Edited by Barney R with my thanks. Messed with by me. All mistakes are mine.

Author’s note: All legal sequences are total fiction, I used them for effect.

She accused me, and when she found out I was truthful, she was remorseful.

I hadn’t been back in my home town for many years, and I wouldn’t be here now except for my father’s funeral. Of course, she was going to be there. She was and is the wicked witch of Grand Rapids, my ex-wife. My father loved her, and so did I until she wouldn’t listen to the truth.

When I saw her, the old hurt came welling up. I felt like I should run away as quickly as I could. I couldn’t run, and I had no desire to talk to her. Her last words to me echoed in my mind. “Go to hell you cheating son of a bitch.” I was stunned at the time because I had never cheated on her or on any woman I had ever dated or was in a relationship.

I knew there was no way to avoid it, so I stood my ground and waited for her to come up to the family area and make her condolences. She looked at the casket for a long time, and I could see some tears.

Finally, she came over to where my family was sitting. She told my mother how she was sorry for her loss.

Then my mother did something I never thought she would do. She reached back and slapped Cathy right in the face as hard as she ever hit us when we were kids and being punished. (When I was a kid corporal punishment was the norm.) “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry after destroying the best man you will ever know, you stupid bitch. You not only chased the best man you ever touched out of his family’s life, but you did it on a lie from someone you knew hated my son. Please let us have this time to grieve without the pain you caused.”

The whole funeral parlor full of people were watching what was going on. Most knew the back story, and by now, my ex-wife knew she had been lied to when she accused me of cheating.

Cathy left with as much dignity as she could muster.

My name is Charles Fremont, Chas to my friends and family. I am 33, and as I said before back in Grand Rapids, MI for my father’s funeral. I was married to Cathy Gilman for two years and we divorced more than four years ago.

I am a ‘road warrior’ I have worked as a field sales/service engineer for almost ten years. I am rarely required to stay overnight for a problem or an installation. I have a professional reputation of being an honest and dedicated worker. I have turned down several promotions to be an office weenie. I like to be on the road, even when there is no real problem. I like being the face of our company and solving customer problems.

I met Cathy Gilman when I was trying to sell her company a service agreement on some of my company’s equipment that her company was using. She was sitting in on the meeting as the administrative assistant to the service department manager. She was taking a lot of notes.

She was a nice looking lady. She had a pleasant smile. She looked to be 23, or 24 years old and paid very close attention to what I was offering. When she walked in, I could see that she was about 5’ 7” or 8” tall, and slender, not model emaciated, but slender like an athlete.

I sold the service agreement, and after we had been maintaining the equipment for about three months, I made a courtesy call. Things were humming along with no complaints about our service or our people.

On the way out, I stopped at Cathy’s desk to talk to her. I asked if she liked live theatre. When she said she loved it, I told her I had tickets to see the Broadway Theatre Guild’s performance of ‘The Man of La Mancha’. I asked if she would like to see it with me. When she said yes, I told her the show time and asked if she wanted to meet there or I would pick her up for dinner and after the play, I would take her back home. She thought the dinner sounded great. We exchanged phone numbers, and I left floating out the door.

That dinner laid the ground work for our life for the next four-plus years. We dated for eight months when I asked her to marry me. She said yes, and we picked out the appropriate jewelry and started making plans for a summer wedding.

Things were going great and it was time to meet her parents. She had already met mine. They were very nice people, and very supportive of Cathy. They seemed to like me a lot, and I was invited for Sunday dinner almost every week.

I had heard horror stories of wedding problems, but we somehow managed to avoid them. The ladies in the wedding party were wearing very nice dresses that with the removal of some of the embellishments would become nice party dresses. All of my sidemen’s tuxes fit perfect, my bride was gorgeous and there were no mishaps during the ceremony or reception. We honeymooned in Napa Valley California. I had a three-bedroom apartment that we made our home in.

Our first year, as man and wife, was fine, actually, it was almost a year-long honeymoon. Trouble started about 15 months after we were married. Cathy complained to me about an employee named Roger Freeman at her plant who was trying to get her to go out with him. She told me that she told him no because she was married. The jerk said he didn’t care and he wasn’t going to tell me anyway.

I made Cathy file a harassment complaint against the guy at her office. She did. The next time I went to their plant to fix a problem, the guy hit me with a wrench he grabbed out of my toolbox and knocked me unconscious. The attack was witnessed by many people and the guy was arrested and fired. I spent three days in the hospital and couldn’t drive for three weeks.

At his trial, I was subpoenaed to testify. His lawyer tried to get me to say I was abusive to him because he asked my wife for a date. I denied it and all of the witnesses told the same thing that I never even spoke to the guy. He was found guilty and sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to pay all of my lost salary and medical expenses. It seems he was a trust fund baby and was only working because the trust fund required it. I sued and got more than the sentencing court had ordered.

The fund paid me a bunch, and Roger lost the amount he would have received from the trust while he was in jail. He got out and called my office number and left voice mail messages saying he was going to get his revenge. I requested a restraining order and it was granted.

A few weeks after he got out of jail, I came home from a rare overnight trip and was met at the door by a stack of garbage bags and a key that wouldn’t work in the door. I called the building manager and made him come up to the apartment and let me in. He wanted to refuse until I reminded him that mine was the only name on the lease.

When I went in Cathy was standing in the entry hall and told me to leave. She said she knew all about the cheating I was doing when I was on my overnight trips.

I denied it then she uttered the last words she spoke directly to me, “Go to hell you cheating son of a bitch.” Then she pushed me out of the apartment and slammed the door. I fell over one of the bags and saw that they were filled with my clothes, or what was left of them. Cathy must have spent several hours tearing and cutting everything.