Just a short one since I haven’t posted in a few weeks. As readers should know by now, I don’t let plot and character development get in the way of the story.

“Sweetie, what happened?” Carolyn Carr asked her daughter as Missy rushed into her parent’s home. She embraced her sobbing daughter, patting her on the back with one hand and stroking her head with the other.

“Ben’s gone!” Missy wailed. “He had these sent to me at my job!” she cried as she pushed back from her mother before thrusting the envelope into her father’s hands.

Frank Carr took the envelope as his wife wrapped their daughter into her arms and hugged her to her breast.

“Where’s Benjamin? Does Ben still have him?” Frank asked his daughter. In her state, Missy didn’t need to be driving around with her son in the car.

“Yes,” Missy gasped between her sobs and tears.

Ben had dropped Kevin, his and Missy’s youngest son, off with Frank and Carolyn earlier in the day and asked his in-laws if they could watch Kevin since he had some errands to run with Benjamin. Barely two hours later, Missy had called her parents in near hysterics after being served divorce papers at work. She had driven to her parent’s house despite their pleas to let them pick her up.

Frank sat on the loveseat as his wife and daughter collapsed into each other’s arms on the sofa. Carolyn was stroking their daughter’s hair as she cried into her mother’s chest.

Frank extracted the documents from the envelope and read Petition for Divorce across the first document. He shook his head grimly as he read the document. There had been no notice or discussion between his soon-to-be-ex son-in-law and his wife. The asshole had served her at work with no heads up, much to his daughter’s shock, mortification and humiliation.

As Frank read the document, he looked up, puzzled. “Missy, he’s filing on the grounds of adultery. Did you cheat on him?”

“No! He has it in his mind that I had an affair with a friend from work. It’s not true! I would never cheat on Ben. I love him!” Missy wailed the last sentence in a cry that sounded like a wounded animal.

‘I will nail his ass to my office wall,’ Frank thought to himself. ‘Making up bullshit allegations to defame Missy and secure a divorce. The son-of-a-bitch has probably been cheating on her.’ As Frank continued to read the divorce petition, he could feel his left eyebrow rising; a sure sign of displeasure.

“Missy, why would Ben think that you are cheating on him?”

Missy glared at her father and then looked imploringly at her mother. “I don’t know! I may have hugged one of our salespeople when he made a big sale?” The statement came out as a question as Missy tried to figure out what her husband could have seen and misunderstood.

“And that was it?” Frank asked. “An innocent hug with a co-worker?”

Missy continued to glare at her father in exasperation. “He kissed me at an after-work happy hour. I had too much to drink and as soon as I came to my senses, I pushed him away. But that’s all that happened, I swear!”

As Frank continued to read, his eyebrow continued its climb towards his forehead, a tic that did not go unnoticed by his wife.

“What are you getting at, Frank?” Carolyn asked, with an edge to her voice. “Are you accusing your daughter of something?”

“No; or at least not yet. But we’ve known Ben for what ... seven or eight years now? I work with him every day. This is completely unlike him, so I’m trying to figure out where his head is at.”

“Up his own ass,” Carolyn snapped at Frank as she continued to soothe Missy. She had brought Missy a box of tissues and there was a growing pile of used tissues on the coffee table in front of her. “How can you even consider taking his side after what he did to our daughter.”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side until I get through reading this petition,” Frank said.

“Who is he accusing you of cheating with,” Frank asked his daughter. “And why does he think it was an affair instead of an innocent hug and a drunken kiss?”

Missy pulled away from her mother and wiped her face with a tissue. “He thinks I’ve been having an affair with Andy Hebert, one of our sales reps. I haven’t though! He must have seen something and misunderstood it.”

Frank nodded his head slowly. “What do you think he might have seen?”

Missy started crying again.

Frank’s expression was slowly changing from understanding and sympathetic to what his wife called his “stone-face look” as he continued to read through the documents.

“Ben is asking for a 50-50 custody split of Benjamin naming himself as the custodial parent.” Frank looked at his daughter, his expression grim. “He’s not asking for custody of or visitation with the minor known as Kevin Andrew Davis. He is further asking that his name be removed from the birth certificate of the minor Kevin Andrew Davis and that Kevin’s last name be changed.”

Carolyn and Missy both gasped at that revelation. Missy dove into her mother’s arms and began sobbing and wailing

“Missy? Missy! Look at me!” Frank said loudly over his daughter’s cries.

Missy paused in her crying and looked at her father. Carolyn Carr looked at her husband with agitation at his lack of empathy for their daughter.

“Ben is accusing you of cheating with Andy Hebert. Kevin’s middle name is Andrew because you said you’d always liked that name. I’m going to ask you again; did you cheat on Ben with this Andy guy?”

In reply, Missy let out a loud wail and began to sob loudly in her mother’s arms. Carolyn looked at her husband in anger.

“Will you please drop this?” She hissed at her husband.

“Did you know?” Frank asked his wife.

“Did I know what?” She asked. Frank could see the rage boiling up in his wife’s eyes.

Frank held up a sheet of paper. “This is why Ben is not asking for any share of custody for Kevin. It’s a DNA test that says there is a less than .00002% chance that Ben is Kevin’s father. So, tell me, Carolyn, how long have you known about this?”

After nearly thirty years of marriage, Carolyn knew her husband better than he knew himself. She knew that her marriage was on the precipice. If she admitted to her husband that Missy had told her that from the beginning stages of pregnancy, she was not sure who the father was, then Frank might very well divorce her. If, however, she lied and Frank found out that she lied, then her marriage would definitely be over. But only if he found out.

Carolyn shook her head and rolled the dice. “I didn’t know. I’m hearing this for the first time. I think Missy is as shocked as we are.”

“I doubt that,” Frank said, dryly. “But there’s one way to put my mind at ease. I want to see both of your phones.”

Carolyn suddenly stood and angrily pointed her finger at her husband. “You will not be invading our privacy,” snapped Carolyn. “You are not going to go through our phones.”

Frank looked at his wife and nodded slowly. “They say that people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. I’m guessing you have a lot to hide so let me put this to you very clearly so there is no chance of you mistaking or misunderstanding what I’m saying. Either the two of you unlock your phones and hand them to me right this instant, or I’m filing for divorce tomorrow.”

Carolyn looked at her husband through eyes squinted with rage and shouted, “I’ve never given you a reason to distrust me! We are not giving you our phones and we are not getting a divorce!”

Frank scowled at his wife. “I’ve caught you in plenty of little lies over the years. I’ve always let it go because I figured the argument we’d have about the lies wouldn’t be worth the hassle. Shame on me for enabling you all these years. For all I know, the lies you’ve told me were covering up your cheating. Before today, I wouldn’t have considered that, but now ... seeing your daughter trying to fool her husband into raising another man’s child? Fuck that noise. The blinders are off. It’s your phones or a divorce. And if you think I’m bluffing, fuck around and find out.”

This was a side of Frank that neither Carolyn nor Missy had ever seen. The grim determination brooked no compromise.

“Fuck you!” Carolyn shouted; her teeth bared in a nasty snarl. “I’ll clean you out in a divorce. I’ll take everything you have and you’ll be lucky to live in your car.”

Frank rose from the loveseat, tossing the paperwork onto the coffee table. He looked at his wife and daughter and shook his head as he walked towards the kitchen. He returned a minute later carrying a plastic Ziploc bag. He inverted the bag on his hand and using the bag as a glove, picked up a handful of the used tissues sitting in front of Missy. He inverted the bag back to its normal position, trapping the tissues inside, and then he closed the Ziploc seal by running it between his thumb and index finger.

“What are you doing with that?” Carolyn asked as she moved toward Frank, her voice increasing into a shout. She was trembling with barely suppressed rage as she pointed to the baggie containing the used tissues. In nearly thirty years of marriage, Frank had never witnessed this aspect of her personality. He began to wonder if he knew his wife at all.

“I’m going to find out from Ben who he used for the DNA test to find out that Kevin was not his son. Then I’m going to find out if Missy is my daughter or if you have been lying to me for nearly thirty years.”

Carolyn let out a screech and lunged at Frank, her fingernails digging and clawing at his face.

Unless it has happened to you, it is hard to describe the effect of having the wind knocked out of you. It is such a commonly uttered phrase but most people have never actually experienced it. Getting the wind knocked out of you induces panic as the air is instantly forced out of the lungs as they deflate. Being unable to breathe or take any air into your body strikes terror into the mind as you think you are about to die. The seconds that it takes the lungs to reinflate feel like minutes as the body struggles to breathe. Frank had taken six years of karate in his youth, and although that was forty years ago, some things you never forget.

As his wife’s fingernails tore into his flesh, Frank used a palm strike into the upper region of Carolyn’s solar plexus. It was not a hard strike; as a matter of fact, Frank knew that it would leave minimal if any, bruising. But what it did was force all of the air out of Carolyn’s lungs leaving her rolling around on the floor clawing at the air in terror and unable to breathe. This caused Carolyn to panic which in turn caused Missy to panic as her mother clutched her throat and tried to breathe.