Chapter 4

I watched my soon to be ex-wife make her way into the dark paneled conference room. I was seated at the head of the long table near the windows. The bright sunshine kept my face in shadow and she had to squint to make sure it was me. I sat in a big executive chair, leaning back and affecting a relaxation I didn't truly feel. I knew I masked it well. I'd practiced often enough.

"I wanted to see you before all the lawyers got at me," Laura said hesitantly. She pulled out a chair a few paces away and sat down.

It had been nearly four months since she'd lost her job and gone home to live with her brother. Her brunette hair was almost shoulder length again. She'd cut it when she'd gone to work for the accounting company, thinking it looked smarter and projected an image of the professional woman. She was thinner and didn't move very well; she looked like she hadn't been eating or sleeping well. There were dark circles under her eyes.

My heart went out to her... but I refused to let any of that show. In something this intensely personal, I was wearing my Corporate CEO face, something I usually showed only to subordinates and business associates. It was often an implacably ruthless one.

"And now you are here," I said quietly to my wife. She nodded, looking anywhere but at me. Finally, she couldn't do anything except face me directly.

"Mark..." she said softly, "I want to start by saying I am SO sorry for what I've done to you and to my baby girl." I didn't say anything.

"I know that isn't... it isn't adequate... and it doesn't begin to make up for all the hurt I've put you through but they're the only words I have," she whispered. "I'm suffering too, Mark," she said. "I cannot figure out why I did what I did and it's driving me crazy." She didn't add anything more for a long while so I filled the silence with a comment.

"I beg to differ," I said matter-of-factly. You haven't begun to suffer, Laura, until you have to tell a 3 year old child that her mother might never come home to be with her." Laura broke down and began sobbing quietly.

"It's been four months since I had to tell her that, Laura, and she still cries herself to sleep most nights. It's only in the last few weeks that I've been able to coax a smile out of her once in a while." I paused and watched Laura double over in her chair as she cried.

"She screams and attacks anyone trying to hold her back from getting to me if I have to leave her somewhere for an unexpectedly long time," I said quietly. "She's terrified someday I won't come back to get her. Can you imagine what that fear must be like to a little girl not quite four years old, Laura? Can you?" I forced myself to settle back in my seat while Laura shuddered through another set of wracking sobs.

"She's in a new daycare center here at the corporate campus," I told her. "I had to build one so I'd never be more than a few minutes away. Any more than that and she goes into hysterics when she can't get to me." I watched Laura cry for a while longer.

"But, on the good side," I said a lot more cheerfully than I felt, "productivity is way up among the single parents who work here and it's almost already paid for itself." It made no impression on her. I let the silence build.

"Why?" I asked as gently as I could. "Why'd you do it, Laura? I loved you more than life itself... and you ripped the soul right out of me. There's a big empty place inside me now, Laura, and I can't even begin to fill it until I know why you did this... thing." She only shook her head and let a river of tears flow down her cheeks.

I saw she hadn't worn any makeup. She'd probably anticipated the tears. She was still beautiful, perhaps more beautiful as a mature 30 year old woman than the girl I'd married. My heart was breaking as I watched her cry. I wanted to give in and cry too.

I lost a younger brother in an automobile accident when I was a teenager. I was more miserable today than I was at that time and I didn't know how to fix things anymore than I had then. I didn't know if the ache inside me would ever heal this time.

"I don't know why," she said after a long time. "I think I might be insane or something." She was quiet.

"I can't undo what I've done, Mark," she said softly. "I don't deserve your forgiveness and I won't ask for it," she whispered. "I've hurt the only man I can ever love so terribly bad. I'll have to bear the pain of that for the rest of my life and I don't know what to do about it. I want to die when I look back over what all I've done to my sweet baby girl. When I listen to myself, replaying that night in my head and listening to me scream at you to take her to hell with you..."

She broke off and put her head back to stare unseeing at the ceiling. The tears flowed in a steady stream.

I almost used the remote beside my hand to bring up the DVD player in the corner. Without referring to the list of bookmarks on the disk, I knew which one was the scene of this woman, naked and drunk, damning her own daughter to hell. It seemed hardly necessary, so I didn't. She apparently knew it well enough already. After a while, her tears slowed and stopped. I thought she was probably too dehydrated to cry any more. I put the remote control in an upper drawer of the nearby credenza.

"I'm seeing a counselor--a psychologist," she said slowly. "I'm trying to find out why I destroyed our lives so completely and hurt so many other people too." Her fingers were twining around each other like so many serpents.

"I went to see Stacy Collier," she ventured. "I apologized for doing what I've done to her family. "She was nice to me," Laura mused. "I don't know why." She stared at the grain in the heavy table top directly in front of her for a time.

"Stacey told me Brian usually managed to find some woman wherever he worked. She said she got used to it, but this time she's had enough. She's divorcing Brian and she's already moving on. She's found a good man interested who loves her children and she says he's the best thing that ever happened to her."

I had known Stacy Collier was divorcing her husband and I knew about the new man in her life. I hadn't been aware Laura had gone to Stacy and apologized. That she'd done that implied remorse and a willingness to accept the responsibility for the things she'd done. Something deep inside me stirred. Something hopeful peeked out, wondering if there was a chance it could live and grow.

"What is the doctor telling you?" I asked. Laura glanced at me and quickly back to the surface of the table.

"We haven't made any progress," she admitted. "I'd give anything to tell you we had, but all I know now is that something happened when I got to drinking so heavy there for a while. It--"

"Were you drugged, Laura," I said, interrupting whatever she'd been about to say. She looked up at me and held my eyes with hers for the first time. I couldn't read the play of emotions that chased each other across her face.

"I don't know," she finally admitted. "Maybe the first time, I... maybe the first time I had--." She stopped, swallowing hard. "The first time I had... sex with Brian, I know I was awfully drunk." Her head dropped again.

"But I wasn't drugged... sometimes I wasn't even drunk... after that," she said. Her sobs began again and she visibly choked them off. "I wish I had that excuse," she said softly, "but I don't... I'm trying to find out what the real reasons are with my counselor." She stopped talking for a while, resuming only when I shifted my weight in the chair.

"Mark... ?" I lifted my chin and raised my eyebrows in question. "Would you go see her... she wants to talk to you... but not what you think... she just wants to ask you some questions... she wants to ask some questions and see if she can find anything I haven't been able to tell her... she..."

Laura's words tumbled over each other in a rushing stream. She was trying to get everything in before I started yelling, I suppose.

"When?" I said simply. Laura stared at me disbelievingly.

"You'll go?" she asked with her voice full of emotion. I shrugged.

"I'm still your husband," I told her somberly. "I'll do what I can to help you so long as it doesn't harm... our child." I'd almost said "my" child but I didn't. A sudden hope blossomed in her eyes and grew stronger. I started to say something cutting to make her realize there was no real chance... but I stopped.

I was willing to explore just about any avenue that would be in my little girl's best interests. I had loved Laura without reservation. I still loved her. Love isn't something one turns on and off like a spigot. Conversely, love couldn't conquer the sense of deep betrayal I felt either.

But... there was my daughter to think of and I could not set that aside. It was a card that trumped all others in the deck. I'd do almost anything if it would help her become whole again.

"Tomorrow afternoon?" Laura stammered. "Is that too soon? I can call and see if she can see you some other time if you want. Is 2:00 o'clock okay?"

"Tomorrow afternoon, and 2:00 o'clock, is fine," I said. "I'll be there." Laura started crying again, but her eyes were bright behind the tears.

"Thank you, ho--" she started. I thought she might have been about to call me "honey" but I wasn't certain.

"Thank you, Mark," she said. She began to rise. It was like watching an 80-year-old woman get to her feet.

"Before you go," I said, "I've had myself checked for sexually transmitted diseases and the tests have all come up negative. Have you... ?" She nodded.

"I always made him use a condom," she said bitterly. "If nothing else, I did that." I sat quietly for a long moment. Condoms weren't a hundred percent effective, but the tests had come back negative in all respects.

"Laura," I said as calmly as I knew how. "Do you have anything else you want to say about those long months of hell you put us through?" She flinched at the phrase I used but straightened to look steadily in my eyes.

"No," Laura said quietly. "I told you I was so very, very sorry for what I've done to you and Alyssa... and I've told you I didn't know why I did it... and I told you I can't even begin to ask for your forgiveness... those are the only things I came here to say... oh... and to ask you if you would talk with Doctor Jamison," she added. I waited for a few heartbeats for anything she might want to add. She had an air of having ticked off every item on a checklist.

"Laura, come sit with me, will you?" I asked. She sat and turned her body to face me with her hands folded in her lap and waiting for me to say something more.

"When your attorney asked if I would consent to a private meeting with you, Laura, I imagined all sorts of things. I wondered if you were going to scream and yell at me like you did that night you were in Vegas." I stopped as she bowed her head. I reminded myself of the shame that had spread across her face on the video almost immediately after she'd said those awful words.

"I tried to call you back," she said in a low voice. "Once I realized what I'd done, I felt so suddenly and completely guilty... about everything."

I knew that. It had been on the surveillance tape Carl had brought back. Brian hadn't gotten very much into fucking my slut of a wife before she'd broken away and scrambled to find her cell phone. Laura had been crying, drunk, and naked. Her vagina fluids had created a shimmering film down the inside of her thighs... but the tape showed immediate feelings of shame and remorse for what she'd done that couldn't have been faked. It was a day late and a dollar short, as they say. Still, it had been genuine.

"I know," I said softly. "When I heard yesterday you wanted to tell me you were sorry... I thought you would try and tell me "it just happened" or "it didn't mean anything" like I see on those reality shows about cheating husbands and wives.

"If you'd said those things or you'd tried to say the whole damned, cheap, crude thing had nothing to do with me... or if you'd tried to say that you love me and you'll make it all up to me... if you'd said any of that, I'd already had you escorted of the grounds by a couple of security guards."

Laura was shaking her head from side to side, tears again falling. I poured a glass of ice water for her from an insulated carafe and pushed it across the table to her. She thanked me with her eyes.

"You didn't do any of those things... and your mother tells me you never said a word to your family against me. She says you took full responsibility right from the day you moved back home." Laura lifted her hands helplessly without saying anything.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I was almost certain I was about to make a bad mistake. It was a retreat, if nothing else, from a strong negotiating position. But... I had a daughter who couldn't get over her nightmares and it had been so long since I'd heard her gurgling laughter. If there was the slightest chance I could make her whole once more, I had to take it. And... it was for me too. The huge ache in the middle of my being was slowly killing me.

"Laura," I said lightly, "there's a small restroom through there," I said, pointing the way to a small door off to the side. "Why don't you go... freshen up a little," I suggested. She nodded, grateful she wouldn't have to show her tear stained features to the rest of the world without a chance to at least splash a little water on her face. Before she got very far, I got a vial of eye drops from a drawer in the credenza and reached across the table to place it near to her hand.

"Here," I said as she got up. "Use a little of this. It should help get some of the red veins out of your eyes." She nodded her thanks again. I picked up the phone and touched the intercom button for my secretary downstairs.

"Maggie?" I said when she answered. "Maggie, would you get Alyssa from the day care center and bring her up to Conference Room C, please... yes... thank you, Maggie." I put the phone back down.

Laura was half way to the little half-bath. I watched as she stopped dead and whirled around to look at me. She was incredulous; she didn't dare hope I'd actually said what she'd heard. For a long moment, she stared at me, afraid to believe I meant...

"Laura," I said gently, I'd have let you see her any time you asked. I would never have kept you apart, don't you know that?" She hung her head again.

"I felt too guilty about the things I'd said... and the way I had been treating her, too," she admitted. "I was afraid I'd just start crying and not be able to stop. That wouldn't have done her any good at all." She stood for a moment without speaking. "Are you sure it's all right?" she asked me softly.

I looked in her eyes, trying to find something to tell me if it was all right or not before time ran out and Alyssa was ushered into the room. I made a decision, doing it abruptly and using my instincts in the same fashion that I made business decisions.

"She'll be up here in a few minutes. Don't you think you should get ready to see her?" I said quietly.

Laura burst out in new tears, but she was smiling as they flowed. She turned and fled into the restroom, trying to blot the salty fluid out on a tissue as she walked. I turned to look out the big picture window into the bright sunshine while I waited for my daughter to be escorted upstairs.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Archer," said the well groomed, rather severely dressed but attractive older woman. "May I call you Mark?" she asked. I shrugged.

"May I call you Janice?" I asked. I'd seen her full name on the office door outside. Surprised, she glanced up and looked me in the eyes for the first time. Up until this point, she'd been looking somewhere over my right shoulder.

"I think I need to keep a good, professional distance," she said, "so I'll have to ask that you call me "Doctor," if you don't mind." Her voice was calm and... professional... so there was no offense given. I nodded my concurrence.

"Professional sounds good... for both of us," I said. She looked at me for a long moment, tapping her pen on the pad of paper in front of her on the desk. I looked back.

"Laura told me you let her see her daughter yesterday," she remarked. "I don't know if you realize how much that meant to your wife." I snorted.

"Doctor, please don't treat me like the village idiot," I said angrily. I didn't wait for a reply. "Of course I know how much it meant to her... and I know how much it meant to our daughter too," I added. The good doctor looked at me with an unsettled look in her eyes.

"Yes," she said, stalling for time. "It was a good visit for them both... I hope you intend to keep letting them see each other from time to time?" I nodded.