A tale of three halves is set in both the USA and UK. It is fairly contemporary in that it starts in 2022 and I hope reflects at least partially the Political Scene in the USA then and sadly now.
The first part of the story is about the grift and corruption in US Politics today and is told from the POV of those left behind at home when someone is elected to Congress.
[April 2022 – At a home in a small town on the edge of the Ozarks]
The lady of the house, Melissa, was getting ready to leave when her phone rang.
“Hello, Darling. I was just going to leave for the airport. What’s wrong?”
"No, you don't have to explain. I understand. You have to make sure that the bill you proposed is passed. Those pesky lobbyists would love to kill it. I saw one of them on Fox Business, sounding off about how bad it would be to the country if it passed. If getting it passed means a lot more glad-handing and sucking up, then do it. I know how much it means to you."
"Ok, next weekend it is then. That means we can both go to the Krueger's Silver Wedding party. I don't look forward to going alone as you know very well that they are your biggest donor in the district, so you can do a bit of groveling for a few bucks."
“Ok, I will RSVP them tonight. Bye.”
Melissa put the phone down and sighed. Her plans… their plans for the weekend just went out of the window. The result of his phone call was that she would have to revert to 'Plan B'.
[one day earlier]
Melissa read the email that had arrived overnight for at least the 50th time. It didn't say much, but the attached photos said more than a million words could ever do. Her formerly safe and entirely predictable world had just come crashing down from a great height. She hadn't a clue who had sent the email. She had tried to reply, but it was returned as ‘undeliverable’.
That didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. What she did know was that she had to do something about it, and the sooner, the better.
Melissa had never suspected her husband of this… While the odd fling is pretty common in the 'Swamp' that is DC, but this… he had gone way too far even for what is generally accepted as the norm for elected representatives in Washington.
In her current emotional state, she could not face anyone at the moment, especially a very chatty hairdresser and manicurist. Those people were experts at getting to the bottom of their client's problems through a combination of mind reading and seemingly idle chat. That would often result in gossip spreading like wildfire in their small town. After sitting at her desk with her eyes closed for nearly twenty minutes, struggling to control her crazy emotions, she phoned the salon. That was the hard one. She made her excuses and didn't reschedule. Melissa hoped that her excuse of, 'I have a bit of a cold,' spoken with her fingers squeezing her nostrils, would be enough.
Once she’d cancelled the salon, she was able to relax a bit and try to plan her next move. Her husband was due to come back to the district the following weekend. This weekend was supposed to be for them to start to plan the local part of his re-election campaign. He had a lot of schmoozing to do with a gathering of his largest donors planned for the following Saturday night. That would give her some time to lay it all out for him in all its gory detail.
If he bailed out on the weekend, she would have to go to DC, but she needed a plan for when she was there. She had to confront her cheating rat of a husband. She’d heard of and read about several wives of politicians who had cheated big time and how their comfortable world had disappeared in a flash. Their ranting had got them nowhere other than their five nanoseconds in the limelight. All the stories had seemed to end badly for the wife who had done nothing wrong. Melissa looked at the photos once more and decided that enough was enough. She had to ensure that she came out the other end with at least a roof over her head.
The more she thought about it and after an hour of searching on the internet, the more she began to accept that Congressmen cheated with their interns almost every day. From the reports, it was nearly always another representative or someone else's intern. To her everlasting embarrassment, she'd ignored the signs of his affairs. They were there for her to see if only… Like a lot of things in her life, she did not see what was in front of her until someone pointed it out to her, in this case, in an email. Her safe and decidedly cozy life as a stay-at-home wife had ended in the time it had taken her to read the text and look at the attached images.
Then there was his squeaky, clean and upright reputation back in the district. He was a deacon in their church. When it got out as it invariably would, his many sermons on marital fidelity would condemn him to temporary condemnation by the members of the church. Melissa would suffer the same fate as it would be assumed that she was less than devoted to her husband and their marriage than she should have been and that she was the real reason for his affair, or was that affairs plural?
Forgiveness is not part of the 'Fundamental Christian' mantra in her part of the USA. In some of the churches in their part of the world, the ideas put forward in 'A Handmaid's Tale' were not that far-fetched. Women were supposed to get married, have children, stay at home, and keep their mouths and vaginas firmly shut to anyone but their husbands. They are there to look after their children and their husbands in that order. If he strayed, then it was her fault, and she would be banished from the church. That was the fate that lay ahead of her. If the husband strayed… then he would be forgiven, and the spouse blamed for not being the perfect wife. His only punishment would be to be removed as a deacon for a period while he served penance for his crimes. Her banishment would be permanent. That, in turn, would make living in the district next to impossible.
Melissa remembered the incident where, not long after her husband had been elected, the GOP Representative in the adjacent district had had a drunken fling with another man in DC. The wife was always blamed for not being attentive enough and hounded out of the state with nothing but her car and the clothes on her back. The fling was never mentioned again. The children were subsequently raised by his parents. Their mother had been erased from family history. It was she who was made out to be the one who had strayed in the marriage. That was a taste of what she could expect if she exposed his adultery to the press.
It wasn't as if he hadn't been warned. Since his elevation from a lowly county representative to a seat in the US House of Representatives and now onto two very prestigious committees, he'd had a couple of not-very serious flings that hadn't lasted very long. This latest one was by the image shown in the photo, in a very different league. It looked like this was a case of 'third time unlucky for her'. If he was re-elected, then he’d become the GOP ranking member on at least one of those committees. He would become an almost permanent fixture on channels like Fox News and Newsmax, as well as the local TV stations.
Their nineteen years of marriage had gone out the window in the time it took to take a photo. The image of her great-grandmother's engagement ring on ‘her’ finger would stick with Melissa forever.
The remaining photos were of a collection of documents. Those documents were bank statements. All of them had the name of her husband on them. A few had, much to her surprise, her name as the account holder. This was all news to Melissa, especially the ones that were from banks in Panama, Abu Dhabi and the Cayman Islands. The sums of money were astronomical. She had to count the number of zeros twice. As she had run the finances for his district office and later his congressional election campaigns, Melissa knew in great detail the sums of money involved in those operations. While they were large, they were dwarfed by the amounts on deposit in these accounts.
It had always irked Melissa that her husband was always complaining that she spent far too much money on clothes for the countless times when she had stood in for him on official duties. A woman has to dress the part, but a man could wear almost any suit as long as it wasn't tan-colored. Jeans and polos were allowed for the men at BBQs, but she would have to be a perfect image of womanhood and would have to wear a new outfit that no one had seen before. That cost a lot of money, and her husband was a skinflint when it came to spending money on her. Thankfully, Melisa had learned the art of ‘mix and match and accessorize’ from her mother.
Almost everyone laughed at Obama when he wore that tan suit. Fox News spent weeks tearing the POTUS apart. They still bring it up when he makes a public appearance. Then, there was her husband’s refusal to buy a new car. Their one car was almost a decade old. When he flew to and from DC- he would always take the cheapest flight, even if it meant a five-hour stopover in Atlanta or Chicago. He'd say that it was all part of his carefully cultivated image of being a man of the people. The truth was very different. Her husband came from money from before the Civil War. His ancestors had seen what was coming and sent all their money in gold to London and Paris for safekeeping. Melissa was from a humbler background.
She knew that it was all an act from day one. She had gone along with it just to please him and keep her cozy life intact. It was starting to dawn on Melissa just how much of his life was an act, or like his 'dear leader' just a downright lie? She didn't know. The images that were now ingrained in her brain seemed to say that his DC life was one big grift.
Thanks to that grift and the anonymous email, she had discovered that her skinflint husband was sitting on tens of millions of dollars. Her level of anger was rising with almost every minute. Melissa was determined not to keep quiet, let him divorce her in favor of a younger model, and be left with nothing.
She knew how much money was in his Super PAC, and it was nowhere near enough for him to get re-elected in November. At the moment, there were no challengers from his party that would be strong enough to force a primary election in a few months. Therefore, he'd likely face a pretty weak opponent in November as the district was very red-leaning and had been since the 1960 election. Even a one-sided campaign would need at least three million dollars. He simply didn't have that sort of money in his PACs at the moment. His donors would have to cough up most of that. Small money donors in the district were thin on the ground. If there was a fight for the seat, then they'd dust off their wallets and purses and stump up otherwise, the good folk of the district kept them firmly shut.
Moving any of this other money could start people in the wrong places asking questions, especially the FEC and, eventually, the FBI/DOJ. The party would not worry despite almost constant claims of 'draining the swamp'… the DC swamp. Neither the former President nor the Party had done a thing about it when they controlled the House and the Senate as well as the White House. If anything, they had only added to it, and her dear husband was right up there filling the swamp with his urine. Then, she had to consider his reluctance to publicly commit to standing for re-election despite his filing the papers as required by law more than a year ago.
All sorts of horrible thoughts started going through her mind. Was he going to head on down to somewhere that did not have an extradition treaty with the USA with all that money with ‘her’ and start a new life? She just didn’t know what he’d do when confronted with the facts, but being left carrying the can while he lived on some tropical beach and enjoyed life was not an option for her.
It seemed pretty clear that with the rumors about other interns and now ‘her’, he was a serial adulterer. That Melissa could handle, but the money was a different matter. That could lead to jail time for both of them. Two of the offshore accounts were in joint names. Melissa would swear on a stack of Bibles that she had nothing to do with them. The only time she’d been out of the country was when the whole family had gone to Cancun for a holiday after his first election to the state legislature. Moreover, she wasn’t even sure if her passport was still valid.
Melissa had been such a dutiful wife… there was that horrible word ‘dutiful’ again. She was annoyed that she'd let herself be played by the one person in her life whom she thought she had cared about. She was such a fool, and even thinking about that hurt right to her core.
Her life, as she currently knew it, was over if the unknown sender of the email made good on their promise to go public in ten days unless certain things happened. One of those was Melissa divorcing Jeff. The sight of a pregnant intern wearing a family heirloom made that decision very easy.
Her next problem was how she was going to recover that heirloom and move on with her life.
The one more thing other than a divorce that she was sure about was that he would never share her bed again.
More out of frustration than anything, Melissa went for a swim. When her dear husband told her that their new home was going to have an indoor pool, she was overjoyed, and like many things, she never questioned the cost.
The pool was her place to exercise and to think. He had his gym in a room next to his office. He never swam, and she never worked out. While they were married, they lived very separate lives. Now that she thought about it, they had been emotionally separated for years. Now, it was time for that separation to be both physical and legal.
Her swim lasted for just two lengths. Melissa’s emotions finally caught up with her, and she had a good cry at the edge of the pool. She hated crying. It was just not her, but the events of that day were more than enough to tip her over the edge.
When she'd recovered from both the swim and the crying, one thing was very clear to her. Melissa was going to divorce him, and she needed to go and see Henry Gibbs, the attorney who had handled the estate of her late mother. If he couldn't handle a divorce, he'd know of one who would be able to handle it with the necessary confidentiality that her position in the community demanded.
Her final task of the day was to start making two lists. One for ‘Plan A’ when she’d face up to Jeff that weekend. The other was for ‘Plan B’, where she’d go to DC at the end of the following week and sort it all out there.
She fell asleep hoping that he was true to recent form and would cry off from visiting his district that weekend.
The phone call with her husband, Jeff, had made her wish that ‘Plan B’ was the way to go a reality. The one thing her free weekend had given her was breathing space. Space to prepare to face her husband with all her ducks in a row.
At the top of her list was lining up a divorce lawyer.
As she thought, Henry Gibbs was unable to help with the divorce, but he was able to recommend another attorney, Dana Thomas. Dana was a divorce lawyer. Melissa kicked herself for not thinking of Dana because she was the person that her hopefully soon-to-be ex-husband had run against for his seat in Congress almost two years ago.
The downside was that Dana could not see her until the following Monday. It looked like she'd have to do her best to hide her emotions from him over the weekend, especially if he was coming home as planned.
There were a couple of community events on the calendar that he'd be expected to attend if he was in town.
Melissa wasted no time in calling the organizers of the event that she or Jeff would have attended that weekend and cancelling their attendance. Her excuse of getting over a cold was accepted without much question. She had an almost perfect record for attending events on behalf of her husband ever since he was first elected. She did hate having to lie to people that she’d known for years, but if her plans worked out, she would not have to face them ever again.
With nothing better to do, she went for her daily swim. This would be one thing that she’d miss from leaving the house for good.
The feelings of anger and frustration this whole thing had given her didn’t go away even after a one-mile swim. No matter what she tried, all she could see was her going to DC and confronting him. Deep down, Melissa knew that it would not matter that much if she was just mad at him. The email contained a list of six names. She knew, or rather, she had met them all at least once. The five-term representative that Melissa had the misfortune to be married to had at least one intern on his staff every year. All the names were of the women interns that he’d employed. The bitter taste in her mouth seemed to get more intense with every passing minute.
Their big house seemed even emptier than ever as she contemplated her next move. It was all very well arranging an appointment to see Dana about a divorce, but what else? She had to think about their kids, Zeke and Brittany. They were away at a private school. That was his idea, and it was presented to her as a done deal. Another piece of the jigsaw that was his life of grift in DC fell into place.
The sheer amount of money in their joint account was nowhere near enough to pay the fees for their education. He’d simply said that it was ‘all taken care of’ and the fool that she was believed him. She believed him because she was trying to play the role of the ‘Good Wife’ aka ‘the dumb blonde’ and not question anything about his life in DC.
If the money wasn’t coming from one of the accounts shown in the photo, then who was paying the bills, and what was expected of her husband in return?
With every step, his double life became murkier and murkier, and she had been blind to it all. Melissa felt so mad at herself for not seeing his duplicity for herself and had stuck her head in the sand until the email arrived.
Melissa had played her part as the dutiful wife of a congressman all these years. She had attended countless functions in his absence. She had never gotten used to being introduced as 'The lovely wife of our congressman Jeff Michaels’. They never used her name. She was always the wife of… It frustrated the hell out of her, but she let it slide. He was our representative in Congress and there to serve us… Only that he was serving himself and not just to huge amounts of money.
Melissa felt so guilty for not suspecting that he was a nasty, crooked SOB years ago. All those engagements that she'd attended in his place, always looking as good as she could. Her bulging closets were filled with outfits that she'd worn just once or twice. At his insistence, a slip of paper was attached to each one showing what function it had been worn to. Again, at his insistence, her hair was now blonde, and she’d get a good telling off if she let her brown roots show at an event.
Even with him being hundreds of miles away in DC, he ruled her very existence. The email was going to change that. Of that, she was sure, but… how? She didn’t have a clue other than they were done. The philandering might have been forgiven, but the money and his pregnant intern wearing her great-grandmother's ring was unforgivable.
Despite all this being on her mind, she did manage to get some sleep thanks to a little white pill. Something else she pledged to give up when she made her break from this god-awful life.
[to be continued]
[Cape May, NJ]
“Mom, what are you doing?” asked Brittany.
Melissa was standing at the window of their apartment, peering into nowhere.
Her daughter’s words brought her back to reality.
“Oh, sorry. I was miles away.”
“Were you thinking about Jack?”
“Sort of. Why?”
“Mom, didn’t I unpack your case when we arrived while you sorted out something for us to eat? I found his letter.”
The realization that his love letter to her had been exposed began to sink in.
“Did you read it all?”
“We both did.”
Melissa’s face fell.
“Mom, that was a beautiful love letter. He really cares about you.”
She nodded her head.
“Mom… Jack is a real person with real feelings for you. That showed through from almost the first sentence. He has opened himself up to you. Dad would never dare show even one little weak spot. He makes him all about himself, just like Trump. From what you said and reading the letter, it is clear to us that this Jack character is a very different person from Dad. What he says makes it clear that he loves his life, and he wants you as part of it as an equal. Dad never treated you as an equal partner. You were there to be the good housewife and not have an original thought of your own. We didn’t understand that until a couple of years ago. Being away from home and DC has given us both a different outlook on life. That’s why we told him to his face the other evening over dinner that we were not going to become tools in his political advancement. Gramps cheered. Dad stormed off in a huff. He came back later in a cab, very drunk. That was the first time he has shown us that he was a human being for as long as either of us can remember.”
Melissa welled up. No one had ever spoken to her like that, and it hurt that it was left to her daughter to give her the facts of her old life.
“Mom, it does not matter to us if he wants to wear women’s clothes. We aren’t like Pop. Two of my classmates are lesbians, and one of Zane’s is openly gay. That does not make them lesser people.”
“That’s not what your father was saying three weeks ago on RSBN? I saw his interview on YouTube. It made me so angry, and I hadn’t even met Jack then.”
“That right-wing propaganda channel needs to be shut down right now,” said Zane, who had just come into the room.
“Along with Newsmax and Pox News.”
Melissa was lost for words.
“Do you want to be with him?” asked Zane.
“At the moment, no. He’s up to his neck in wool. It is the middle of sheep shearing season.”
“Shearing?” asked Brittany.
Melissa smiled.
“I had that very same question. Once a year, all the sheep that live on the moors for most of the time are brought down to specially constructed pens where teams of men with clippers cut the old wool off the animals. I watched a video of them doing it in Australia, and it only takes a few seconds.”
“What happens then?”
“The wool is graded and sent to buyers. Most of Jack’s wool goes to a factory where it is turned into insulation for buildings. Jack supervises that stage of the operation.”
“He’s not doing the shearing then?” asked Brittany.
Melissa shook her head.
“They employ specialist teams who move around the countryside all summer. It takes skill to do it quickly and not injure the animal in the process.”
She swallowed hard.
“But they do operate from dawn to dusk. The shearers are paid by the animal. They come, shear every animal move on to a new location and repeat it. At least that was what Jack told me about the operation.”
A silence fell over the trio.
“When are you going back to England?” asked Zane.
“What do you mean?” said Melissa.
“Mom, it is clear to both of us that you would rather be with him than here with us. So?”
Melissa didn’t answer.
“What if we came as well? Then you are spending time with us as you promised Pop, as well as with him.”
Melissa shook her head.
“And when your father finds out? He will go berserk and accuse me of trying to turn you against him. He could apply to the court to revoke my access to you until you are of age. I don’t want that to happen.”
“Who will tell him then? We won’t.”
“What about your social media? Won’t it look suspicious if you suddenly go dark?”
“We can announce that we are going offline for a bit of cold turkey.”
“And if he comes here looking for the three of us?”
“Does he know where we are?”
“He knows that we are in the vicinity of Cape May. All he needs to do is call the cops and say that he suspects I have kidnapped you, and I’ll be a wanted felon. Sorry kids, as much as I’d like to get on a plane with you, it is not going to happen.”
“Will you go back to England when we are done here?” asked Zane.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Mom!” exclaimed Brittany.
“Go. This man sounds like a great guy, and they are thin on the ground. After Dad, you deserve someone completely different, and Jack seems to fit that bill…”
Melissa smiled.
“And there speaks the voice of experience.”
“No, Mom, not mine but the moms of several of our classmates. They have been traded in for younger models and, like you, are free agents. We’ve both listened to the tales of disaster when it came to finding a good man to hitch up to. Then you find one without even trying?”
“What about his desire to…”
“Mom,” said Zane as he looked at his sister.
“You need to know something.”
He swallowed hard.
“I’m gay.”
Those two words dragged Melissa out of her malaise in a flash.
“Zane? What about those girls you dated?”
“I dated them to keep Pop happy. They were all daughters of people he wanted to curry favor with. I dated them for a bit, and then we parted. They were in on the game so none of them were horrific breakups. Dad was happy that I was dating, but all the time, I was secretly seeing a guy from school. Brittany knew about me a long time ago, but because of him, we agreed never to say anything.”
“Now that you are free of him,” said Brittany.
“It is time to let you in on the secret,” she said, smiling.
The news about her son had rocked Melissa’s world. She’d been rebuilding her life since the divorce, but this news had thrown a wrench into it big time.
Her shoulder sagged, and she sat down on one of the stools in the kitchen.
“Mom, don’t be sad,” said Zane.
“It had to come out sooner or later. Don’t worry about Pop. The plan is to formally come out on my eighteenth birthday. He’s already talking about throwing a big bash in DC with all his cronies, backers, lobbyists and especially those who have daughters over sixteen. You know what he’s trying to do. Coming out as gay would put his scheming nose well out of joint and in public. It would be a political kick in the balls for him.”
Melissa shook her head.
“Don’t become like your father, darling. Yes, he’s become a real bastard since going to DC, but you are better than him, and you know it. If he does put on a birthday event for you, then I suggest that you just don’t turn up. That will cause him to lose face with all his cronies. Then… when he balls you out for not being there, you can tell him that you were thinking of him by not coming out at the party. That will shut him up for long enough for you to exit stage left. Not embarrassing him by coming out as gay would be far worse than not turning up.”
Zane thought for a moment and then smiled.
“Mom, you are too good at this. You should become a politician and stand against him!”
Melissa laughed.
“I’ve had a lot longer dealing with your father than you have, and besides, I value my sanity and integrity. If I ever mention standing for anything beyond a school board, you have my permission to put me out of my misery.”
“Ok, Mom. I will remember that promise!” he replied, smiling.
[Later that evening]
Brittany came into the lounge of the apartment carrying her laptop.
“I’ve been looking at flights.”
Melissa internally groaned.
“You said that you went to a place called Yorkshire. I found it on the map, and there is a flight from Kennedy to Manchester tomorrow night that has space for us. How about it? We don’t need a visa as tourists…”
Melissa looked at her children. From the looks on their faces, this was one battle that she was not going to win.
“What will I tell your father? And how do you have your passports with you?” asked Melissa, who was suffering from a bit of temporary brain fog.
Zane looked at Brittany, who nodded her head.
“We had hoped that you would send for us from Europe, so we made sure that we had them with us when we went to stay with Gramps. Besides, we would have needed them to go to Cancun,” said Zane.
That sounded reasonable to Melissa. The proposed trip to Mexico had slipped from her mind.
Brittany smiled.
“You know that I was talking about becoming a Veterinarian?”
“Yes?” replied Melissa, wondering where this was leading.
“There is a college not far from Manchester that is one of the best schools in the UK for Veterinary Studies.”
“So?”
“They also run degrees in Environmental Management and Sustainability,” added Zane.
Melissa suddenly understood that she’d been outwitted by her children. For an instant, she was angry; then she felt proud, proud to have two very intelligent children in her life.
“So? You would like to visit and put your names down for 2024 and 2025?”
“As we are foreign students, we don’t go through this thing that the Brits call ‘clearing’. As long as our GPAs are above 3.5 and we can afford the fees, we should be able to get in,” said Brittany.
“And…” said Zane as he imitated a drum roll.
“It is less than an hour from Manchester Airport.”
Melissa’s eyes went up. She had been stitched up good and proper. The last person to do that to her was her mother when she ‘arranged’ for her to start dating Jeff.
“So, you can tell Pops that we went looking at colleges, and this is one of the best in the world,” said Brittany.
“But... Zane, what about your father’s plans for you to follow him to DC as a lawyer? He won’t give up on that easily. Then, you know his views on climate change and all that green stuff. Are you deliberately trying to make him blow his top? I know that you told him, but he would need more than one telling-off to get him to change his mind.”
“That is the last thing that we want to do. By studying outside the US, we will be out of the picture when the hacks come after him,” said Zane.
“And just why do you think that the ‘hacks’ will come after him?”
“There have been rumors in DC about him being on the take for well over a year now.”
“Aren’t all of those in the DC swamp in the pockets of at least one donor, but how did you hear of this?” remarked Melissa.
“From my tennis partner,” said Zane in a matter-of-fact manner.
Melissa knew when she’d been backed into a corner.
“Ok, let’s go. I guess you want my credit card?”
Brittany smiled.
“I’ll let you finish off the purchase.”
“A mother’s work is never done…” she joked.
With the flight to Manchester booked, there remained the little job of making a call to Jack and sorting out where they should return the rental car. A call to the rental company sorted that out. She would return it to the airport before they checked in for their flight. On the same call, she booked another car for pickup at Manchester Airport.
They left the apartment the next morning and headed north. Cape May is at the end of a peninsular with just a few ways on and the same few ways off. After dropping off the keys at the letting agent, Melissa steered the car onto ‘The Garden State Parkway’.
After a lunch stop near Neptune, Melissa walked away from where they’d parked the car and made a call to Jack.
“Yes, it is me,” she said when the phone was answered.
“How is shearing going?”
“You are? That’s good.”
“No, Jack, that wasn’t the reason for my call.”
She took a deep breath.
“I’ve had my arm twisted by my kids into coming back to your part of the world.”
“Err… Tonight. We are on a flight from Kennedy to Manchester… tonight.”
“No. I’ve booked a rental car.”
She laughed.
“Yes, I know that I have a bit of history with rentals, but there is somewhere else that we want to go.”
She swallowed hard before saying,
“Have you heard of a college called ‘Harper Adams’?”
Melissa listened to Jack and shook her head.
“What did you major in?”
“I think that is pretty close to what Zane wants to do.”
“I will be glad to see them again as long as we won’t be putting them out too much?”
“Ok, give me a call when you are all done for the day. We are about an hour and a half from Kennedy. I know that we will be early, but that’s not the point.”
“Jack… They are cool with you.”
“Sorry. I didn’t hide your letter, and they read it and… I’d already sort of accidentally let it out.”
“Err, Jack, if I wasn’t cool with things, do you think that I’d be calling you right now?”
“Yeah, we need to have a long talk when I’m over there. There are some things that you need to know before… Well before.”
“Give my love to Moira and Henry. Bye.”
Melissa hung up and breathed a sigh of relief. She’d made the call, and he hadn’t run a mile. She felt a tear well up inside her. Just hearing his voice again made her feel weird. Nice, but weird.
“How was the call?” asked Brittany when Melissa returned to the car.
“Ok.”
“Ok? Is that all?”
“Yes. Ok. I need to think a few things over, but I promise you that before we get on the plane, I’ll tell you.”
Both Brittany and Zane knew from the look on their mother’s face that the call wasn’t all plain sailing.
There were a couple of hours to wait before check-in opened when they arrived at their terminal at John F Kennedy International Airport.
“Let’s find a place to sit while we wait,” said Melissa.
Zane’s stomach decided that this was the best time to grumble.
Melissa smiled.
“Thanks to your sister, we are flying business class, and we’ll get a meal before we board the flight.”
“Mom? How do you know that?”
“I read about the services here in an in-flight mag of the airline when I was in Europe.”
Those words didn’t mean much to her children as they’d only flown internationally once before, and that was on a budget airline, thanks to the insistence of their father.
They found a place where they could buy some half-decent coffee and a muffin for Zane. Melissa hoped that would be sufficient for the time being.
“I promised to give you an update on my phone call before we boarded, so here we are.”
Melissa looked at her children. They'd become adults without her noticing. She'd missed so much of their childhood, thanks to their father.
“Jack will be expecting us… the day after tomorrow. That’s the last day of shearing, and there is a big party at their place in the evening.”
“Where will we stay tomorrow night?” asked Zane.
“Jack is sorting that out, but it looks like there is space in the big house for you. I’ve booked us a rental car from the airport. Then we can go visit this college you are interested in. I have the name of a lecturer who, if they are there, might be able to give you the grand tour.”
“How did you come by that? Did you get it out of thin air?” asked Zane.
Melissa smiled.
“Jack studied Estate Management there. It is his alma mater.”
“Where will you be staying?”
“They have twelve bedrooms apart from theirs. The team of shearers are using ten of them. I’ll stay the one night in Jack’s spare room. When they have gone, I’ll move into the big house.”
Zane looked at his sister and grinned.
“I’ll have none of that. Jack and I? It is early days, so don’t you be getting ideas, ok?”
They both nodded their heads.
“Good. Then we can rest easy tonight and hope that this Professor Colin Wilkes is not on vacation tomorrow.”
Brittany entered his name into her phone.
“He’s the deputy head of the department. Almost the top guy,” she remarked when the results were returned.
Melissa smiled.
“What it won’t say is that the Professor is Jack’s second cousin.”
She’d finally got one over on her children but in a good way.
[to be continued]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
[At a Hotel in Wensleydale, mid-July]
“Good afternoon, can I help you?” said the man at the reception desk.
“Yes, I have a room booked for the night in the name of Michaels,” said Melissa.
The man looked at something on the desk. The something was a thick ledger. Melissa smiled. Everywhere seemed to be computerised. Already, the atmosphere of this hotel seemed different from everywhere else that she’d stayed, not just on this trip but anywhere in her life.
“Ah, yes. Welcome to Wensleydale, Ms Michaels. I am afraid that we are running a little behind with our service today. Your room will not be ready for at least half an hour. Why don’t you take a seat in the lounge, and I’ll get you some tea or coffee? On the house…”
“Oh. Ok, thank you. Some tea would be fine.”
“Any particular sort of tea? We have Green, China, Darjeeling, Earl Grey and English Breakfast?”
“Oh,” said Melissa, a little surprised at the offer of a selection of teas.
“Darjeeling, please.”
“Great. I’ll get it brought over to you in a few minutes.”
Melissa sat down in one of the large Chesterfield sofas that were dotted around the lounge area. After all the concrete box hotels she'd been in for the past month, this place was remarkably… quaint. She wondered if the exposed beams were real. Then she kicked herself. She'd seen a carving on the outside of the property proclaiming that the inn had been built in 1649.
[a few minutes later]
“Ms Michaels, here is your tea. We don’t serve cream with tea, but the milk is fully loaded.”
The man arrived with a tray loaded down with a teapot, milk jug, a bone china cup and saucer, plus two clearly homemade fairy cakes. She was impressed.
“Fully Loaded?”
“Sorry, it is full cream milk. If you want semi-skimmed or skimmed milk, goats or oat milk, please let me know.”
“This will be fine.”
“Will you be dining with us tonight?”
“I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“I took the liberty of bringing you a menu. Every main ingredient apart from the fish comes from within the county of Yorkshire. Some of the fish comes from Seahouses in Northumberland. We are proud of our local suppliers. The cod was landed at Scarborough yesterday morning.”
“Thank you. I will have a look at it while I drink my tea.”
[the following morning]
“Here is your bill. I hope that everything has been to your satisfaction?”
“Yes, everything has been great. I was hoping to thank the man who was here when I arrived yesterday. His recommendation for my meal was very good.”
“Ah,” said the young woman who was dealing with her check-out.
“That would be Jack. He was only here because I was taking my driving test yesterday afternoon.”
“Did you pass?”
She grinned back at Melissa.
“I did, but my boyfriend isn’t very happy. Now I get to drive his car, and he is very protective of it.”
“I don’t understand?”
The young woman smiled.
“It is a man thing…”
Ms Michaels grinned.
“I get you now.”
“Have a safe journey,” said the receptionist.
Melissa left the hotel feeling at peace with the world. The recommendation of the concierge at the hotel in London proved to be excellent.
[later that afternoon on a by-way in the Yorkshire Dales]
“Oh shit,” said Melissa as she surveyed the flat tyre on her rented car.
“Oh, double shit,” she said once she found that there was no spare in the trunk.
“Oh fuck,” she said when she found that she had zero phone coverage.
For a moment, she admonished herself for cursing like that. It was so unlike her… the old her. Then she smiled and said quietly to herself,
“I wonder if I have finally got rid of the shackles that Jeff made me wear for all of our years of marriage? For once, I don’t have to think about everything I say in case it could affect his fundraising or campaigning or even his chances of re-election.”
Then she thought… ‘Out of the darkness of adversity, bright things can emerge.’
Melissa put her now useless phone away and looked around. The moorland landscape was unlike any that she’d ever encountered before. The only sound other than the cooling of her car's exhaust system was a couple of skylarks singing their hearts out. In the distance, she could hear some sheep bleating. If her car wasn’t dead, she would have enjoyed the whole scene until she thought about how hard it had been to concentrate on the driving.
It didn’t take Melissa long to understand that this bit of road was not exactly an Interstate. It was little more than a track with some asphalt on the top. In parts, there was grass growing in the middle of the one lane. A little way back down the way that she’d come, she saw that a few potholes had been recently patched. Yes, not an Interstate. There was just enough room for one car to go along it. She’d worked out that the fairly regular pull-offs were to enable other vehicles to pass. Luckily, she’d stopped in one, so she wasn’t blocking the road. That was the good news. The bad news was that she’d not seen another vehicle on the move for a while.
She decided to sit and wait and hope…
Almost forty minutes had elapsed, and Melissa was starting to contemplate walking to civilisation when she heard the sound of a vehicle coming up the road.
Coming towards her was a strange-looking pickup-style vehicle that had very much seen better days. The passenger door was a very different colour to the body; the hood was almost entirely covered in what looked like rust. Another peculiarity was that one of the two panes of glass that went to make up the windscreen was cracked in three places. This vehicle had very much seen better days, but she could not have been happier to see it.
Melissa dithered for a moment. But she overcame her fears and waved them down.
She got a surprise when the driver got out of the cab. It was the man who had checked her into the Hotel the previous afternoon.
“Hello again,” he said, smiling.
“I see that you have a puncture. Can I be of assistance?”
“Please…”
“There is no spare, and I can’t get any cell phone reception.”
“The mobile phone signals are a bit patchy in this area. Only one of the major networks covers this part of the moor.”
He stopped for a moment.
“I’m Jack Beaumont, by the way.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jack.”
Jack knelt and looked at the front left wheel.
"This tyre is done for and probably the rim as well. That means it can't be repaired out here. We'll need to get the car recovered. The rental company should sort it all out."
“I was trying to do that, but there is no signal.”
Immediately, Melissa felt a little embarrassed for repeating herself. Then, she saw that Jack had ignored her verbal foo-pah.
Jack stood up and wiped his hands on a bit of towelling that was sticking out of a pocket of his overalls.
“I’m on my way to deliver these hurdles. The farmer needs them tomorrow. This is what I propose.”
He paused for half a second.
“Why don’t you get your things from the car and put them in the back of the Land Rover? Then we can go down to Church Farm, where I’ll deliver the hurdles to the farmer, Freddy Bishop. There should be a phone signal or a landline there, so while I’m unloading, you can phone the rental people and get them to come out and collect the car. Then we can sort out somewhere for you to stay the night.”
“Can’t I stay at the hotel like last night?”
“Afraid not. The place is fully booked for the next four nights. Two coach parties of tourists from your part of the world.”
He could see a reaction to that news.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure that my parents can find a room for a weary traveller. I live in a cottage near their home.”
“Are you sure about this? I don’t want to trouble you… or them?”
“It is not a problem. They love entertaining, plus the fact that he served as a diplomat in the British Embassy in DC until he retired in 2012.”
“DC is a horrible place,” said Melissa.
Jack laughed.
“That, I can agree with. I hated visiting the place in the holidays. I’d much rather be here.”
For a moment, Melissa could understand why. The calls of a skylark and the bleating of sheep made this a vastly nicer place than DC, especially after what happened during her last visit.
[Twenty minutes later]
“That’s the last of the hurdles unloaded. Now we can sort out somewhere for you to stay. Did you get through to the rental company?”
“I did, and they will get the car picked up in the morning. They’ll deliver a new one at the same time, but I didn’t know where to send them to deliver it.”
“Sorry, Melissa,” said Jack.
“I should have thought about that. Beaumont Hall. If you call them back and tell them that, they should be able to find us.”
“Thanks.”
Melissa went back inside the farmhouse to make the phone call.
[later at Beaumont Hall]
Jack drove the Land Rover up to the main entrance. Melissa’s eyes told him that she was impressed. She saw him looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She turned away. He just chuckled before saying.
“We’ve been here or thereabouts since before King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. Most of the building dates from the time of the first King George, but the Victorians messed around with the back of the house.”
“Are you some sort of royalty?”
Jack laughed.
“No. The nearest we ever got to that was a Lieutenant to Oliver Cromwell after our Civil War. It split the family. Just before Charles II was crowned king, his brother murdered him. That restored normality in the family.”
"Touché," said Melissa as she smiled for the first time.
Just then, an older man appeared at the front door to the hall.
“That’s my father, Henry. He’s an old softie when it comes to pretty women. Mum keeps him under a pretty short leash, though. They are going to be celebrating their Ruby Wedding next weekend.”
“Impressive. Most couples get tired of each other well before then,” said Melissa as she thought about her marriage.
“Dad, this is Melissa. She is visiting from your old stomping ground in the USA. Her rental car picked up a puncture not far from Church Farm. It won’t be sorted until the morning.”
“Welcome to our little bit of GOC, Melissa. I’ll tell my wife that there will be four for dinner.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” she replied.
“GOC?”
The two men laughed.
“Sorry, God’s Own Country. We like to think that Yorkshire is just that,” said Jack.
“I meant what I said. I don’t want to be in any trouble. If someone could give me a lift to somewhere where I can get an Uber or a Bus into York…”
“Nonsense. We are only too happy to have a visitor. John, can you get our guest’s things and take them up to your old room? You know where the bed linen is kept.”
“Ok, Dad,” said Jack.
“Please come with me, love. I’ll introduce you to the lady of the house, Moira. She’s in the kitchen finishing off a birthday cake for one of our tenants.”
Melissa followed him into the depths of the house while Jack sorted out the bedroom for the guest. This was the first time that he’d been in his old bedroom since he’d moved out when he left home for university. It felt rather strange to be back there. Part of him missed the room, but he liked the privacy that his nearby cottage gave him.
When he’d made up the bed and put out some fresh towels, he had a flashback to his time working at the hotel as a teenager. The money he made in the summer helped him to cover the expenses of living in London while a student. Those had been happy, carefree days. Now, he had the responsibility of running the family estate. Being the boss, there are only a few times in the year when he could get away for a few days. This was one of them. In ten days, the sheep shearing season would start. That would be two weeks of working dawn to dusk, even if it was chucking it down with rain. An idea started to form in his mind for the intervening period.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, Melissa was being made welcome like a long-lost relative coming back into the fold. She was a little taken aback by this welcome. They knew nothing about her, and as far as she knew, Jack had not called them to give them a heads-up about her arrival.
“You aren’t a Vegan or a Vegetarian, are you?” asked Moira.
“No, to both of them. If I was, would it be a problem?”
As soon as she asked the question, she felt awful.
“Not really, but we are farmers. We, or rather our tenants, raise Sheep and Beef here and down the valley near Leyburn, we have a chicken farm. All free-range birds and a few thousand turkeys for Christmas.”
“I think I understand. I saw some sheep out on the moor.”
Moira laughed.
“There are at least a couple of million of them on the uplands of England. They live almost all the year outside, and most of the time, they live off the land. We only feed them when the weather is bad and through the lambing season. The soil up there is very poor and unsuitable for growing crops. Down in the valley, it is mostly grass, which we use to feed the cattle in winter.”
“You have a much bigger operation than I thought.”
“And it is all run by John.
“John?”
Moira smiled.
“Sorry. It is a Scottish thing. Our son was christened John, but everyone but us calls him Jack. I’m from Perth in Scotland, by the way.”
Melissa had wondered about her accent.
“I didn’t know… about him running the whole thing.”
“John is very modest about that. He manages the estate and the Hotel. If any part of the business needs help, then he either does it himself or gets an expert in to help. In ten days or so, shearing will start. That is when all the tenant farmers come together and help out. Almost all the wool will go to a factory in Newcastle for use in building insulation.”
“Was that ‘helping’ why he was acting as receptionist at the ‘Bulls Head Hotel’?”
“Did he? I didn’t know, but that is just who he is.”
Melissa started to understand just how different Jack was from her former husband. He’d never volunteer for anything unless there was an angle in it for him or that he’d be owed a favour in return that could help his career.
“I was just glad that he came along when he did. I was thinking that I’d have to start walking.”
“I understand that you had a puncture. I got a heads up from Mrs Bishop just after you left their farm.”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
“Then it is just as well that John came along when he did, look outside.”
Melissa looked out of the kitchen window. The view down the garden was now obscured by heavy rain.
“I am thankful that he did.”
“Where were you going to stay tonight?”
“I had booked a place in Penrith. When I phoned the rental people, I called them and cancelled it. I had hoped to get back to York.”
“You seem to be doing a bit of a tour then?” said Moira as she rolled out some pastry that had been in the fridge.
“I’ve been to Rome, Venice, Paris and London. I am a country girl at heart, so I asked the concierge at the hotel in London where would be the best place to go in the country. He said the Yorkshire Dales. One train ride and a rental car later, I was at the Hotel that he had booked for me. On the train, I started to plan a few other places to visit before I fly home in just over a week.”
“And?” asked Moira as she finished putting the top on an apple pie.
“Eh?”
“Where is your cunning plan going to take you… Before the puncture, that is?”
“Cunning Plan?”
Moira chuckled as she dressed the top of the pie with some sugar.
“Sorry, a very British joke. It comes from a TV series. Where are you planning on going? North of the border, I hope?”
“Sorry… You lost me there?”
“Don’t worry your sweet heart. Back when we were posted to DC, I was always so careful with my language. I don’t mean to point a finger at you, but most of your countrymen and women have very little knowledge of world geography. The United Kingdom is made up of four countries. England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. I’m from Scotland. By ‘north of the border’, I mean into Scotland. Penrith is less than an hour from the border near Gretna Green.”
Melissa smiled as Moira put the pie into the oven.
“We have thirty-five minutes to wait for the pie to cook.”
“It smells great.”
“I hope it tastes as good as it smells. I’ve used a new recipe. It was given to me by one of our tenants. Her daughter is away at catering college.”
“To answer your question, I had planned on going to Edinburgh, but beyond that, I don’t know.”
Moira stopped and looked at her guest.
“Forgive me if what I am about to say is a bit direct, but people in this part of the world are known for not dodging around the subject. Why don’t you let John give you a tour of some of the more interesting things this wonderful country has to offer? He hasn’t been farther away from the Dales than the market in Northallerton since before COVID hit.”
“I could not impose on him like that. It is not fair.”
“Then we’ll just have to use our feminine cunning then?”
Melissa smiled.
“Moira, you are so different from the people I’ve been around for years. I kinda like your directness.”
“Then you are up for it then?”
“How could I say no when there is the prospect of such a feast in store?”
Moira wiped the grin off her face.
“The wives of most of the government people we dealt with in DC were afraid to eat a thing in case they put on a few ounces. To them, their image was just as important as their husband’s voting record. Am I right in assuming that you are not like that?”
“I know just what you mean. I was, until recently, a stay-at-home in the district wife of a congressman. He got caught with his pants down, so to speak.”
“I wondered if your trip to Europe on your own was something like that. You keep fingering your ring finger, and the tan lines have not yet faded. A lot of women in similar positions as yourself take a trip just to get the smell of their ex off their skin after often messy divorces. I know of the partners of at least five senators who did just that during our twelve years in DC.”
“Guilty, I’m afraid. He cheated and got caught. Thankfully, our divorce was not messy. He lied to me for years and kept lots of secrets from me. It will take me a long time to trust a man again.”
“Then John needs to know that he is just a friend and nothing more,” said Moira.
“I know that he is a kind person, but I hardly know him from Adam.”
Moira smiled.
“Adam lives a mile down the road.”
It took Melissa a second to realise that her leg was being pulled.
“I’ll make sure that his father has a word with him.”
“I haven’t said that I’ll do it yet?”
“That, my dear, is down to you, but our immediate task is to get washed and changed for dinner. Then we let John bring up the subject and make him think that it was all his own idea.”
Melissa smiled.
“Are you sure that you are not a politician? You could run rings around most of those in DC.”
“I know that from our time there. Some of them are total goofballs. The career civil servants are the smart ones who keep the place running. Most Politicians just live for the next opportunity to get in front of a camera to raise money or get a new donor. Screen time is what it is all about for many of them. The more screen time they get, the more money that they can raise for their next election campaign…”
Then Moira shook her head,
“Sorry, you didn’t need to hear my rather jaded view of your government.”
“Moira, your description could have described my former husband perfectly. He was so vain that he made notes of what suit he was wearing for what TV appearance. He’d get a new one if he felt that he’d been seen too often wearing the same one. I like your rather direct way of speaking. The DC wives would never dare talk like that in case their words were overheard, and it got back to their other half.”
Moira headed for the kitchen door. She held it open for her guest.
“Let me show you your room. Dinner is at six thirty.”
Once she was in her room, Melissa sat on her bed and wondered about going off with a man that she hardly knew. Before… before her divorce and despite what she’d vowed on the flight to Rome, it was very tempting. She had a strange feeling about the place she’d ended up in. It just… just felt comfortable and non-threatening.
On the surface, these people were just being themselves and not out to make a few bucks at the expense of others and to hell with the consequences. That slightly unnerved her. It was a first for her on this trip.
Thanks to Moira’s gentle persuasion, she resolved to go with the flow and enjoy being shown some of the less touristy sites. She’d had enough of parties of aged citizens from various countries being shepherded around the major tourist attractions like they were cattle.
Melissa relaxed on her bed and fell asleep. It was only the gentle ringing of a gong that woke her. Whilst she had only been asleep for a little over an hour, she felt more relaxed and awake than before that fateful email had arrived.
[to be continued]
The dinner was far better than Melissa had envisaged. It was made even better by Jack’s Father, Henry, who proved to be quite a raconteur.
His time working all over the world for the British Government provided them all with many humorous moments during a very delightful meal. Moira was an accomplished cook whom Melissa felt should have been running a top restaurant.
The subject of her taking a trip was raised by Jack, just as Moira had predicted.
“How about we go on a little tour of some of the places that don’t make it into the ‘I’m doing England and Scotland in a week’ brochures?”
“What do you have in mind, darling?” asked Moira while trying hard to keep a straight face.
“Rothbury, Amble, Bamburgh, and Lindisfarne for starters.”
“What about Caesars Camp?” asked Henry.
“Don’t you mean Chesters?” suggested Moira.
“Chesters Fort is on the Roman Wall built during the time of Emperor Hadrian. That is worth a visit,” said Jack.
“That’s two days… What about the rest?” asked Moira.
“Somewhere to relax in the peace and quiet, perhaps?”
Henry grinned.
“I might be wrong, but I think that you are suggesting that they go to your sister Heather’s home near Loch Lomond?"
“I am,” said a smiling Moira.
“That way, Melissa can see a few mountains, taste some real Whisky and eat some great food on the way,” said Moira, who addressed their guest.
"My sister runs a Bed and Breakfast. It has great views over the Loch and be back for the party."
“Speaking of which, Melissa, you are coming, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to be any trouble. If I am right, the party is the day before I fly home. My flight from Heathrow to Rome leaves at ten. It will be difficult to get there for that. I’ll need to be there two hours before that…”
“Nonsense,” said Henry.
All eyes went toward him.
“My dear, we will get you to the church of air travel on time. You will not miss your flight. Leave it to me.”
“How?” asked Melissa
“My dear, when my husband promises something, then he will deliver. I learned a long time ago to trust him when it comes to arranging travel.”
“But…?”
“We would love to have you at the party even if it means leaving early.”
“Just so that you can show me off to your friends, I suppose?”
As soon as Melissa had said that, she regretted it.
“Sorry… It just came out.”
“No need to be sorry, Melissa. The party is more like a dinner for the family. There will only be twelve of us, including you. My other sister and her partner are coming down from Penicuik. That’s near Edinburgh.”
“Somehow, I got the impression that I was to be shown off as Jack’s bride-to-be. I was wrong. I am still getting used to being single. I am so sorry for putting my foot in it. You have all shown me wonderful hospitality since I came here.”
“There is no need to apologise,” said Henry.
“My dear wife can sometimes leap to conclusions before she knows all the facts.”
“He’s right, my dear. It is a family trait, I’m afraid.”
Melissa began to realise just how close her hosts were after almost forty years of marriage. Her marriage paled into insignificance in comparison. She felt rather sad that hers had gone south long before the twenty years that it did had passed.
What struck Melissa very quickly was the family dynamic that was playing out in front of her. Her own family had been torn apart when her father died from Lung Cancer. Her former husband's family were a poor clone of one from 'Peyton Place'. She felt rather sad that she'd only have a week to experience it.
Her daydreaming was interrupted by Henry.
“Well, Melissa, are you game for a guided tour?”
“Sorry, Henry, I was miles away.”
“Don’t worry, my dear,” said Moira.
Melissa sat back, cupping the glass of excellent wine that had been served with dinner in her hands.
“Why not? I’m not sure when I’ll be back in this part of the world again.”
As soon as she said those few words, she regretted it… again. It was getting to be a bit of a habit. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she returned home. She was effectively homeless and… Then she remembered what she’d told herself about ‘going with the flow’.
“Good,” said Jack.
“I’ll get on with planning it in the morning. We don’t want you to go all that way back across the ocean and not see some of the best of what this country has to offer.”
Melissa went to bed, and for much of the night, she tossed and turned. Jack was the total opposite of Jeff. She had no idea people like him still existed. All the men in her old life had been associated with politics and were in it for themselves and not for the good of the people they served.
Jack, on the other hand, very much cared about the staff at the Hotel, his tenants and everything about the estate. She'd seen the trust that he had generated right up close when she'd asked Mrs Bell to use her phone. The fact that they were all on first-name terms with their landlord threw her at first. It was different to the image of country life that various TV shows about the UK seemed to portray. The mere fact that the landlord was moving temporary fence panels for his tenants had thrown her even more. Back home, the boss would not dream of getting their hands dirty like that. Their job was to make sure that the enterprise returned ever-increasing profits every 90 days, not to help out the people who work from dawn to dusk and beyond to create those profits.
The one question that would not go away was… Did she fancy hooking up with him? Despite her intention of not getting involved with anyone on this trip, she could not stop thinking about him.
Breakfast with Moira and Henry didn't help much. Both of them wanted her to see what Moira called 'some of the hidden gems of both England and Scotland' before she went home. Melissa was hesitant, not because she didn't want to go but because the time before her flight to Rome and then back to DC was getting ever closer.
Moira saw her hesitation.
“Having second thoughts, dear?”
She’d just about gotten used to being called ‘dear’ as a term of endearment.
“Sort of. I have to get home to spend some time with my son and daughter before the end of the summer holidays.”
Moira smiled.
“Why not get them to come here? Did you have anything booked for your time with them?”
“No. Why?”
“We have plenty of space. Seeing a bit of life in another country would be different. Where do you normally go on Holiday? You know when you were a family?”
“We used to go to Aspen in the winter even though I’m a total idiot on skis. Disneyworld in the summer when they were younger. Since they grew up, Jeff wanted to spend the summer campaigning, so we would go to Cancun for a week. Other than that, they spent most of the summer with their school friends.”
“Then it could be time for something a bit different? Do they ride?”
“Horses?”
“Yes, horses. There are some great rides across the North Yorkshire Moors if you head towards the coast. You can camp out and ride. The trekking company in Hawes can even come and pick you up from somewhere like Robin Hood’s Bay. The only company you would have, are walkers, cyclists and wildlife.”
“Unless it rains?”
Moira laughed.
“That’s what GOC is like. All four seasons in the morning and another four in the afternoon.”
Melissa laughed.
“I’ll have to think about it. Is that ok?”
“Please do. We own the trekking company, so…?”
Melissa shook her head.
“Is there anything around here that you don’t own?”
Moira smiled.
“Lots, but we have diversified a lot in recent years. The hotel and the pony trekking company are just a few of the things that we have invested in. We own part of the company that will turn our fleeces into building insulation. We did it so that we could pay our tenants a decent price for the fleeces. Around ten years ago, the market price for raw wool dropped to the floor, and some of them were thinking of quitting, so we came up with a plan that would keep everyone happy.”
Melissa shook her head.
“Back home, the farming conglomerate would have called in any loans and kicked the tenants out. It is all about profit, the bottom line and the return to stockholders.”
“We take a very different view of the world. Far more long-term than short-term, bottom-line profits. That’s why we have lasted here for almost eight hundred years. We think long-term. We might not make as much as your agro giants, but we value expertise. Upland farming is very much hit-and-miss. One year, we make lots of profit, and the next, we don’t. That is down to the weather. Besides, we have to live in the community alongside our tenants.”
“That does give you a different perspective on life. I will think about bringing Brittany and Zane over here for a couple of weeks.”
Moira smiled back at Melissa.
Jack presented a proposed itinerary for their trip north to Melissa and his parents that evening.
Melissa looked at it and said,
“I don’t have a clue where most of these places are apart from Edinburgh,” she said after a few seconds.
Jack smiled.
“Isn’t that the idea? Go to new places. I’m willing to bet that when you set out on your European adventure, you would never have guessed in a million years that you’d end up in an out-of-the-way place like this?”
“True. I did the city thing, but after a while, they all looked the same even though London is not Paris and Paris is not Rome, they are all big cities, and that means lots of people. For a small-town girl like me, there is only so much I can take. That’s how I ended up here.”
She looked at the programme one more time.
“Ok. I’m game. When do we start?”
Jack looked down at the table.
“Tomorrow morning?”
Then he added,
“Early. I want to be at Chester’s Fort for when they open.”
“As long as we don’t go in that old truck of yours!” exclaimed Melissa.
It took a second or so for Moira and Henry to grasp what she meant by ‘truck’.
“Oh, you mean Beryl?” said Henry.
“Beryl is the name of the old Land Rover that Jack drives around the estate,” said Moira.
“It was built in the same year that our Queen Elizabeth ascended to the throne and will see me out.”
Melissa briefly wondered if everyone in this part of the world was mad.
“We’ll take the BMW,” said Jack.
“It does not have a name,” he added.
They all laughed.
Melissa changed her mind about everyone being mad. They were bonkers.
Early the next morning, Jack and Melissa loaded up a two-year-old BMW X1 with their bags.
“This Chester’s place? How far is it?”
“About two and a half hours. It is almost due north, but most of the roads don’t go that way, so we have to zig-zag a bit. We’ll cross a couple of old Roman roads on our way. The main one from York to the fort goes in our direction. If they were still in use, we could be there in an hour, but over the centuries, parts of it have been dug up, and the stone used for other things.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
Jack smiled.
“I don’t know, really. I just took an interest in my history lessons at school. York is just down the road, so we all have huge amounts of world history on our doorstep, although it was hard as a ten-year-old not to get tempted by the lure of the railway museum.”
“I saw the signs for it from the station.”
“It is a great place to go when it is raining, and it is free.”
“Then on to Lindisfarne. We have to be at the crossing by four.”
“Crossing? Do we have to take a ferry or something?” asked Melissa.
“You get to the island using a causeway that is covered by the sea for twelve hours a day.”
“Oh!”
“Don’t worry, it is perfectly safe to cross. According to the tide table, the causeway won’t be covered until five. We are staying at a Hotel on the Island tonight. We’ll have plenty of time once the day trippers have gone home to look at the monastery. It is a place of pilgrimage for Christians. Henry the Eighth dissolved all of them as a result of the Pope in Rome not permitting him to get divorced. The ruins are remarkable, though especially because of the setting, right on the coast.”
Melissa’s history lesson continued for four more days until they reached a small farm that was perched high above the eastern shore of Loch Lomond.
“This place is beautiful,” commented Melissa.
“I was saving the best until last. The lady of the house is an even better cook than my mother, but please don’t tell her that.”
She groaned.
“Scared of putting on half a pound? Didn’t we walk almost twelve miles and climb up Ben Nevis yesterday?”
“I know, and my feet are still walking,” joked Melissa.
“Tomorrow night is the anniversary do for my parents. Then we have to get you down to Heathrow for your flight by nine. Make the most of tonight.”
“I know, and I’m going to be shown off as your new girlfriend. I still don’t have anything appropriate to wear.”
“That’s not going to happen unless you want to come and live here?”
Melissa didn’t answer. She was saved by the mistress of the house appearing and walking up to the gate to open it. She looked at the woman and then at Jack.
He grinned.
“Meet Siobhan, Mum’s twin sister.”
Melissa groaned.
“What did I say about the girlfriend thing?”
Jack didn’t answer.
Siobhan proved to be just as good a host as her sister. She treated Melissa as someone very special. It was clear to her that Jack was smitten with Melissa but was, as usual when it came to women, he was too afraid to ask them to be more than just a friend.
Thankfully, Siobhan put her at ease right away.
“My dear, you will soon be leaving us and returning to the USA, and a few days after that, you will forget that we ever existed. That is what holidays are for. Experience new things and forget them as you get back into your normal life.”
Her words hit Melissa hard, but she knew where they were coming from. Most holiday romances or flings don't go much further, especially if the parties are separated by a big, cold ocean.
Melissa’s problem was that ‘normal life’ had been a bust. What would be the new ‘normal’ for her, and for that to even start, she needed to put down roots, but where?
They dined that evening on the terrace that overlooked the loch. The mountains beyond provided a sunset that Melissa would never forget. It was the sort of place that she could imagine moving to. That alone would stop her from forgetting this remarkable end to her foreign trip.
The pair were strangely silent the next morning as they drove south. Their trip together was coming to an end, with a lot of things left unsaid between them.
All too soon, they arrived back at Jack’s family home. Preparations for the evening were in full swing. Melissa was at a bit of a loose end, so she went in search of Jack.
Melissa found him playing with Tess, his border collie. The dog missed her master. She didn't interrupt, as it was clear that there was a very strong bond between them. She'd never had a dog, even as a child. It was just one more thing that would stop her from even contemplating taking any relationship, even a small step further. There were just too many obstacles in the way of them getting together.
She stepped away to let them get to know each other again.
That one incident caused Melissa to make up her mind. She had to leave as soon as possible.
Telling Jack would be a no-no. She went in search of Moira.
“Moira, I don’t know how to say this, but…”
“You want to leave tonight?”
Melissa nodded her head.
Moira took hold of Melissa’s hand.
“That’s sort of what I expected, so don’t feel as if you are chickening out of this evening. You have your children and a new life to think about back home. Jack is… well, Jack. He won’t change. One day, he might find someone who can help him share his dream. For a brief moment, I had hoped that it might be you, but that is not to be. You deserve to find someone who can be your partner for your life. It is probably too soon after your breakup to even think about a relationship, so please, don’t be too hard on yourself, ok?”
Melissa hugged Moira. It was mostly so that the older woman would not see the tears in Melissa's eyes.
“Go and get your bags. I’ll call for a taxi to take you into York. Once you are on your way, I’ll break the bad news to Jack.”
“Moira, you are a wonderful person. They broke the mould with you.”
“Och. Be away with you.”
Melissa caught an early evening train to London with a lot of regret in her heart. Every turn of the carriage wheel took her farther away from someone… someone she loved. She hated to even admit it to herself, but she knew the feeling. She’d had it for a brief period when dating Jeff, but it had never been anywhere near as strong as this. That’s why she had to leave like a coward, but all the reasons she’d mentally listed as to why it would not work outweighed those that were on the other side of the scales.
The next morning, Melissa arrived at Heathrow in good time for her flight to Rome with an onward flight to Boston. What she wasn’t prepared for was to see Jack waiting for her in the check-in area.
“Jack? What are you doing here?”
“Errrr… looking for you. We left a few things unsaid, didn’t we? Besides, I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to you. One minute, you were there, and then you were gone.”
“I…I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say to you.”
“Don’t say anything.”
Jack stepped forward and kissed Melissa. At first, she resisted, but then she relaxed and responded to his lips.
“Now, go and get checked in. Then we can talk for a bit.”
Melissa tried to pick up her suitcase, but Jack had already grabbed it and was walking towards the check-in counter.
“I only have twenty minutes,” said Melissa.
“According to the clerk at check-in.”
“Then I will keep this short,” said Jack.
He took hold of Melissa’s hands in his.
“I like you a lot, Mel. I do have feelings for you. I know that long-distance relationships rarely work, but I’m willing to try if you are. I could ask you to move here, but you have your children to think about.”
Then Jack let go of her right hand and reached into his jacket pocket.
“Jack, I have feelings for you.”
“But it is too soon after the breakup of your marriage?”
“That is partially true, but I was in Venice when it hit me that my marriage had been over for years. I do have Zane and Brittany to think about, but they are already talking about colleges. They are young adults, and soon they will be able to make their own decisions.”
Jack pulled an envelope out of his pocket.
“Please read this when you are back in the USA. It may explain a few things about me that are hard for me to talk about.”
“Are you gay?”
He shook his head.
“No, I’m not gay. I fancy the hell out of you. Please read it when you are alone. It will explain a lot.”
Melissa reluctantly took the envelope and put it into her handbag.
“I hope that this is not a final goodbye,” said Jack.
“This past week has been about the best one of my life. Meeting you has turned my formerly cosy life upside down in a good way.”
He didn’t wait for Melissa to reply. Instead, he embraced her, and their lips met passionately.
When they broke apart, both of them were close to tears.
“Go. Get through security before I make an even greater fool of myself.”
He kissed her briefly again before directing her towards the security screening area.
They went their separate ways without actually saying goodbye. Jack stood and watched Melissa go through airport security. She didn't look back, for which he was glad. She'd disappeared for almost a minute before Jack moved an inch.
He returned to his car and, after a deep intake of breath, paid what he thought was daylight robbery, the fee to park his car for just over an hour. Jack wasn't looking forward to the journey home. 'Home' would seem empty without her cheery face being there.
He mentally kicked himself for being so silly, but that was how he felt about her. His life had changed for the better since that encounter on the moors.
[End of the Second half]
Melissa somehow managed to make her connection for the flight home in Rome. The image of Jack meeting her at the airport was there front and center in her mind. Even being chatted up by two Italians on the long flight failed to get her to show some emotion other than contempt for them. She was lost in her own thoughts.
The brief visit to Yorkshire had upset her sketchy plans for the future in a big way.
Those few days with Jack and his family had been a breath of fresh air for her. It had been totally the opposite of her married life back in the Ozarks. The almost total lack of standing on ceremony or the worry about what others might think and then say about her was startling.
The fakeness of her old life was staring her right in the face. She admired their ability to laugh at their own misfortunes as if it were just part of life. At first, it had unnerved her, but by the time she and Jack ended up at Moira’s Sisters’ place in Scotland, she had accepted that this was just part of life. For years, she’d had to be so careful about every word that she said in case it was posted online and could be used to embarrass her former husband. It was as if the shackles that Jeff had put on her when he was elected were finally sent to the scrap yard.
The envelope that Jack had given her was ever-present in her mind, but there was nowhere apart from the toilet on the two flights where she could open it in private. As there was almost a constant queue of people waiting for the one that wasn’t blocked, she crossed her legs and hoped to make it to DC.
The sight of Dulles Airport as the plane came into land made Melissa sort of sit up and take notice of her surroundings. She had hoped to get at least a little sleep on the flight, but between the two men who were sitting on either side of her and the brat in the seat behind who kept kicking her seat, she failed miserably. Her body clock was still on UK time, and it was saying loudly, 'I need feeding and sleep'.
She couldn’t be bothered to head downtown but instead went to the nearest hotel and found a room for the night. The cost was staggering, but it would have to do. Then she shook her head. She had more money than she could imagine, but being careful with the cash was deeply ingrained into her psyche.
After a shower, she felt much better, so she went down to the restaurant. To her dismay, one of the Italians from the plane was loitering with intent near the entrance.
“Ah, there you are. I knew that if I waited and prayed to the god almighty, you would come to me.”
“Fuck you,” said Melissa in a very loud voice. Then, she gave him the middle finger.
She didn’t wait for his reply but headed for the lift. It would have to be room service, after all.
While she waited for her overpriced burger and even more overpriced lite beer to arrive, she took the envelope out of her handbag.
It was addressed to her in perfect copperplate writing. She'd seen Jack writing some things during their road trip and knew right away that it was his writing.
The letter inside covered three sides of paper. It was all written in the same perfect script. That in itself was so rare these days. It must have taken him a lot of time to write it all down.
She mentally kicked herself. All she was doing was delaying the inevitable. She hoped that it was not a ‘dear Melissa’ sort of letter. There was nothing left but to begin reading.
Right from the start, it was not what she had expected. It read more like a potted life history. It described a side of Jack that, upon reflection, had been there just below the surface all the time. By the time she reached page three, she was crying. He had poured his heart out to her.
She knew what it was that was so hard for him to talk to her about. A lot of that was down to her background and especially some of the public statements that her former husband had made in recent years about LGBT people. She read the last paragraph again just to be sure that she hadn’t made a mistake. She hadn’t. Jack was someone who liked to dress up as a woman from time to time. He didn’t want to become one, but anyone who was in a relationship with him would inevitably find out. With her husband following the MAGA party line and calling all trans people ‘groomers’ and ‘paedophiles’, Melissa understood very well why he had not talked to her about it. He was letting her free to break off all contact with him if she could not handle being seen with someone who sometimes liked to wear a dress.
She sat for God knows how long, staring into space, trying to get her mind around what Jack had revealed to him. It was only when there was a knock at the door that she returned to reality.
The burger tasted of nothing, and the beer was some tasteless thing. She'd never baulked at drinking that sort of beer before, but ever since, she'd had a pint of… She tried to remember the name of the brewery at Jack's Hotel; she'd developed a taste for ale. Then it came to her. Black Sheep. It had a taste that made all the ‘Lite’ beers that Jeff only drank in public almost tasteless.
Sitting alone in her hotel room, she lamented not being back in Yorkshire. The food at the places they'd stayed at on their trip had always been magnificent and often not that much more expensive than the fast-food alternatives sold by the major chains. To return home to such crap was a reflection of the society that the USA had become. Everything seemed to be about a quick buck, and to hell with the consequences.
The question that Melissa had to answer was right there in the letter and the experiences she'd had with Jack and his family. While she could afford to go almost anywhere on the planet and live a life of relative luxury, there was something down to earth and real about that little bit of 'God's Own Country'. Something was nagging at her. It was a memory from her early childhood, but at first, she could not drag it into her conscious mind. She hated it when that happened. She was sure that there were parts of rural America that enjoyed the slower, less profit-driven way of life, but she’d never found one.
The empty beer bottle and drooping eyelids told Melissa that it was time to try to get some sleep. She wasn’t going to solve the conundrum that Jack’s letter presented her in one evening or even one week.
With some effort, she turned her mind towards spending some time with Zane and Brittany.
The dawn of a new day didn’t bring any solutions to Melissa’s problems. Even checking out proved problematic. For some reason, her credit card was refused.
She took this on the chin, and instead of making a scene, she took an Uber to a branch of her bank and drew out the exact amount of her bill in one-dollar bills. While she was waiting to be served, she called the credit card company. They told her that her card was not blocked and that she should get the hotel to resubmit the transaction. Melissa calmly said,
“Thank you, but I have arranged for an alternate method of payment.”
Armed with the cash, she returned to the hotel where she tried to pay her bill despite protests from the staff that they ‘didn’t take cash’ any more.
Melissa smiled.
“I have tried to settle my bill with the legal tender of this country. I will leave now. If you as much as even think of calling the cops, I will call my husband, who is a member of Congress here in DC, who will, in turn, call the media. Do you want me to do that? Oh, and I don’t see any signs saying that you no longer take cash therefore, you take cash.”
They didn’t answer, so Melissa walked out of the hotel with her head held high.
Outside the hotel, it dawned upon her that she didn’t have a plan for the day. She was due to meet up with Brittany and Zane the next day in Williamsburg, Virginia. They had been staying with Jeff’s parents for a week. Jeff was off somewhere with his girlfriend, according to Brittany’s social media posts. He had not bothered to formally introduce her to any of his family.
Melissa had smiled when she read that. She knew that his father would tell him to get lost. Infidelity is not allowed in that family. That point was made clear to Melissa before they became engaged to be married. She had remained faithful while he hadn’t, but it didn’t matter now. That part of her life was behind her.
Just thinking about that made her blush. She would have jumped into bed with Jack if things had turned out that way, but he’d been the perfect gentleman all the time until they had said an emotional goodbye at the airport. That behaviour made him not being there at her side all the harder to manage. She had just one day to try to put him to the back of her mind and think of her children.
Melissa took an Uber to Union Station. While she was traveling into the city, she booked a hotel in Williamsburg and a rental car from the hotel for the morning. Her day of ups and downs seemed to have a down episode when she discovered that the train that she’d used before for the trip no longer ran and that the next train was late the following afternoon as the early morning departure was cancelled.
Thankfully, she was able to cancel the car booking and instead rented one from Reagan International Airport. Leaving the station behind her, she took the metro directly to the airport. While she waited for the Metro train, she mentally compared the state of the US rail system to her admittedly brief experience of the British one. When going from London to York, a similar distance of around 200 miles, she found that trains were running every half an hour, not one or two a day. Once again, she had to reset her mind and think about the here and now and spending some time with her children.
At the agreed time the next morning, Melissa arrived at Jeff's parent's home. To her, it was unnaturally quiet. His parents had two rambunctious golden retrievers that usually came bounding around the house to greet the newcomer. They were conspicuous by their absence.
Melissa rang the doorbell and waited. There were no sounds from inside the building. Melissa began to get worried when an SUV came up the driveway. Her heart dropped when she saw that her former husband was driving. The missing dogs were in the back.
“Hey babe,” said Jeff.
“What are you doing here?”
“Errr?” said Melissa.
“I’ve come to collect Brittany and Zane. It is my time to have them, remember?”
“Sorry, babe. They are on their way to Cancun with my parents.”
“What the hell are you doing here then?”
“Looking after the dogs. It was all done at short notice, and none of the kennels can take them.”
“Short notice? Yeah right. When I spoke to Brittany less than two days ago, she knew nothing about going to Cancun or anywhere for that matter. You are a bastard, aren’t you!”
“It’s not like that, babe!”
“Do they know about her?”
“They do. Zane spilt the beans, so thanks for that.”
“It is no more than you deserve.”
Their conversation was cut short by the arrival of a taxi.
Both of them looked at the cab. Zane was the first to emerge. Brittany got out the other side.
“Why aren’t you on the way to Mexico?” shrieked Jeff.
“Because we want to be with Mom,” said Brittany.
“Gramps and G-Mom have gone on without us. We told them what you were trying to do, and they didn’t like it. Gramps said to tell you that he will be having words with you when they return. G-Mom was just as angry.”
Jeff went red in the face.
“Gramps also said, ‘Don’t you dare put the dogs in kennels and slither off back to DC like the snake that you are’.”
Melissa resisted smiling. Jeff’s father knew his son very well indeed.
Zane went and paid off the taxi after removing his and Brittany’s bags from the trunk. He put them in Melissa’s SUV.
“Where are we going, Mom?” asked Zane.
“Cape May. I rented an apartment not far away from the Cape for a week.”
“Hey? Don’t I get a say in this?” argued Jeff.
“Sorry, Dad. Mom told us before she went to Europe that she’d be back for this week. She confirmed it before she left a place called York. You tried to make her seem to be the one who cheated on the other. Mom told us the truth and showed us the evidence. She treated us like adults, unlike you. Sorry, Pop. We are with Mom on this. Right Britt?”
“Sorry, Dad. Zane is right.”
Then she turned to Melissa.
“Shall we go, Mom, we have quite a drive ahead of us?” suggested Brittany.
“Yes, darling, we should get on the road.”
Melissa turned and left her former husband, standing in the middle of the drive with his hands on his hips and with a scowl on his face.
[Two hours later]
“Ready for a coffee stop?” asked Melissa.
“Mom, we need to talk, so yes,” said Zane.
Melissa was a bit put off by his tone but carried on driving until they came to a strip mall that contained a small coffee shop and bakery. She pulled off the road and parked the car.
“Let’s get something to drink, and then we can talk, ok?”
Neither of her children argued.
They found a place to sit in the shop that was well away from the counter once they’d obtained and paid for their drinks.
“Well?” said Melissa.
Zane looked at his sister, who began.
“Mom, we were worried about you. That last week and a bit in Europe, you changed. Before that, you were, I’m sorry to say, just treading water. It seemed that you went to Rome and Paris and everywhere else, but you weren’t really there. You were there in body, but your mind wasn’t. It was like you were still telling us about Dad. You were angry but afraid to show it to us. Are you with me so far?”
“I think so.”
“Then, when you called us and told us that you were in a small town that hardly appeared on Google Maps, your whole voice and everything was different. It was as if someone had flicked a switch, and you were you again, but with bells and whistles on.”
“Brits is right, Mom,” said Zane.
“It was as if we were speaking to a different person.”
“Sorry,” muttered Melissa.
“Don’t be sorry, Mom. The old you was right there again when you dealt with Dad back at Gramps’s place. He was trying to drive a wedge between us and you. Even G-mom saw through his plan. They are not happy with him, and that’s why he was told to look after the dogs like a naughty child. You did nothing wrong, Mom, and that’s why we were so happy when the old you came back to us. What happened? Did you meet someone?”
Melissa’s idea about keeping Jack a secret just went up in flames.
“I did meet someone, but it is not what you are thinking. I met someone at the Hotel that I stayed at when I went north. He was working behind reception at the time. He treated me like a human being and not like someone to pick up. So many men had tried that in my time in Europe, it was getting tiresome.”
Zane was about to say something, but Melissa glared at him.
“The next day, I visited this place that had been a flourishing Monastic site until Henry the Eighth fell out with the Pope in Rome over a divorce.
As it was a nice day, I took this little road that climbed up out of this beautiful valley and up onto what the locals call ‘the moors’. That’s when I picked up a flat in my rental car. It was then that I found out that where I was had zero cell coverage. I was not looking forward to walking off in search of a house or a phone when this old… and I mean really old truck came up the road towing a trailer. The driver was the man from the hotel from the previous day.”
“You were rescued by your knight in shining armour?” joked Brittany.
Melissa smiled.
“Not quite, but he did take me a few miles to the farm where he was delivering the load of fence panels that were on the trailer. I was able to make a phone call to the rental company and get that sorted. But it looked like I was stuck there for the night. The hotel was full, so the man offered me a bed at his parents’ place. I said yes. They took me in and treated me like a long-lost relative. For the first time in years, I felt at home, and I could relax.”
“That’s when your voice changed,” said Zane.
“Jack… His name is John, but everyone calls him Jack, offered to take me on a little trip up to Scotland and show me the places that tourists from this part of the world generally don’t get to see. He was the perfect Gentleman at all times. I was treated like someone special for the first time in years. You don’t know how nice it felt.”
“Did you… you know?” asked Zane.
Melissa glared at her son for a second. Then she smiled.
“Jack was the perfect host as were his parents Moira and Henry. Their family had lived in the same place since well before the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. That’s more than nine hundred years.”
“So, they are loaded then?” suggested Zane.
“It was not like that, so don’t go getting any ideas. Yes, they have land and tenant farmers and own the hotel and some other businesses, but they are down-to-earth people. Jack is on first-name terms with all the tenants. Some of the families have been tenants for well over a hundred years. No, Zane, they were just nice people who made me feel so very welcome and, importantly, asked nothing from me in return.”
“Sorry, Mom, I don’t accept that. Everyone these days has an angle, or at least that is what Dad keeps trying to instil in us. He wants us to be like him, become a lawyer and then stand for office. Neither of us wants anything to do with the law, and after how he treated you since going to DC, neither do we want to follow him. He won’t listen, so that’s why we were thinking of going to college in Europe, but he would not even consider it. It is as if we are his personal property.”
“Jack didn’t have an angle, as you put it. I came out of our marriage with a good settlement, and there is money in a trust for you both to use for college as you see fit. Your father can’t stop you from going to Europe to study if that is what you want to do. You will then both adults, and he can’t stop you. But… getting back to Jack and everything, I do miss him, and no, I never even kissed him until we said goodbye at the airport, but it wasn’t that sort of kiss, so don’t even think that there is something more than friendship between us. Got it?”
The reaction of Brittany and Zane told Melissa that they didn’t believe a word of what she’d just said.
“But something is stopping you from going back to him right now?” asked Zane.
“I made a promise to spend a week with both of you, didn’t I? And I always try to keep my promises, don’t I?”
“After this week? What are you going to do then?”
Melissa had been putting off even thinking about what she should do after this week.
“I don’t know. There are lots of things to consider. For starters, I don’t have a place to live. All my clothes and possessions are in that one case in the trunk. I left everything from before when I left him. I need to start again somewhere, and at the moment, I don’t know where that will be. Then there is your father. His recent speeches are just sad. He’s joined the anti-LGBT MAGA crowd in his party. My trip to Europe opened my eyes to a far more tolerant world.”
“Is Jack gay?” asked Brittany as she made a huge leap.
Melissa shook her head.
“No, he’s not gay, but he told me that he likes to dress up as a woman from time to time and no, I have not seen him in a dress.”
There was a silence between the three of them. It was Brittany who broke it.
“If you want to be with him, then we are with you, aren’t we Zane?”
“We are,” replied Zane without hesitation.
Melissa felt that a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
“Do you both mean this? You aren’t just saying it to please me?”
Both of them shook their heads.
“We are at school with kids who are gay and lesbian. They are just people like us. Trans people are just the same. If we go back to school up north next month, then we will be amongst them every day. They are just normal people. Dad’s words are horrible, and we told him so after that last campaign rally where he warmed up for Trump. He told us to shape up and get on message. We are not going to do that. We are not clones of him.”
The vitriol in Zane's words was very evident.
“If you go back to school? What are you saying? Are you going to drop out?”
Both of them shook their heads.
“Dad does not like their progressive teaching methods and has threatened us with sending us to a school in Alabama near his alma-mata, Auburn.”
Melissa shuddered at the thought.
“I’d only go if I could enrol in their Vet’s program”, said Brittany.
“But I found out that he put my name down for the pre-law program.”
“Just how did you do that? Please don’t tell me that you hacked his phone or computer.”
“I overheard him talking to Gramps when they were out in the yard the other evening. He’s done the same with Zack. He didn’t even ask us about it. We called the College the next morning and removed our names from any list that he might have signed us up for,” said Zane.
“He wants me to meet the son of one of his cronies from DC and to become like you were for years, Mom, the stay-at-home wife who raised his kids and did his work in his district for free. You know that he was taking a salary for you all these years? It is there in his filings to Congress,” said Brittany.
“I didn’t know until just before we were divorced. I never saw a penny of that money. I hope that has stopped now that we are divorced.”
“Mom,” said Brittany,
“Dad is a crook, and we want nothing to do with him. Gramps told us the same thing last night while Dad was out walking the dogs. That was when we hatched the plan to not go to Cancun like he’d planned.”
“I know that he’s a bit of a crook. Aren’t they all in DC?”
Melissa looked at her phone.
“It is time we were moving. I said to the agent that we’d be there by four.”
That put a halt to their conversation for the time being. Nothing was settled yet, but at least she knew that her children would not disown her should she go back to Yorkshire and Jack.
[to be continued]