The basic facts of this tale were relayed to me by a friend that I trust. My attorney tells me that I have changed the names and circumstances enough in his real life story of woe that no one could ever successfully sue me for defamation or a related cause of action. However I do believe that the "tradimento" – i. e. betrayal – comes through as loud and clear as if I had accurately described the circumstances and used actual names. I tell the tale as my friend's first person account.
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Not much background is needed, but the basic facts are crucial to understand what happened after the defining event. I'm Grant Oster. While in graduate school getting my M Sc. degree in chemistry I met Laura. I fell in love immediately; I think it took her six months, until just before she got her M A in art history, before she fell in love with me, but it happened. While I don't think that either of us was especially experienced, as far as I was concerned our sex life was excellent, and she never voiced any complaints and seemed to orgasm regularly, both from oral activities and vaginal penetration. We got married less than a year after she got her M A, and got jobs in the same city, her teaching at a community college, me teaching part time at a state university while also working part time with a science consulting firm.
After three years of marriage I quit the university and worked full time as a consultant. I became an explosives expert and one of the clients I worked for was the Federal Government. About the time that our first daughter, Angela, was born I was doing most of my work for the Government and it involved quite a bit of travel. I know that it was hard on Laura but I did offer to quit and get a full time teaching job at a local college – which had tried to recruit me many times. However, Laura liked the money that my job brought in and the lifestyle that it afforded us, and encouraged me to stick with it. "I can survive, I'm self-sufficient," was her smiling mantra.
My travel had not let up too much by the time of the birth of our second daughter, Grace, two years after Angela was born. I again offered to change professions, but again Laura insisted that I stick with my consulting job since we now had an extra mouth to feed, clothe, and educate.
When the girls were five and seven my schedule let up for a time, and with my help with child care and once the girls went to school, Laura decided to go back to work. She got an administrative job at the local university primarily dealing with the liberal arts college. For reasons that I never really understood – but didn't concern me because it made her happy – Laura developed a keen interest in photography. We have more than a dozen albums chronically our lives with the kids.
Another seemingly odd interest that Laura developed at the time was in other languages, primarily Italian.
There were now times when Laura travelled on her job, especially to Chicago where she had meetings with benefactors, visiting professors, and the Art Institute, and visits with Gina, a friend of hers from college who was an Italian exchange student at the time but was now working in Chicago.
When the kids were eight and ten terrorist activities around the world made my skill set extremely valuable to the Federal Government, and I was recruited to work full time for them for a two year period. I talked it over with Laura many hours before accepting the assignment because it would result in much more travel for that two year – or perhaps longer – period and I would be gone sometimes for more than a month at a time. Laura encouraged me to take it, saying that she and the girls would miss me, but would be fine.
My assignment with the Federal Government caused me to be away for two Christmases in a row, when Grace was nine and ten, and Angela eleven and twelve, which was heartbreaking. Laura took the girls with her to visit Gina in Chicago. I talked to them on the phone every day for their week visit, and they seemed happy enough. Apparently a number of Gina's relatives were visiting, some of whom the girls had met before, and some of whom were kids about our daughters' ages.
Finally, just before Thanksgiving after I had worked on assignment providing my expertise to fight terrorists for more than two years, I went back to full time consulting and rarely travelled. Laura continued to travel occasionally, normally about once a month for two or three days, mostly to Chicago, and I was happy to assume all parental duties for Grace and Angela when she was gone, although sometimes they went with her.
I guess it is to be expected that girls become closer to their mother than their father. While I had a good relationship with Grace and Angela there really never were important things that they confided in me, and they rarely asked my opinion about personal matters, although it seemed that they were always sharing personal information with Laura. It didn't really bother me – much – except for one thing. They never, ever, were their normal chatty selves about their experiences when they went with their mother to Chicago; while they weren't withdrawn about it, they never volunteered information, and oftentimes would laughingly change the subject.
Just before eighteen year old Grace went to college out of state, while Angela was a junior at another out of state college at that time, Laura had a dark period. When I caught her crying on several occasions I asked her what was wrong. She chalked it up to becoming an empty-nester. She said what she needed was to take the girls on a shopping trip to Chicago (they don't have stores in Columbus?). The trip was planned hurriedly, and apparently required several long phone conversations with Gina – in Italian. Since I didn't understand Italian, I just accepted what Laura told me about the details. I had no reason to doubt her even though she had never been as weepy before as she had been the three or four days before she and the girls went to Chicago.
Laura returned from Chicago after three days more sanguine, although still not completely normal. That was not the surprising thing, however; what was surprising were the few purchases that the three of them came back with from their shopping excursion. When I inquired about it I was told that some of the items would be shipped later, including some directly to the girls' college addresses.
I did notice that my sex life – which never was bad, except, of course, when I was away for extended periods of time because I never cheated on Laura – got better once Grace left for school. I attributed this to Laura and I growing closer as empty-nesters, and I greatly enjoyed the increased frequency. Then the defining event of my story "happened."
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I played hooky from work starting about noon one Thursday without telling Laura, who was at her normal place of employment. I had planned to play nine holes of golf, but rain doused that expectation. However, I was planning for our upcoming anniversary. I wanted to give Laura a surprise party, so I talked with an event planner and started the ball rolling. About 3:00 p. m. a deliveryman came to the door with a wooden crate with "Fragile" markings on it, bringing it up the four front stairs of our house using a dolly. It was addressed to Laura. I signed for it, and with the help of the deliveryman we placed it in the living room in a stable position with the "This Side Up" properly positioned.
I thought that the delivery of the crate was odd. I couldn't imagine what was in it. I looked at the return address and it said "Romano Photography Studios," followed by an address in Chicago which I knew to be in the center city. I called Laura at work and told her about the arrival of the crate. She got quiet at first and then said "Oh, that's work related. They were supposed to send it to me at the office – I guess they screwed up. Just leave it, unopened, and I'll have someone help me bring it to the office tomorrow."
That would normally be a rational explanation except for three things. 1) The complete silence on the other end of the phone for several seconds after I first told her about the crate – a long enough time that I almost asked "are you still there?" since Laura is never at a loss for words. 2) The way that she told me not to open it; it was a command much more than a request and her voice was clearly stressed when she said it. Having worked anti-terrorism for several years I had become, through osmosis, aware of the importance of stress and nuance. 3) Her entire demeanor – not just the command not to open the crate – was uptight.
My curiosity was aroused sufficiently that I took a few photos of the crate, and entered the return address information into my laptop.
A fourth thing making me uneasy occurred as soon as Laura returned from work. With only a perfunctory greeting she raced to the crate, looked it over – obviously she was inspecting it to see if I had tampered with it – and then she was very vague and stand-offish when I asked her what was in it. "Not sure, exactly, but I was expecting some artwork from an organization in Chicago that wanted to set up an exhibition at my school. I'll open it and look at it at work."
"Want me to help and open it now?" I asked, not just to be a good guy, but also to test her reaction.
"Oh, no, no, no – uh – we – need to – uh look at it at work to make sure there was no damage in case an insurance claim – uh – is – needed," the normally glib Laura stammered.
The next morning, even before I left for work, two maintenance guys from the college she worked at showed up and carefully moved the crate to a school van under Laura's careful supervision.
