The new day allowed Melissa to gather her thoughts, and over a caffeine-laden breakfast, her normal decaf blend was in the recycling… she began to plan her revenge in detail. Uppermost on her mind was protecting her children.

At the very least, she could make sure that their future was safe. That future needed money if they were not to be saddled with huge amounts of student debt. Now that she knew more about her dear husband's finances, she was determined that he was going to pay for that future as part of their divorce.

Two things became clear after the third cup of coffee, and they were one: she was even more certain that she was going to divorce him on her terms, not his. The photo of his intern showed a definite bump in her stomach. She was very pregnant. Letting him go might just allow him to do the right thing, but deep down, she didn't think he would, but she would give him a chance. The second was that she would have to be careful not to tip him off. The last thing she wanted was for him to start covering his tracks before she served him the divorce papers and a detailed financial settlement.

Melissa clearly remembered watching some of his speeches on C-SPAN, in the House or to committees where he would berate the speaker or the witness for being corrupt to the core and that sooner or later, he’d catch them taking bribes before they could cover their tracks. All the time, he had been the one on the take. An operation that had netted millions of dollars, and she was just as guilty as he was for profiting from his corruption. Her only saving grace was that she had known nothing about it until now, so proving intent would be hard. Thank goodness for small mercies.

After a lot of thought about changing the venue for her meeting with Dana, she decided to risk it. She would have to accept that there was a risk that the meeting would be posted on social media and someone in his staff would see it. Some aspiring social media posters had recorded her every move in the hope of getting a scoop and their post going viral and, therefore, boosting their ratings. She'd seen it happen to the wife of another congressman. In the third decade of the twenty-first century, everyone with a phone was a potential source of a social media post that could easily be taken out of context and a career ruined.

By the time the coffee pot was empty, she had the outline of a plan for the weekend ahead. She had to make a list of demands for Dana. Plus, she had to hope that she could prepare the divorce papers before she went to DC, where she would confront him and his girlfriend. At the very least, she would get her great-grandmother's ring back. He owed her that, at the very least.

Just before lunchtime, Melissa rearranged her appointment at the Salon for the following day. Normal service and appearances were slowly being restored after the psychological tsunami of the email arriving in her inbox.

---

Melissa kept returning to the email and the photos. She began to wonder if he had taken other pieces of jewellery of hers and given them to her or one of the other interns with whom he'd had an affair. The more expensive pieces were in the safe that was hidden under the floor in his office.

Now determined to find out, Melissa went to the safe and tried to open it and failed. Her 'dear' husband had changed the combination. That spurred her to dig deeper into his papers in the hope that he’d written down the combination. She didn’t find the numbers, but she did find details of his other bank accounts. These confirmed that the images in the photo were genuine. Whoever had sent them to her certainly had it in for her husband. She owed that person a lot for opening her eyes to the real person she had been married to for more years than she cared to remember.

She had been at it for almost four hours when she found a memory stick buried in the bottom drawer of his desk. It was hidden in a box that had once contained some silver cufflinks that she'd given him to celebrate his first re-election to Congress. Also in the box was the pin that was given to all members of the House. A different one is issued for each two-year session of the house. There was no sign of the cufflinks; they were probably somewhere in DC or the trash... In its place was a 32Gb memory stick. Underneath the case, there was a thick wad of $50 bills. She estimated that there was close to $10,000 there.

Out of interest, she counted it, and sure enough, there was almost $10,000. One $50 bill short. When she got to the end, a wry smile came to her face. Not only was it just short of the limit where banks have to report transactions to Uncle Sam, but it tallied with a withdrawal from the account that was used … or should have been used to pay her a salary for being on his staff. It would be ironic if she used that money to pay for her lawyer and her flights to DC. Satisfied with her work, Melissa took that money back to the kitchen and left it on the counter.

Melissa dithered for around 10 minutes before inserting the USB drive into her laptop. When she browsed the contents of the USB drive, she swore at herself for dithering. At the top of the most recently modified files, there was a spreadsheet that recorded all the under-the-counter dealings he'd done since his first election to Congress. All the gory evidence of his corruption was there. She had discovered the equivalent of the crown jewels. That evidence answered the question of who had been funding their children’s schooling. The money had all come from a State-owned Oil Company in Russia. That left a bitter taste in her mouth. His boss had been mouthing off for years about the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia hoax’. Only it wasn’t a hoax, at least for one representative on that side of the aisle.

For a while, she wondered why he'd kept all that incriminating evidence. Then she realized that it was all part of his insurance policy. The USB stick also had details of the offshore accounts and the dirt on several congressmen, senators and very rich donors to the party. Even Melissa knew that it was dynamite if it fell into the wrong hands. If he went down, then they would go down with him. Other documents and images on the USB stick confirmed that. Dirt, dirt and yet more dirt all dragged up from the smelly DC swamp that our former dear president promised so many times to drain within months of taking office. So far, it was just another politician's broken promise. The sooner she was well away from the stench that had spread hundreds of miles to her part of the world, the better.

Another spreadsheet gave Melissa details of all his investments. It confirmed that the photo from the email was real and, sadly, was just the tip of the iceberg.

The sums astounded Melissa. Slowly, she came to realize that their lifestyle could not have been funded solely by his salary as an elected member of the house. His PAC and SuperPAC accounts had plenty of money in them, but no transactions had been made with them for the last four months. Before that, there were regular withdrawals of $9900. At first, she found that a strange amount. Something triggered a memory from a news report about our dear previous POTUS and how he could spend PAC money as he liked until he announced that he was running for re-election this year. Those withdrawals were just $100 less than the federal reporting limit. That alone seemed to indicate that he was up to no good.

Melissa was about to give up for the night when she made one more discovery. The records showed that she owned the house that she was living in. She'd always assumed that it was in his name, but a scanned copy of a letter from a tax advisor confirmed that for tax purposes, it was now in her name and was dated some ten years before, right around the time when Jeff was first elected to Congress. His signature on the transfer looked real enough, but hers was a forgery. The plot thickened.
That presented Melissa with another problem and a huge potential liability. To the best of her knowledge, she had never paid any property taxes. At first, she thought that was because she had no real income. She did receive a small allowance from her husband for the work that she did on his behalf in the district. Thanks to the nagging from Jeff, she managed that income carefully and only used it for things directly related to the district. Every cent was properly recorded. But… ever since they were married, he'd taken care of her tax returns. She wondered if she might be on the hook for a lot of back taxes, both local and federal. That would need to be cleared up with the divorce.

Melissa did some more checking on the county and state government sites, where she discovered that the property taxes on the house had been paid well in advance of the due date and that she was all clear on the property tax front. She was still very much in the dark as to exactly where the money for the taxes had come from, and only he could answer that, but she had her suspicions. That left the IRS.

Melissa went onto the IRS site and held her breath. Her account showed an income as one of the authorized staff of a House Member. While that was not that uncommon, she breathed out and wondered where that money had gone. None of it had come her way. Another grift? She didn't know. All she did know was that she was up to date with her IRS account. The same applied to her state income tax. Jeff had made sure that all her contributions to Social Security and Medicare were current. It was clear to her that he’d defrauded her of over $100,000 in income since he’d been elected and failed to pay her the salary that she was due as a member of his staff. The allowance was just 20% of the salary that he was apparently paying her. Thankfully, her bank account would not show the income that he was claiming should the IRS start investigating.

He'd been stuffing his pockets at her expense since the day he went to DC. Was he that shallow? Did he ever truly love her? The answers were probably Yes and No.

For a moment, she got angry, but then it dawned on her that the last thing her husband would want was a full IRS or state tax audit. Unlike the previous president, whose taxes had been under audit for years and was almost a badge of honor for him, for her, it was a disaster waiting to happen. So far, they’d been lucky. She’d never seen even a bent penny of the bulk of the salary that her husband was supposed to be paying her. For a moment, she wondered if that was used to fund his sordid affairs. Hotel rooms in DC didn’t come cheap, especially those frequented by the elected representatives in both houses.

Like most people, she was her own worst enemy when it came to taxes. He'd done them for her right from the day they were married. Before that, her recently deceased stepfather had done them since she came of age. There was no one to blame but herself. That would have to be rectified before she could move on with her life. His words came back to haunt Melissa.

“Don’t worry, your pretty little head with your taxes; I will handle them just like your stepfather did.”
She had been a fool for the entirety of their marriage. It hurt. Hard.

There was plenty of other evidence on the memory stick. The cache of saved emails to him at an account that she knew nothing about revealed a history of dirty dealings on bills with lobbyists. She made two copies of the memory stick and returned it to where she'd found it.

Melissa then spent an hour returning all the files to where she had found them after photographing every page with his fancy digital camera. All the time, her anger towards her husband was increasing. What a way to spend an evening. When she was done, Melissa uploaded all the files to her laptop. Then she wiped the memory card clean and filled it with music tracks, the crappier, the better, especially Rap and Hip-hop. He hated those genres. It might have been small, but it was a victory, and she was able to go to bed happy.

---

Melissa spent the rest of the weekend doing the same things that she did almost every weekend when her husband wasn't at home. She'd called it 'Keeping up appearances' for many years. That show included going to church and listening to a fiery sermon about infidelity. She had to fight hard to resist making a scene, and she left the church feeling guilty as sin, even though it was not her who had strayed. She counted herself lucky that she wasn't a Catholic. Otherwise, she'd be in the confessional for several hours confessing what she wanted to do to her husband, especially around making him eat his penis in front of the church.

After the polite post-service conversation with other church members, which was mostly making polite excuses for her absent husband, the whole charade made her feel dirty as hell. Pretending that he was working on a bill was just another lie to add to the dozens, if not hundreds, of lies that she’d told over the years.

The warm early spring weather allowed her to eat dinner that Sunday evening on the outdoor deck. Their house was built on the top of a ridge and had a view to die for. She felt rather sad that this could well be the last time she'd be sitting there enjoying the scene. Melissa was fully resigned to leaving the district but had no idea at all where she was going to end up.

That was for later. She had her adulterous criminal husband to deal with first.

As the sun set behind the hills on the other side of the valley, she raised a glass of chardonnay.
“To the place that my husband is going to, make it as hot as hell. To the place where I will go, make it a long way from here.”

[to be continued]

[Monday morning]

“Thanks for seeing me at such short notice, Dana,” Melissa said as she sat down in her office.

“I happened to have a free morning after another case was settled out of court last week,” came her reply.
Dana smiled at Melissa.

“So… How can I help you?”

“Dana, I know that this might seem odd, are you thinking of running for Congress this November?”

“Does your husband know that you are here, or did he put you up to this?”

“He knows nothing about it. I just want to prevent any possible conflict of interest.”

Dana smiled back at her. She had a great ability to put clients at ease with a smile. Many other lawyers, her husband included, could not do that.

“In that case, I can confirm that I’m not going to run. Your other half beat me by thirty clear points. I’m done with politics, at least as far as DC goes. Does that satisfy you?”

She smiled at Dana.

“Yes, it does.”

Melissa reached into her purse, pulled out $1000 in $50 bills, and put it on the desk in front of her.

“That is a retainer. If you need more, then I can get it.”

Dana looked her right in the eye.

“This sounds serious. I don’t usually get retainers in cash.”

“It is. Will you represent me?”

Dana sat back in her chair and looked Melissa in the eye.

“I’m guessing that you want a divorce, and you want to keep it on the QT for as long as possible?”

“Yes. So? Will you represent me?”

She smiled.
“I’m in. It would be nice to get at least one win over him. Some of the dirty tricks he pulled on me were cruel and totally unnecessary. He just did it because some of his fellow Republicans were doing it. This district is very red, but I wanted to give it a go, but that is yesterday’s news.”

Dana passed over some sheets of paper that she took from a folder on her desk. The folder was marked with Melissa’s name.

"That's our standard legal agreement. It lays out my terms and my costs. Read it and sign one copy. You can return it at our next meeting. I'll give you a receipt for the retainer. That commits me to at least hear your case under the rules of attorney-client privilege.

“Thanks, Dana, it is acceptable.”

Dana opened her desk drawer and pulled out a receipt book. She quickly filled in one receipt. After signing it, she handed it to Melissa.

“Are we good?”

“Yes, we are good.”

Melissa put the receipt in her purse and pulled out the sheets of paper that she was going to use to make her case.

“Those attack ads that you ran last time around where you accused my husband of being a crook were right, 100% right, but I didn’t know about it at the time.”

Dana smiled. Melissa guessed that she was going to enjoy this even if she could not scream about it from the top of City Hall.

“This email arrived last week.”

Melissa handed over a copy of the email with the list of interns' names. Then, she passed over printouts of all the photos that had been attached.

“Ouch! That must have been a shock. Do you know if this one is real?” she replied, holding the picture of him and his latest conquest.

“That ring on her finger was my great-grandmother's. I want it back.”

“That is some pretty damming proof? You can prove that?”

“I have the insurance valuation for the ring that includes a photo. The last time it was valued, it came in at over three grand. It describes the ring, the setting and the cut and brilliance of each stone. There is also a photo of the hallmark. That shows that the ring was made in Birmingham, UK, in 1908. My great-great-grandfather bought it in London before coming back home after the end of WW1. Any rings with that particular hallmark are pretty rare in this part of the world, according to the valuation report.

“So, the bastard is an adulterer and a thief. That won’t go down very well at your church, will it?”

“No, it won’t. But you know as well as I do, they will blame me for not being a faithful wife, however, that is not the worst of it.

Look at the second photo.”

Dana looked at the photo for well over 10 seconds. It showed some of his offshore bank accounts and the balances.

“That is some serious shit… if you pardon my language if it is genuine?”

“It is. I found a memory stick with all sorts of goodies on it. The details on it confirm their accuracy. At least without going into the accounts and checking them, but as I don’t have the passwords and other codes, I have to assume that they are correct.”

“Can’t you go to the Feds? This is way beyond a state crime. Sending cash to places like the Caymans is right in the purview of the Feds, as in the FBI and even the Treasury.”

Melisa shook her head.

“I can’t unless I have a lawyer who has experience of this sort of thing, and they all live in places like DC or NYC. That’s because the bastard has implicated me in his crimes. For example, I seem to be the owner of our home even though I can’t remember ever signing on the dotted line. My name is on some of the offshore accounts even if I have never been to those countries, nor have I signed any documents relating to those banks. It seems to me that if I implicate him, then I could very well charged as an accomplice. Hence the need for an expert in this area. That also costs a lot of money. I know from reading about other cases that as soon as I go to the Feds, they’ll freeze everything in sight, and they’ll remain that way possibly for years.”

Melissa took a deep breath.

“That’s why I want it quick and quiet. Then I can get out of here before the shit hits the fan and I become an enemy of the people around here.”

“If that is the case, then what do you want from me and the settlement? From what I know of you, you are a very thorough person, and you would not come here today without being well prepared.”

“I want out with as much as I can legally get to ensure his silence. If possible, a clean break, no-fault divorce. He can buy the house back from me. It must be worth well over half a million. This sheet should cover all my demands. I want at least a million put into trust for the education of each of our children. I’m not going to contest custody, and they will be of age before the next presidential election and the end of the next congressional term. Our children are away at private school, so they won’t be directly exposed to the mess of the divorce. When I get settled, I want to have access to them during the school holidays. Otherwise, he can have custody.”

Melissa handed Dana another sheet of paper.

“If you don’t mind me saying this, it seems to be a rather cold attitude.”

“Finding that he’s been using me to feather his nest and make me part of his crime was a huge shock. If he had come home as planned last weekend, I’d probably need a criminal defence attorney by now. Instead, I began to think for myself for possibly the first time in almost twenty years of being with him. To put it bluntly, I want to cut and run… As for the children, I don’t want to take them away from their schools. The next few years will be what shapes their future. I don’t want to threaten that, and I have to hope that he understands that.”

Melissa smiled before adding, “I’d like to have enough money to start again somewhere else. Don’t ask where, as I don’t have a clue. Also, there is no one else. I’m not the philanderer, the serial adulterer and a multi-million-dollar grifter come con artist extraordinaire.

“Then there are the local people here. Even though he is the one breaking the Ten Commandments, as I said, I will be the one blamed for not being the perfect wife and forgiving him unconditionally. I will be shunned by the community. You know that from your own experience.”

Dana looked at the papers without commenting for more than a minute. Then she looked at Melissa.

“Thanks for being honest with me, and yes, you are right about what will happen in the district. I had a hard time for a while for wanting to be me, having a career, and not playing the part of the perfect stay-at-home wife. That’s why I left the Church… It was more of a mutual parting of the ways, and now, I don’t regret it one bit. They seem to have lost the spirit of the word that Jesus was preaching. Today, they don’t understand the meaning of the word compassion. Those Sunday morning TV grifters are all about revenge and retribution and nothing about forgiveness.”

There was a brief silence before Melissa said,

“I’ve been through all the accounts I can find and ignored those that are only in his name. Taking just the ones that are in both our names and dividing them in two gives five point two million. If I add half a million for the injury of him cheating on me plus the sale of the house, then I estimate that is less than twenty per cent of the assets that are recorded on his spreadsheet. I will have more than enough to start again somewhere, as long as it is not somewhere like Palm Beach or Aspen. I have no idea how he came by all that money nor if any of it has been declared to the IRS.”

“And if he does not agree to that? I know from bitter experience that your husband is a stubborn bastard. He’ll probably try to call your bluff. What then?”

“His adultery. His party are the ones preaching family values. Making an intern pregnant is, for many of them, beyond the pale, even though some might be able to spin it into a positive, more than likely at my expense. His pregnant girlfriend could be enough to end his career, and I know that he was eyeing a place as a ranking member on both the House Appropriations Committee and Ethics Committee after January should they take the House. Then, the leader has sort of hinted that he could become chair of the Ethics Committee. I don’t think that he’d want to put that in jeopardy. That would be a perfect springboard to run for POTUS in 2028 or 2032, even if either of the jerks from Florida gets… by some miracle, elected in 2024, he will be a one-term doofus, if he even lasts that long. He’s probably standing for re-election in Florida but will be term-limited after that, which is why many of the pundits are predicting that a run for POTUS in 2024 will be it for him.”

Dana thought for almost a minute. She looked through the papers I’d given her. After a sign and a shrug of the shoulders, she said, “If you are prepared for the inevitable retaliation, then we can go ahead.”

She looked at the spreadsheet printout for several seconds.
“When do you want to present him with the papers?”

“I’d like to do it before the end of the week. I plan to fly to DC Thursday afternoon and go to his condo in Alexandria where that photo of him with her and the ring was taken.”

Dana grinned at Melissa.

“With the aim of catching them in ‘In flagrante delicto’ perhaps?”

“If that is the case, then good. He deserves it.”

“Thursday will be a bit tight unless I make the financial settlement a separate document… Then it will be doable. The difficulty will be finding a judge to approve the application. I have one that I think would do it, but it is only 50/50. He was a donor to your husband two years ago.”

“Please try to get the papers signed off.”

Dana smiled.
“If I propose to judge Schultz, that they are filed under seal until the end of the year. That may sway the judge. He’s up for re-election this year, and the last thing he wants is to be seen as going against a representative of his own party. Asking him to seal them until after November will probably sway his decision. He’s hinted more than once that he’s going to retire after this next term. If that is true, then any backlash will not matter to him.”

“Politics is a dirty game. I always knew that, but… just recently, I have begun to understand just how corrupt it is. Trump was right about needing to drain the swamp, except that he only added to it in his time in office.”
Dana grinned.

“Good for you. That shows that you are not a lost cause… yet.”

“I don’t know about that, but who I vote for is between me and my maker. It always has been despite the grilling I got from ‘him’ after every election.”

“If you let me get cracking on the divorce papers, then the sooner, I’ll get to ask the judge to approve them.”

“Ok and… thanks. If you need more money please just ask. I’ve told no one yet, but if I get the papers signed off, then I’ll serve them on him myself in DC. I’m done with this state, especially its politics. When I collect the papers, let me have your bill, and I'll settle it on the spot. This is not a prima facie case. When I go to DC, I have no intention of returning here ever again.”

“Good for you.”

Dana looked at the papers for a few seconds. Then she said,

“What about money for the here and now?”

“Oh…” I remarked.
“I had not thought about that. All my credit cards and bank accounts are in joint names.”

“Then you know what to do. If you can get your bank account and a credit card by the time I get the papers ready for you to sign, the better it will be for you if he says no. At least then, you will have access to some funds.”

“Thanks, Dana. This is all a bit strange for me.”

Dana smiled.
“You are doing a lot better than many women who come to me in similar circumstances.”

Melissa nodded.
“That’s probably because I’ve had to fend for myself for most of the time since he went to DC. With him gone for so much of the year, I’ve learned to balance both the household and his PAC books. Working out what I wanted was hard. It was hard not to want it all, but I’m not going to be greedy. Trying that on will be a loser, and he’ll fight me until his lawyers eat it all up, and there is nothing left.”

“You don’t like lawyers, do you?”

“Not the sort that charges $5000 per hour and wears a different suit every day of the week, and only eats at the best restaurants, I don’t…”

Dana stood up, telling Melissa that their session was at an end.

“In many of the divorce cases I handle, I keep a small retainer on the book even after the divorce is finalized so that I can be your lawyer. Is that ok with you? Then, if you need to call, I can answer you under our existing terms and conditions, plus our Attorney-Client privilege would still apply.”

It took a few seconds for Melissa to understand what she had just said.

“That is good to know, and I’m good with keeping a small retainer in the bank, so to speak. Thanks, Dana.”

“Good luck, Melissa. I’m sure that you will find the right place to settle down and the right man to be with.”
Melissa ducked out before she embarrassed herself. The mere thought of ‘finding another man’ at that time made her feel rather ill. In time, that would pass, but at that moment, Melissa was not into men or at least any of the men that she’d known in recent years. Those were all just like her soon-to-be former husband. Shallow and born liars. Finding someone who would treat her as a woman and not as an object to be shown off to prospective donors would be impossible in this part of the world.
It was only on her drive home that she realize that she'd been rambling and repeating herself during her time with Dana, yet Dana had not commented on it. She must have seen that sort of reaction a thousand times, but for Melissa, it was a strange but slightly unnerving situation.

It was now down to Dana to come up with the goods and for Melissa to appear as normal as possible.

---

[Tuesday morning]
Dora, her hairdresser, was her normal chatty self. Melissa tuned most of it out because she wasn’t going to be here for the events that she was going on about. All she did was nod and grunt in the right places.

She’d almost done her roots when Dora said,

“Melissa, I hope that you don’t mind me saying you seem different today?”

She panicked for a moment.
“How am I different? I don’t think so. Perhaps it is the good weather we have been having?”

“It is just that your whole aura seems to have turned upwards. In recent months, that was not there. That is a positive sign in my book.”

“Thanks for the compliment, but I have some tough times ahead. Politics is a messy business. Jeff has still not finally decided to run again despite him submitting his papers at the start of the year.”

“But… His people are out fundraising… or they were at the County show a few weeks back.”

“They were fundraising, but that money went into the general PAC for the Republican candidates that are standing for the state house. Until he formally announces, he can’t start raising money for the campaign unless he uses a Super PAC, and as far as I know, it hasn’t been touched since the last campaign. Beyond that, I don’t know. All those Election Finance rules are a bit strange to us country folk,” said Melissa, laying it on.

“DC is a strange place,” said Dora.

“We went there on a school trip, and I hated it.”

Melissa laughed.
“It is an acquired taste, I’m afraid. Not the place for me.”

Melissa didn't think that Dora believed her, but gratefully, she didn't labor the issue. Melissa left her a slightly bigger tip than normal in the hope that she hadn’t been found out.

Being a well-known figure in the district, thanks to her husband, was on most days a benefit, but now, it was a hindrance. People would engage her in conversation whenever she was out and about. Melissa carried a notebook in her purse just to record the encounters and would relay them to her husband if she thought that he could help with their problems. Most of the time, she would refer them to an agency of the city or the state, but keeping a record helped when they would ask her what was happening about their complaint.

This was part of the job of the dutiful wife that she hated. Many of those cases were lost causes even before they’d opened their mouths, but she had to smile and try to deal with them as best she could.

Melissa headed home via the deli as she often did. She was determined to maintain an aura of normality for as long as possible. For a change, she decided to splash out on some top-quality pastrami and to hell with spending a couple of dollars more than normal. A load of rye bread and some Dijon Mustard would make a nice lunch if accompanied by a nice red wine. Jeff’s private wine cellar could provide that in abundance. It would be hard to resist smashing every bottle on her way out of the door.

Getting a bank account set up in her name plus a credit card had proved to be very easy. One call to the bank where their joint account was held, and it was done. Melissa went into the nearest branch the next day to sign the forms, and a new credit card in her name came by express mail the next day.

Nevertheless, Melissa began to experience a definite feeling of being in limbo while she waited for Dana to do her thing and report back on progress. In her ample free time, she’d even found her passport. She was relieved to find that it had one more year to run before it expired.

Keeping up appearances was still the name of the game for the time while she waited for Dana to work her magic. On Tuesday evenings, she would normally go along to the local American Legion Post and talk to the vets. They had so many issues that it was downright depressing, but in some cases, she’d been able to help with getting them the help that they needed, even if some of his donors had found it strange that she had wanted to help what one of them called, ‘a bunch of freeloaders’. Despite what the previous POTUS had more than once said about wounded servicemen and women, she felt honored to at least try to make their lives better.

Melissa’s father had served in Vietnam and had been affected by Agent Orange. He’d probably still be alive now if he hadn’t been exposed to that chemical. The VA had helped him as best they could, so helping them now was her way of paying them back despite her lovely husband voting against the last Federal budget that had included more money for the VA that was earmarked for Agent Orange sufferers. They had one of their few arguments about his time in DC when she found out about his voting record. They had agreed to disagree on this matter but after that, Melissa would always check on how he’d voted.

This week was no different to many others. She tried to give help and understanding to those in need. Melissa felt bad because she would not be around to report back. It was hard not to just get up and leave them alone, but she didn’t. That wasn’t her. She cared about the little people, unlike her soon-to-be former husband.

The more she thought about it and, especially during conversations with the Vets, the more she discovered how different she had become from her husband. He'd moved very much to the right in his politics, and, to be honest, he'd left her behind. It wasn't that she disagreed with his views at first; she did, but recently, some of the proposals he'd made in the House were way too extreme for her, especially those relating to the rights of minorities, especially members of the LGBT community. They were not drifting apart; they were diverging like two railroad tracks, one going north, one going south. He was the one going south, wearing a red hat and a Confederate Battle Flag.

The arrival of that email had only served to make a decision that she had been putting off since the 2016 election easier. Politics of the sort being promoted by the previous POTUS and his cult was not for her, and she wanted out as soon as possible.

---

Dana called Melissa just before 10 am on Thursday.

“You got it signed off?”

“Thank you, thank you.”

“I’ll be in to collect everything before 4 pm and settle my bill. If I am lucky, I can get to the airport for the last flight of the day to DC.”

Melissa hung up, feeling that there was indeed light at the end of the tunnel, even if she was unsure where that tunnel would lead.

[to be continued]

Melissa’s hotel in DC was as boring and anonymous as only a chain hotel could be.

She checked in just before 11 pm. The concrete box room was costing her well over $200 just for the night. For a boring, soulless room that didn’t even have a chair that wasn’t bolted to the floor, it was outrageous, but that is DC for you. She decided that as she was still married, his or rather their joint account should pay for it.

The upside was that it was fairly close to her husband’s condo in Alexandria. The ownership of that was a mystery to her, but she recalled him saying that he’d bought it after his first re-election, but he never did divulge how much it cost. She kicked herself for not including that in the list of assets to be divided in the divorce, but it was too late now and… If she had been too greedy, he would have more to argue against.

Melissa turned in almost as soon as she got to her room. She had an early start in the morning because she planned to pay a visit to her husband a little after 7 am. If she could rely on one thing about her adulterous partner, that was that he was a stickler for routine.

That routine would mean that he would rise at 6:45 am, take a ten-minute shower, have a shave and spend five minutes flossing his perfect-looking but 100% fake teeth. She wanted to serve him with the divorce petition before he chose which one of his more than thirty made-to-measure suits he was going to wear that day. Compared to some others in his party, he was always immaculately dressed, especially when compared to the jerk who always appeared on camera in shirtsleeves and frequently sporting a yellow tie that told everyone that he would act like a coward when the going got tough.

The suit was all set off with a blue shirt and a silk tie. The shirt was his attempt at appearing as a man of the people. It was all fake, but he did look a lot more professional than his yellow tie-wearing colleague who had the next office to his in the block next to the Congress building.

---

[The following morning 06:50]
A cab dropped Melissa off at the end of the street where his condo was located. Once again, she paid with their joint credit card. Now that she was in DC, she didn't care who tracked her and her spending. With what she was about to do, any pretext of being stealthy just didn't matter. Unless someone was monitoring the card activity in real time, she was good to go. She would only use it a couple more times before hopefully being a free woman at last.

Her watch said 06:52 when she quietly let herself into the condo with the key that he’d given her after his first re-election. She could hear the shower from upstairs. Good, she thought to herself, he’s on time.

Melissa headed straight for the kitchen. As she had expected, the coffee maker was just springing into life. Two cups were on the worktop next to the machine. Two cups meant that either he’d got wind of her impending visit or that ‘she’ was here.
Then, she saw that one of the cups had the string of a teabag visible. The box of tea on the counter said 'Zero Caffeine'. That confirmed it, 'she' was here. At least she was looking after the baby.

‘She’ could witness the documents provided that she was over eighteen. If she wasn’t, then Melissa would be calling 911. Statutory rape was a crime here, just like back home. He could probably wiggle his way out of that one, but his career could well be over.

Once the shower stopped, Melissa could hear two voices. That confirmed it. She or possibly another ‘she’ was here.
The clock had just ticked over to 07:10 when he came downstairs.

“Fuck!” was his first word when he saw Melissa sitting calmly at the kitchen table.

“Nice to see you. Looking ready to battle the opposition, as usual, I see?” was her prepared response.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Melissa?”

“I’m here to serve you these,” she said, thrusting the three documents into his chest.

“What?...”
Then he saw the top document. The word ‘Divorce’ was right there for him to see.

“Why are you doing this? I thought that we were good?”

“Why? Because of this.”

She handed him the picture of his pregnant intern.
“Don’t ask who sent it, as I don’t know. I would guess that it was one of your staff. I’d like the ring back, by the way, it was my family's only heirloom, as you well know.”

Her soon-to-be former husband, Jeff, was usually so sure-footed under pressure. He was one of the few on his side of the aisle who could debate issues rather than slagging off the members on the other side. For once, he was lost for words.

His surprise only increased when he read the second and third documents.

The second document was their public financial settlement. This was the one that showed him buying their house from her and where money from his legal accounts would be put into trust for our children.

The third paper was where it visibly hurt him. This was the division of the offshore accounts.

“I think that I’m being very reasonable considering the trouble you would be in if those accounts in Panama and the rest were made public.”

“But… you would go down as well. Your name is on them?”

“True, but as I have never been to Panama nor to any of the other countries where you have accounts, I could hardly have signed the documents opening them. Unless… you used someone posing as me, but I don’t think that even you are that devious.”

Finally, he sat down with slumped shoulders.

“How long?”

“How long have I known about this? The email arrived just over a week ago. The picture of the ring made me very suspicious. Then I found out that you had changed the combination of the safe, where I had assumed that the ring was all safe and sound. That simple thing that you did without telling me caused me to go and investigate. The flash drive that I found was very, very incriminating. Your donors would not like to be exposed should the records on it go public.”

“I…”

Once again, he was lost for words. Melissa was sure that it was only temporary. She wondered what sort of lies were forming in his mind to explain away all the foreign bank accounts with her name on them.

Just then, ‘She’ appeared. She took one look at Melissa and stopped dead.

“Please join us, Bethany. How far along are you?” I asked, referencing her obvious ‘bump’.

“Twenty-three weeks,” she muttered as she sat next to Jeff.

“The ring, please. It belonged to my great-great-grandmother. That was how I knew that the picture on the table was real.”

Melissa stuck her hand out.

Bethany looked at Melissa’s husband. He nodded.

She removed it and gave it to Melissa.

“Once he signs these papers, he will be free to marry you. I take it that he has mentioned the ‘M’ word, seeing as he has that ring on your left-hand ring finger?”

Bethany looked shocked. His reddening face told her that he had been avoiding it. Typical.

“I’m setting you free, Jeff. A no-fault divorce under seal until after the November elections. It is the quickest and cleanest way, don’t you think? Dana has done the hard graft and cleared it with the judge. All you need to do is to sign the documents.

Jeff slumped. Bethany looked for some empathy from him, but it was not forthcoming. He was just staring at the financial documents.

Melissa decided to take the initiative.

“Bethany, I take it the tea is for you?”

She just nodded in response. Words were just not coming out of her mouth in any meaningful form.

Melissa stood up and put the already prepared kettle on to boil. While she was at it, she found a large mug in a cupboard and poured one cup and one mug of coffee. The mug was for him. He looked like he could use it rather than the tiny cup that was sitting on the counter.

Then, she went to the fridge and got the non-dairy creamer. Melissa hated the stuff, but Jeff told her to use it at home. The rebel in her compromised and only did so when he was at home. In a show of defiance, Melissa decided to take her coffee black.
“Here, drink this,” said Melissa, putting the large mug down in front of him.

Once the kettle had boiled, she filled the other cup and gave it to Bethany, who sat there dunking the teabag.

“I’m not the enemy,” said Melissa.

Then she turned to Jeff.

“The revelations in the email just made it easy to decide, I want out. Sign the divorce papers, transfer the money and tell the children, then I can be out of your life for good.”

“What will you do?” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“I will go travelling for a bit. Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, London, and that’s just for starters. That will give me time to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. There is one thing that I am pretty sure about, and that is I will not be back in this country for any length of time, until after the November mid-terms at the very earliest, but at the moment, I just don’t know. If and when I am back in the country, I will not be going anywhere near your precious district, so you will be safe from me. I won’t rock your re-election boat if that is what you are worried about.”

She let that sink in for a few seconds before continuing.

“I don’t want to get in the way of your grifting. Thanks to your donors, I’ll have more than enough money to set up pretty well anywhere on the planet. I know one thing, and that is it probably won’t be in the lower 48. Costa Rica sounds nice, but again, I don’t know where I’ll end up apart from not being anywhere near your district or here. What your party is proposing is beyond the pale in many aspects. How you could support getting rid of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and even Food Stamps is beyond the pale. I have kept silent for far too long, but no longer. As for those so-called ‘infrastructure weeks’ that your dear leader kept promising, Joe might be old, but he’s doing more for the working class of this country than Trump would ever do. You, my hopefully soon-to-be former husband, are following his lead and voting against it. No doubt, you will be out in the district championing any projects that are going to help your constituents despite your voting record. Being two-faced is just par for the course for you, isn’t it?”

Melissa took a drink of coffee. Ugh. It was decaffeinated.

“Will you let me go, or do I have to play hardball?”

“I need to think about this,” he muttered.

“You have until this time tomorrow. After that, you will need to be on a plane home. You have to attend the Kruger’s silver Wedding bash, or have you forgotten? I sent off the RSVP for just you just to make sure that you will be there...”

He didn’t react.

“You see, I still care about you and your public image. I’ve been the perfect stay-away-from-DC political wife. I didn’t want to rock the political boat back in the district even now when I could have so easily done so. I let myself be used for years ever since you came home from one of your fact-finding trips and announced that our children were going to go to Private School. It was a done deal. I now know that it was financed by a deal you did with a coal company that is owned by a Senator from across the aisle. Let them continue to pay. One day, I’ll tell them what went on, and they can make up their own minds about who is the bad actor. Your continued statements about the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia hoax’ and that the 2020 Election was rigged should get you a prime slot on MSM [1] if I have to go public with all this stuff. You can take those half dozen other Congress critters down with you if you choose, but I want out. Let me go on my terms, and I won’t rock the boat. I will let you concoct some story to explain my absence. I’ve been doing that for years so now, it is your turn to lie to everyone but as you do that almost every day in the house and on Fox, it should not be that hard.”

Jeff looked worried. He was holding the document that described the trust fund for their children. His knuckles were white. Jeff did not like hearing the truth from Melissa.

“Don’t worry, Jeff, I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag until they are both eighteen and legally adults. That gives you one more term at least to feather some new nests. Play ball with me and marry this lovely young lady, and I will keep my lips zipped. Yes, I can be bought if our children have a future, a future that they can choose and not one dictated to by their parents.”

Melissa picked up her cup of coffee and emptied it into the sink. Then, more out of habit than anything, she rinsed it and then put it in the dishwasher. Only then did she stop and think. ‘What’s done is done, now it is up to him to play ball’.

Melissa turned to face her husband.

“Until this time tomorrow, then? You must know that letting me free is the best way forward for you both. Sign the documents, transfer the money, and we can be done. With another child on the way, you need to concentrate on her, not worrying about me and if I was going to find out about your infidelity.”

She then headed for the door into the hallway and turned around.

“Jeff, that tie does not go with that shirt and suit. Please stop wearing blue shirts. You are not and have never been a man of the people. Only people on the other side can do that. Even Fox commented on it last month. Hannity was just not impressed. Just wear a white shirt, for heavens’ sake. If you selected it, Bethany, then you really do have a lot to learn about the father of your child. He always has to look better dressed than the leader of the party in the house. Those shiny suits that Kevin has taken up wearing do nothing for him but just make it less obvious that your own ones are hand-made. Look at the baggy, shapeless crap that Trump wears. Somewhere between the two would be good.”

Melissa left them to it. She’d said what she’d come to say. Now, it was up to him.

Melissa emerged from the building and took a deep breath. She felt unclean despite having a shower that morning. The seed was done and was at a loose end for the rest of the day. The last thing she wanted was to hang around DC, where there are always freelance paparazzi on the lookout for a story. Melissa, being Melissa, had a plan.

She took a cab from the end of the street to Union Station, where she caught the next AMTRAK service to NYC. There was an exhibition at the MoMA[2] that she wanted to see. It would be a nice diversion from the swamp that is DC… the one which a certain president said that he was going to drain, just like the builders of DC had done over two hundred years before so that the capitol could be built. They’d succeeded, whereas the previous POTUS had failed miserably.

---

Melissa didn’t switch her phone on until her return train to DC stopped at Philadelphia. In the middle of all the dross, there was one text of significance.

“You win. Back Sun PM. Come to dinner.”

It was from her soon-to-be former husband.

That gave her almost 24 hours to do her own thing unless…?

She went back to her hotel with a definite plan in mind. She had not had to sit and listen to him prepare countless speeches without at least some of it sinking in. Keeping the upper hand in negotiations was something he bragged about in his campaign speeches. He'd go on about how he always managed to get something over on the other side during the horse-trading that went on when finalizing bills. It was all lies. Anyone who watched C-Span would know that.

Getting her husband to sign away a significant amount of his legal wealth wasn’t the problem. If he wanted out of their marriage, then that was the price that he’d have to pay. As she’d not asked for regular alimony, he should agree to it. The other money was a different matter. The size of the sums involved told her that these were well beyond what could be raised by a simple grift. In her opinion, almost all politicians were involved in a ‘grift’ of some sort when it came to raising money. Promise to promote an issue in return for a campaign donation if it was regular and sizeable, then even better. Small personal donations of ten or twenty dollars did nothing for a campaign when millions and millions were needed. The Super PACs made it easy for those big donors to fund campaigns. That money would, in turn, be funneled to the candidates’ campaign PAC. Grift and corruption were everywhere thanks to a series of rulings in the equally corrupt and right-wing dominated SCOTUS.

She had learned that lesson during his first primary campaign, where Jeff had defeated a five-term incumbent. Jeff’s backers had ten times the money of the incumbent. She went along with him because his dream of being elected to office was what spurred him on and had been a lot of what attracted her to him in the first place. Back then, there was a drive about him. Now, it was all about the filthy lucre and the horse-trading.

His affairs with the interns and now the discovery of his grift had finally done it for her. Now, she had to take a leaf out of his playbook and keep the upper hand until the documents were signed and the money transferred to her accounts.

---

The next day, Melissa rented a car and visited a couple of Civil War Battlefields as well as George Washington's home. There was no sense in wasting her last free day in DC moping around the hotel and deflecting the many lounge lizards, two of whom had already tried to pick her up.

---

With Jeff out of DC for most of the day on Sunday, Melissa went grocery shopping. She was going to cook him his 'last supper'. That way, he could not back out of the deal, or so she hoped.

A cab deposited her right at the front door of his condo. She said a small prayer and hoped that she wasn’t there. She was in luck. The place was empty. There were signs that whoever was last there had left in a bit of a hurry.

Melissa took the opportunity to have a look around. She didn’t go digging in drawers or anything so invasive, instead, she just looked at the state of the place.

Jeff was a neat freak. That had very much rubbed off on her, and over time, she’d become much like him. She found that the master bedroom was a tip. This wasn’t Jeff or, rather, the Jeff of old. The second and much smaller bedroom was where Jeff was sleeping. His freshly laundered shirts were hanging from wardrobe doors, still inside their plastic sleeves.

It appeared that Bethany was sleeping in the master bedroom. If she had been suffering from morning sickness, then it made sense as it had an en-suite bathroom.

With her inspection over and done, she began to prepare dinner. Melissa had decided to make him his favorite meal, dry rub ribs and fried catfish.

She was about to find out if the way to his heart was still through his stomach.

[to be continued]
[1] MSM: Mainstream Media, aka MSNBC, CNN etc and even Fox News.
[2] MoMA: Museum of Modern Art in New York.

[Sunday evening, Washington DC]

“Thank you for not being angry with me over all this,” said Jeff as he poured some wine.

“I am angry as hell, but knowing you as I do, going ballistic with you won’t get me anywhere. Then there are our children to think about. Add to that the party with its new focus on ‘family values’, God and the sanctity of marriage with a leader who has cheated on all of his three wives; I decided that the best way to go was as quietly as possible. As you are fond of saying that, in a time of crisis, no publicity is the best publicity, especially if you want to run again in November.”

Melissa smiled. She’d used words from his last speech in the house against him.

“Thanks for hitting me with my own words. I deserve it all.”

“You do deserve to be exposed as the crook that you are, and for a while, I wanted to cut your dick off and make you eat in front of the whole church. Once I’d found all that lovely money, I thought relieving you of most of it would hurt you the most. You, like the rest of your party, love getting hold of money and keeping it. It isn’t for nothing that your district chairman calls the RNC ‘Grift Central’. With ‘the Donald’ in the White House, everything was done to take as much money from any source stupid enough to cough up, and that included many of the poor people in your district. I have heard many, many complaints about Donald’s grift from the people you pretend to represent. The Hanson family from where we lived when we were first married had their accounts emptied by Donald’s fake campaign to ‘stop the steal’, which we all know is a big lie in itself. It took me months of representations to them to get even half of what he’d stolen back. Even today, I don’t know where the money came from. It all stinks to high heaven, and you are part of the stinking swamp.”

“Ouch.”

“Not ouch darling, the truth. Donald’s presidency was just one big grift. Look at Jared. Weeks after leaving office, he gets $2B from the Saudis, and no one bats an eyelid? For what exactly? People in your district see that and shake their heads. Most of them are just ordinary hard-working Joe’s and not MAGA. We all were part of it, and that includes me as your face on the ground. Most of us went along willingly, even myself, which I will have to live with for the rest of my life. The party is going down a blind alley. The total lack of policies that are relevant to the average Jolene and John in the district will only hand a victory to the other side in ’24, and it will only get worse, a lot worse. With all those idiots like Lauren, Margery, Paul, Matt and now you as fully paid-up members of the MAGA cult, I want out. I can’t live with your grift and lies any longer, and yes, I will live off that grift. I can live with that, knowing that I’m out of the swamp. If this hadn’t happened, I was very close to telling you to quit for the sake of our family. Adam took a big step in joining the Jan 6th committee. His decision to quit because of the direction that the party is going, and the same with Liz… Well, that got me thinking. That was something I hadn’t been doing until someone sent me that email. Think of it as payback for not giving me any of that salary that you have apparently been paying me since you were elected… You know the one that I have been paying taxes on but never seeing even a penny?”

Melissa took a sip of the wine. The skinflint had chosen the cheapest bottle in the chiller cabinet. It wasn’t the worst that she’d ever tasted, but one glass would be more than enough.

“Did that make sense?”

“Yes, and I have made several promises to my donors that I’d try to see us through this.”

“I was afraid of that being the case,” she said sadly.

“I could have given you an ultimatum, which you just told me would have fallen on your increasingly deaf ears. I could have walked out with a scene, but I didn’t. Your passion for Interns has given me an exit path that will provide for our children and leave me with enough money to get established somewhere else. I’m done with being your wife, and my shame is that I didn’t understand before this that I was done with it when ‘he’ went into the White House. You know my opinion of him, so I won’t go over that ground again. The country has had a chance to recover under the current POTUS, but it seems that your friends want to lead us into oblivion with Trump V2.0 which will be even worse than before. How many of your voters rely on Social Security and, Medicare and even Food Stamps? If you vote to reduce them in the next congress and somehow Biden does not veto it, I hope that in 2024, you get thrown out on your ass. You stopped caring about your voters other than to relieve them of their cash years ago. I’ve been more of a representative to them than you could ever be, especially to the Vets. You know the one who you keep voting down bills that would give them financial or medical help. You have no idea how hard it has been at the VA after one of those votes. Care about the Military? You care more about the shine on your shoes than those who are serving and have served.”

He didn’t respond.

“If you must know, I voted for Biden in 2020, and I voted for Hillary in ’16. While she was an awful candidate, she would have made a far better POTUS than him!”

My dear husband was still reeling from my broadside, so I followed that up…

“Are you ready to sign?”

He looked her right in the eye.

“Are you sure that you are not going to run against me? I would not want to debate you.”

“Me? Run for office? Think again, sunshine. That is the last thing I would ever do. One thing that the ‘Former Guy’ got right is that this place is a swamp. The only thing is that he didn’t drain it but made it a whole lot worse, and Bill Barr was just the most recent swamp monster in chief.”

She saw a slight but detectable nod of his head.

“I was asked when I was at church last weekend. ‘Have you gone all in with the radical evangelical loonies?’. I didn’t have an answer. Reverend Morrison was clear that it was not what the Lord Jesus would have done. He and the rest of the deacons are hoping that you don’t, but from your last interview on NewsMax, they are too late. I have to say that I am with them on that, but given what you have said, you are running on the ‘Ultra MAGA’, ‘God, Guns and Trump’ ticket. That is a shame. I thought that you were better than that, but no, your lust for the almighty dollar wins over working for those who elected and continue to elect you like the blind idiots they are. You have betrayed their trust in you big time. I am only sad that I never opened my eyes until now to see it. Trump and the rest of you MAGA cult are devoid of any empathy towards your fellow humans. That, in my book goes directly against the teaching of Jesus.”

“I… Kevin told me that I have the backing of the party, but… there have been rumors of a challenge in the primary.”

“That look on your face says that you don’t want out? That might not be for the best if you are actually going to play the devoted father for the first time?”

He managed a small smile.

“You are enjoying putting the knife in me, aren’t you?”

“I am, but don’t you think that you deserve it? I have remained 100% faithful, but you have played away for the past ten years.”

“I am so sorry, but… I never appreciated what I had with you in my life.”

“Cut the crap, Jeff. I was out of sight, out of mind after your first term, here deep in the swamp. I have finally come to my senses, and it is time for me to have a life. Why don’t you get your pen out, and we can get this over with.”

“Ok. Ok.”

Jeff did get his pen out and signed the documents. A copy each plus a third for the court.

Melissa checked them over. They were good. Bethany witnessed them, and they were done as a married couple.

“And the usernames and passwords?”

Jeff took the document that was our second and unofficial financial agreement. He wrote down the password for each of the accounts and passed it back to me. The passwords were all identical.

“Really? You used something as obvious as that?”

He’d written down the names of our children, with each letter of the youngest slotted into the name of the oldest.

“I thought it was rather clever.”

Melissa shook her head.

“Thank you. I’ll send the docs to Dana once I’ve checked and changed the passwords. She’ll file them with the court under seal.”

Then she added,

“If I don’t get them filed, you won’t be free to do your duty and marry your intern.”

“As for marriage…? She… She is having second thoughts.”

Melissa gathered up her copies of the documents and put them into her bag.

Then she stood up and started to walk out of his life just as ‘she’ returned from a brief visit to the bathroom. Melissa stood aside and let her sit down at the table.

“Marry this SOB and keep him honest. I know that somewhere inside him, there is a decent person… If you can get him out of this swamp.”

With another smile, she tossed her key to the apartment onto the table and walked away.

---

As soon as Melissa was back in her hotel room, she logged onto the bank in Panama. She breathed a sigh of relief as the screen showing the balance appeared. The sum was as they had agreed, which pleased her no end. She changed the access password and logged off. Melissa repeated it for the other two bank accounts in the Caribbean. He’d been truthful… so far.

With the sum of money that he'd paid her for the house and the not-inconsiderable sum offshore, Melissa was technically a millionaire several times over. The problem was that she didn't have a clue what to do with it. She'd been so engrossed with getting even with him for his years of infidelity that she had not thought much about 'what's next' for Melissa version 2.

She repeated the operation with the banks in Abu Dhabi and Grand Cayman.

Melissa was almost free of him. There was one last job to do. Telling children that their parents’ marriage was over was not a job that she relished.

---

[two days later, offices of an accountant in Boston, MA]

“Thanks for seeing me at such short notice,” Mr Kerry.

“It is not often we get a call from the wife of a Republican Representative.”

“Actually, it is his ex-wife now. I need to set up a fund to cover my immediate tax liabilities while I go traveling. Until now, my husband has been doing my taxes, so I have no idea about what I owe or am owed. Mostly, he just said, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about it’.”

That was a bit of a lie but useful in showing that she needed his services.

Mr Kerry smiled.
“What you have just said is not that uncommon.”

“That is why I am here. I have spent some time looking for a tax accountant who does this sort of thing. You have a good reputation for getting spousal tax liabilities sorted out after a divorce.”

“Thank you for being diligent. Some companies promise the earth and deliver peanuts if you get my meaning.”

“That is good to know, but that aligns with your reputation,” she replied firmly.

“I have copies of all the tax records that I could find at my former home, plus the financial settlement between us. I am prepared to sign whatever authority you need to get him to work with you to settle things before the end of the tax year next April. Ideally, I’d like it all settled by the end of July.”

“Melissa… May I call you that?”

She nodded her head.

“It is nice to see someone who is at least half prepared for the work that I have to do on your behalf. That will save a lot of time and, naturally, your money. Do you have a new place of residence?” he asked after glancing at the settlement document.

“I don’t. To be honest, I have no idea where I will go apart from somewhere outside his district. I’m going traveling very soon and don’t plan on returning here until after Labor Day at the earliest. Then I’ll have a better idea about where I’m going to settle down, at least temporarily.“

He smiled.

“Then I will set up a PO box for you. If you update me as to your whereabouts on a periodical basis, I will forward any postal mail you may receive.”

“Thank you, Mr Kerry. Shall we get down to details?”

Melissa left Mr Kerry a little under two hours later. She had time for a brief lunch stop before heading to the meeting with her children. Three copies of her new will were in her purse. She’d named her children as sole beneficiaries. In the event of her death and they were not legally adults, then her estate would be put into trust for them. Mr Kerry had been very understanding about her wishes. She’d even paid his bill in cash before she left his office.

[2 pm that afternoon, at a private school in MA.]

“I am sorry that it came to this, but your father and I are getting divorced. He signed the papers last night in DC.”

“Mom? How could you?” said Brittany.

Zane was trying not to laugh.

“What’s wrong, Zane?”

“It is his Intern, isn’t it?”

“How do you know that?”

“My tennis partner, Scott, is the son of one of his opponents in the house. He told me that his latest intern was looking a little pregnant when he saw her last week near his office. He was warning me about the consequences of playing the field. I’d just broken up with Terri and…” said Zane.

“That is good advice, but yes, his current Intern, Bethany, is expecting.”

“Are we going to have a stepmom?” asked Brittany.

“I don’t know, darling. That is down to your father and Bethany.”

“What about you, Mom?” asked Zane.

“I’m going to do a bit of traveling until the end of summer, but I’ll be back for part of the holidays. Your father has custody of you until you both come of age. We could have argued about it, but we thought that this was for the best. I need time to decide what I’m going to do. At the moment, I don’t know where or what I’m going to do for the long term. While your father is a politician, there will be some stability in your home life, at least until I get settled. Both of you are almost adults, so you don’t have to put up with him for very long if that is what you want.”

Brittany wasn’t saying much.

“What about you, darling? You are very quiet?”

“What is there to say? We don’t count, do we?”

“Both of you count. Your father and I have just grown apart, and his latest affair… That was the last straw. I need to get away from everything for a while. While you are at school, it is the best time. Your father and I will be sharing custody of you during the holidays.”

“You mean passing us around like someone with the plague,” said Brittany.

Her words shocked Melissa.

“That is not the case. I could have probably said it better. Both of you will be staying with me for part of the summer holidays. Where that is yet, I don’t know. We will let you know well in advance. Besides, once you are eighteen, then you can do what you like… even giving us the finger. That would be your choice.”

“Are still you speaking to Father then?”

Melissa sighed before she could stop herself.

“As far as I know, we are if it concerns the two of you and your futures.“

“What is going to happen to us?” asked Zane.

“Will you still be here next semester?”

“That is our intention. Part of the divorce settlement is that there is money set aside in trust for your education. There is more than enough to pay for the remainder of your time here and going to college and even for a master’s or a doctorate. That includes tuition and living expenses.”

Melissa felt rotten to have not been there for them during their formative years, but 'he' had been sent to a prep school by his parents, and if it was good for him, then it was good for our children, and she didn't have a say in the matter. At least she'd had a say in which schools they were sent to. These were more, shall we say, 'liberal' than the ones he'd been to.
Zane and Bethany were turning out to be very rounded young adults. For what little part Melissa had played in their education, she was proud.

“The last thing I want to discuss,” she said.

“Is my will. I’m giving everything to you. I’ve got copies of my will for you just in case Both of you will be taken care of. Your father gets one dollar, the rest is yours.”

“This is so morbid,” said Brittany.

“Brits, it has to be done. With the divorce, all previous wills are null and void,” said Zeke.

“Thanks, son. You are right. I don’t intend to pass through the pearly gates any time soon. If the worst happens, then you will both be set up for whatever you want to do with your lives. Anyway, that’s enough of the talk about death, I’m alive and kicking and looking forward to a new phase in my life.”

Melissa looked at her children and said,

“I’ve never looked at another man, and at the moment, I’m off men. Don’t worry about me; just pass your exams, and I’ll see you in the summer vacation.”

She gave them both a big hug. Despite their father, they were turning into lovely young adults.

Once she’d said her goodbyes to Brittany and Zane, Melissa was now at something of a loose end. She had just had the one conversation she hoped to never have with her children. At least they were old enough to understand at least most of what was happening without creating a scene.

Melissa headed back to Boston, intending to drop off her car at the airport and spend a little time in the city. After returning to her rental car, she took the shuttle to the terminal. Instead of returning to the city, she found herself in one of the terminal buildings and looking up at the departure board. A flight to Rome kept attracting her eye.

That was it. Melissa headed for the airline ticket desk and bought an open return ticket in coach with her new credit card.

Two hours later, Melissa boarded the flight without a clear plan for where she would go in Europe, but she was off on an adventure that could shape how the rest of her life shaped up.

As the plane taxied towards the runway, she decided on two rules for the trip. The first was that she was not going to flash the cash. The new Melissa was going budget class all the way. As she’d been on a budget at home for years, that would not be a strain. The main reason was that she'd anecdotally heard many tales of single women having big problems while traveling alone and appearing to have money. None of the clothes that she had with her had designer labels. All of those had been left behind at her old home. The second was that romance of any sort, even a one-night stand, was out of the question. She decided that she'd buy what was needed locally as and when it was urgent and that her one medium-sized suitcase would have to be it. If she bought something new and it didn't fit, then something would have to go.

The plane took off, leaving her old life behind her. What lay ahead was, as they say, in the lap of the gods.

[End of Part 1 of 3]