The song blasting from the jukebox in the less than crowded bar was more than appropriate for the present mood I was in. The song was a Three Doors Down tune, and the words of the chorus hit my chest like a hammer blow.
And there's something I can't see, there's something different in the way you smile.
Behind those eyes you lie.
And there's nothing I can say, 'cause I'm never gonna change your mind.
Behind those eyes you hide.
Indeed there had been a great deal of lying and hiding going on behind the eyes of my wife of fifteen years, Sheila. For the last two months I had nearly suspected that she had been replaced with an alien pod person. She was moody one moment and loving the next, almost overly so. There were periods where she was outright distant. Often during these fugue states, I would have to repeat something I said to her more than once before she seemed to wake up from whatever was going on in her head.
Of course, when I inquired as to the cause of this disturbing behavior, it was always the same old thing. It was nothing in particular. It was stress, or PMS, or her hormones were giving her trouble. Of course, my suggestion that she see a doctor was immediately rebuffed, and that quite forcefully. It was not these actions alone that had me sitting alone in a corner of a rather worn down and seedy looking drinking establishment. No, there were other troubling actions that had me unsettled enough to be putting away Manhattans in rather unusual quantities.
There had been several times when Sheila had not been where she said she was going to be. Sheila had never been a stay at home a lot wife to begin with. She was often at her mothers or shopping with our daughter. Ours was an unusual marriage in that respect. Though we mutually spent a great deal of time apart, we made the most of our time together. I had never really made any effort to check up on her whereabouts, as I trusted her fully. Of course, in the past when she said she would be at such and such a location, it could be counted on with certainty. Now it seemed that even that old familiar pattern was being broken.
I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Although I make a good living, and could by all standards be considered moderately well off, I'm not a rocket scientist by any stretch. But all this was adding up to a conclusion that didn't exactly call for the talents of the fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. No, Luke Johnson might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night. I had no choice but to believe that there was a weasel in the chicken coop, and that my particular hen had been singled out for the menu. Of course, the possibility was there that she had already fallen into the weasel's clutches.
Sheila and I had actually met some seventeen years ago. I was fresh out of college, armed with a degree in business administration. I landed work fairly quickly and was making good money. I was considered a handsome lad. At a touch over six feet tall, broad of shoulder and slim of hip, I was a good physical specimen. I kept myself that way with a regular physical regimen. My sandy colored hair was well groomed and trimmed short. My eyes were a soft green, and my skin was smooth and tanned. My pleasant, laid back personality and my dry humor also made me popular, according to my friends and business contacts.
I was doing some casual dating but had hit on nothing serious. It was at this point that my mother had collaborated with an old friend who had a daughter a few years younger. Thus I found myself in the crosshairs of two matchmakers and reluctantly headed out for a blind date. I had expected the usual disaster with a two headed swamp thing, but was stunned when I saw the other victim of the conspirators' plotting. Terri was an absolutely gorgeous young blonde. With that, a rather intense relationship had started off and both of us were happy for a good while. It was during this period that I met Sheila, who was Terri's second cousin.
After nearly a year, the bloom had fallen off the rose between Terri and me. I was the one who hit the kill switch, and Terri was devastated and hurt. I actually made several attempts to start it back up, but was met with resistance and finally gave up.
A few months later, I was in attendance at the Homecoming game at my former high school. On the way to the concession stand I ran into Sheila and struck up a conversation with her. It was rather obvious that there was a spark there. I could see it, for my part, in her eyes.
Sheila was cute, of that there was no doubt. Her long thick auburn hair was arresting, as were her blue eyes. She was a tall girl with heavy breasts and a slim waist. The things her backside could do to a tight pair of jeans were of considerable interest to me as well. Her legs were delicious, long and shapely, as I knew from seeing her in a dress at family functions. All in all she was quite the package, since besides her good looks; she also had a shy, sweet personality.
Within days we were an item. It was not a popular development with Terri, and there was a brief respite on Sheila's part to try and heal over this family difficulty. Within a few weeks, Sheila had decided that the romance was not to be denied. Her cousin would just have to accept things as they were.
Developments made the point rather moot as the months went along. Sheila's period came up late, despite the fact that we were using protection, thank you Trojan Rubber Company, and a marriage was quickly set up and performed. The two of us just settled in and started our life together. Sheila was a restaurant manager, and between the two of us we made a decent living. Two children resulted in the next few years, a daughter, named Tina, and a son Joshua.
The marriage had been a consistently happy one, although it was hardly what everyone's idea might have been. We lived only a few hundred yards from Sheila's mother, on the same road in fact. Sheila and her mother were very close and she spent a great deal of time there, usually every evening and a considerable amount of time on the weekend as well. This did not cause the expected friction because I had a great many hobbies I was involved in. We were together for almost every meal time and usually planned some special outing as a family over the weekend.
