Chapter 17

Tawny’s divorce attorney had said the paperwork would be ready to file in another two or three days. He had also rained on her financial parade.

“It doesn’t matter if the money is in an account you recently started,” he said, patiently. “You started the account while you were married, not to mention that some of the assets you moved into it were in his name only, like the sales of the stocks. It’s still community property.”

“So, if I don’t want him to get half of it, I need to give it to the Humane Society?”

“What?”

“Murdock loved kitty cats,” Tawny said, dryly.

“What I’m saying is that, as soon as you file for divorce, there will be an automatic restraining order, preventing you from moving, disposing of, or hiding assets. The judge will decide who gets what, if you and your husband haven’t made an agreement.”

“Okay,” she said. “Get the paperwork ready, but don’t file it until I tell you to. I need to go.”

“We have more to discuss,” objected the man.

“It will have to wait,” she said, breathing rapidly. “I think my water just broke.”

“What?!”

“You can charge me for the chair,” she gasped, as a contraction rippled across her distended belly. “Could you possibly call me an ambulance?”

“Of course!” he gasped.

His panic didn’t transfer to his secretary, who bustled in and took charge of Tawny.

“I’ve had three,” said the woman. “This isn’t the emergency a lot of people seem to think it is. Just breathe, okay, Sweetie? You’ll be just fine.”

“I couldn’t call you,” sighed Tawny. “I needed to get to the hospital.”

“I’d have gone with you,” said Bobby, whose voice was agitated. He’d just been informed his girlfriend had delivered a healthy baby boy, who was currently sleeping on her chest.

“We talked about that. Our cover story for why you’ve been spending so much time at my house is already thin. We need for people to think this is Murdock’s son.”

“He knows it isn’t,” objected Bobby.

“I don’t care if he complains about it to his cell mate,” said Tawny. “I want to be able to be with you in public at some point in the future. I suspect that will be scandalous enough all by itself, without our baby being brought into it.”

“I want to be there for you,” he groaned.

“Be there for me later,” she said. “He’s beautiful, Bobby. You make good babies.”

“I’m not happy, Tawny,” said Bobby.

“I know. I’ll make it up to you later.”

“How? When?”

“In six weeks,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you in six weeks. That’s when we’ll be able to have sex again.”

“I can go without sex, Tawny,” he growled. “What you and I have goes beyond just sex.”

“I know. Until then you can make it up to me by helping me take care of our son.”

“So now I have to make it up to you? What’s that all about?”

“What that’s about is being in love with a woman,” she said. “Now, I have to go. I think Charles is hungry. You have to share my breasts, now.”

“Charles?”

“My father’s name,” she said.

“Oh. Okay.”

“You can name the next one,” she said.

It was three days before Bobby got to see his son. He picked Tawny and Charles up and took them home. Then he jogged to the divorce lawyer’s place of business and drove her car back to the house.

He spent a good hour cuddling his son. It was hard for him to adjust to the fact that he actually had a son, but Tawny pointed out all the things that she said were “Bobby features”. He eventually gave the baby back to his mother and then watched as she bared a breast and let the little boy latch on to a fat nipple. She shuddered and Bobby heard the wet sounds of a baby gorging on breast milk.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes, and no,” she said. “When the milk first lets down it’s uncomfortable, but that goes away almost instantly. It’s not like when you suck them.”

Bobby licked his lips, unconsciously.

“When he’s finished, you can try some, if you like,” she offered.

“Really?”

“Uh huh,” she said. She gazed adoringly at her offspring, before looking up.

“I need to hire you to put the crib together, and unpack the swing and some other things.”

“Hire me?” He laughed. “You don’t have to hire me.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I need to spend a lot of money before I file for divorce. As soon as I file, they keep anyone from hiding money. My lawyer says everything I moved is still considered community property. That’s why I need to spend most of it before I file.”

“And you want to spend it by hiring me to do things,” he said. He laughed again.

“There are a ton of things that need to be done if I’m going to have this house ready to put on the market,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “What am I supposed to do with that much money?”

“I think you should buy a house. You need to move out of that terrible apartment.”

“I can’t buy a house in Julian,” said Bobby. “In another year I’m moving to Norman to get my bachelor’s degree.”

“Then buy a house in Norman,” she said. “I may beg you to let me live there after I sell this house.”

Bobby stared.

“We’d live together?”

“You said you want to. Has anything changed?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “I guess I just never thought it would be possible.”

“It might not be possible here, in Julian. In Norman, nobody would think anything about it.” She frowned. “Other than people thinking I’m a cougar.”

“If we get to live together I don’t care what people think,” he said.

“Me, either,” she said, firmly. “Now, get to work. I’m going to pay you a lot. I want a lot of work out of you!”

When Tawny’s water broke, it had interrupted her discussion with her divorce attorney. His assessment of her financial status had concerned her and she had originally thought to have Bobby do little things around the house and then pay him exorbitant amounts for his labor. It had occurred to Bobby that, if he banked half a million dollars in a month or two, somebody at the bank might get suspicious. The police might be informed. They’d suspect he was dealing drugs, or something. In the end, they’d find out his cougar girlfriend just gave him money, but all that would be on record, and what she was doing would be obvious, if Murdock contested the divorce. She was pretty sure he’d contest the divorce if he was told “he” was only worth about forty-five thousand dollars.

Instead of hiring Bobby to fix a faucet and paying him five or six thousand dollars for his labor, she decided to become a landlady. She drove to Norman, visited a realtor’s office, and within two weeks bought a house. When she paid cash for it, people were surprised, but there was no law against paying cash for a house. And, since she paid cash, there was no bank involved that was worried about protecting their collateral, so inspections went quickly and smoothly. Immediately after closing, she talked to the realtor’s property management team and asked them about renting it out until she was ready to move to Norman and live in it. She was told she could easily get fifteen hundred a month in rent, but the property management fees would eat into that. In theory, Murdock would own half of that house and be entitled to half the income it produced.

“Okay. I’ll think about it and let you know,” she said.

She’d been putting a little money in Murdock’s commissary account every couple of weeks, just so she could say she was still being “supportive”. Since she didn’t want to talk to him, she changed her phone number so he couldn’t call her anymore.

Now she was back in her lawyer’s office, to get things finalized.

“He’s a cutie,” said the man, looking at the baby in her arms. “What’s his name?”

“Charles,” she said.

“Well, there probably won’t be a custody battle over him,” said the attorney. “It’s pretty tough to sue for custody when you’re in prison for the rest of your life.”

“It wouldn’t matter,” she said. “My husband is sterile. This baby is not his.”

“Oh,” said the man, peering at her. Her obvious pulchritude had made it unavoidable for his mind to stray into little fantasies, and now he imagined being the father of this baby. Then he pushed those thoughts away and returned to business.

“All right. Whose name is on the birth certificate as the father?”

“I left it blank,” she said. “If he tries to claim paternity, I can find out who did his vasectomy. That happened before I married him, but he’s lived in this town for over twenty years, so it was probably done here. Also, he admitted it on tape to one of his victims who was pregnant. When she came to him saying he’d gotten her pregnant, he laughed and told her about the vasectomy. The police have that tape. Also, I won’t be asking for any child support.”

“Okay, so that won’t be a problem. Now, the paperwork is finished with the exception of splitting the assets. As I said, he will probably contest what you’ve already ... um ... spent.”

“Let him,” she said. “We were married and I spent a lot of our money.”

“He’ll argue that you spent his money,” said the lawyer.

“I don’t agree,” she said. “We were married. We had money. I spent it. What else is there to say?”

“He’ll argue that he wasn’t aware you knew about the stocks you sold, and that he didn’t tell you to sell them,” said the man.

“Does that matter?”

“Normally, when someone has an account in his name only, and keeps that bank account a secret, it’s considered his property, and not that of the community.”

“So if he told me about them, then there’s no problem?”

“But you said earlier that he didn’t tell you about them.”

“When he went to jail, I told him the checking account was empty. He said he had lots of money, that it was our retirement money. He told me he had stocks and that there was money in the safe. He wanted me to hire him a lawyer.”

“And did you?”

“Of course I did. That lawyer tried to get him to cop a plea that might have only gotten him fifty years. He ignored his lawyer’s advice and now he’ll never get out.”

“Isn’t he in his fifties?”

“He is fifty-one,” said Tawny. “My point is, he did tell me about this money, and he said it was for our retirement. That made it our money.”

“You were clearly ripping him off,” groaned the lawyer. “That’s how a judge will see it.”

“Why?” asked Tawny. “Moving our money around is no crime.”

“No, it isn’t, but your husband will sue you when he finds out about it.”

“That won’t be easy for him while he’s in prison,” said Tawny.

“No, but he’ll still do it. It might take him years, but he’ll still try to get a judgment against you, and if you don’t have the money to pay that judgment, it could really mess with your life.”

“Wouldn’t he have to make a case that he could have actually used that money for his own personal desires?”

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t need a hundred thousand dollars in his commissary account,” she said, dryly.

“He could spend that much on legal aid,” said the man. “Easily,” he added, somewhat thoughtlessly.

“I’ve left his IRA alone,” said Tawny. “I haven’t sold the house, or any of the furniture. I haven’t sold the cars.”

“Then I recommend you get the divorce final before you do any of those things,” said her lawyer. “That will go a long way toward making a judge think you’re acting in good faith.”

“I am acting in good faith. My husband cheated on me by raping numerous helpless girls in his office at the school they had to go to. He was the unfaithful one. I’ll be happy to sign something that says, as of the day the divorce is filed, I won’t touch any of our financial accounts, except to pay utility and food bills. I will happily split what’s in all our open accounts right down the middle.”

“Okay,” the man sighed. “I’ll write it up that way and file it in three days. Get me copies of your bank statement as of that date.”

Bobby knew Tawny had gone to Norman and bought a house. He hadn’t gone with her because he couldn’t be away from Julian for two or three days at a time while she looked at houses. She had driven down there four times in the process and taken Chuck with her each time.

He knew she was tired, and while she was engaged in house buying he talked to a girl named Veronica, who he had a class with, who was interested in doing some babysitting to make a little spending money. Now that Tawny’s trips to Norman were finished, he brought Veronica to Tawny’s house and she took care of the baby while Tawny fell into bed and slept like a log. Over the next couple of weeks Veronica took care of Chuck for a few hours every other day or so, just to give Tawny a break and time to get things done. It was an added bonus that Veronica and Tawny became friends. Tawny’s attitude toward college age people was quite different than the girl usually experienced from adults.

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