He was the slyest of weasels, everyone ultimately agreed. Even his own, usually nonjudemental mother said so. He, his new gray, tailor-made suit and expensive shoes arrived at the courthouse fashionably late -- as though he had not a care in the world, because he didn't. He didn't know what was coming next.
On the other side of the long table was his soon to be ex wife who looked him in the eye when he looked only once directly at her and then down at the table. She never stopped staring through him.
He thought he was cool. He thought he was so very slick. There was no way she could prove his infidelities or find hidden assets he claimed were lost in a bad business deal. He was so much smarter. He covered his tracks. He didn't even really care now that she knew about the money, because he was so smart and business savy that he made tons more than he stole and could easily replace it. He met women out of town who never knew his real name. He rented cars for that purpose. He kept cheap cell phones for those calls. Credit card bills for all those charges went to his office, so she could never have access to them. He almost always went to hotels where he wouldn't look out of place and would likely be unrecognized.
There were never phone calls to the house late at night to raise suspicion. He never had lipstick on his collar. He never smelled like another woman's perfume. He didn't spend hours on the internet. He and his wife still had sex as often as they did all of the10 years they were together. He still listened when she talked as though he really cared. He thought he had all his bases and outfield covered. Thinking about the pre-nup agreement which she signed so willingly over a decade ago brought a smile to his face in court as the lawyers for the two sides started to talk. He was getting excited as the final days of this union drew to a close. Her eyes met his again when he looked at her for the second time with a slight grin on his face. Then he started to worry a little when she smiled back.
He so wrongly underestimated her intelligence, her gut feeling. She continued to stare at him from across the court house table and smile, not grin. She hadn't smiled since all this mess started. Her smile caught him way off guard. He hadn't agonized at all since this mess started, but now wiped his brow with his hand. It was catching up to him.
For in the pre-nup there was a clause that if she cheated on him, she got nothing. But if he cheated on her, she got half of the moon and the kids got a quarter of what was left of his half of the moon if they divorced before the kids were grown.
There was that one time last year when she went out of town for a week without him. Something was different in the room when she returned. Something. She could feel it, but she talked herself out of thinking the worst. After all, he drove mid week to spend a day and night with her on her trip. They didn't just have sex. They made love and it hadn't been like that for a long time. She liked how she felt -- as though it were new love again. So she unpacked from her trip, took a shower and waited for him to come home. From the bathroom doorway towel drying her hair, she froze in her tracks, in such disbelief. It was all so clear from there.
Sitting in court, he wanted to feel secure again, so he smiled a little broader smile to himself thinking how sly he was after leaving her in that hotel on his way home to surburbia to pick up his umpteenth infidelity and take her to his home him with him for the night. He broke his own rule, but with this one he had faith and trust, for this Twinkee had a prenup of her own with some big shot who could outbuy him any day with his pocket change. This Twinkee had more to lose than he did if news of their hot affair got out and she was even much greedier than he.
So he unbuttoned his suit jacket and leaned back comfortably in his courthouse chair, smiled that broader smile to himself and looked at her across the table almost with pity for being so stupid. He had got away with it. He would be free of her and her outrageous demands to meet with teachers, go to church, vacation with her relatives, tolerate her boring and under educated friends and spend more time with his kids than he cared to do. And he would be free at such a little cost of some low alimony until the kids were grown. He didn't even consider that she might remarry along the way; he saw that as too remote a possibility. She had aged more than he did. Who would want her, he almost said aloud. It was just a given in his slick, shallow mind that she would struggle to maintain anything that even remotely resembled the lifestyle that she had become accustomed to with him.
The lawyers talked but only hers would hold the trump card.
It was the tag on the quilt on their bed that caught her eye coming out from her shower when she returned home from that week-long trip to see her sisters. The tag on the new quilted bedspread wasn't hanging down on her side at the foot of the bed as it was before her trip when she noticed it on her last quick look over the room to make sure she packed everything. She made a mental note to cut the tag when she returned. Under penalty of the law, she always cut those off right away, but this time, with her wet hair and spirit crushed she left it on when she mustered the courage to pull down the spread at the top of his side of the bed and saw it.
She sat in court staring through him again, remembering how hard it was for her to pull off the quilted bedspread and put it back on their bed the right way, with the tag hanging down at the foot of the bed on her side. She used the towel that dried her hair to dry her eyes and made the bed perfectly. In court, she continued staring through him, remembering how hard it was not to throw that quilt away that night. Twelve months later, she was looking across the courthouse table again and thinking how smart she got overnight after noticing a detail so insignificant as the tag on the quilt. He noticed her again staring through him across the courthouse table, again with a faint smile on her face. He started to fidget. Without realizing it, he tapped his foot so rapidly on the courthouse floor that his lawyer touched his client's knee for a moment to communicate that he needed to appear calm. His knee and his foot stopped moving immediately but panic was soon taking over his mind.
He didn't care about the home that they shared. She could have it. He felt that sorry for her. She'd never get another house quite like it. The poor stupid thing could have it. The neighborhood was too boring for him anyway. The cars, sure she could have 2 of those, too. He still had the rest of the vehicles worth much more. He didn't want shared custody of the kids, only visitation one weekend each month. He didn't have room in his life and time for the kids.
Her smile was beautiful; he always told her so. She'd make a good wife, he once thought. Beautiful but naive. He knew he could get away with leading a double life so to speak with her because she just wouldn't think the worst. But the lawyers in the courthouse room with them stopped talking and looked at the envelope that she pulled from her purse containing evidence that would be introduced as her valuable trump card and pre-nuptual agreement buster. His lawyer looked at him and back at her. Neither liked surprises of any kind, especially when they thought they were almost done.
The day after she washed the quilted bedspread, she purposely went out of town again. She didn't have the heart or courage to install a suveillance camera in her own bedroom, but had one placed right outside its door and another placed in the garage. When she returned three days later, through tear-filled eyes she watched the video of the Twinkee coming into her home with her unfaithful husband and the two in various stages of undress entering and leaving and re-entering their bedroom multiple times over a 10-hour period. She watched as he went out in the hall with the phone to talk on the phone - she knew it was she on the invisible end of the line. He had lied and said he didn't answer the phone earlier because he didn't feel well. In the middle of one of his fake coughs, Twinkee came into the hall to pull him back in the room.
She watched the tape over and over but not to the end. She reconsidered her instinct to leave, instead had the locks changed on the house and called him at work to say not to come back. When she did finish watching the tape, she caught him alone removing bank books from a secret hiding place in the hallway closet that was easy for her to access with a hammer and screwdriver. This worked out perfectly. By the time he retrieved his message from her, she said she knew that money was missing from an account specifically for the kids' college funds.
He and his lawyer rehearsed the next part incase that truth came out in court. He was prepared to repay the account the couple hundred thousand dollars that he planned to say he used as start up money for a business that quikly failed. But he watched frozen in time as she opened the envelope and handed the tape to her lawyer. Her lawyer read the attached note that paraphrased the pre-nup ageement and asked for the tape to be played. She smiled a full smile at her dearly shocked spouse who would have to do a lot more than repay the college fund.
His lawyer objected but its viewing was allowed. She didn't take her eyes off the two of them as they watched video of the garage door opening, his car pulling in and Twinkee getting out of the car with him. She had seen the video so many times. She didn't need to see it one last time in court. The movie across the table was more pleasurable to view. His lawyer was taken aback, equally shocked as well to see his own naked wife in his client's hallway pulling him back in his bedroom for more. His lawyer never saw it coming, either. She smiled one last time at her soon to be ex husband who just shook his head in disbelief as her lawyer handed him a small envelope containing something so insignificant to him as the tag from the quilt cut in two.
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