I, Harley David (I love my parents but hated their sense of humor in naming me, especially since I don't ride a motorcycle), met the woman I thought was the love of my life when I was twenty seven years old and she was twenty five. Sarah Johnson and I had chemistry from the first time that we encountered each other. We were a little unlikely as a couple from the physical standpoint because I'm six feet four inches (193 cm) tall and weigh 230 pounds (104 kg) and she's five one and ⅔ (she's very proud of the "⅔ inch" ha, ha, although I don't know why someone would measure themselves to that degree of accuracy and it's a weird fraction for height), that's 157 cm, and 110 pounds (50 kg). However our personalities meshed perfectly, we had lots of interests in common as well as different ones, and we had about the same intelligence.
Courting Sarah and getting her to marry me would have been a piece of cake except for one impediment -- her evil stepmother, Belinda (a great name for a witch, don't you think?).
While evil to me, Belinda was loved by Sarah. Belinda was only nine years older than Sarah, and only seven years older than me, so they had more of a younger-older sister relationship. Belinda had married Sarah's father Norm two years after Sarah's biological mother died, and she and Sarah developed a close relationship. While Belinda never tried to be a disciplinarian she is excellent in manipulating people and in my opinion had an almost Svengali like control over Sarah.
Belinda doesn't look anything like Sarah. First of all at five feet eight inches tall (the same height as Norm) Belinda is six inches taller than Sarah. Her weight I found hard to gauge because she never wore particularly stylish clothes around me, but she certainly wasn't significantly overweight, if at all, but certainly was much heavier than Sarah's petite 110 pounds. While Sarah is the epitome of cuteness in my opinion Belinda's face is pretty ordinary, although she does have stunning ice blue eyes (I consider them haunting but to be fair most other people consider them stunning so I'll go with that) and although disguised by her wardrobe what looks like a pretty decent body. I think that she married Norm for his money because physically Norm is no prize -- Sarah's looks completely take after those of her biological mother Janice from photos that I have seen of Janice.
Anyway, it was always a mystery to me why Belinda didn't like me. I think that I was respectful whenever we interacted, and I never said anything mean to or about her, but I did question Sarah on occasion about her attitude. Sarah never had a real response either because she didn't know or chose not to tell me.
Eventually I convinced Sarah that despite Belinda's misgivings that I was the right guy for her and we married about eleven months after we first met. Unfortunately because of Belinda's objections and Norm's wimpiness we eloped and got married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas.
I tried my best to stay away from Belinda -- and because he was a wimp, Norm -- during our marriage. I thought that it was a great marriage when Belinda was not interfering. We both had good jobs, made more than decent money, and had a sterling sex life filled with both romance and physical satisfaction. Then after we had been married a little more than two years things changed precipitously.
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I came home from work one Friday at my normal time to find Sarah crying in the living room of our nice three bedroom house. I immediately rushed up to her and earnestly inquired "What's wrong honey?"
With a venomous reaction that she had never displayed before she moved her body away from my extended hand and said "As if you didn't know, you bastard," then took off and ran sobbing into our bedroom.
I couldn't think of what the fuck I could have done to make her so pissed at me; we never before had anything close to a disagreement that could even be considered a "fight" and I know that I hadn't forgotten an important occasion, destroyed any of her possessions, or even left the toilet seat up after peeing. I knocked on the door, called to her through it, and tried to get some clue as to what was going on. All she did was scream "Go away, leave me alone you bastard," every time that I asked her to communicate.
I finally gave up, made myself some dinner, and ate confused and silent with a pit in my stomach. Of course I could have easily broken the latch on the door by kicking or shouldering it, but that would not have helped the situation. So after another couple of unsuccessful tries I went into the guest room to sleep. Fortunately I had some casual clothes there so I could wear something aside from my business suit Saturday morning because I still couldn't get access to my bedroom.
At some point on Saturday when I was mowing the back lawn I saw Sarah's car leaving the street we lived on. I turned off our electric mower, went inside, and found nothing except for some clothes, toiletries, and some electronic equipment of Sarah's missing. There was no note, no communication whatsoever. I called her cellphone and it was off. I left a message with the hope, but no expectation, that it would even be received let alone responded to.
After I finished with the lawn I called all of Sarah's friends and co-workers that I knew. I acted nonchalant in my phone calls; none of them had any clue where she was or what the problem could be (I was very subtle in my inquires and didn't mention her crying or swearing at me). Finally I took a deep breath and called Belinda and Norm's land line and when there was no answer there Belinda's cellphone, also not answered. I left a message on the land line.
Sarah never returned Saturday or Sunday, nor did she, Belinda, or Norm call me. I went into work Monday thoroughly confused and depressed. I had no clue why my perfect marriage was apparently on life support.
Early that afternoon I finally got further proof that my marriage was on life support (at best) when while I was at my desk at work I was served with divorce papers. Unfortunately the divorce papers only indicated irreconcilable differences, no other reason. Since we had never even had a fight, and Sarah made no attempt at "reconciling," I didn't know how it was possible to have irreconcilable differences.
What the divorce papers did do was to make me go on the offensive; I wasn't playing defense any more. I always took that approach in athletics, including Division I college basketball, and it always had worked well for me in the past.
The first thing that I did was to get in contact with a divorce lawyer that one of my co-workers had used. He recommended her as the epitome of an Orca, one that killed sharks for fun. Her name was as appropriate as her reputation Athena Killem. Anybody who was on her wrong side always considered her surname two words and imputed an apostrophe before "em".
At Athena's suggestion within two days after I was served I countersued on the grounds of mental and emotional cruelty and served her through her attorney since we didn't know where she was and she worked in a secure facility that only authorized persons -- process servers not among them -- could get access to.
On my own -- Athena simply said "I never heard what you just asked" when I questioned her about it's legality -- I removed all of Sarah's precious possessions still in our home -- including two paintings and a dozen llardo figurines that were her most prized ones -- from our house, as well as my most prized possessions, and put them in a month-to-month storage facility that I had a friend rent for me so that it wasn't in my name.
It turned out that the countersuit and the removal of possessions from our house were both good calls. Those acts were the only thing that got Sarah -- albeit through her attorney -- to give me any information about what the fuck was wrong. The information I was given was a series of photocopies of photographs dated a few weeks ago that supposedly showed me fucking another woman in what allegedly was a hotel room in Detroit where I had gone on a two night business trip a week before I found Sarah crying.
