Chapter 1

January 13th 2012

I was sitting alone at a table for eight in the large dining room of the giant Italian cruise liner on a romantic Mediterranean get-away. At least that was how my wife Kate described it – she had set it up as a way to rekindle our marriage. We'd been having problems to the point I had moved out this past Thanksgiving, and she had filed for divorce shortly thereafter. I pushed my ice cream and cobbler dessert around with my spoon having no appetite. My insides were filled with anger at recent events that had turned this romantic cruise into a body blow of bad news. I really should have been an actor, keeping the sappy smile on my face all evening while the two adulterers sat on either side of me at dinner while I seethed.

Just before dinner, an overheard conversation had confirmed my suspicions that my wife of twenty five years was having an affair with her twin sister's husband, Alan. That was really adding insult to injury. Why'd she pick him anyway? Her affair with that jerk, and all the crap I had suffered at her hands for more than a year, made the idea reconciliation impossible. I'd never liked the bastard and now I wanted to kill him. On top of everything else he and my wife's sister Melissa shouldn't have been on this cruise anyway.

Kate and Melissa had left our table and gone off to the powder room. Alan had left with the two Australian couples who had been our dinner companions – to the bar, most likely for something stronger than the wine we had at dinner. So now I was sitting at the table alone. Perhaps Alan had detected my underlying mood and didn't want to be left alone with me while our wives were gone. Maybe he was afraid I'd ask him, "So Alan, how long you been fucking Kate?"

I really wanted to wipe that smirk off his face and vowed to do so soon, but first my engineer brain would analyze the problem and work out a course of action that would be the most advantageous to me, and the most hurtful to Alan and Kate. Melissa was probably as clueless as I had been, although I had it on good authority that they were having their own problems. Alan was a womanizer and why she kept him was a mystery to me. Now his antics with Kate were going to blow up two marriages. Melissa was a sweet person and I had liked her from the first time we met, but I suspected that Alan's affair with her sister was going to be one affair too many. I also suspected that it would break the cozy relationship the sisters had had all their lives. She and Kate were fraternal twins, but still the resemblance was striking, with their long brown hair and very sexy and tall model-like bodies. I think each tried to outdo each other at the gym and kept in "swimsuit form" all year around despite each having two grown children.

Melissa and Kate were inseparable and she and Alan lived only a few blocks from our home in a suburb of Atlanta. Alan sold insurance and mostly worked out of an office at home. Gee, easier to make a cuckold of me, I thought. How very convenient that Kate had to spend a lot of time at Melissa's house. How many of those visits were with Alan alone? God knows Kate was never home these days as it was, with her job and all, but I had never questioned her trips to see her sister. Kate would just head out the door and walk over to their house and be gone for hours.

This day had started off on a positive note with an unbelievable bout of sex initiated by Kate in our hotel in Rome. It seemed for the last couple of weeks, since we had been "dating" after our month-long separation, Kate had tried to kill me with make-up sex. She'd dragged out all the sexy lingerie and we were very much like newlyweds again. The kids were still around, but that's another story, and then she surprised me with this cruise. I resisted, telling her it was too soon, but she finally convinced me that we needed to get away to get our marriage back on track after all our difficulties of the past year. I was really too busy to take almost two weeks away from my engineering business, and I was still smarting from all the bullshit she'd heaped on me, but I went along knowing I had to make an effort. Of course that was before I discovered the affair.

I had puzzled over the fact that that it seemed we had been at each other's throats for the year or perhaps longer. We just couldn't agree on anything. We used to be able to work together on everything but in the last year especially, it seemed each discussion became an argument she had to win. At Thanksgiving we had a blowup that caused me to pack a bag and move out. A week later, in early December I was served with divorce papers at my office. Merry Christmas sucker!

Since the kids were old enough to be considered adults and we both had good jobs, her settlement petition seemed damned unreasonable. The spousal maintenance and demands to relinquish title to the house stuck in my craw, but I was too angry and hurt to try and fight. So like an idiot I had signed the documents, despite my attorney's misgivings, and he sent them to her attorney.

As I sat alone with my thoughts, I gazed around. Our table was relatively secluded in the huge seagoing dining room, but damn this place was over the top gaudy. How had she ever picked this ship? Well at least our stateroom with balcony, was comfortable enough, in an upscale chain hotel kind of way. And there was very little sensation of movement as the ship moved through the, for now placid mid-winter Mediterranean. On the downside, after what I had observed earlier today when Melissa and Alan had showed up, and then later when my suspicions were confirmed; I was not planning to actually sleep in the stateroom with my wife - the unfaithful, back-stabbing bitch.

I sipped my wine. I had nursed it throughout the meal, wanting to stay sharp for the confrontation that was to come later when I announced to Kate I was divorcing her, without the beneficent terms I'd agreed to just last month when we were separated. Furthermore, I was getting off the ship tomorrow when we reached Savona. Some wag had once said, "Life's a bitch, then you marry one, and then you die."

That's how I was feeling. Hell, it was Friday the thirteenth. How could this day get any shittier? Thank goodness it was almost the end of the day.

The white-jacketed, maybe Russian, waiter came by to refill my wine glass. I thought about waiving him away, but decided, what the hell another glass of the Spanish plonk the Aussies had ordered wouldn't kill me, and might make it easier to get my feelings off my chest once Kate and I returned to our cabin.

He poured the last of the wine from the bottle and then looked at our plates. I nodded for him to clear them away and noticed, like mine, Kate's dessert was untouched. I thought about it and recalled seeing the waiter take away her mostly uneaten entrée. She had been very quiet at dinner. This day had not gone well for her either I suspected. Fortunately the Australians and Melissa had more than kept up their end of the conversation at dinner. The Aussies were a bit younger than the four of us, with kids just nearing high school age, and they were off on a romantic seaboard adventure with in-laws watching the kids back in Perth.

When Kate and I had departed our hotel in Rome at noon today for the port city of Civitavecchia she had snuggled against me in the back of the taxi, still glowing from our lovemaking of the morning. Despite my misgivings I think I was coming around to the idea that this vacation was the start of what we needed to repair our marriage. I was pretty sure I had successfully hidden those misgivings since embarking on our travel from Hartsfield International in Atlanta. It was still hard to get past the acrimony of the past year, and the realization during the month or so I was living on my own that we had drifted so far apart over the last couple of years that the only solution was divorce.

When we got to the port and saw the size of the ship, Kate's only comment was, "Oh my." I refrained from saying what I thought. Had I not been aware that she had put this trip together to try and save our marriage I would have just called the immense white ship, "Costa Moby Dick". Actually not so long ago when we both still had a sense of humor, I would have made some comments, and we both would have laughed. Now we were walking on eggshells around each other.

The ship seemed so top heavy that it offended my engineer sense of proportion. It looked like it was ready to capsize any second. But I knew they had been building these kinds of mammoth, dare I say titanic, cruise ships for years and for the most part they managed to stay afloat and upright.

Regardless, Kate had assured me with a wicked smile that we would be spending the majority of our seven days afloat in our cabin while she modeled all the new lingerie she had picked up at Victoria's Secret. Sex wasn't the most important thing in a marriage but it was a good place to start in helping to repair one – and perhaps we could have those pillow talks like we used to, where we shared our dreams and our successes, and comforted each other in our failures. I hoped so.

Well, so much for the best laid plans.

There were probably five or six hundred people waiting to embark at Civitavecchia, although the ship held over three-thousand passengers. Since it made a continuous trip around the western Mediterranean, stopping at seven ports, going as far as Barcelona and then returning to Rome/Civitavecchia, there was a constant ebb and flow of passengers and probably portions of the one-thousand or so crew too.

So it was just this afternoon, while we were standing in the queue to board that the day went quickly to shit.

We heard someone call out, "Kate and James!" We both looked up trying to think of anyone we might know who would be here, and to my dismay it was Melissa and Alan. They had booked passage at the last minute to surprise us.

Melissa worked in hospital administration, and was what I considered a pretty smart person. That was in most things. Of course what had prompted her to marry a weasel like Alan I didn't know. And of course she had little judgment as far as her sister went. Didn't she realize that this was a trip for just Kate and me? She had known all too well about our separation. With their own troubles now and over the years, perhaps she thought it was a good idea to get away with Alan for some alone time too.

As Melissa prattled about her surprise, practically bubbling over with excitement, I tuned her out to watch Kate. She was ashen and seemed very unsteady. I noticed she was trying very hard not to look at Alan. He, on the other hand was staring at her with an expression I can only describe as smug, almost proprietary.

It was then that it felt like someone had put a knife in my chest. I didn't have any solid proof of Kate's infidelity, but at that point as the Brit's say, "the penny dropped." Everything we'd been through the last several months pointed to Kate having an affair. It's just that I hadn't put all the little and big things together. And, of course it was with Alan. Visits to Alan and Melissa' house would not be questioned. And the sudden absence of contact with them both the last couple of weeks, while Kate and I began trying to stitch our marriage back together spoke volumes. Perhaps Kate had broken it off, or at least called a time out, while she tried to lure the cuckold back into her house and bed.

She'd been pretty quick with the divorce action after I moved out. She said she did it to try to get my attention since I cut off all contact. She also said she loved me and wanted us back together. Right. Maybe things hadn't worked out quite as well with Alan as she had planned and she had second thoughts, so she had decided to give her poor schmuck of a husband another chance. Or maybe she figured I was better than nothing while she hunted around for another replacement. Lord knows she didn't need my money.

How had it come to this?

As I sat in that ship's restaurant with its garishly bright lights accompanied by the noise of hundreds of conversations and laughter all around me, I felt miserable and angry.

I realized our marriage had really started to come apart maybe three or four years ago. We just didn't know it. My engineering firm had started to take off and I had at that time about a dozen employees. Kate had taken the job as assistant manager of an upscale restaurant in Buckhead, an always trendy part of Atlanta. We really didn't need the money but the kids were in high school and she felt they didn't need her, so she went back to work. Two years ago she accepted the position of manager of the restaurant. We had our first argument about work and family at that time. It also coincided with our son Matt leaving for college.

Kate put her spear in the ground and wouldn't budge. She was going to take that job despite the long hours and lack of home life. So we hardly saw one another. Our daughter Emily was in high school and involved in every kind of activity there was and seemed hardly to notice we were never around.

A year ago our straight "A" son quit school and moved home. He didn't flunk out of college, he just quit, saying he needed to find himself. I thought that was a load of crap and Kate and I fought for days over how that should be handled. I wanted him to find a job and pay room and board. Kate wouldn't hear of it, saying he just needed some "down time." Eventually I backed down. It wasn't worth the emotional turmoil, although to Kate's displeasure I made my feelings known to Matt. Then in the late spring he suddenly moved out of the house. He'd been home four months and never even looked for a job. I was particularly furious when I discovered that Kate was giving him $100 a week allowance. We fought about that too.

Matt had gone to Boulder Colorado and Kate had given him $2,000 to get started. Emily let that slip one day. I think she was a little jealous. I also got a text from Matt one time that he had accidentally sent to me instead of his mother saying the $1000 per month really was not enough because Boulder was so expensive. That precipitated an explosion on my part which resulted in Kate not speaking to me for a week. Although I don't think Matt got any more money.

Then there was the fight over Emily joining a sorority. She was going to attend the same college as her mother and Kate felt it was important that Emily pledge at her sorority there. I thought the whole fraternity sorority system was a scam and a monumental waste of money, Emily was a brilliant student and I just couldn't see how she would fit in. I also thought I had detected some doubts on the part of Emily, but by the end of the summer she had sided with her mother and decided to pledge. I was disappointed but tried hard not to show it. Kate on the other hand seemed to gloat at another victory over her idiot husband. I just couldn't figure out why everything had to be a battle. For most of our marriage we had discussed things and come to a consensus. Not anymore.

And then once Emily got to campus she cut off all communication with me. I didn't ask Kate what was going on, or even if she had heard from Emily. She would probably have just given me some bull about needing to be a better father.

About the beginning of October 2011 Matt returned home again. I had been on a month-long trip to the Philippines where we were a subcontractor on a dam project in Luzon. I walked in and there he was in the downstairs family room. He was watching TV and eating from a bag of potato chips. An open bottle of my beer was on the coffee table in front of him. His hair was long and he was unshaven. I looked at him with undisguised contempt and said, "Find yourself yet?"

He didn't bother to look at me or acknowledge me in any way.

Kate and I never discussed his presence. Actually there was little of it, for it seemed he was either in his room or out with friends – at least while I was around the house. At that time I started practically living at my office and I would travel a lot so maybe I was at home a couple days a week. I would usually come home on a weekend do some work around the house and leave again. I didn't sleep in the master bedroom, and Kate never commented on it, of course Kate and I rarely saw each other anyway. Her job at the restaurant meant long and late hours. Not seeing me and not sleeping with me seemed to suit Kate just fine. We used to have a very active sex life and I felt it was enjoyable for both of us.

Finally it all came to a head on Thanksgiving. We were spared Alan's presence since Melissa had developed pneumonia, so Alan elected to play the dutiful husband and stay home. Their twins, Simone and Sofia did decide to join us though. They were sophomores in the engineering program at Georgia Tech, my alma mater, and they were as outgoing and delightful as Emily was withdrawn and sullen. Emily had come home from school for Thanksgiving with an amazingly disrespectful attitude, piercings, and her chestnut hair dyed black, and she brought with her Brantley "Lee" Eversole. I thought of him as "Brad you asshole." He was just a spoiled rich kid a couple of years older than Emily, who affected the same retro Goth that she did. It was almost laughable.

Of course Kate was horrified. And was practically apoplexic when Emily announced she had left "that pack of losers" at the sorority after the first month. I wisely kept my mouth shut.

Matt even graced us with his presence at the Thanksgiving table. Of course the meal was catered. Kate was much too busy to cook a Thanksgiving meal even though I volunteered to help as did Melissa's twins. She said she was around cooking all the time at the restaurant and wasn't about to spend any more time in a kitchen than she had to.

The diner was a strained affair to say the least. The twins and I watched our alcohol intake but the others did not. Of course it soon became obvious that Emily and Brantley were stoned out of their minds. I was familiar with the symptoms and was not amused. I think Kate just tried to ignore it by drinking more wine. About the time dessert was served and the caterers packed up and left, I excused myself for a few moments and went to Emily's room. Actually it was the room she was sharing with Brantley, although we had to suffer the charade that he had the guest bedroom. When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was several condom wrappers on the floor near the bed. I took some satisfaction in the knowledge that they were at least practicing safe sex. The fact she was flaunting their drug use really bothered me. What had happened to the sweet daddy's girl who used to be my beautiful daughter? Maybe she was just turning into her mother, twenty years early.

On the nightstand I found what I was looking for – a gallon size Ziploc full of marijuana. I'd never seen so much dope. It looked like a damn pillow. Next to it was a quart baggie full of a pharmacy worth of pills of every description. Asshole was obviously not just a casual user, the bastard was a dealer.

I came downstairs and put the bags right in the middle of "Lee's" pumpkin pie and said, quietly but with a great deal of menace, "Get out of my house!"

It took a few moments for his stoned mind to comprehend what had happened and he looked at me and shrugged and said, "Hey man..."

"Out!"

He reached for the baggies but I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him from his chair. "The drugs stay, but you, get out!"

Then he made a mistake. I could see it in his eyes and he telegraphed his punch so far ahead I could have taken a nap before responding. I caught him in the solar plexus and the air burst out of him and he dropped like a sack. Too bad he was so wrecked because I'd have liked him to feel more pain.

Emily jumped up and started screaming. I'm not sure all the things she said, but I was a "Fucking asshole," among other things.

I invited her to leave with lover boy as I yelled at him to not vomit on the carpet. About that point Kate jumped up and came up to me and slurred, "You bastard!" and she took a swing at me. Since she had too much to drink and was pretty unsteady, I just caught her arm and spun her around so she landed on her ass on the floor. There was surprise on her face as she looked up at me, but it seemed there was hatred in her eyes. I had never touched her before in anger, nor threated to. Actually Kate had never tried to slap me before either.

I looked at Matt and said, "Anyone else?" He gave a very slight shake of his head. That was smart of him.

I walked to the powder room off the front hall and it took several flushes to dispose of Brantley's drugs.

When I returned Simone and Sofia stood in the front hall with their coats on ready to leave. They each kissed me on the lips and gave me a very long hug. Ever polite, and with a wink, they thanked their "Uncle James for a most entertaining evening." They were gorgeous identical blondes dressed in clingy cashmere sweaters and skin-tight jeans. In their very high heels they were almost as tall as I was at six one. They, like their mother and aunt, had modeled in high school. Ah to be twenty again I mused, or even thirty...

When I came back into the dining room Matt was still in his place at the table eating his dessert, while Emily and Kate were trying to revive Brantley who was still on the floor. Despite my warning he had managed to vomit on the rug.

Emily looked up at me and said, "I wish you were dead!"

"Yeah, between you, your mother, and your brother, sometimes I do too." I replied as I walked out of the room.

I packed quickly, and went unnoticed out to my car, and drove away.

A week later I got the divorce papers at my office. In the interim, Kate had tried to call me dozens of times and I had to duck out the side entrance to my office a couple of times when she showed up, but I was too damn angry to have anything to do with her. I laughed when I looked at the divorce papers because they also included a restraining order which alleged all kinds of violence against Kate and our children. I was prohibited from contacting them in any way and had to stay away from the house and places of employment. Well, that was my intention anyway, and would apparently solve the problem of Kate's calls and visits.