Chapter 2

Penny wasn’t happy with my stance, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. What pissed her off even more was that Carla was back and in a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with me.

But by now I knew (or at least suspected) based on experience that it probably wouldn’t last more than three or four months which was fine with me as it would take me up to graduation.

It was just after I started back up with Carla again that I got a phone call from my mother.

“Robert; I need to speak with you. Come to the house please.”

Robert? She never called me Robert unless she was pissed at me. I wondered what the hell I’d done to piss her off now. When I got to the house she had me sit down at the kitchen table. Once seated she asked:

“Why are you refusing to accept responsibility for your actions?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your refusal to step up and assume responsibility for what you have done to Penny.”

“In the first place it isn’t all that certain that I am the one who got her pregnant. I know of at least three guys she has been with over the last two or three months. Just because Penny says that it is mine doesn’t make it so. I told her I would step up if a DNA test proves that the kid is mine. In the second place where do you get off jumping on my ass on the word of someone who had lied to me at least a dozen times over the last year?”

“You can’t talk to me that way young man!”

“I can and I will. I will not stand still for you accusing me of something you know nothing about!”

I got up and started to leave and she said “Where are you going. We are not finished here.”

“We are as far as I’m concerned” and I left the house and went back to my apartment. I wasn’t there five minutes when my dad showed up wanting to know what I’d said to my mother that had her in such a rage.

I told him the story and he said “You need to cut her a little slack Bob. She and Penny are really close and she has had her heart set on seeing you and Penny married. Penny is adamant that the child is yours and your mother believes her.”

“That doesn’t give her the right to come at me the way she did. I’ll step up if a DNA test proves that the baby is mine, but that does not mean that I will marry her.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure I could trust her not to cheat on me. As many times as she has come to me and told me she was done seeing other guys only to turn around and date someone else? No sir; I’d have to think long and hard on marriage to her. If I married her and she cheated on me it would mean divorce and we both know what happened to Uncle Frank when he divorced Aunt Mary for cheating. He got totally fucked on the deal. Why set myself up for something like that?”

“You do have a point. I hear they have a way to check DNA before the birth. Have you looked into that?”

“I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Maybe you should look into it.”

“I will. But if there is such a test I’m not sure I could get Penny to take it.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“She might not be in a hurry to see whether or not it really is mine.”

I did get on the computer and turn Google lose on the subject and found out there were several tests that could be done as early as ten weeks into the pregnancy. I got a hold of Penny and told her about the tests and she surprised me. She was eager to take a test.

“You are the only boy who has ever made love to me so I already know what the test is going to show. When can we do it?”

The test did indeed show that I was the father of her baby Penny was carrying and that put the ball in my court. Do I accept the responsibility and marry Penny or do I accept responsibility without putting a ring on her finger? The only sure thing is that I would step up.

The problem is that I did not trust Penny. More than once she told me she was done dating other guys and then she turned around and dated other guys. It didn’t cost me anything but hurt, but if she stepped out after I married her I would kick her to the curb and from what I knew about divorces I’d end up screwed.

I couldn’t make up my mind what to do; which way I should go. The answer, surprisingly, came from Penny.

“We will get a pre-nuptial agreement.”

We had an attorney prepare one and then the wedding took place. It was a simple civil ceremony with just our parents as witnesses and then Penny’s parents threw a party for us as a reception.

Things went well for almost six years. Little Robby joined us; all eight pounds of him and of course he instantly owned me.

When Robby started school Penny decided to get a job. She found one that let her go to work after she saw Robby off to school and let her be home by the time got home.

I came home one Friday and found Angel, our next door neighbor babysitting Robby. From her I found that Penny had arranged with Angel to babysit Robby. I also found out from her that Penny had been picked up by a guy in a Jeep as soon as Angel got there.

“A bright yellow Renegade?”

“All I know is that it was a yellow Jeep.”

“Did she say what time she would be home?”

“Just told me to take care of Robby until you got here.”

“Can you stay another half hour? I need to run to Home Depot.”

“No problem.”

As I drove to the hardware store to buy a couple of lock sets I was wondering why Penny had done it. I assumed that the bright yellow Jeep belonged to Jake Biggs. At Penny’s last company Christmas party Jake was bragging about how easy his new Jeep was handling the heavy snowfalls we had been having. Someone asked:

“Is that your bright yellow Renegade outside?” Jake said it was.

And at that party I noticed that Penny danced more with Jake than with anyone else except me and twice when I came back from going to the bathroom I found Jake in my seat talking to Penny. After the party as I was driving us home I mentioned that she seemed to spend a lot more time with Biggs than with anyone else. She shrugged it off and said he was a fairly new hire and she was the one breaking him in so they spent a lot of time together. As a result he didn’t know all that many people who were there at the party so he naturally gravitated toward her. At the time it sounded reasonable.

About a month later Penny started working more hours. She went from six hours a day five days a week to four ten hour days with Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. She arranged with Angel to babysit Robby from when he got home from school until I got home.

Along with the longer hours she started stopping after work for drinks with her coworkers. When it went from one night a week to two I started to wonder. About the same time our love making started to slack off. I guess you could say my ‘spidey sense’ was kicking in. I guess in the back of my mind in the closet where the doubts I had before I married Penny were stored the door opened and let some of those doubts trickle to the front of my mind and I started paying closer attention to what Penny was doing.

When her getting home time from work went from six-thirty to seven forty-five and then eight-thirty I started checking my finances to see if I could afford to hire a private investigator. I called a few and found out there wasn’t any way I could afford it.

I knew from things that Penny told me where she and her co-workers stopped after work. I’d never been there so one day on my lunch break I went over and checked out the place. There didn’t seem to be anywhere I could sit and not be seen. No corner where I could sit even in a half assed disguise where I could see and not be seen.

There was a chance that if I sat at the end of the bar farthest from the booths and tables I just might not be noticed if someone only glanced my way, but didn’t bother to take a closer look. I decided to do it and if Penny noticed me? So be it.

Mondays and Thursdays were the nights Penny stopped so Thursday I arranged for Angel to babysit longer than usual. When I got off work I went over to the lounge and took a seat at the bar that was as far from the booths and tables I could get.

Thirty minutes later Penny and her crew came in, pushed three tables together and sat down. I noticed that Penny and Jake sat next to each other. After they got their drinks one of the guys fed some money into the juke box and Penny and Jake were the first ones on the dance floor. They danced real close and Jake had his hands on her ass and she made no attempt to remove them.

Then they kissed.

They stayed on the floor for three tunes, kissed several times and by the time they sat down I’d seen enough. When they sat down at their table I got up and headed their way. They were kissing when I reached them. I tapped Penny on the shoulder and when she broke the kiss and looked up I almost laughed at the expression on her face when I said:

“I would like to stick around and watch more, but I promised the babysitter I wouldn’t be too late” and I walked away.

It wasn’t lost on me that Penny didn’t come home until after I’d gone to bed. She made enough noise when she got home that she woke me up. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was four-thirty. I pretended to be asleep when she got in bed and she was very careful not to wake me.

I was up and out of the house before Penny woke up. Of course she might have been awake and pretending.

When I got home from work on Friday is when I found out she had gone off with someone in a yellow Jeep. There was no doubt in my mind that the man in the Jeep was Jake Biggs.

I decided to show Penny how displeased I was with what she was doing and I asked Angel to stick around long enough for me to run to the hardware store. I went to Home Depot and got three keyed alike locksets and went back home and replaced the locks on the front and back doors and the door that let in from the garage.

Then I fed Robby and played with him until his bedtime. Once he was down for the night I watched some TV. When Penny wasn’t home by ten I called it a night and went to bed.

It was ten the next morning when the doorbell rang and when I went to the door I found Penny standing there.

“My key won’t work.”

“Yeah; ii know. When you took off with Jake yesterday and didn’t come home I assumed you moved in with him so I changed the locks. You can still get into the garage though and you’ll find all your stuff in garbage bags. You have three days to move your stuff out. If it is still there on trash pickup day it will be moved to the curb with the rest of the garbage.”

“Stop kidding around Bobby and let me in. I’ve had a hard night and I need to lay down and take a nap.”

“I’m not kidding Penny. After what I saw Thursday night and after what you pulled yesterday and last night you don’t live here anymore. I’ll see an attorney on Monday and get the divorce started.”

“Oh no Bobby; there isn’t going to be any divorce. We need to sit down and have a talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to you Penny. Goodbye.”

I closed the door and ignored her beating on it and ringing the bell. Robby wanted to know who was making all the noise and I told him it was just someone who was trying to sell me something that I didn’t want. Which in a way I guessed was true. Penny obviously wanted to sell me a line of bullshit I didn’t want.

I did keep an eye on her through the window. I saw her use her cellphone and fifteen minutes later a yellow Jeep showed up and picked her up.

Penny didn’t quit. She called three times and wanted to talk, but I hung up on her. On Sunday she was back and this time she had her parents with her. They had treated me like the son they never had and there wasn’t any way I was going to turn them away and Penny knew it. I invited them in and went into the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on. Her dad went right to it.”

“Penny tells us you locked her out. Why would you do something like that?”

How do you tell your father in law, a man you really like and admire, that his daughter is a cheating slut? I did tone it down some. I didn’t us the words slut or cheating, but I did give him a rundown on everything I saw on Thursday and what she had done on Friday and then I threw in what I’d seen at her company Christmas party and surmised she had been messing around with him since then. I let him draw his own conclusions.

He turned to Penny and asked “Did you really do those things?”

She looked down and away from him which gave him the answer to his question. He turned back to me and asked:

“Is there any chance that you can work through this?”

“I don’t see how. This is not the first time she has done this to me. In fact she did it to me so many times that she had to agree to a pre-nup before I would marry her.”

“But that was over six years ago.”

“Yes, but leopards can’t change their spots and I doubted that Penny could change her mindset. I expected this to happen only I expected that it would have happened much sooner so it came as no surprise when it did happen. That and the fact it was so in your face “Screw you Bob; live with it” on her part.”

“It was not” Penny said.

“Did you rush home after I approached you Thursday night? No you didn’t. You didn’t get home until four-thirty in the morning. Bars close at two. Where did you spend the two and a half hours after that? And with who? Where did you spend last night and with who? And not one word spoken to me from Thursday morning until you couldn’t get in the house today? And how about the fact the guy you spent all your time on the dance floor with on Thursday and who picked you up at the house on Friday was the same guy who picked you up when you couldn’t get into the house this morning And you don’t think that wasn’t saying “Screw you Bob?” That’s what I was hearing whether you said it out loud to me or not.”