Chapter 6

1997

She was crying and holding the man’s hand as he slept. At least he was home and out of the hospital, finally. Six weeks in a medically induced coma. Another six weeks of therapy. He was finally back to something vaguely approaching his old self, but he did need a lot of rest still. Her used to be man, had done this, and John Michael had put two other men and one woman in the hospital as well before he was taken down by still other men. It was horrifying. And now her used to be man would be spending seven more years in prison; and, it was only that little because of the efforts of Jennifer Connolly. She really was the very best lawyer around.

And now she had to do the unthinkable. She had to out herself to the man she loved, Nathan Grimes. It would be the hardest thing she had ever done. And hard didn’t begin to tell the tale, not close to telling the tale.

He’d finally gotten to where he could be up and around without gasping or stumbling. Finally!

She was sitting out under the awning on the expansive patio of the Grimes estate in Scottsdale. She was dressed demurely. She waited, nervously waited, for her man to return from his latest business deal, enterprise. He didn’t need the money. But money making was what he was better at than almost any other human. But, this early evening she was not interested in money, far from it. And, her heart was in her throat.

“Hello, dear,” he said, coming up to her and giving her a kiss on the cheek. It had been three weeks since he’d finally gotten home from GMC. “You look a little down.” She nodded, but she didn’t say anything, not immediately.

It’d been almost five months since her still husband John Michael Steele had shown up and blown the lid off the pressure cooker. He’d almost killed her Nathan. And, again, he’d also injured though not nearly as seriously two other men and a woman, although in point of fact Melinda had actually been injured by her own husband’s falling body when John Michael had kicked him hard enough to knock him down.

She and her Nathan had discussed the matter of her legal husband at length, but as she alone knew, not in depth. She had come to a decision. Her man had been patient, and now there was no more waiting. The early evening, now, would be the time. There would be no going back half an hour from this moment.

“Nathan, I need to tell you some things. After I finish, and please let me finish, whatever you want to do, say, or what all is what shall be. Okay?” said Victoria. He gave her a look, and the look was a question.

“Vic, your tone is scaring me,” he said. She looked down.

“Please,” she said. He nodded, and it was a supportive nod. He looked questioningly at the Levi-jacket on the table to her right, but he said nothing; he would listen and then fix whatever the problem was. That was his silent oath to himself, and to her.

“Nathan, some nine years ago now, my husband, John Michael Steele, went to prison for killing a policeman. He, the policeman, was a very bad man. And, John Michael went to prison, as I said, for killing him. But, Nathan, John Michael didn’t kill him, I did,” she said. She looked down and waited for the storm that was bound to sweep over her, them.

The man across from her leaned forward in his seat, but he said nothing, not yet. The silence was deafening.

She motioned toward the jean jacket. “It’s the proof. It’s undoubtedly covered in GSR. Johnny told me to burn all the clothes I was wearing that day, and I did, except for that jacket. Nathan, Johnny convinced me to let him take the fall for me. And, coward that I am, I let him. And, he’s been suffering in prison, and again, that for me, ever since.

“Well, and you know the rest. At any rate, when he saw us together last Thanksgiving Day; well, you can imagine. Anyway, like I say, you know the rest,” she said.

The man slumped back in his seat. He was nodding. “Okay, anything else?” he said. He wasn’t smiling, frowning, showing any emotion.

She tendered him a questioning look. “Isn’t that enough?” she said, meaning it.

“Oh my, and oh boy oh boy that does explain a lot,” he said, “especially your over the top loyalty to the man.” Her turn to nod.

“Okay then, my turn,” he said. “Victoria, what you have just told me must never again be spoken of to anyone apart from ourselves. Never to anyone else, am I understood? The man did what he had to do, what any real man would do for his woman, any real man.”

“But...” she started. He held up his hand to short shank her. He slowly shook his head meaningfully. He wasn’t done, not close to done.

“Dear heart I love you more than my life. I have since that first moment I saw you in that cheap ass hotel restaurant some eight years and more ago. Likewise, I completely understand and believe that that good man of yours loves you too. Oh my, how much he must love you! And his bitterness and anger at seeing us together like that, that day. Completely understandable, and I mean completely understandable.

“So, several things are now going to happen.

“Number one. We are setting the date for our wedding; and likewise for the adoption by me of Selena. John Michael will have a place in her life, but I’m her father, her real father sperm donorship notwithstanding. I am a little concerned about that particular issue, but we’ll just have to deal with it in due course if and when it becomes a problem. Hell, of course it’s going to be a problem, no damn doubt about it.

“Number two. I am going to set up a protective screen around your husband in that awful place. He won’t know I’m doing it, I’m gonna be getting Jennifer to engineer it; she has contacts up there and can make it happened; but even Jennifer will not know the whole story. But no one will ever hurt him again while he’s in there, and I know that they have in the past, I checked. The details are what they are and need not be gotten into, not now.

“And finally, we, you and I, are going to figure a way to minimize the pain he’s going to suffer as a result of the divorce that has to happen now; and, something I’ve kind of been thinking about for some time. We, you and I, will do our level best to see to it that he meets a woman to love him and take your place in his heart. Not sure how to do that just yet, but it is going to happen and that’s the long and the short of it,” he said.

His words had not quite stunned her, but she ignored them for the briefest of moments.

“You, you don’t hate me?” she said.

“I just got done telling you I love you more than my life. Try and internalize that very great truth,” he said, and now he was smiling. She jumped out of her seat and ran to him throwing herself into his lap and crying her eyes out in the process.

The calendar on the cell wall declared it to be September of 1997; it’d been ten months since my discovery of my wife’s perfidy and betrayal. She was still technically my wife, I supposed. At least I’d not been informed differently. How long she’d remain so was problematical, though not for me, just for them. Well, that was my less than meaningful thinking.

I knew of course about cheating wives and the destructive nature of prison to marriages and all of it. And, I now knew about it first-hand. I had thought; no, I’d been certain, that my situation was going to be different than it had been for so many others; but in the end it hadn’t been. I was in the same boat as the rest of them, and there was not a damn thing I could do about it. Seven more years, and I’d brought those, the seven, down upon myself. I comforted myself in the sure and certain knowledge that she was going to feel guiltier than I was pretty sure she previously had. Oddly perhaps, I wasn’t sure I wanted her to. I loved the woman. I loved her more than that guy she was with for damn sure. Well, and at least I’d gotten my licks in on him.