before I felt the tug of a little hand in mine that stopped me dead in my tracks. For a few seconds, I just stood there, frozen. My mind was spinning, torn between the desire to kill my cheating wife and her lover and the need to protect my daughter. Finally, my love for Hannah won out over my rage so I took her back to the car and secured her in her car seat.

I cracked the window slightly before closing the door and told her, "Listen baby, you just sit right here for a minute while Daddy takes care of something. I promise I'll be right back."

I then headed straight for the two lovebirds. When I got to the car, I froze for a second watching as Sarah lay across the backseat with her legs spread and her boss on top of her fucking her as hard as he could. Finally, I jerked the door open and grabbed her asshole boss by the hair on the back of his head and dragged him into the parking lot, naked from the waist down, leaving Sarah alone and naked lying on the backseat with this horrified expression on her face.

"You fucking whore!" I yelled. "How could you do this to me and Hannah?" I then turned toward Richard Whitlock and said, "you have about two seconds to get the fuck out of here before I beat the shit out of you!"

By this time, all the yelling had started to draw a crowd and they watched in amusement as I lunged at Richard, sending him running for his life across the parking lot, still naked from the waist down. I then turned back to Sarah and said, "Hannah and I will be gone when you get home. We're going to my parents for a few days and would appreciate it if you would pack your things and get the fuck out of our house before Monday. I don't care where you go as long as I don't have to see your cheating face again!"

She never said a word to defend herself, but I could hear her sobbing as I walked away. To this day, I don't remember driving home. I just remember thinking about all of the late nights and work trips and wondering how long this had been going on behind me back.

When we got home, I quickly packed enough clothes for me and Hannah to last a few days and we headed to my parent's farm. Before we left, I wrote Sarah a note, letting her know that I would call her in a few days to work out a schedule to make sure Hannah was cared for. When I finished, I folded the note and left it on her dresser with my wedding ring on top of it.

The rest of the weekend was quiet, with no word from Sarah at all. So, on Monday, I went to see my sister Julie's husband Andrew, who was a lawyer in town. I had him draw up divorce papers and arranged for Sarah to be served at work later that week.

I guess I could have been more of an ass about the divorce, but there was really no reason. We were renting the house we lived in and we both made about the same amount so there wasn't a lot to argue about other than custody of Hannah. In the end, there was no argument about custody either as Sarah gladly accepted my offer of joint custody with us alternating weeks with Hannah. As I mentioned before, Sarah was so wrapped up in advancing her career that she didn't really have the time nor the desire to be a full-time mother.

In the end, I decided to stay with my parents so that they could help me with Hannah and Sarah decided to keep our lease and stayed in the house. Things went fairly smoothly for the first few months after we separated, with the exception of Sarah constantly being too busy to keep Hannah on her weeks. Every other week, Sarah would meet me to pick Hannah up and within a couple of days she would call me with some excuse to see if I could keep her for the rest of the week.

I never asked any questions, I just documented everything to use to my advantage when we finalized the divorce. Actually, I was just happy to have the extra time with my daughter. But I later found out the real reason behind Sarah's attitude. Apparently, Richard didn't really like children and he didn't like having Hannah around taking Sarah's attention away from him. In fact, I'm pretty sure that good ole Richard was much happier when he could just fuck Sarah and then send her back home to me for me to deal with the real-life problems.

About three months after our separation, I made the one decision in this whole ordeal that I have regretted for the past twenty-three years. My anger had been festering since I caught Sarah in that car with Richard Whitlock. So, armed with some information provided by Sarah's coworker Amy, I went back to Andrew and had him file an alienation of affection lawsuit against Richard and I also had him name the company as a co-defendant since his womanizing and sexual exploitation of his female staff members was well known about and tolerated by his father who owned the company.

I had run into Amy at the grocery store a couple of weeks after I caught Sarah with Richard and we began dating occasionally. After a few dates, I was getting two important things from Amy; some very bland sex that I knew was wrong at the time and information about my cheating wife and her asshole boss. It was through Amy that I learned about a meeting that Sarah, Richard, and Richard's father had with their largest client.

So, I had both Richard and his father served during that dinner meeting in front of their client. I knew that the chance of actually winning the lawsuit was remote, but I just wanted to embarrass them as much as I could and let them feel just a little of the pain that Richard had caused me. I had no way of knowing at the time that filing this lawsuit would forever change our lives.

That evening, I watched from my car as Sarah, the Whitlocks, and two middle aged gentlemen entered the restaurant. When the process server arrived, I followed him in at a distance so that I could see the looks on their faces when they were served. I saw him approach their table and ask them something before he pulled out two envelopes, one for each of them. He then walked away as they both began opening their envelopes.

As I approached the table, I heard Richard's father ask him, "what the hell is this abut Richard?"

Before he could answer, I said, "That's what happens when your son turns a man's wife into the company whore like Richard here has done. By the way, I'm Jack Anderson and that whore sitting next to Richard is my soon to be ex-wife Sarah." I then turned to the other two gentlemen and said, "If I were you, I would be more careful about the type of people I did business with. If a man will steal another man's wife, he'll sure as hell steal from you." With that, I wished them a good night and left.

At around 8:00 that evening, I had just put Hannah to bed for the night when I heard the doorbell ring. I was downstairs in the basement trying to catch up on some paperwork that I had brought home from the office when my father called down and said that there were a couple of police officers there to see me.

I thought that odd, but I left my work and went upstairs to find out what was going on. I knew by their faces that something was wrong and after they introduced themselves, they told me that Sarah had been in a serious single car accident that evening and that I needed to follow them to the hospital.

At that point, all they could tell me was that Sarah was alive, but the man driving the car had been killed instantly. I knew without a doubt that the man killed was most likely Richard Whitlock. I wish I could have been more gracious, given the circumstances. But I still clearly remember thinking, "karma's a bitch isn't it, motherfucker!"

When I got to the hospital, I was informed that Sarah was alive, but they had her sedated to keep her calm. Her leg had been badly crushed and she needed surgery immediately to try and save it. Since I was technically still her husband, I signed the consent paperwork before kissing her on the forehead as they wheeled her out of the emergency room to head into surgery.

The surgery lasted for almost three hours, but just after midnight, the surgeon came into the waiting area to let me know that she was out of surgery and that he was pretty sure that he had been able to save her leg. She would need several more surgeries and a number of months to completely heal and up to a year of physical therapy to hopefully walk normally again. I thanked the doctor and was allowed to go into the recovery area to sit with her until she regained consciousness.

I just sat there for hours thinking about how much I still loved her. Even after all she had done and all she had put me and Hannah through, I knew then that I would always love her. I could never hate her; I just couldn't be married to her anymore. I resolved that night that I would do whatever I had to do over the next few months to make sure that she recovered fully. I even decided to put the divorce on hold until she was back to normal.

Over the next week, she continued to improve every day until they finally released her to go home. Sarah and I were really the only family that she had left, so, being the sucker that I am, I decided to move back in with her to take care of her until she was able to care for herself again.

When I picked her up at the hospital, I took her home to the house we had rented together before we separated. She had kept the lease and stayed there even after Hannah and I left. I managed to get her in the house and settled into her bed with everything she would need to be comfortable and then headed out to the den to let her rest.

I was almost to the door when she asked, "Jack, why are you being so nice to me?"

"Because I vowed to love you 'til death do us part' and I still intend to live up to that vow. Listen Sarah, I hate what you did to me and, trust me, I'm still really pissed off. But I also still love you and I probably always will. I know that I can never trust you enough to be married to you again, but that doesn't mean that I don't care about you and want to help you when I can. Now, get some rest and we can talk later."

Sarah continued to get stronger and within a few days was doing well enough to be left alone so that I could go back to work and start taking care of Hannah again. My mother had been watching her since the accident and I was happy to start getting her back in her normal routine. With all three of us back in the house, Sarah actually seemed happy again for the first time in years.

About a week later, I gave Hannah her bath and put her to bed before settling down on the sofa to watch tv with Sarah before going to bed. I don't know why, but I just suddenly felt this need to know the details of her affair, so I asked her, "can you answer one question for me? How long were you sleeping with Richard before I caught you in his car? It won't change anything between us, but I think I have a right to know."