I went back to bed and had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right. Remembering I had put the Find My Phone app on all our phones, I activated the app. The GPS put him in a neighborhood a few towns over. I considered driving there but it was a little after 3am, he could be on his way back before I arrived. But no, he didn't leave until almost 4am.
Elation was my first emotion. I had been miserable for several years. He spoke down to me and my self-esteem was plummeting. He criticized and micromanaged everything I did. I didn't clean right, I wasn't organized, I screwed up letters he'd ask me to type. Whatever it was I did, I didn't do it right and of course, he could do it better. He would say 'you're only value is when you spread your legs and cook'. I constantly felt I either was walking on eggshells, or in defense mode. I would lash out in hostility or retreat to the bedroom crying. He became nastier and I would get more belligerent. And so it went on for a couple of years before D-Day.
By 4:30am, he fell asleep. I stopped at the donut shop for an iced coffee, then drove up to the street where the GPS picked him up. The screen shot I took showed two possible houses and I wasn't quite sure which one was the house, so I googled the residents of the two addresses. One was clearly not an option, but the second had a resident in her early 50's with the first name of 'the skank'. For a fleeting moment I thought of this girl, but it really didn't stick in my head at that time. It should have.
I looked her up on Facebook and saw some pictures. She was blonde. 'The skank' had been a brunette. I then looked up my cell phone bill. Pouring over the numbers, one stuck out due to the sheer frequency of incoming and outgoing calls. It was a Clearwater, Florida number. While I was volunteering at school that day, I could not shake this nagging feeling so I kept revisiting her Facebook page. I began scrolling through her photos which were public. There were several references to Clearwater. I then saw a photo with her and her mother. And I was like OMG, it's 'the skank'.
I had a friend's daughter with an out of state phone number call the Florida number. The call went to voice mail. She called me to tell me I was wrong, there was a different name on the message. When she told me the name, I recognized it, went back to one of her pictures and discovered it was the niece's name. Gotcha.
I called a friend of mine who was an attorney and asked her if she knew a good divorce attorney. She made us martinis and we called a friend of hers. I had an appointment the next morning.
Initially, I kept the knowledge of the affair from my husband. I met my attorney on Tuesday, got some additional information for him and saw him again on Wednesday. He was already drafting the divorce papers.
By Thursday, I couldn't keep quiet any longer. I was seething with anger, furious that my husband believed I was such a fool and he could just get away with his deception. I exploded, taking him by surprise. He denied an affair, said they were just ‘friends’. She was going through a nasty divorce and he was looking over stuff for her. I didn’t buy it. I told him that I think he had feelings for her and that it was more than an affair. He said ‘she’s crazier than you’. He said her husband was crazy. He said her husband filed for divorce because of her excessive drinking and smoking marijuana. He told me she was seeing someone she met in Florida. My husband also said she was supposed to go away with this guy next month. ( I wondered if maybe her soon to be ex would like that information.) I told him I drove to the house Tuesday and saw naked arms and legs flailing around from the living room window. “You know what a germaphobe I am with my dick and I don’t like rubbers, do you really think I would fuck her. We fooled around but didn’t have sex. I wonder if her soon to be ex-husband could use any of this information… I still didn't tell him about the divorce.
I signed the papers on Friday and they were filed with the court on Friday afternoon, four days after I unearthed the affair. But the court was backed up and the summons that was supposed be computer generated on Friday afternoon, was delayed.
As the reality of the affair sunk in, I was furious. I was manic and in a rage. For as bad as things were, I never expected my honorable husband, who never did anything wrong, who considered himself the epitome of the perfect, moral, respectful gentleman, to betray me like this. Cheating was something I never considered for a second that he would do. And I wanted him and her to pay.
By Friday afternoon, I had visited the courthouse and looked up the details of 'the skank's' divorce which were a matter of public record. I confirmed her husband was the one who filed. I jotted down the next court date as I planned to attend. I would introduce myself to the soon to be ex and his attorney, with the cell phone call log and the find my phone screen shots (which I had been taking all week) of my husband at her house. I could just imagine the horrified look on her face and that made me smile.
Friday evening was going to be fun. My husband and I received a bottle of Dom Perignon for Christmas a couple of years ago that had been sitting in the fridge. My cousin was coming over for dinner, we were going to load all my husband's things in the back of my station wagon and drive to 'the skank's' house. I paid extra to the constable to serve the divorce papers that night, at her house. After he served my husband, I was going to back my car on her front lawn and push his things out of the trunk, then throw the hundred or so pages of the phone logs up in the air. I'd tell him, 'don't bother coming home' and say to her 'he's all yours'. My cousin was going to video the whole thing and we were going to celebrate back at my house with the bottle of Dom. I could just see it when we went to our own divorce hearings, the attorneys and judges in the court (his colleagues) knowing that I served him at his girlfriend's house. That video would have been uploaded to YouTube before the champagne bottle was empty. And again, I smiled.
However, what is it they say about the best laid plans? Things didn't go as planned that Friday. The court system was backed up. The summons that were supposed to be emailed to my attorney on Friday afternoon were delayed. There would be no constable serving divorce papers, no car emptying his belongings on 'the skank's' front yard, no Dom, no throwing the phone logs at them, no YouTube video.
That Friday was the last night he was at her house. He went over to tell her I knew, and saw my car while I was trying to get some photos. He came home early that night. And he was home every night after. I had to settle for the constable serving the divorce papers at our home later that next week.
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