The following is part of a novel in progress. There is some sex but not highly explicit. It is a fantasy set in the not so distant/possible future. Please let me know what you think. E-mail me at: rwig@hotmail.com
Legal stuff: The story is mine so don't steal it or I'll be pissed.
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RClayton
***** THREE
Gloria sat across the breakfast table from Phillip and watched him as he read the paper and drank his coffee. They had only been married for three weeks but she was already suspecting she'd made a mistake. There were still so many things about Jerrison's disappearance that didn't add up. Things that she should have questioned far more closely at the time and now she wished she had.
"What's wrong, dear?" Phillip asked. He placed his now folded paper aside and looked across at his new bride.
"I was just thinking about Jerrison. Today would have been his forty first birthday. I need to take the kids to the cemetery after school to put out fresh flowers."
"That sounds like a nice idea, dear." Phillip said. He didn't like the look in Gloria's eyes. She had suspicion in her eyes and that was never good. He knew when she got that look, when any woman got that look, there was trouble on the way.
"You don't say much about Jerrison, Phillip. You were supposed to have been good friends as well as colleagues."
"What would you like me to say about him, Gloria? He was a good man. He worked hard, made a good living for you and the children. He was very moral and determined but he had his faults like anyone else."
"What were those faults, Phillip," Gloria asked. She knew well enough that Jerrison had secrets and pains that he didn't share with her. There were things in his past that she didn't want him to share with her but she still had feeling for her departed husband. You don't spend fifteen years with a man and have no feeling for him. Granted most of those feeling had started to turn to loathing and borderline hate but they were feelings.
"You know as well as I do that he had affairs, Gloria."
"So, I did to. If I hadn't you wouldn't be sitting there now." She said flatly. "I still don't know for sure if Cynthia is his or yours."
"His. I had a vasectomy years ago. I never wanted children. In fact I still hope to talk you into sending those two to boarding school some place."
"Phillip..."
"Yes dear?"
"Fuck you."
He laughed.
Gloria stood up from the table and left the room, her bright red hair flaring out around her head as she stormed from the room. Fucking bastard! She'd already told him she was not sending her kids away. Private school was one thing but boarding school? Hello no! She walked into her bedroom and continued across the room into her dressing room. She slung open the folding wooden doors and examined the dresses and pant suits which hung there. What should she wear to the cemetery to visit her dead husband who she doubted was really dead? There as no body down there, just an empty box. They never found the body, just the wrecked Jag at the bottom of the cliff.
She sat at the dressing table and stared at herself in the mirror. The night he went missing they'd argued about the damn private school again then he'd gone up to bed. She stayed in the library reading then went up herself. He was sound asleep and she slipped in beside him without waking him. She remembered laying there not able to sleep as the clock rolled over to three then four in the morning. She didn't know when she drifted off but when she got up at eight Jerrison was gone and the maid was vacuuming the hall outside of their bedroom.
"I'm sorry, Gloria. I didn't mean to upset you." Phillip came up behind her and placed his hands on her silk covered shoulders.
"Then why did you do it," She asked.
"All the talk of Jerrison just annoyed me, I guess. I do miss him sometimes. He was a friend, you know. We were suppose to have lunch the day he died. He never showed and when I got back to the office to find the police there, well..."
"I understand, Phillip." She said. She didn't really. She still wondered about that lunch, about the police and the accident. She also wondered about the missing four million from their brokerage and savings accounts. What happened to that money?
"I have to go to work. If you want me to go to the cemetery with you and the children call me before one."
"No, Phillip. We'll go alone, but thank you for the offer."
"As you wish dear." He kissed the top of her head and left the room humming some inane tune.
"Bastard," she whispered under her breath. She wondered what it would take to get out of this marriage with the least amount of inconvenience and loss of money.
TBC...