The Only Way I Could Get Justice

I had not planned on writing a sequel to my previous story, but several readers said that they wanted it, not only in the comments, but in some private messages.

It was the last private message that I read which convinced me. The email address did not match any particular screen name, so I don't really know from whom it came.

This is written from Karen's perspective, and it answers some questions raised by commenters in the last story, along with an attempt to convey Karen's feelings.

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It was the most humiliating day of my life. A few minutes after two, and this insipid looking guy walked into the ER, looked around and then walked up to me. "Karen Ann Swift?" he said. "For committing adultery with the late Justin Marsh, formerly of this hospital, you have been served."

Damn it! Damn

him!

Mike must've planned this, and damn him if he didn't have me served in front of most of my friends from work, not just with divorce papers, but telling everyone that I had fucked Justin. How the fuck did Mike find out in the first place?

Of course, the second worst day was my next working shift, when I got called into Human Resources. You can't have an announcement like that, in public, without HR getting notified.

Not that there was anything HR could do. The hospital doesn't have any rules against two employees fucking, and really, they can't. As long as employees aren't caught screwing on the premises, while on the clock, the hospital, even a Baptist one, has no legal business getting involved, not as long as there's no supervisor/subordinate status involved. My supervisors are the ER Nurse Manager and the hospital's Director of Nursing, not the doctors.

Mike had screamed at me and stormed out after I got home the day I was served. I had to spend the next two days - thank God I wasn't scheduled those days! - lining up child care, which gets fucking expensive when you have two 12½ hour shifts on the weekends.

I checked with the bank: Mike had withdrawn about half of our money and taken his name off the accounts, but the accounts were still open and my debit card still worked. I guess that he could have really fucked me over there, but he didn't.

I knew that I'd get the inquisition from my work friends on my next shift, and boy, did I! Justin had been killed a bit ago, over in Africa by some idiot terrorist group in Nigeria, and the story had been all over the local news, which just reminded everybody about who he was. He'd been gone from Central Baptist for two years now.

The affair? It hadn't really been that much of a much. Yeah, we'd gotten drunk at a party, and Justin really was handsome, blond hair and blue eyes from his Dutch heritage, and he was flirting hard, and shit, I liked it and gave in. The excitement and the novelty of getting screwed behind Belinda and Dave's garage, where anybody could have caught us, was thrilling, better than the sex itself, really.

An affair was really the last thing I wanted. I could excuse myself for a drunken one-night stand, even though I knew Mike would be outraged, as long as it wasn't a real love affair. But, you know how it goes: once you've crossed that line, it's a whole lot easier to cross it again.

Of course, it was blatantly obvious: Justin wasn't looking to take me away from my husband; he just wanted some pussy. Me? Yeah, Justin was certainly handsome, and the nurses all regarded him as quite the catch, but he wasn't really, because he was most definitely not going to let himself get caught.

Besides, he was up to his eyeballs in student loan debt, and second-year residents just don't get paid that much. Add to that the 90 or more hours a week they have to work, and there was certainly no future there.

Anyway, we hooked up two more times, at his place, and those times I made him wear a rubber, which I should have done that night behind the garage. He was nice and charming, but there was something that was just missing. The thrill of risking getting caught wasn't there, and the sex, well, it was OK, sort of, but if Justin hadn't been decent at eating pussy, I wouldn't have gotten off at all. I didn't when he fucked me, that's for sure.

Maybe the blah sex was what I needed to screw up the nerve to end it. I told him that no, we'd always be friends, sure, but I was married and we couldn't keep doing that. I cut the cord cleanly.

Two months later, I knew that I was preggers. Shit!

Of course, the odds were that it was Mike's son or daughter I was carrying, but it didn't take but a minute's figuring to realize that it could be Justin's; the timing was certainly right!

Funny thing about being married: you don't really remember what days you screwed your husband, not unless there was some special occasion, because they all blend in together. It's just the days when you cheat that you remember times, dates, everything. I guess that I had made love with Mike during the same time period - we hardly ever went more than a few days in between - but wasn't sure.

Well, Justin figured it out, too. I kept the news of my being pregnant quiet for a few months, but had to spill the beans eventually. Justin didn't hang around the ER that much - he was a general surgery resident - but he'd occasionally get called down for a consult. Once he spotted that I was showing, he asked me if it was his. I told him that it wasn't very likely.

Still, after that, Justin started finding excuses to see me again, and was always nice and sweet. No, I didn't restart the affair, but he was just really nice to me, the whole time.

I was just praying that the baby was Mike's!

I didn't need any DNA test to know. Both Savannah and Junior were dead ringers for me, but the new baby? He didn't look like me, and didn't look like Mike. I figured that, well, somehow a combination of our genes could produce the new baby's looks, except for one thing: his eyes.

My eyes are blue, too, so that was something, but there was this old Dutch, clear-as-water blue that Justin's eyes were, and so were the new baby's. I shouldn't have done it, I know, but Mike and I really hadn't had any names picked out, not for a boy. Had the baby been a girl, she'd probably have been named Cheyenne, but we'd never agreed on a boy's name.

So, I picked Justin, and Mike had no objection. Why should he?

I don't know if any of my friends figured it out, but Justin sure did. He badgered me about it, but I kept saying that no, he was Mike's and my baby, not his. It was just about a year later that Justin hooked up with Doctors Without Borders, which would help with his medical school loans, and now that he'd completed his fourth year of residency, he had a choice between an additional three years to specialize as a cardiothoracic surgeon, or he could put that off to work with Doctors Without Borders.

I don't know, maybe he wanted to get away from the whole situation, but he didn't need to. Maybe he just wanted a change of scenery. Still, he was a liberal, the kind who admired that kind of thing, and that 1999 Nobel Peace Prize made it a glamourous thing to do. At any rate, he bolted. Two years later, he was dead.

I still don't know how Mike found out, because I'd never told anyone about sleeping with Justin. Thing is, little Justin was growing up to look just like his father. If anyone at the hospital noticed the resemblance, no one said anything to me, but big Justin's face was all over the local news when he was killed, and I guess that Mike could have seen that.

But if it was that, Mike never said anything that made me even the least bit suspicious that he'd guessed. I guess that he'd spent that time getting DNA tests and plotting his revenge, though I never noticed him gathering DNA samples.

Michael threw down the gauntlet, hardball, in his divorce petition, so I had to get an attorney, quickly. When she saw that Mike was offering minimal child support for Savannah and Junior, but nothing for Justin, my attorney counterfiled, not only asking for major child support but specified that Justin was to be included in the order. Michael had stated in his petition that Justin was not his child, presented his DNA evidence, and stated that he was willing to have a second DNA test done, at the court's direction, to prove it. My shark attorney claimed that Michael was Justin's legal father, regardless of what the DNA stated, and that the biological father was dead, and could not pay child support. Further, with the outstanding student loans, the late Dr Justin Marsh had no estate to speak of, and nothing to inherit. The insurance payment after his death had already been paid out, to his brothers and sisters, and they could not be held responsible for his progeny.

My attorney said that we'd gotten really lucky: the case was assigned to a feminist judge, one who was big in local Democratic Party circles, and she figured that there was no way the judge would let Michael off the hook for child support on little Justin.

And it had to hurt Mike's case that he demanded visitation only with Savannah and Junior. I mean, that was stupid on his part, stupid and hurtful. My attorney had advised me that, during interim visitation, I should stick to my guns and not allow Michael to take only the two older children, inasmuch as that would be placing unnecessary, harder strain on children who had done nothing wrong.

I had to do that only once; after that, Mike took all three kids on his weekends. I guess that his attorney told him to stop being an asshole, because it would only hurt his case.

Basically, I "won" the divorce. Mike was ordered to pay $1500 a month in child support, which was above state guidelines by about $300, though it was less than the $1600 my attorney had asked for. Mike kept his 401(k) and I my 403(b), and my retirement account was a lot larger than his. Mike argued that I was putting in 15% while he was only saving 6%, because we couldn't have afforded for him to save that much, not while I was. The way that the stock market had taken off after Trump was elected had really spiked my 403(b) value. His, too, but not as much, because he was starting from a smaller base.

I had agreed to adjust my schedule at work, to do every other weekend rather than every third, like RNs of my seniority had to do, just so Mike could have the kids every other weekend. That was seen as a big concession on my part but, really, it was something I'd have had to do anyway to account for visitation. Still, with this judge, it had meant something.

We were told that we had a year to sell the house and split the proceedings, or I could buy Mike out. That actually worked to Mike's benefit, because that meant the house would be appraised for sale, and a realtor friend of mine said that the appraisal we got was about $20,000 more than she thought we'd get if we sold it. Basically, I was buying the house from both Mike and myself, which meant paying off the old mortgage, and then Mike walked away with $78,512.13. I sure could have used that money.

Maybe my attorney overreached on that one: we had asked that I be allowed to continue living in the house until Justin was 18, at which time it would have to be sold. That would have been 13 years!

Mike just stared straight ahead during the entire proceeding; if he ever even glanced my way, I never saw it.

I have to admit it: I never saw it coming. Mike was dutifully making his child support payments, even though he was being petty by writing "Support for Savannah and Mike Jr" in the little "For" line on the check. I never let the kids see those checks, because I didn't want them to see how their father was acting. When my attorney found out about that, she called Mike's attorney and advised him that if Mike continued that, he was setting up a situation which the courts could find would be harmful for our children. After two months, that asshole note disappeared from the check.

In fact, the whole check changed: I was no longer being paid child support by Mike, but by Harrod Concrete, Mike's employer. Apparently he'd made some sort of arrangement to spare himself the indignity of writing a check to me.

I even tried to heal at least some of the breach between us, asking Mike out to dinner one evening. It was my weekend with the kids, but had dropped them off with my parents. I asked Mike to meet me at Corto Lima, a South American restaurant at North Limestone and Short Streets that we had liked before our horrible split.

Would it work? Would anything work? I had no illusions of us getting back together, though I would have loved it if we could have. I was lonely, and I was overworked, trying to take care of three kids with no husband. Yeah, I was still pretty enough, and lucky in that I hadn't developed a "mom bod," though I wasn't a skinny-mini. I had a strong, athletic body, the kind that ought to attract men, but having three kids at home? That kept the men away.

So, despite having no illusions, I figured that I'd hit my best sexy casual look. Nice jeans, not the super skinny jeans the college girls wear, but ones that fit me very well with just a touch of sophistication. I'd bought a nice, casual top that fit me perfectly, showing off my figure without being trashy tight, and which showed maybe a half inch of midriff when I walked, just something to entice him. Some new sandals, and it was just the right look, one that said sexy without saying desperate at the same time.

And I got stood up.

I guess that was Michael's last little dig at me, leaving me there, a woman obviously waiting on her date, for all to see, getting stood up. At least it let me know: there was no hope, no hope at all.

I guess that Michael had it all planned out. The next weekend was Mike's with the kids, and, of course, I had to work. He picked the kids up at 9:00 PM on Friday, and they stayed with him at the apartment he'd rented after the divorce. Then, on Saturday morning, he took Savannah and Justin to my parents' house, saying that he was going to take Junior on a boys' fishing trip in Red River Gorge, and of course they understood it. Mike and Junior would be back around noon on Sunday, he said.

Did you know that amazon.com makes deliveries on Sundays? I didn't know that, but Mike did, and there it was, on my porch, when I got home Sunday evening. I opened it up, and there was a letter from Mike, telling me that I'd never see him or Junior again, that they were going to get lost in Canada, live off the land in the Yukon, like those fucking off-the-grid shows he liked to watch. No more child support for Junior, and I could pay everything for Savannah. And nothing for "that asshole's bastard child."

I broke down and cried, wailing at the top of my lungs, maybe for an hour, before I called the police. I was just devastated.

The police put out an APB for Mike and his truck, but there was nothing. They alerted the Canadian authorities to be on the lookout for him traveling to the Yukon territory, but nothing ever came of it. Mike had such a head start he was surely already in Canada before I'd called the police. The cops figured it might be a diversion, and alerted the Border Patrol on the Mexican border as well, but nothing hit there, either. The drive from Lexington to Brownsville, Texas is about twenty hours, and if Mike went all the way to El Paso, it's still less than twenty-three. If he hammered straight through, he'd have been over the border long before the authorities had been notified.

If the note was real, the police said, there was a chance to find Mike and our son; Canada has decent law enforcement. If it was a lie, and he'd headed to Mexico, there was less of a chance. The country is thoroughly corrupt, and the last thing the Mexican police are going to worry about is a father-taking-his-son case. Hell, the Mexicans would probably approve of what he did. And US relations with Mexico were not all that good right now anyway.

Heck, Mike could even disappear someplace in the United States, whether in Montana or eastern Kentucky or West Virginia, and never be found. I had to consider that possibility as well.

I cried every night, shaking and sobbing that I would never see my son again. Mike had been thorough, cashing out every penny he could, not closing his accounts but leaving just $25 in them, enough to keep them active without the authorities being called. He never used his debit card or cell phone or anything that could ever be traced.

Savannah was stronger than me. She understood what had happened, and comforted me on nights where I was lost to sorrow. Justin, well, he knew what had happened, but how much he understood about the situation I didn't know.

I had never thought that Mike would have been capable of something like this. Some part of me thought that he was a man, wanting to have his son, maybe not identifying with his daughter quite as much. Savannah, well she was grown up about it, even though she wasn't even a teenager yet; way too many kids in her class at school were living with divorced mothers or with their mothers and step-fathers. How she and Justin handled the hurt, I guess that I'll never know.

How is Mike Junior doing? He's with his father now, and boys adore their fathers, as they should. But does he miss his mother, does he miss Savannah and Justin? I might never know.