Tremendous thanks to AdrienneL for making this story vastly better than it was before this skilled editor went to work on it.
"I need to talk to you about Eleanor."
Logan looked at his wife. He was surprised.
"So that's it."
"What do you mean?"
"Something's been bothering you for a couple of weeks. Eleanor! Huh!"
Amelia looked at him quizzically, as if waiting for an explanation, so he continued.
"You've been asking if I can come home early. Every night that one of us wasn't doing something with Maddy or Ted or had some other commitment, you wanted to eat dinner early."
"And you never managed to get away."
"There was always something I had to finish up at the office. I've been trying to get out sooner, but I couldn't until tonight."
"You never used to have trouble shifting to high gear. Is your boss dumping extra stuff on you?"
"Not that I've noticed. And the big restructuring isn't until next year. No, things have been pretty normal."
"Why do you think the same amount of work is taking you longer now?
"I don't know. Now that you've brought it up, I wish I could put my finger on it. Anyway, I'm here and ready to talk about Eleanor?"
"Eleanor is just the beginning. That's why I needed more time. Tonight is perfect. You're home early, the kids are sleeping over at friends and we can talk as late as we want. Tomorrow is Saturday, so we can sleep in."
"Was it a coincidence that you made steaks and apple pie?"
"I wanted dinner to be special."
"It was wonderful. You're a keeper."
"You can still say that after seventeen years?"
"I'll say it for the rest of my life."
"I'm happy to hear that."
He was mildly surprised again. Usually, she responded to his flattery with more emotion. The way she spoke was polite and restrained.
"I mean that!" he said, with more emphasis. "You know I do!"
"Thank you," she said, almost dismissively, "but let's talk about Eleanor now. I've never told you how much I hated her."
Logan's jaw dropped. He couldn't believe his ears.
"Before I go on, I want to warn you that you're not going to like some of what I'm about to say, but I'm asking you to not interrupt me until I finish. Then I'll listen to you. Will you agree?"
He didn't hear because he was still stunned from her pronouncement about Eleanor. He saw her waiting for him.
"Uh, I'm sorry, would you say that again?"
She repeated her request.
"I don't know what to say."
"Just say yes, you promise you won't interrupt."
"Okay, but I --"
"Logan! You just promised!"
He didn't try to continue. Amelia took a deep breath and began speaking again.
"When she was first assigned to you, I knew she was good looking because your sex drive went into high gear. I imagined you were flirting with her, like you do with any woman who gets within fifteen feet of you.
"Then you started talking about her all the time. Eleanor did this, Eleanor did that. And everything she did was perfect. All the other guys at the office were crazy jealous of you, even your boss and his boss.
"My hatred kept growing until I finally met her at the Christmas party. I had just given birth to Ted two weeks before, and despite the expensive dress, I looked like shit. And then this vision with a gorgeous face and a body that every man in the room lusted after came up to me and introduced herself. Her voice oozed with charm.
"As she spoke, I imagined her moaning as you fucked her on the couch in your office. I don't know how I managed to be polite to her, but as soon as I could get away from her, I went to the bar and stayed there.
"Remember how you tried to pry me away a few times before you finally gave up? I know I've never embarrassed you as much as I did that night. I silently toasted the end of our marriage at least fifteen times.
"What you don't know is that I got so drunk that I staggered over to Eleanor and grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the guy she was talking to. I dragged her out of the ballroom and into a corner and almost slobbered on myself as I put my face right up to hers and told her how much I hated her.
"She was shocked at first, but then she smiled warmly, and I could tell she felt sorry for me. That made me hate her even more.
"She said that her sister was also affected by hormonal changes after her baby was born and not to worry about what I just said because it didn't mean anything.
"I could barely reply, but I managed to spit out that I had hated her even before having my baby because I knew she was after you and now that I met her, I knew it was just a matter of time before you left me.
"She didn't seem surprised at what I said. She told me that she had warned you to stop talking about her at the office, because it made you look foolish. She didn't think you were such an idiot that you would do it at home, too.
"'I've got to take a hammer to your husband's thick skull,' is what I remember her saying as she looked toward the ballroom. Then she looked directly at me and asked, 'Do you want me to tell you everything?'
"I felt her catch me as I fell. She held on to me and walked me to some chairs and sat me down.
"That's when I found out that the man I had pulled her away from was her fiancé. She said that when she had first come to work, she had been assigned to an executive who began bothering her the first day and harassed her so much that two weeks later, she walked into HR and resigned.
"The head of HR was summoned and he talked her into giving the company a second chance. Later, he told her he had been sweating blood because she was looking like a million-dollar lawsuit. That's when she was assigned to you. She thinks you were warned about her because for the first few months, you were extremely formal.
"She said she knew within a month that she loved working for you and would never leave you. It wasn't because you were the sharpest guy or the most motivated. It was because there wasn't a mean bone in your body. The most convincing thing to her was the way you talked about me as if I was a goddess. She never heard you say a bad word about me.
"I was crying by this point, and the booze had removed all my inhibitions. So I interrupted her and demanded to know why if you thought so much of me that your tongue hung out whenever a good looking woman walked by and you flirted with every skirt that got near you."
"She said she wondered about that, too, but when she started checking around the office, she found out you never followed through with any of the girls. If they told you politely to stop, you never bothered them again. If they tested you a little to see how far you would go, you backed off.
"I asked her if that excused you for humiliating me in front of every waitress and shop girl.
"She admitted that watching you often made her angry, and one day you got her so upset that she told her fiancé that night she would never tolerate that kind of behavior from him. She was embarrassed when he pointed out that he had never done anything like that.
"But she said that other men at the office had problems far worse than yours, including real infidelity. You were so wonderful in every other way, that it would be a shame if your boorish behavior destroyed our marriage. She told me she had no right to give me advice, but if you were her husband, she would overlook your weakness.
"She told me the only thing she worried about was that you were sometimes naïve and gullible in business dealings because you never suspected others of lying and scheming. Without bragging, she confirmed what you've told me often. She's saved your ass countless times at work.
"She told me how she dealt with a couple of obvious gold-diggers who had set their sights on you. She worried that a shrewd good-looking conniver could get to you, but she knew it wouldn't happen on her watch, and she didn't ever intend to leave you.
"She said even though her fiancé made a lot of money and they were planning to have a family, she would work part time until her kids were in school so she could watch over you. After that, she'd come back full time. Since you are both the same age, her plan was to retire when you retired. She guaranteed that you had never cheated on me."
"And I haven't," Logan interjected.
"You promised not to interrupt. Let me finish."
"That night, I stopped hating Eleanor. She called me up a week later, and we had lunch -- the first of hundreds. It wasn't long before I loved her as much as you do.
"Whenever I ran into one of your colleagues, I turned our conversation to her and pumped them for information. Both men and women were green with envy. They didn't come right out and say it, like you do, but I could tell from the way they talked that you were honest when you told me that she was the one running your department. You did what she told you to do and kept getting promotions and raises.
"One wife was the most forthcoming, after I plied her with four martinis. She said her husband told her that your boss tried to talk Eleanor into taking your job, and they would promote you into a sideline job that got you out of her way."
"She never told me that!"
"Think hard and then tell me the truth. Do you think the wife lied to me?"
Logan was silent for a while, then muttered.
"What was that? I didn't hear you."
"No."
"No what?"
"No, I don't think she lied. It probably happened that way. Why didn't Eleanor take my job? She deserves it."
"You know the answer as well as I do. She would never do anything to hurt you. I told her once that I thought of her as your second wife, and she was shocked and quickly said that there had never been anything between the two of you.
