I stood there staring at the divorce papers which had been delivered by a courier. The words blurred on the pages as I heard Susan laughing from the spare bedroom. Just a few short minutes ago everything was coming together for me. I had the love of a good woman, a second woman as a plaything and I was on the verge of finally being freed from a marriage that had died a long time ago. In the brief time it took to read the divorce filing everything had changed, and was in real jeopardy of falling apart completely. She was suing for divorce, claiming adultery as the grounds. By naming Lucy and Megan as co-respondents in the divorce action, Susan had made them fair game for her attorney to destroy on the witness stand during the proceedings. There was no way on God's green earth I could allow this to happen.

I went into the spare bedroom where Susan was in a state of euphoria, still laughing over the evil trick she had played on me. "What's the matter Frank?" she said, her laughter still echoing in my ears. "Did things not turn out like you planned?" She had an evil smile on her face and her expression was burned onto my psyche.

"You haven't had the last word just yet, Susan," I replied. "Somehow, someway I will make you regret your vindictive tactics. For now, I have only two words for you: Get out! I want you out of my place and out of my life. You can either leave now or I'll call the police to escort you out of here. I'll be back in a little bit and I'd better not find you still around." I had to get out of there before things got really ugly. I've never struck a woman in my life and I didn't want to start now. Leaving was my only option.

"Oh, I'll leave," she spat back at me. "I'll leave, but you had better be prepared for a drastic change in lifestyle. I told you last night that I would take you for everything that I could and I will. When I get done with you you'll be living in a flophouse in the worst part of town. And you can forget about your precious Lucy. I would imagine that the prospect of being drug through the mud along with her two lovers and having her promiscuous lifestyle exposed to her employers will be enough incentive for her to cut and run. Be prepared, Frank. Be prepared for living utterly alone. No one but a common whore will have you when I get through with you, and you won't even be able to afford the town tramp."

That was enough for me. I turned around and got the hell out of there. My hands were trembling on the steering wheel as I pulled away from my place. I had to see Lucy to tell her the bad news face to face. I called her while I drove to her place to make sure she was home. She answered, but she wasn't home. She was at that new slider bar with Megan. Lucy told me where it was and I changed my route to head over there.

When I arrived I walked through the front receiving area and saw them in a small booth in the back. They were holding hands and Megan was talking to Lucy. Megan was kissing Lucy's hands as she spoke to her. When Lucy saw me approach their booth she pulled her hands away from Megan suddenly, as if she were caught doing something improper.

"Hi Frank," Lucy said as I stood before them. "Did you change your mind, sweetie? Are you going to join us for dinner now?"

Megan didn't bother to speak. She looked at me with a look of indifference. I had interrupted their quiet time together and she seemed pretty pissed about it.

I didn't know any other way to break it to them, so I just blurted it out. "Susan has filed for divorce. The grounds are adultery and she has named both of you as co-respondents. That means that your names will be made public and they can subpoena both of you to testify at the hearing."

Lucy had a look of sheer terror on her face and her eyes began to well up with tears. Megan was silent, but her expression seemed indifferent.

"Look, the last thing I want to do is drag your names through the mud. The only way to prevent that is to make sure that you don't have to testify, and right now the only way I can make sure that you don't is not to contest the divorce. My other fear is that Susan knows this, and she will make some unreasonable demands knowing that she has the upper hand. If she tries to take advantage of me I don't know what I will do. I am going to talk to my attorney and my investigator tomorrow."

Megan seemed surprised. "Do you have an investigator? What do you have one for?"

"I got one to do some work back in North Carolina when I decided to file and beat Susan to the punch. He is digging up dirt on her, trying to find out if she had someone on the side while she denied me sex. He'll find out how she learned your names as well. I have a sneaky suspicion that Susan hired an investigator locally in order to gain information that would hurt my case."

Lucy continued to sit there, quietly sobbing. I wished that I could say something to her that would make things better, but there wasn't anything I could say. I reached out and took her hand. "Look babe, I wish I didn't have to come here and spoil your dinner with Megan, but you needed to know what is going on. I promise I'll try to keep you both out of this, but I have to check in with my people back in Raleigh. Just hang in there, will you?"

Lucy couldn't speak, but nodded her head. It broke my heart to see her like this.

"Don't worry, Frank," Megan said to me. "I'll see to it that she gets through this. You go take care of business and we'll keep in touch."

There wasn't any more I could say at that time, so I just turned around and walked away. Before I left the restaurant I looked back. Megan had Lucy in her arms and was whispering to her as Lucy cried. That should be my job, I thought. Could I lose everything when all is said and done?

When I returned to my place there was no traces that Susan had even been there. She obviously took my words to heart and got out of there. She left no note or anything, so I couldn't be sure if she was still in the area or if she went back to Raleigh. I had to call Rocco and see what he had been able to find.

"Hello, Frank. I'm guessing you have been served already."

"That's right, Rocco. The server caught me right after I returned from work. Susan was in her glory when it happened, so I told her to gather her things and get the hell out of my place. She's gone now. Rocco, do you have anything for me?"

"Frank, I've got a ton of stuff for you. Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"Everything, Rocco. Don't hold anything back from me, because it couldn't possibly get any worse."

"Okay Boss, you've got it. First of all, it seems that Susan has been having an affair with Mr. Martin Woolf. You ever hear of him?"

"Yes, I have. Who in Raleigh hasn't heard of him? Isn't he a big-time attorney back there?"

"He sure is, Frank. He's a big-time divorce attorney, handles the A-list clients in the Southeastern United States. Frank, they've been an item, albeit on the back burner, for over seven years. He's not representing her, by the way. He arranged for a friend of his to take her case. He can't afford the publicity if it got out about them."

"Seven years? Jesus, she was fucking both of us for a year before she cut me off."

"Well, every time your wife was away from the house for more than a few hours she has been with Martin Woolf. He set her up with a condo near Chapel Hill four years ago. Has Susan taken any vacations with her girlfriends lately?"

"Several times a year they have weekend getaways. They go shopping in Florida. Are you telling me this was a cover?"

"It sure was. She was in Florida, but not for shopping and not with her girlfriends. She was with Woolf at his winter condo in South Beach. By my count they have had, on average, six of these little romantic weekends every year."

"Jesus, Rocco. I've been a fool."

"Don't beat yourself up about it, Frank. She covered her tracks pretty well, even going so far as to include one of her best friends in the lie. If you ever asked, this woman was prepared to lie to keep the truth from you. She's good, Frank, but not good enough to keep it from me. You know that I've got friends and informants everywhere, including South Beach and the Bay Area."

"What do you mean, Rocco? Have you been checking up on things out here?"

"No, Frank, but it seems that during her first visit out there she hired a local guy to find out about you and your girlfriend. A real shady character, from what I can gather. This guy found out that you were seeing that Lucy gal. And he knows about the three-way arrangement as well."

"Rocco, are you telling me that he found out about Megan?" How was he able to do that?"

"Frank, I can't prove anything, but I think he may have paid her for information. She needs the money and I think he's preying on that to gain information about your relationship.. Susan's plan was to catch you in an unsavory situation and use it to up the ante on her settlement demands. She has no idea that I was able to learn all of this, though. I'm forwarding everything to your attorney so that he will be well armed when you are prepared to make a response to her initial demands."

I was stunned by all of this. I guess my gut feeling about being concerned about Megan was correct, after all. I worried that her influence would drive a wedge between us, and now I understood why.

"Rocco, I can't thank you enough for all of this. I'll be calling my attorney as soon as we get done here and I get a chance to tell Lucy about it.

Buddy, you are worth your weight in gold."

"Ha, ha, my friend. I've got one more piece of information for you, though. It's about Lucy."

My heart sank when Rocco said that to me. If Lucy was somehow implicated in all of this it would break my heart. Just when I thought I had found that special someone...

"Rocco, what is it? Is Lucy in on this somehow?"

Rocco couldn't answer me because he was laughing too hard. Once he stopped he began to explain. "Frank, quit worrying about Lucy. I felt it was necessary to check her out for just that reason. Frank, she's legit. I couldn't find anything bad about her, other than she's had a lot of short-term boyfriends. She got a huge settlement in her divorce a few years ago. Enough to never have to work ever again and some more left over to allow her to run her business."

"Business? What business, Rocco? She never said anything about having a business."

"Frank, she owns one of the largest commercial real estate agencies in the Silicon Valley. She owns it, but she allows a friend to run the business and be the public face of the business. She pays the bills and rakes in the huge profits. Otherwise, you'd never know she has anything to do with it. She keeps it all very much on the back burner."

I never suspected that Lucy was a wealthy woman. All this time I thought she got the house and a nice monthly stipend from her divorce. The speculation about Megan had me worried, but Rocco had no proof of anything. What a mess!

My next call was to my attorney, Tom Feldmann, again back in Raleigh. He told me that he got the preliminary report from Rocco. "Frank, the stuff he has on Susan is enough to give me leverage when they come up with demands. The speculation about the college student, Megan, is useless to us because there's not only no proof, but it also doesn't have any bearing on the case. It's unscrupulous that he would offer her money for information and more so if she accepted that arrangement, but it simply doesn't help our case one bit. My suggestion to you would be to disregard it."

"So what are we looking at, Tom? What's the best case scenario?"

"Well, Frank, the best would be a simple division of assets, on a fifty-fifty split. I think she might agree to that in order to avoid going to a hearing and having all the details about her affair with Woolf be made public. I'm sure that he doesn't want that to happen, but you never know in these cases. She could ignore her attorney's advice and go for broke, but I highly doubt it. If she wants to keep on being Martin Woolf's plaything, she'll keep her demands to a minimum."

"So what's our next step, Tom?"

"Frank, my advice to you is to keep low. I don't think the threesome is a good idea just now. You can go on seeing your girlfriend, but not while the other girl is around. You really should consider ending that part of the whole relationship."

"Thank you, Tom. I'll take that advice. As a matter of fact, I plan to call Lucy tonight and see if we can be alone. I need to make sure she knows about everything, including Rocco's suspicions about Megan and your advice to end it."

I was beat after all of that, and hungry as well. Since Lucy and Megan were already out for dinner, I thought I would stop by Dobby's Place and get something. Maybe the atmosphere there would cheer me up. When I finished dinner I could call Lucy and see if we could get together and talk about everything. I needed to tell her about the suspicions that Rocco has about her.

I got to Dobby's Place and was prepared to sit at the bar when I heard a familiar voice calling my name. I looked around and it was Jan, Dr. Browning's secretary. She was sitting at a table in the dining room with another woman. She waved me over to her table.

"Frank, what a surprise seeing you here," she said as I approached her table. I leaned in and gave her a light peck on the cheek. Jan was with a very young, good looking woman. She looked young enough to be her daughter. "Frank, I want you to meet my daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer, please say hello to Frank Beddoes. Frank is heading up the molecular engineering department at work."

I couldn't stop smiling when Jan told me that Jennifer was her daughter. I didn't even know that Jan had a daughter, or that she had been married. "Jan, I apologize for being a little on the dimwitted side, but I had no idea that you were married, much less the mother of such a beautiful young woman."

"Don't be silly, Frank. You are one of the smartest persons I know. Jennifer's father and I were divorced when she was four years old. I raised her, but her father and I are good friends now. We weren't much of a match as husband and wife, but somehow we managed to raise a bright, beautiful young woman."

"Why thank you for explaining that to me, Jan. I really didn't mean to pry."

"Oh my goodness, where are my manners? Frank, would you like to join us for dinner. The bar doesn't look like much of an option when we have an open chair right here."

"If you are sure you don't mind it, Jan, I would be honored to join you and Jennifer for dinner."

"Oh good, Mr. Beddoes," said Jennifer. "I'm happy you are going to join us. Mom has told me so much about you."

I looked at Jan and she was blushing. "It's not like I talk about you all that much, Frank. Jennifer has a tendency to exaggerate."

I shot Jennifer a quick glance and she was rolling her eyes and shaking her head. "Well, I'm pleased to meet you, Jennifer. And you must call me Frank. I insist on that."

We sat there and had a very nice evening. I was happy to have run into them, though. Our talk kept my mind off of Lucy and my dilemma. Jan seemed to be enthralled with my stories about life back East. She smiled the entire time and rarely looked away from me. Over the course of the evening I learned that Jennifer was going to UCLA and was home for break, although she was leaving tomorrow to return to school.

After we had our meal and waited for our dessert order, Jennifer excused herself to go to the restroom. Once she was out of earshot Jan spoke to me. "Frank, I'm so glad you had dinner with us. I was hoping that someday we would get a chance to know each other better."

"Me too, Jan. I really enjoyed myself tonight. Thank you for taking pity on me and inviting me to join you and Jennifer. It was just what I needed after today's crazy developments."

"Is it the trouble with your wife, Frank? I don't mean to pry, but have you decided on what you are going to do?"

"No, you aren't prying. I was preparing to have my attorney file the necessary paperwork to begin divorce proceedings, but Susan beat me to it. I was served right after I returned home from work. Right now, I don't know how it's going to play out."

"I'm sorry to hear that Frank," she said. "I want you to know that if you need someone to serve as a sounding board I'll be happy to do that for you. In fact, I wouldn't mind having dinner in the future if you need someone to talk to."

Just then Jennifer returned, as did our server with our dessert. We all enjoyed our selections and then I told them that it was time for me to get home. I called our server over and paid for the meal. Jan tried to object to me picking up the check but I told her it was my pleasure to have spent the evening with them.

I rose to leave and I shook hands with Jennifer, wishing her well at college. Jan got up and gave me a nice kiss on the cheek. "You think about what I said, Frank. The offer is good for as long as you need it."

As I left for the parking lot I thought about what Jan had said. It might be nice to have someone to talk to. Lucy would always be there, but talking to a friend with whom I wasn't romantically involved might help things.

When I got to my place there was an envelope taped to my door. My name, in Lucy's handwriting, was on the front. I got inside and turned on the light in the kitchen, eager to see what this might be. I opened the envelope and found a single piece of stationery.

Dear Frank,When you get this message I will be far away. Megan convinced me to spend a few days with her so that I could process what happened this afternoon. Please don't try to find me, as I need the time away to think about everything, including us. Don't try to phone me, either. I won't answer my phone if you try. Megan will be with me, so don't worry about me, I won't be alone.This could be a good time to take a little break in our relationship. I'll be in touch with you once I have sorted everything out and let you know what I want to do.Lucy
The words burned into my mind. Megan had convinced her to go away with her and I wouldn't know where. That's when the tears came, stinging as my eyes welled up.

I found myself sobbing out loud, as despair crept in and the realization of what had happened hit me. Everything I had hoped for was washed away, gone. My plans for a future with Lucy were as far away as could be. I slumped to the floor, clutching Lucy's note in my hand, reading it over and over in hopes that the words would change and that this was just an illusion.

But they didn't change. This really was happening and I was powerless to prevent it. My deepest fears had come true.

I had lost everything. I couldn't hold back the tears now and they poured down my face as I cried all night long, until sleep took over.