Page 5 of Dirty Rotten Cheating Husband

My mind went back to Vivi. She hadn’t flirted with him.

But still. There was something beyond ordinary dislike in her look.

There was something. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but there was something wrong.

I contemplated life as the wronged wife.

What that what was happening?

Was my husband unable to keep it in his pants, maybe bored by his shy and nervous wife? Did he want some kind of weird sex thing that he couldn’t get from me?

I toyed with the idea of announcing that he could tie me up and spank me with a paddle, if he so wished, but the whole thing seemed so incredibly embarrassing that I could not.

In some ways Grayson and I had a very formal relationship. At first, I had thought nothing of it. It was wonderful having a gentlemanly man who treated me right, asked about my day and my work, listened to the answers. He was even a very good cook!

But, I realized uneasily, he never really talked about himself. I knew very little about his background or his family, just that his parents had died over ten years ago. And we rarely talked about us, like our future goals or where we wanted to be in five years. And, strangely, even though he said he wanted to have kids, he always brushed off any attempt on my part to ask when.

I tried to shove down my nerves and worry, but I wasn’t successful.

Then one day I got a call from my dad Harvey.

He’d been arrested for large-scale governmental fraud.

I listened to the list of charges with bewildered confusion.

It wasn’t that I was surprised my father was getting arrested for fraud. But the scale of the charges shocked me. He wasn’t the mastermind type!

Hanging up the phone, my hands were trembling.

These charges were serious. They could put him away for a long time with this.

And there was only one person in the world who could help me untangle the mess of what to do. I called Grayson, but he didn’t answer.

Then I called his accounting firm, but there was no answer either.

“Leave a message, for Thomas & Thomas Associates,” the voice mail called out, in rumbling, sonorous tones.

Who was the other Thomas? I wondered, not for the first time.

Probably Williams on the call. He had a low melodic voice like that.

I felt frantic with worry, panic coursing through my body.

The first step was to get Dad a lawyer, right?

Then figure out how to post bail for him.

I called his cellphone again. Normally I tried to be cool and not a freak-out disaster, but when my husband didn’t answer again I tried one more time, then left a voicemail.

“Hi, it’s me. Can you please call me back? I think my dad is in some big trouble this time and I need your help to get him out!”

I had no clue where he was!

Pacing up and down the length of our huge, bright kitchen, I wondered what to do. Grayson had always said there was no point in putting the address to his accounting firm in my phone because he was often gone for meetings. I had only been to the vague gray office building downtown a few times and was pretty sure I couldn’t find it again.

In desperation, I went into the garage to look through his work vehicle. Maybe it would give me some clue about how to find him.

I rummaged around in the console. Nothing. This was probably pointless. Grayson was so spotlessly neat and tidy. What did I think I was going to find? A hand-written card from the dentist saying he had an appointment at 2:20 pm?

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