She said she wanted to get away to find herself

My name is Eric Sanderson. When this happened I was 27. I had been married for just over two years.

I met Jane Kowalski when I got out of the military. I was in a bookstore, and she saw what type of books I was looking at, and asked help in getting a couple of books for her brother for his birthday. We introduced ourselves, and talked about her brother’s likes and dislikes in reading material. I offered some suggestions from my favorite authors. She thanked me and started to go to look for the books. I asked her to wait for a second. I then asked if she would like to go to dinner with me. She said where and when and gave me her cellphone number.

We went out to dinner later that week and started seriously and exclusively dating from there. Jane wanted to hear all about my military duty, most of which I could not talk about. I probed for her background and experience.

I found a good job with an electronics security company as a troubleshooter and field installation supervisor. My area was the local metro area. Nice job, good pay, and more importantly only about two hours a day of office time, after about six months on the job I asked Jane to marry me and she said yes.

We got married about 18 months after we met. Things were fine for the first year plus, good company, great sex, lots of conversation. Then things started to change.

At first, like most mere men, I did not notice a great change. When I finally noticed I realized that Jane was not her usual cheerful self at home. She stopped asking about my day, the sex seemed to me more mercy fucks than lovemaking, and she no longer seemed to want to do the things that we enjoyed before. No date nights, no friends over for cards. No time in the public with me and when I suggested something, I was shot down with ‘not in the mood’; ‘not feeling well’ ‘just doesn’t sound like fun’. Of course, the Tuesday nights with the girls did not have those complaints, and to be fair, she never complained when I went out with my guy friends or my weekends fishing.

One day I got home a little early and I overheard part of a phone conversation Jane was having with her sister where she said: “Eric just doesn’t excite me anymore, he’s no fun.” Then she looked up and saw me and blushed and quickly ended the call.

I asked; “Do you want to talk about this ‘excitement’ or ‘fun’ problem?” I was hurt, sad, and mostly angry so I added; “Isn’t it nice that you can talk to your sister about ‘our problems’ but you can’t talk to me.”

Jane started to say something, but only sobbed and ran out of the room. I heard the bedroom door close and went into the living room and sat down to think about what I had heard. I must have lost track of time because I woke up the next morning still in the chair in the living room.

I got out of the chair and went into the bedroom for my clothes for work and found a note and Jane’s rings, her cellphone, and car keys on the dresser. I also saw that all of her clothes that she still wore were gone from the closet. I called work and took a personal day. Then I sat on the bed to read the note.

...

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Jane was right, after the shock, I got angry. I also decided to get even. As I said earlier, I work for an electronics security company. I sat down and made a plan of how to exact my retribution, because frankly, how do you find excitement on a retreat. I made a list of things I needed to do.

I got through the first 3 parts of the list and did not find any surprises. I took Jane’s laptop, the house computer and the cellphone to one of the guys at work who did cybersecurity for a side job. The bank accounts had not been touched. The work stuff was easy because I had not set up a beneficiary before, so I just named my parents as primary and my brothers and sister as secondary. For the charge cards, I asked for copies of the last six months of charges and paid them off. The cellphones were on a month to month also so I got copies of the last six months of calls and canceled the service. I bought a TracFone plan for my new phone service. I rented an apartment in a different part of town and did not have a landline phone put in.

The investigator was one that my cyber nerd coworker recommended and he gave the investigator a list of email addresses and phone numbers that were from the devices I had him check.

My last step before closing out this phase of my plan was to call Jane’s sister and say to her; “When Jane finds herself, have her try to find me. I have informed our security she is not allowed on company grounds. I have had our switchboard informed that I would not accept calls from her and that if she calls, she is to be informed of these steps I have taken.”