Why?

I began this tale as a short story, never intending to exceed 8000 words. As I wrote, the story and the characters seemed to take on a life of their own --demanding more "air" time. Finally, I was forced to write a outline, histories and what not, converting this story into a novel. This isn't my first rodeo, but it is the first time I've written a loving wife story and submitted to a site. Be forewarned, this is the first chapter of several more (perhaps 20 in total) and contains nearly 12,000 words. Rest assured, the rest of the chapters are and will be significantly shorter in length. At this time, I've completed three other chapters, which are in the process of being edited. I will submit future chapters as quickly as possible.

Please keep in mind, this is my very first attempt at a loving wife story. I've read quite a few, but never tried getting nitty-gritty with this sort of genre until recently. I appreciate whatever constructive criticism is offered in whatever form it is presented. However, those whom blast me willy-nilly, I will ignore.

Although this story is loosely based on real events, the characters and their names are fictional. Any resemblance to anyone living and dead is purely coincidental. There are or will be instances mentioning real world events, which are used to enhance, clarify and extol a character's nature, rather than to opine my personal views. For this first chapter, I did my own editing, so any dialogue flaws, grammatical errors, and misspellings are my sole responsibility.

There is no sex in this chapter.

*

"Hi, Honey!" I greeted my wife, as I walked into the kitchen.

Melissa stood by the sink, braced up against it; her arms spread out on the counter top, palms down, as she looked out the window. She didn't answer me -hell, she didn't even look at me, but I was used to that.

She was deep in thought, but Melissa was often like that. She'd get something in her head and she'd worry it to death until she was satisfied that she'd thought it through. Until she figured out whatever it was that had her brain crunching away, she would ignore most other things. Including me. We'd been married twenty-two years, so I was used to those little quirks that she'd displayed throughout our marriage. Thus, I wasn't surprised, worried, or otherwise disconcerted by her silence and her lack of attention to me.

I walked through the kitchen, down the hall, upstairs to our bedroom and to the bathroom to wash off the dirt of the day.

I knew once Melissa came back to the world, she would remember I was there and come greet me at that time. As I said, I knew her little idiosyncrasies.

And sure enough, a few minutes later, as I was drying off, she came in.

"Hi, Mark. How was your day?" she asked. Although she was obviously aware I was home, she still looked thoughtful. Sometimes she would shelve whatever it was she was thinking about, until the normal routine of dinner and other nightly things were behind her for the day, but it would still hover.

"Not bad. Looks like Branden Stafford will be getting that executive position after all. Of course, that means he'll have to relocate to California. And they'll be filling his old position. That's the bad news. The good news is that I got Branden's old job. What do you think?" I asked, beaming proudly at Melissa.

"That's nice. I'm glad for you." replied my wife, with less enthusiasm than I expected. Mind you, I wasn't looking for a brass band and a street parade, but I thought a certain amount of cheer and perhaps some smooching might have at least been on the menu. Apparently, whatever Melissa had on her mind was still affecting her.

"Yeah. It is. It'll mean a larger salary and better hours. And, fatter bonuses." I explained, probably for the thousandth time, since I'd been informed I was up for the position.

"I know. And I'm glad of that." she said, still in a thoughtful voice.

Smiling at her, I asked, "How was your day, babe?"

"Mark. I want a divorce."

I stopped dressing. I stopped everything. It felt like my heart had stopped too. I wasn't sure I heard her right, so with mixed emotions, I asked her with a pretense of cheer, "What did you say? I thought I heard you say you want a divorce." I chuckled nervously.

"I do. I want a divorce, Mark."

I was dumbfounded. I had no idea where this was coming from. All sorts of thoughts went through my mind and all sorts of other things went through my heart. I think my thoughts and feelings were having a field day jumping between the two. And they sure became mixed, leaving me totally confused. I tried to organize my thoughts, so I could ask something calmly and somewhat intelligently. But all that came out was a surprised disbelieving semi-yell, "What!?!"

Melissa looked at me. I mean she looked at me like she was talking to an idiot. It was a look I'd seen her throw to other people when they said something that refuted the facts and assured her that these were not only ignorant cretins, but unintelligent ones too. Or as Melissa liked to say, "those incapable of being educated". Anyway, that's how she was looking at me. Of course, what Melissa had just dumped on me wasn't something that could be prepared for, and the only education to be gained would be from all the crap a divorce entailed. I'd heard plenty of divorce horror stories, and most I passed off as exaggeration. Although there were a few that had the ring of truth to them, and those did bother me. Not that I ever thought I'd be facing the same thing, but we guys do wonder.

"You want a divorce? Assuming this isn't some sort of sick joke, why do you want a divorce?"

I thought my voice sounded fine as I spoke. For a sixteen your old girl. Too bad I'm a forty-six year old man.

Melissa looked away from me, a sure sign she was either embarrassed, ashamed --or guilty. But then, she faced me again. I saw her eyes, looking highly determined, and that sight made my stomach feel very queasy.

"Mark, I met someone. We've gotten to the point where we know we need be with each other. I'm sorry, but I don't know how else to explain it but to tell you straight out. I didn't want to tell you this way. I thought...I don't know. Maybe..." she said, trailing off uncertainly.

Well, at least she began with my name, Mark. That is, Mark Layton. And you know now, I'm forty-six years of age. But the rest of what she said kind of got garbled after the last syllable of my name. So my mind worked at it while I stood there looking...well, I'm not sure, but I hoped I wasn't looking more a fool than I felt.

I was a gifted orator, which made my job, in large account sales, a breeze for me. Not only that, I was fast on my mental feet. Hell, there had been more than one time where clients had thrown me for a loop at the last moment and I'd landed upright, and come back for more, until I'd gotten the sale. This wasn't much different than those times, only more personal. Much more personal. So I used my gift of gab.

"You met someone. And you...what? Want to have a fling"

Okay, not my best moment, but I was still in the air, and hadn't landed yet.

I looked at her, square in the eye, trying to fathom where all this was coming from. I heard her words clearly, but they weren't making much sense to me.

"It isn't like that...It just happened....It was...chance." Melissa, my wife of so many years, began to explain hesitantly.

'What the fuck is "IT"?.' I asked myself.

Funny how the mind fastens on to one word and worries it --there IT is again-- until it gets meaningless and garbled. But I was morbidly curious and wanted to know what IT was.

I continued to look at her, not saying a word, but as I'd said, I was still falling, waiting to land. It was the longest I'd ever felt being airborne, even considering my short stint in the army as a paratrooper.

"Stop looking at me like that!" I don't know how I was looking at her, maybe like a gasping fish out of water? "Mark. I love him. I'm sorry. I never meant for this to happen."

With that sad epitaph to our dying marriage, she walked out of the bath and downstairs.

All sorts of feelings rushed and coursed through me, and the only thing that blazed across my mind was the question of, 'Why?'

I stood there, trying to make sense of it. Only there wasn't any logic, nor rationale, nor anything else that came to mind that offered a explanation of why my marriage was over.

I guess I should have been angry, maybe even furious, after all, what person falls for another without some deep level of intimacy being reached as part of the mix? Or what is so often call, 'cheating'. I would have been furious, if my mind had managed to reach that conclusion at that point, but I was stuck on the why of it.

I finally walked downstairs, thinking I would question her, try to find out what was going on. Was I somehow at fault? Did she think I had cheated, so she wanted to get some payback? Was I that bad in bed? I didn't know, but my nature --my character, urged me to find out. This wasn't about self-improvement, it was about the desire to understand why someone fucks over the one that loves them.

When I entered the kitchen, I expected her to be in there preparing the evening meal. Imagine my disconcerted surprise when she not only wasn't in the room, there was nothing out on the counters to indicate she'd begun to cook. Everything looked in order and spotlessly clean. Melissa had prided herself on being a loving mother and a great housewife. She never wanted to work outside the home. Although I did my share of the household chores, early on in our marriage she made it perfectly clear the kitchen was hers alone and strictly off limits to me.

I consoled myself with grilling outside on weekends, weather permitting.

I went looking for her, going room to room. I knew she had gone downstairs, I'd seen her, but just in case she'd snuck by me and went back up, I searched everywhere. She was gone. I went to the garage, and saw her 2009 Prius still nestled in close to the far wall. Figuring she was outside, I walked to both front and back yards, but no Melissa.

I thought, 'She's out for a walk. Maybe trying to collect her thoughts so she could confront me with a better explanation.'

It was somewhere along that time, while I looked for her, that I began to get angry, yes, my mind had moved off of the why of it, and had begun to put two and two together. She had cheated on me. Probably fucked some silver tongued snake in the grass, who filled her mind with thoughts and fantasies of 'Once upon a time and forever more.'

I went in to the kitchen --my last memory of her in there blazoned in my mind-- grabbed a beer and went to the den to sit and wait for her return. I must have dozed off, for the next thing I knew, the sun had set and it was early evening. It was dark, so I flipped the lights on and searched the house again, calling out to Melissa. Again, with the same silent results.

There were a few times Melissa and the kids, had spent a night or two away, usually when visiting her sisters or her parents, who lived just outside of the city, and I was okay by myself. Hell, I actually enjoyed the time to myself. But, now, the house seemed so forlorn and empty. I was definitely not enjoying the solitude.

I remember looking at the wall clock in the kitchen as I grabbed another beer, and it read 9:17. And suddenly I knew. It came as an epiphany. And her last words came to fill my mind, then my being.

Son of a bitch! She's already left me!

I frantically scrambled to get to my mobile phone. I called Melissa's on her mobile phone and I heard a distant chime. I had to call it a couple of times to locate her phone. It was laying atop the dresser in our bedroom along with her engagement and wedding rings, her credit cards, check book, and other such personal items, including her driver's license, and a large firmly sealed manila envelope.

I stared for what seemed like an eternity at the pile of what used to be my wife's life. It's funny how such a pittance of nothing can represent a life. But, then, in today's world we are nothing without our identification cards, insurance cards, bank cards, cell phones, and everything else that goes into making us part of our modern society. Each one of those things is a representation of something greater; each a portal to some substantial aspect of life. Without those things we are no more than street people. And without them, we also can't be traced, much like the homeless. At least, not easily.

I'm not sure what I thought as I stood in shock and dismay, with a increasing feeling of emptiness beginning to fill my soul.

I remember leaving the bedroom. I didn't want to be in that room, who the hell knew what went on in there? I sure didn't! And I didn't want to think about what my wife of twenty-two years might have done on our marital bed.

I wasn't walking. I was shuffling my feet. They weighed a ton apiece and I was suddenly drained of all energy. I still had the bottle of beer in hand, but it had grown warm, so I drained the bottle into the sink and placed it on the counter.

I guess I must have sat at the kitchen table and gone to sleep again. When I awoke, the sun was cheerfully shining in through the big patio doors. I heard the various distant sounds of everyday life as people and their animals began their day. I thought about calling in to work, but I had just gotten a promotion and I didn't want to give my boss the wrong impression, so with the same shuffle of a few hours earlier, I showered, dressed and went to work.

Before getting to work, I psyched myself up for the day. As difficult as that was, I managed to put aside some of the anguish, anger, and frustrations I felt. So when I entered the offices where I worked, although I wasn't as bright and cheery as was my usual manner, I did well enough not to attract any unusual attention.

I'd like to say that I made the day without any emotional upheavals, but what Melissa had done to me was too much, too soon, and I ended up becoming morose more than once. I'm sure more than one person noticed my mood swings, although no one commented on them. As much as I had begun to regret being at work that day, the thought of going home was becoming detestable.

The rest of the week was like that. I went to work, swinging back and forth emotionally, trying to not dump my anger on anyone there. Then going to a empty house. When Friday rolled around, although I could feel the end-of-the-week relief in everyone, I was filled with dread.

Throughout the week, I couldn't focus on my work enough to make any kind of perceptible impact on the accounts I handled, although I did manage to get an appointment with a prospective client for the following week. At the same time, as much as I tried to hold them back, thoughts of my and Melissa's marriage kept popping in from time to time. And, of course, her last words. They kept running around around in my mind. Maybe not at the forefront, but they came close enough to the surface for me to be conscious of them. And each day dragged on for an eternity. On Friday, when it was time to leave for the day, I wasn't sure where to go. Yes, I had a house to go to, but it was just that, it had become a house. It wasn't a home anymore.

The thought of spending two days alone, trapped with the memories of my former life, was too much for me to face. I had to go somewhere else, I just didn't know where.

Several thoughts pummeled my mind as I drove. I still wasn't sure where I was going, but wherever it was, it wasn't to my house. I was traveling on the wrong freeway to get to the house, and I'm not sure how I got there, as I had no conscious thought of driving in this particular direction. I quit worrying about it and just drove, while I tried to order my thoughts.

Did I want to stay married to Melissa? I didn't know. Or rather, I wanted to be married to the Melissa I knew. The woman I married twenty-two years ago. Not the one that confronted me Monday with her cheating. Was it just a few days ago? It seemed like a life time ago. It was fresh, yet old, in my mind.

After further thought, I realized I had no say in the matter. In my marriage. Whether I wanted my wife or not, the painful terrifying truth was she didn't want me. I could hope she would change her mind, if I waited long enough. It was just wishful thinking. For I knew she'd made up her mind. The look of determination on her face with the same expression in her eyes, was as sure a sign as the sun rose each day.

By this time, I had pulled into a secluded road, which lead up to a beautiful, very romantic spot on the lake shore that few people knew about. When Melissa and I found it, it was by pure accident. We'd been out looking at some property. We'd been discussing our retirement, and what we wanted to do then. We decided we wanted to live near the water, but not on the coast, due to hurricanes. The last piece of property we were to look at for the day was supposed to be in the area, near a lake. I got lost looking for it, while Melissa urged me to stop and ask for directions. This was before GPS became available and the map we were using didn't even have the street we were looking for, listed.

What did I do?

Yup, you got it. I became angry and stubborn, and drove and drove. That's how we found the spot my subconscious drove me to that late afternoon. We never did buy any property on the lake, even if we did continue to discuss it from time to time. Thankfully, the shore lot I was going to was owned by a very nice older couple, who refused our offer of purchase, but over time, as we went back and forth with various offers, upon noting how much we loved the area, allowed us to use it when we wanted to.

I had arrived at my and Melissa's special spot. We'd brought the kids many a time, but when we could get away alone, she and I would come here to spend a loving and very romantic afternoon.

The wonderfully wooded area was large, encompassing roughly twelve acres of unmarred unfettered nature.

The lake was a rippling sheen of tiny orange glitters that blazed like bright distant fires as the water gleefully reflected the sun's setting light. The breeze flowing across the lake waters was a soothing caress of soft fingers carrying a hint of nature's aromatic essence. The chirping of the birds, and the other sounds of nature's animals, the lapping of the water on the shore, the whisper of the wind; all mixed together, to become a melodious harmony of contentment and serenity. I hated it.

I didn't want to be calmed or contented. I wanted to rage and hate. Nevertheless, I climbed out of the car and walked to the lake. I stood there awhile with my thoughts whirling, and my emotions roiling, not seeing anything in particular. I then sat. The clapping sound of the water hitting the shore made me look at it. The little waves strove to reach my brown shoes, but failed before being forcefully pulled back, almost against their will. Then they'd began again. I know there was some kind of irony in that, but for the life of me nothing came to mind.

As a deep dusk fell, I finally stood. It had grown chilly. It wasn't autumn yet, but it was close. I was still aimless in my thoughts and feelings, but I knew I had to leave this area. It was too full of things that brought back memories of joy, tranquility, and love. Things that I felt I would never hold in my heart again.

Walking back to the car, my mind and my heart abruptly came together with a silent clash but reverberated with the impact, and I landed.

All week I'd been in the air. I knew it, but I forced myself to stay aloft. It was easier than handling those strange emotionally charged feelings I'd never known before. I knew if I let go they would overwhelm me, and I might be lost to myself forever. However, some things can't be held in for long and like a over pressurized bottle of hydrogen, I exploded.