“Then he told me he’d thought I would give all that up when we got married. Evidently he expected me to sit around until he got home and then feed him and probably rub his back and listen to him talk about his day, and then strip if he wanted sex. At least that’s what he’d expected. Where he got that idea I’ll never know.
“I tried to talk to him about it, but he would just shake his head and tell me over and over that I was a crummy wife, that I was unreasonable. He said I’d lied to him. That wasn’t true. It came as a total shock to me after we were married when he started pitching fits over my schedule. While we were dating it had been just the same and he’d never said a word. Once he even told me how proud he was of me.
“When I finally told him that I knew he was having an affair and that I wanted out, he said I was imagining things. He said I was being silly, at least at first he said that. Then just days later he said I was losing it, that I was paranoid but that he wouldn’t divorce me because I was going crazy. It wouldn’t be right. No, he wouldn’t do that to me. I didn’t understand what he was talking about until about four days later.
“He was sleeping with another woman, James, I would bet my life on it. After I was locked away in Beadermeyer’s sanitarium, I don’t know what he did. I was kind of hoping that I’d never have to see him again. And I didn’t. Just my father came. But Scott had to be in on it with my father. He was and is my husband, after all. And he had told me I was nuts.”
Interesting, he thought. “Yes,” he said. “He was in on it, up to his little shyster’s ears. Who was he having an affair with?”
“I don’t know. Probably someone at work, at TransCon. Scott’s big into power.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, dipped down and kissed her ear, “but you’re going to have to see him again, at least one more time. Good thing is, I’m your hero and I’m even official, so you don’t have to worry.
“Sally, maybe Scott killed your father. Maybe your mother is protecting him.”
“No, Scott’s a worm. He’s a stingy, cowardly little worm. He wouldn’t have the guts to kill my father.”
“All right.” So much pain, he thought, too much. It would all work out, it just had to.
He leaned down and kissed her mouth this time. Her lips parted, and he wanted more than anything to go deep into her mouth, just as he wanted to go deeply inside her body, but he realized her world was spinning out of control right now. He didn’t want to add any more confusion to her life. Good Lord, he’d asked her to marry him.
“Perhaps that would be good,” she said and pulled him down so she could kiss him.
“What would be good?” he said in her mouth.
“To get married. To you. You’re so normal, so big and normal. You didn’t have a screwed-up childhood, did you?”
“No. I’ve got two older sisters and an older brother. I was the baby of the family. Everyone spoiled me rotten.
My family wasn’t particularly dysfunctional. No one hit anyone. We kids beat the crap out of each other, but that’s normal enough. I was big into sports, any and every sport, but my passion was and still is football. Sundays were created for football. I always go into withdrawal after the Super Bowl. Do you like football?”
“Yes. I had a woman gym teacher at my school who was from San Francisco. She was nuts about football and taught us the game. We got very good. The only problem was that there wasn’t another girl’s team around for us to play. I don’t like basketball or baseball.”
“I can live with that. I’ll even play touch football with you.”
She kissed his neck. He shuddered as he felt her opening even more beneath him. He said quickly, “My big screw-up was marrying Teresa Raglan when I was twenty-six. She was from Ohio, seemed just perfect for me.