Law of the Heart—Alternate Ending

Headhuntertales stated at the beginning of Chapter One of his story that, “I decided to try something new, a story with several alternative endings. These ending will vary quite a bit, from the romantic to the hardcore. I know the set-up is long, but it needs to be, for all the various possible endings to make sense.

“Also, any authors out there are invited to write their own ending!”

Premise: Husband asserts himself after seeing his wife being unfaithful at law school reunion

Author’s Note:

There is probably no stronger emotion a man can feel than the love/hate conflict inside himself when he finds out that his wife has been unfaithful. I like stories with well-developed characters, extensive dialogue, strong emotion and contention

This is one of the first stories I started for Literotica. I will try to make it as well written and grammatically correct as possible. I admire the prior submissions by the original author of this story, as well as those who have submitted alternate endings. This is my alternate ending.

I will start with a synopsis of what has happened so far, so that this stands as a complete story. I urge all readers to start at the beginning with the original story and read all of the other alternate endings.

This version of Law of the Heart presupposes a number of slight changes to the original story. The alterations I will make to the original story are these: Jake took pictures and videos with his I-phone of the events that happened at the reunion. Also, as well as his placing Jill’s wedding rings in the wedding album, he also placed the boarding pass for his flight to Miami. Finally, Jake picked up the blue sarong that Jill discarded during her erotic dance with Juan at the Luau and hid it under his shirt.

I also like to think that Jake could afford something better than a room at the YMCA. I choose to believe that he rented a one-bedroom efficiency suite in one of those hotel-like companies that rent by the week.

What has bothered me most about the ending of the original story and the other alternate endings is that: (1) the appropriate type and amount of revenge has not been exacted from the antagonists: Juan, Hector and Sally. (2) Jake has not been able to regain his total inner self-respect and (3) If he loses Jill, the antagonists win.

As always, special appreciation to my editor, BlackRandl1958.

Characters:

Jake Martin: Lawyer, public defender for the city of Boston

Jill Martin: Jake’s wife and a corporate lawyer

Sally Campbell: Jill’s roommate in law school and longtime friend

Bill Allen: Fellow law school classmate who hooked up with Sally for the reunion

Juan and Hector Mendoza: Twin brothers and law school classmates–both handsome and charismatic as well as wealthy through their Cuban family heritage. Jill had briefly dated Juan during law school.

Steve and Meredith Carter: Best friends to Jake and Jill. Steve was best man at Jake and Jill’s wedding. Steve organized the reunions and served as the unofficial host.

Paul Evans (New Character): Jake’s original law partner before Jake was hired away by the city of Boston to become a public defender.

Girard Giadino (New Character): Big time real estate investor. Client of Paul Evans/Jake Martin law firm, who are defending him for arson of a waterfront warehouse.

Henry Williams (New Character): Retired fireman and contract employee of Girard Giadino.

Synopsis:

Jake Martin, a lawyer and Public Defender in Boston, thought it was fortunate that he was able to wrap up a case in time to join his wife, Jill, at their annual law school reunion outside Miami. He arrived just in time to see Jill associating provocatively with Juan Mendoza, one of two wealthy twin brothers who Jake disliked with a passion. Rather than interfere with Jill’s un-wifely deportment, he decided to watch and photograph what happened. He saw her spend the day with Juan, his brother Hector, Sally and her escort Bill Allen. After the barbeque and around the bonfire, Jill and Juan and Hector and his wife Maria participated in an erotic dance in which Jill threw off her blue sarong and danced in an unseemly way with Juan. The sarong was blown over to where Jake was standing, he picked it up and put it under his shirt. Later in the evening, Jill, Juan, Maria, Hector, Susan and Tom were in the resort hot tub on the beach patio of the resort. The women were topless and the men kissed and caressed their breasts. Toward midnight, Jill allowed Juan to escort her to her bungalow. Jake, watching from a hidden location nearby, saw Jill give her hand to Juan and invite him into her room. Brokenhearted, Jake made the decision to return to Boston in the early morning.

When Jill returned home on Sunday evening, Jake could hardly contain his anger. He asked her leading questions about her activities. Jill never admitted to anything. She didn’t make the connection between her activities in Miami and Jake’s hostile demeanor, not even after Jake said he was moving into the spare bedroom.

Jake challenged Jill as to the whereabouts of her wedding rings. Jill stated that she had left them with Sally for safe keeping. In reality, she had taken them off in Juan and Hector’s 70-foot luxury power yacht, The Seductress. Jake found them during a period of time after it had docked and the partying participants had disembarked. At that time, he took his own wedding ring off and tied it to a leather lace around his neck. He told Jill that he would put his ring back on when she puts her rings back on.

That same evening, Jake heard Jill on the phone talking with her best friend, Sally. He heard the phrase, “Yes, it was amazing”. He interrupted that to mean that Sally knew of Jill’s infidelities and that Jill had agreed with her that the sex was amazing. It hurt and hardened Jake even more.

Jake, still reeling from the knowledge that his wife had cheated on him with his worst enemies, became more distant and made the decision to move out of the house and into an efficiency suite near his office. He was torn in half. He missed both his child, Little Jake, and his wife, Jill, but he could not reconcile the betrayal he felt with the love he had for Jill. He threw himself into his work. He avoids seeing Jill even though it also means he does not get to see his son.

The Story continues:

The story picks up when Jill comes to visit Jake in his office building, claiming to have found her wedding rings.

Onward…

I didn’t go home over the weekend. I slept at the Marriott Suites and spent the rest of my time in my office. I didn’t have any other place that I wanted to go. Plus, the deserted building kept me from having to interact with anyone else. In my own way, I was beginning to accept the situation. I was able to keep my anger under control and address the situation in a more methodical manner.

Late Sunday afternoon, my office phone rang. I was using the day to catch up on old case files. There were tasks that I had been putting off for months. Without thinking, I answered the phone.

“You’re there!” was Jill’s brief reply to my “Hello”.

“Yes, I’m here,” I sighed. I was not depressed, but rather, for the first time, I was calm.

“Ahhh, ummmmm,” Jill stumbled. Finally, she said, “Jake, I’ll meet you in the lobby of your building in twenty minutes. Please meet me there. okay?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Please. Meet me there. Please just be there,” she seemed to plead and then hung up the phone.

I stopped by the bathroom to make sure my hair was combed and I didn’t look too bad. I had become pretty casual about my appearance. I hadn’t shaved in two days. I needed a haircut. I had lost weight.

I was sitting in the marble lobby of the County Office building. Only the security guard and I were there on Sunday evening. We both turned our heads with a start when we heard the door open and the sound of heels on marble. I saw Jill walking toward me.

I turned to the guard. “Joe, I’ll be escorting this visitor while she’s in the building, okay?”

“No problem Mr. Martin,” he replied. “Is she a public defender like you? She sort of looks like a lawyer.”

“Yeah, she’s a lawyer but she is not a public defender. She works for a big law firm.”

I met Jill halfway across the lobby and escorted her to the elevator. She looked tired and frightened. She was wearing jeans and had on her heavy winter coat. Her hands were jammed into the deep pockets of her coat.

We were silent as the slow elevator creaked up to my floor. Once in my office, Jill finally unbuttoned her coat and flopped with a sigh into the one worn chair that faced my battered institutional green metal office desk.

I looked at her expectantly. She finally spoke.

Another Alternate Ending begins here.

“You will be happy to know,” she said, “that I have my engagement ring and wedding ring back.”

Jill took her left hand out of her pocket and held up it up to display her rings.

I was surprised and confused. Did that mean that she had finally looked through our wedding album and found them? I wasn’t sure, because if she had she would have found the boarding pass to Miami I had left with them. Her demeanor didn’t seem to match what I thought her attitude would be if she realized that I had been in Miami at the time of the reunion.

“Where did you find them?” I asked as I feigned a happy smile.

“Sally had them all the time. I had given them to her for safekeeping when I was on the tour boat,” she explained.

I knew she was lying to me–again. First of all, I knew that she did not take the tour boat with her other classmates, rather, she had been on Juan and Hector’s yacht, The Seductress. She hadn’t given the rings to Sally, either; she had left them in the cabin of the yacht.

“Now maybe you can put your wedding ring back on, come home to Little Jake and me, make love to me and we can get on with our lives as a family.”

I nodded as if agreeing with her, and reached under the unbuttoned collar of my shirt and pulled out my wedding ring that was still tied to the leather lace. I initially gave Jill the impression that I was going to take it off the string and put it on my finger…but then I stopped and asked, “Can I see your rings, please?”

Jill was hesitant at first, but then offered her hand to me so I could look at the rings more closely.

“These are fakes,” I announced. Jill withdrew her hand quickly.

“What are you talking about, Jake?” she protested.

“They aren’t fakes, but rather they are duplicates. Why would Sally send you duplicate rings? They must have cost her thousands of dollars.”

I continued, “Is the wedding ring inscribed with our initials and our wedding date?”

Jill tried not to look guilty and quickly withdrew her hand. She protested further, “Of course they are mine. Why wouldn’t they be?”

“I don’t know, Jill. I just know that those are not your original engagement and wedding rings. Why would Sally try to mislead you?” Then, I got more pointed. “Or is it you who is trying to mislead me? And for what reason?”

Jill stifled a sob and fired back, “How do you know these things? How can you say that? I just want you back. I don’t know why you are so upset just because I misplaced my rings.”

Jill still hadn’t made the connection between my anger and estrangement and her extramarital interlude with Juan. She felt that there was no way I could have learned of her activities between Friday night and her return to Boston on Sunday afternoon; therefore, my mood change could not be the result of anything that she had done.

Over the month that I had been out of the house, I had had a chance to do some thinking that was less influenced by my anger. I knew I was still deeply hurt. I felt the loss of self-respect that goes with the knowledge that my wife wanted to fuck someone other than me. I felt the embarrassment of knowing that other people, a few at least, knew that I was a cuckold. I recognized that I had lost all trust in Jill, not only because of her night with Juan, but also because she continued to lie to me. I knew I missed my son. He and Jill had been the center of my universe. Just because I lost one didn’t mean that I had to lose the other.

I also knew that I did not want to be the victim of this event.

Finally, I was aware of the fact that I could not afford to live on my own forever.

I studied Jill for a few moments and then said, “I am going to move back home. I miss my son.” I left out any reference to missing Jill, although I did.

“However,” I continued, “I will sleep in the guest room for the time being.”

This decision seemed to partially placate Jill. Perhaps she thought that it meant the beginning of normalization between us as a couple, as husband and wife.

“I will move back home on Monday evening,” I said. “I will see you then.” As if to dismiss her, I said that I had to get back to work.

Jill saw that I was finished with our discussion and stood up to leave. “I’m happy you will be home with us where you should be.” However, she mistakenly thought that we might embrace and kiss with the decision. She stepped toward me and I withdrew. “You haven’t touched me since I returned from the reunion,” she noted with a tear in each eye. Then, she turned and left my office.

I sensed that Jill’s mind had refused to associate my anger with her infidelity. Maybe it was some sort of defensive mechanism or denial. Maybe it was just a form of deceit.

I did return home on Monday evening. I moved most of my stuff into the guest room. When I did have to use the master bedroom to access my closet and the bathroom, Jill was good enough to give me my space.

I spent the majority of my non-working time with my son, Little Jake. When together with him, Jill and I presented a united front on his behalf. Jill and I were verbally affectionate toward one another, even though we never touched.

When Jake was not present, or after he was put in his bed at night, I was indifferent to Jill and often withdrawn and silent, although I was no longer moody and I didn’t make innuendos as I had done when my anger was near boiling over.

It had been three weeks since our meeting at the office. I was at home for my son, but that was all. As far as Jill was concerned, I was at home in body, but not in spirit. I had been sleeping in the spare bedroom.

I was devoting most of my home time to my son. I had always known what an amazing little boy he was, but in the last few weeks I had come to appreciate him even more.

Jill and I had come to a peace agreement of sorts. We actually worked together to make the logistics work. She stayed out of my way when I went to the master bedroom to get clothes or shower in the attached bath. I picked up and kept her office clean so she could do her part-time work in her office during the day.

We were surviving. Well, I was. Jill looked like she had lost a few pounds and her spirit seemed to be gone. I, on the other hand, was reveling in the time I was spending with my son.

One day, Jill said in a monotone, “Sally called me yesterday.”

“Good old Sally,” I rejoined with some anger in my voice. “Did you tell her to go to hell?”

“No, Jake. Why should I? She wants me to visit her in Atlanta.

“That is probably better than her visiting with you here in Boston, since I really don’t want to see her,” I replied.

“She wants me to visit her, Jake, not us.

“I almost said something derisive about Sally getting Jill into more trouble, but thought better of it and remained silent

“I want to see her.”

This time I couldn’t keep quiet. “Want to talk about old times in Miami?” I said sarcastically. I was pushing her further and further away but I couldn’t help myself. The pain of her betrayal became fresh again.

“I am sure that the reunion will come up. But I would like to be able to talk to her about us, Jake. She is my best friend, but I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to.”

I was surprised that she asked. “Sure, go ahead, if you think it will help. I doubt that it will,” I continued. “I don’t think you know Sally as well as you think you do.”

Over the next week or more, we worked together in an uneasy truce to make our lives tolerable and to make Jake’s life as normal as possible. I knew what I had to do, and I formulated those steps I knew that I had to take to regain my self-respect and honor. I knew that I loved Jill with all my heart, but I also know I could not live with a woman that was unfaithful to me.

About a month after the reunion, I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner. It had become our custom that Jill would make dinner and I would clean up the dishes afterwards. I was drying a wine glass when I heard a lamentable wail come from the living room. I stopped what I was doing and stepped into the living to find Jill sitting on the sofa with our wedding album open on her lap. When she saw me come into the room, she held up her wedding rings and my boarding pass in her hand. “You knew,” she said with tears in her eyes. “You knew all the time,” she cried.

She was obviously genuinely upset. She was sobbing beyond being consolable. She saw me and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t look at you,” she said. “Don’t look at me,” she continued.

I sat down in a living room chair opposite her and said, “Yes, I know everything. I was there. I saw it all.”

“I put it out of my mind,” she said between sobs and gasps for breath. “I pretended it hadn’t happened. I wanted it to go away.”

“Maybe it did for you,” I said, “but not for me. I see it over and over again. I even have pictures.”

“Pictures?” she cried. “You have pictures?”

“Yes, I took pictures of everything that happened. They are on my iPhone.”

“No, no, no,” Jill cried. “I have to see them,” she said.

“Are you certain?” I said. “They are explicit. Besides, you know what happened.”

Jill replied, “I have to know what you know.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, opened the picture file and flipped to the file of the night of the reunion. “They start here,” I replied as I gave her the phone.

Jill took the iPhone and began to scan the photos. The pictures covered the time from when the Mendoza yacht landed at the pier to the point where she invited Juan into her bungalow. She looked at all of them. Some of them were blurry and indistinct, but, nevertheless, proved that I was there and had seen everything that had happened.

Jill threw the phone onto the sofa beside her and cried even louder. “I am so, so sorry Jake. I would do anything to change what has happened, anything.” she said as she continued to cry.

“But you can’t, can you?” I said almost impassively. You pretty much fucked me over, didn’t you? You fucked the two men that you know I hated the most in the world.”

It took Jill a few moments to understand what I had said. “What do you mean, ‘two men?’,” she said between sobs.

“Did you know that you fucked both Juan and Hector that night?” I said, almost matter-of-factly.

“What are you talking about?” Jill responded, still crying.

Let me tell you what happened that night, Jill,” I said, and I started to recount that night from my point of view.

“I watched from a distance when you returned from your cruise on the Mendoza yacht. It surprised me that you were topless, much less that Juan Mendoza had his arm around you without your objection. Immediately, I began to wonder how far you would go if you thought that I was not around. So, I decided to see what you would do without me.

“I watched you at the luau while you did an erotic dance with Juan. I observed that you allowed Juan to caress your breasts in the hot tub later in the evening. And I watched as Juan escorted you to the door of your bungalow late in the evening.

“What surprised, disappointed and hurt me beyond description is that I watched as you invited Juan into your bungalow. It killed my soul.

“When I saw that, I became enraged. I walked toward your room with hate for both you and him in my heart. As I approached your room, I picked up a large rock. My intention was to bust into your room and crush Juan’s head in. Make no mistake about it. I did not want to just hurt him. I did not want to just bash him into unconsciousness. I intended to kill him. And then, it occurred to me that I wanted to kill you too. The only thing that might stop me from killing Juan is that he might kill me first, but I didn’t care at that moment.

“I approached within ten feet of your door and stopped. For some reason, I thought of Little Jake. I evaluated my options and the scenarios that might follow.

“What if I busted into you room and found you so hot to fuck Juan that you told me to get out and that we would talk of this later. That would have triggered an explosive reaction that I don’t like to think about.

“What if Juan was so intent on fucking you that he beat the shit out of me and threw me out of your room? In that case, my self-respect would have demanded ultimate retaliation against one or both of you.

“What if Juan had excused himself as soon as he had seen me? I would’ve been left with a wife who would have cheated on me if I had not appeared at the last second. What would you have done at that time? Cried? Begged for forgiveness? Promise me that it would never happen again? In any case, I would have been stuck with a wife I could never trust again.

“I was a loser no matter what might have happened.

“What if I had burst into your room and killed Juan like I so wanted to do? Jake would have been raised without his father who would be known as a murderer.

“If I had been killed by Juan, then the possibility was that Jake would have been raised by his mother and his step-father, Juan. That was not an acceptable solution.

“If I had killed both Juan and you, Jake would be raised by one of his grandparents. That was also an unacceptable solution.

“My only option at the time was to walk away from it and deal with the consequences later, regardless of what they might be.”

Jill finally looked up at me and said, “What are you going to do??

I looked at her, and with tears in my eyes, I said, “I want a divorce.”

Jill let out a big cry, “No, no, no! I didn’t want this to happen. You were never to know.”

I replied, “I have no choice. You fucked my worst enemies and then you lied about it time and time again. You never considered confessing the indiscretion to me so that we might resolve it somehow between us. You lied and lied and lied. I don’t trust you anymore. You had no respect for me or our marriage vows.”

Jill alternately sniffled and cried. “You can’t forgive me and let us go on as before? Can’t you give me a chance?” she questioned.

I replied, barely able to hold in my own tears, “I did give you a chance, and you continued to lie to me.”

I went on, “My sense of honor and self-respect will not allow me to go forward as if nothing had happened. You would not respect me if I should do that. I would forever be a cuckold to you, to me and to our friends, acquaintances and associates. My pride would not allow that, no matter how much I loved you.

“And regardless of the fact that I love you, I don’t want to touch you. I won’t make love to you knowing that the last man inside you was Juan or Hector. I won’t kiss you knowing that you have sucked the cocks of Juan and Hector and your mouth has been full of their jism.”

Although Jill was listening as I made my thoughts known to her, she had just picked up on the fact that I was talking about both Juan and Hector.

“What are you talking about when you say Juan and Hector?” she asked through her crying.

“You are a bigger slut than you know. Didn’t you know that both Juan and Hector fucked you that night?” I responded.

“I still don’t understand what you are trying to say. I was with Juan and only Juan, all night long.”

“How many times did you climax?” I asked pointedly.

“Please, Jake, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve been trying to put that night out of my mind.”

“How many times did Juan have an orgasm?” I continued to press for answers to questions that were as uncomfortable to me as they were to Jill.”

“Please, please, Jake,” she pleaded. “I didn’t want you to know that anything had happened in the first place, so I certainly don’t want to go into the details of how and how much and how long I fucked Juan. Actually, I can barely remember most of it. I had had a lot to drink, too much, and I was high and I was tired.”

“Let me give you my best guess about what happened,” I said. Juan escorted you to your bungalow a little after midnight. Based on how hot you were to get fucked, I think you and Juan got it on within a few minutes. After resting for a while, Juan probably encouraged you to suck his cock, which I’m certain you did. Then, you two probably fucked a second time in a different position than before. Maybe he even fucked you in the ass.”

Jill interrupted, “No man has ever had my ass–ever. But you are right, that is what he wanted to do at one point.”

“Regardless,” I continued, “Juan probably fucked you one additional time before you curled up with him and went to sleep sometime around 3AM. In that three-hour period of time both you and Juan probably climaxed at least three times. Then, about 4AM, Juan seemed to get inspired again. He might have started out by waking you up with light kisses and then continued with touching, perhaps sucking your breasts. He might have worked his way down your body until he was fingering you or even eating your pussy. At any rate, he aroused you to the point where you fucked him again and pretty much repeated what you two had done earlier.”

I looked at Jill. “No wonder that you thought it was a night of amazing sex. You must have been fucked at least six times, been eaten at least twice and sucked Juan off twice, if not more. How close was I to how things actually went down?”

Jill was still sobbing as I recounted what I thought was the expected scenario in her room that night. “You are closer than you think,” she said. “Some of it is still blurry to me, especially the sex I had early on Saturday morning. I couldn’t believe how virile Juan was. He wanted me over and over again.

“I am so, so sorry Jake. In retrospect, the whole day seemed to lead up to what happened. I just allowed myself to go along with events. I never, ever wanted you to know what happened. I have hurt you so much and I can see that. You know that I love you. And I know that you love me and Jake with all your heart. We have to get through this, we just have to.”

“Let me tell you what really happened to you Jill,” I said as I held up my hand to stop her supplication. “After I decided that I was not going to break into your bungalow and kill Juan and possibly you, I dropped the rock. I felt that I needed time to get my rage under control before I did anything else, so I started walking down the beach. I walked for a long time. During that time, I made the decision to return to Boston and not let you or anybody else know that I had actually been there, that I had seen what I had seen. I wanted to get the earliest flight possible back home.

“I was returning to my bungalow at about 3AM when I looked up through the palm trees toward your room. There was a man standing outside of your door. At first, I thought it was Juan, taking a break of some sort. Then, I saw the real Juan open the door of your room and step outside to greet his brother Hector. They stood together for a few minutes, and then exchanged shirts. Hector entered your bungalow, now dressed as Juan, and Juan walked off toward his own room.

“So, the reason you experienced such amazing sex that night was that you fucked two men, Juan and Hector Mendoza.

“No, no, no,” cried Jill. “I didn’t know.” How could he…how could they…”

“Technically, Hector raped you,” I said. “You did not give your consent to have sex with him. However, I suppose that that distinction is lost in the broader scheme of events.”

Jill just cried and rocked back and forth, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” she repeated.

“It doesn’t matter to me that you fucked Juan or Juan and Hector. What matters to me is that you were unfaithful at all. You seemed to do it so casually, as if it was the thing to do without your husband around.”

“Yes, you’re right”, Jill said. “It was all too easy. And I haven’t faced up to the consequences of my actions. I never even considered the possibility of consequences. What was I thinking? Where was my respect for my husband, my marriage?

“If you want a divorce, Jake, I will not contest it. I will do as you’ve outlined. We will still have Little Jake to keep us as a family.”

“I’ve thought about this for some time now. You may agree with it or not. My primary concern is for Little Jake, and I think yours is, too. The house is too big for just one parent to maintain, and we both still have busy careers. I think we should sell the house. We will each buy separate townhomes or condominiums near our work and near each other so that Little Jake can continue at the same school and have the same babysitter and daycare center, since we both work. We will share him equally as much as possible. He will live with me for a month at a time and then with you. In order to maintain a semblance of family, we will do holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween and birthdays together as a family, so that he will not feel as if he was abandoned by one parent or the other. We’ll be polite and courteous to each other whenever we are together with both Little Jake and our families. Other than that, we’ll maintain separate lives.

“Since maintaining two separate households will be a lot more expensive, I made the decision to leave the public defender’s office and rejoin my old partner, Paul Evans, and his law firm. Paul has wanted me back ever since I left for my job for the city. He says that he has much more business than he can handle alone, and he needs someone with my trial experience.”

Jill interrupted, “But you loved being a public defender.”

I responded, “Yes, I did. I felt I was helping people who were at a disadvantage in the court system. I also gained a lot of trial experience on a wide range of issues. But I am tired of the low-level cases involving drug pushers, gang members, wife-abusers and so on. I’m leaving the office in good hands with young, enthusiastic lawyers who are anxious to cut their teeth in courtroom confrontations. I would like to concentrate more on a higher level of criminal justice.

“Paul has promised me that I will have more than enough work to do and that the financial rewards will be substantial.”

Jill cried most of the night. I couldn’t help her and I didn’t try. I cried, too.

The next morning, Jill announced that she couldn’t face me for a few days and said she was leaving to visit Sally for a few days. I thought it was for the best, too. Not that I thought Sally would do her a lot of good. In fact, I disliked Sally intensely because I thought it was Sally who had set Jill up to fall. Jill still believed that Sally was her friend.

I waited for an hour or so after Jill’s airplane landed in Atlanta before I texted her. I imagined she had been picked up by Sally and they were at Sally’s house at the time. In the text, I said that, in addition to the pictures I had taken that night at the resort, I had a video clip of her bonfire dance with Juan and I attached the video file. I told her to take note of Sally’s actions.

What the video showed was Jill and Juan and Hector and Maria trying to outdo each other in suggestive moves as they danced in the light of the bonfire. In the background the video showed a number of our classmates watching and some even turning away from the R-rated gyrations. However, as Jill and Juan danced, Sally walked up to Jill and handed her a drink while whispering some in her ear. After Sally withdrew back to the crowd, Jill downed the drink in one gulp and threw the empty glass into the bonfire. Jill seemed to dance a little more wildly then and, at one point, ripped off her light blue sarong and threw it into the air. The video showed the sarong blowing across the sand toward the video operator. The video ended.

Not more than two hours later, Jill called me and said she was returning home on the next flight.

I picked Jill up at the airport. She was quiet for the first few minutes of our drive home. Then she said, “I feel I was set up.”

“I don’t know why. I also know that it does not excuse my behavior. I made it easy for them. I made all the decisions to do what I did. I drank too much. I smoked weed. I allowed myself to become Juan’s companion for the weekend. And then I fucked him…them. I thought they were my friends, but they weren’t. But I still don’t know why.”

“I don’t know why either,” I said.

We were silent the rest of the way home.

Separation papers were filed. Even before they were finalized, Jill and I had a lawyer draw up an equable division of assets. Our finances were split apart and we began to manage our monetary affairs separately. Contemporaneously, we both found suitable places to live near our places of work and near each other. Our home had appreciated a great deal in the few years we had it. It was sold for a substantial profit and we divided those assets. I used part of the profit from the house as a down payment on my three-bedroom townhome. The rest, I placed in liquid assets until I could decide what I wanted in long-term investments. My new income level allowed me to put a lot of my pay into savings. As it turned out, I would need it soon.

Jill purchased a three-bedroom condominium less than a mile from my townhouse. At one point, when we were discussing the logistics of sharing custody of Little Jake, we hit upon the idea of decorating each of the bedrooms in our separate residences in the same style as Jake’s room in our previous home. We felt that would make him feel more comfortable as he switched from Jill’s place to mine and back again each month.

The first month or so was traumatic as we moved our chattels from our family house and into our new dwellings. Simultaneously, I was getting adjusted to my new job as a criminal attorney in a private law office. Paul did not hesitate to load me up with cases, but also with the responsibilities of a co-equal participant and partner in our law firm: Evans & Martin, Attorneys at Law.

I kept Little Jake with me at our home for the first month while Jill moved out of the house and into a condominium she had found. Jill was kind enough to keep Little Jake for the second month while I moved into the three-bedroom townhouse I bought.

I had refused to let Jill talk to me about the night of her infidelity. I didn’t admit or couldn’t imagine that there could possibly be a rational explanation or excuse for her conduct. I was still hurting. However, she still pressed me to listen to her side. On the day that we signed the divorce papers, she made it a point to do it only on the condition that I allow her thirty minutes to explain what happened. I really didn’t want to hear “her side” of the story. I didn’t think there could be any justifiable “her side.”

Nevertheless, after the papers were signed, we dismissed the lawyers and sat alone in the law office conference room.

She started out by apologizing again, telling me how sorry she was and acknowledged that she knew that she had hurt me deeply and that I was still hurting. She was so regretful that she caused the dissolution of our marriage but she understood that my pride was so wounded that I would never get over it. She also understood that because of the events that caused our marriage to wither and die, I had lost a lot of self-respect for myself–for something that wasn’t my fault. She almost started to cry and I could tell she was having a difficult time keeping herself under control.

I reminded her that I agreed to listen to her description of events and not to hear her more apologies for her part in ending our marriage.

She steeled herself and started, . . .

“The reunion weekend…It was so nice to get away… Do you know that it was the first time in six months I was off by myself for longer than a trip to the store? I was by myself: No job, no husband, no Jake Junior. It was just me. On the flight to Miami, I told myself I was going to have fun. I wanted to join up with my single girlfriends and party like we did in law school at the end of a semester; all by myself, in Miami

“The resort was so beautiful. The warm tropical breezes, rum drinks, hot salsa music. Beautiful people… Jake it was just so sexy there,” Jill sobbed.

“Jake, everyone was there and we were having such a good time. It was like I was back in school. Before there was an us, before there was a Jake Junior. It was like I was my own person again; not responsible for anything or anyone other than myself.”

“I have always let you be your own person, Jill. I have always given you space if you told me that you needed it,” I responded. My voice was dull and unemotional.

“I know, Jake. It’s not anything you’ve done. It’s just life…”

I couldn’t help but interrupt. “You wanted to get married, Jill. I thought as much as I did. And I know you wanted to have a baby….”

This time Jill stopped me. “Yes, I did. I wanted marriage and a baby. I love you, Jake… Oh God, this is so hard!”

She continued. “I had hoped to join up with my single girlfriends from school, but soon found that there weren’t any. Most of them were married and most of those who were single didn’t come to the event.

“Sally was there, however. We teamed up and she told me that she would see that I had a great time. She had told Juan that I was alone and he promised to take care of both of us during the reunion. She had always been good friends with the Mendozas.

“On Friday afternoon, we all gathered on the patio for a cocktail hour. That’s when we met Juan, Hector and Hector’s wife, Maria; and made plans for the next day. The reunion schedule called for a tour boat to take everyone out to a small island owned by the resort for a barbeque lunch. Juan and Hector said it would be much more fun to use their yacht.

“I was a little suspicious of Juan’s motives and told him I probably should stick with my other friends. Juan said to invite some of them along, too. Sally wanted me to go, so I said I would go if Steve and Meredith would go with us. I found Meredith a short time later and she said that she and Steve would accompany us on the Mendoza yacht.

“The yacht seemed so much more alluring than the tour boat, and certainly less crowded. Although I missed partying with my classmates, I enjoyed the freedom on the yacht. The lunch was superb and there was lots to drink. I shouldn’t have started drinking so heavily so early in the day. And then Juan pulled out the weed and we all had some. I can’t tell you how relaxed and free I felt.

“As you can guess, or as you observed, I went along with the flow, not realizing that I was being played by people who pretended to be my friends. I had more to drink and smoked more weed, all of which lowered my resistance to suggestion. I allowed myself to dance like a gypsy with Juan by the firepit. I let Juan touch me in the hot tub. It was all very tantalizing and sexually exciting. By the time Juan walked me to my room, I was so ready to get fucked that I pulled him inside. I had no thoughts of you whatsoever. I am so, so sorry.”

“I woke up the next morning alone in bed. I had the worst headache ever. The place reeked of sex. I was sore. It began to dawn on me what I had done…what I had done to you, to us. I cried and cried and cried. I became physically ill and got the dry heaves. About 10AM, I called room service and asked them to deliver clean sheets. I threw the ones that we used into the hallway. Then I took a long shower and tried to scrub myself clean. No matter how much I bathed, I did not feel clean. When the clean sheets arrived, I remade the bed and curled up with a pillow. I couldn’t sleep. I felt so full of shame and guilt that I continued to cry.

About 1PM, Meredith came looking for me because she noticed that I wasn’t outside enjoying the reunion. At first, I didn’t want to let her in, but she detected that something was wrong and I finally opened the door. She hugged me and I cried in her arms. She asked what had happened and I told her everything.

“How will I ever face Jake? This will just kill him,” I wailed.

“Meredith took control. ‘This never happened, Jill,’ she told me. ‘I want you to start to put it out of your mind right now. This was a non-event.’

“I could never fool Jake,” I responded.

“Meredith replied, ‘I mean it, Jill. Put this event out of your mind. It did not happen. You have no reason to feel or act guilty. Jake will never know.’

Meredith continued to outline her plan, emphasizing that nothing ever happened. There was no incident to hide or cover up. She ordered coffee and food from room service. Physically, I started feeling better. Meredith told me that I had to continue the rest of the weekend as normally as possible. That would mean that I should attend the banquet and dance that evening–the last event of the reunion.

“I told her that I couldn’t face my classmates and I certainly did not want to see Juan.

“‘Remember, Jill, last night didn’t happen. You are going to be your usual social self. Nobody but you and Juan know this happened. And not even Juan would want Jake to find out what he did to you.’

“In the mid-afternoon, Meredith had me go with her to the reunion hospitality room of the hotel to mix a little with the rest of the class. Several people asked where we had been that morning. Meredith told them that we had gone shopping. After an hour or so, everyone began retiring to their rooms to dress for the banquet.

“I followed Meredith’s plan. I pushed the incident far to the back of my mind and concentrated mingling with my friends. One or two of them mentioned the dance that Juan and I had done together the previous night, but they didn’t seem to infer that anything went further than that.

“Meredith picked me up in my room and I went with her and Steve to the cocktail hour preceding the banquet. Meredith stayed with me like a protecting angel. I was actually enjoying the evening–partly because I was able to dismiss the previous night’s activities from my mind. Nothing happened.

“I sat next to Meredith and Steve at the banquet. I saw Juan and Hector at another table along with Maria, Bill and Sally. Juan frequently looked in my direction, but I purposely never made eye contact with him. I was afraid he was going to approach me or ask me to dance later in the evening. I told Meredith that I would come apart if he talked to me or touched me. Meredith told me not to worry. She had personally told Juan to stay away from me or there would be trouble.

“For the rest of the evening, I tried to enjoy my classmates. I had only one glass of wine the entire evening and I danced once with Steve. Meredith and Steve made certain I got to my room that evening. I rode with them the next morning in the hotel van to the airport and left on my flight home. I had shoved the incident so far to the back of my mind that I shed the guilt that I would have otherwise felt. I wanted everything from this point forward to appear as normal as possible–even to the point not making you suspicious with an extreme amount of guilt sex. Supposedly, I didn’t have guilt.”

Jill finished abruptly, “That’s what happened. I will never forgive myself for what I’ve done. I don’t think you can forgive me either. I don’t expect you to. Just know that I’ll always be sorry for hurting you so much. Also know that I will always love you.”

At that point, Jill just stood up and left the room.

I waited for the required period of time to pass before the divorce was final. It was an anticlimactic day when I received notice that I was again a single man.

I continued to work hard at my job. Paul had been right about the benefits of my background and experience as a public defender. It was a definitive asset to our law firm. Not only did I know my way around a courtroom, my knowledge of the inner workings of the district attorney’s office was invaluable. We switched from a philosophy of plea bargains to one of trial by jury–and we started to win. The reputation of our law firm was slowly enhanced as we took on more important cases and higher profile clients.

My usual destination after work was a local lounge/bar that Paul and I used either to relax or as a place to take clients when we wanted a more casual environment than the legal settings of our office.

On this particular day, it was only 2PM, and the lounge was, for the most part, empty. I took a seat in a secluded booth by myself and ordered a double shot of spiced rum. I started thinking. I probably would not have thought of anything extreme if it had not been for an e-mail I received from Sally the previous night.

Dear Jake:

I understand that you are divorced now. I am so sorry to hear about it. On the other hand, it frees you up to see other people. I’m an “other people”. We dated briefly (one date) before you met my roommate, Jill. I was prettier then. In fact, I was very pretty. I can’t tell you how much I was smitten with you at the time. You were all I could think of. It hurt me more than you ever knew to see you dating and falling in love with my roommate. I never felt that she was good enough for you. You couldn’t see her faults. She was devious. I knew you had made a mistake when you married her and I always wanted to prove it to you. I did that at the reunion. I showed you that she was just a tramp. Although she had very little to do with Juan since she broke up with him while we were in law school, I knew she didn’t dislike him like you did. It was easy to get Juan, Hector, Jill and myself to run together for the weekend. I knew, with a little help, that she would hang herself. Juan was at his charming best. He always wanted her and always hated you because he felt that you took Jill away from him.

Anyway, I’m sorry for the way things turned out but I wanted you to know that I am here for you. Please come down and visit me sometime. I will do anything to help you forget that bitch. I know that I am not as pretty as Jill is, but I could love you much more than she ever did.

XXOO, Sally

I figured that she must have been drunk when she wrote that letter. She would not have admitted to setting up Jill’s fall if she had been sober.

I forwarded the email to Jill without comment.

The letter confirmed, without doubt, that Jill was set up by her good friend, Sally. It was also obvious that I was set up as well. That didn’t excuse what Jill did. Marriages are supposed to be able to withstand temptation, and spouses are supposed to be able to avoid situations where they are vulnerable.

Ever since the incident between my wife and the Mendoza brothers; I had felt humiliated and enraged. Initially, I took all of my anger out on Jill, who I blamed for all of it. The intensity of those feelings subsided somewhat after I initiated divorce proceedings against her, but they were not gone. A heavy workload as a trial lawyer distracted me from those feelings, but they were still inside me. Since our separation and the initiation of divorce proceedings, the anger and resentment had not dissipated. I wanted to get even. No, it wasn’t getting even that I wanted–I wanted revenge.

Among our clients was Girard Giadino, He was a wealthy real estate entrepreneur who dealt exclusively with commercial property. He had been arrested and accused of arson. Specifically, he was accused of burning down several warehouses on the dock in order to prepare the land for future development of a high-rise condominium. The warehouses were moderately insured.

Actually, the police had very little to go on. There was no evidence of arson: no fire bomb remnants, no accelerant, no timing devices…nothing. Most of the evidence was circumstantial. It was well known that Giadino wanted the land cleared. Also, the buildings were insured, although not excessively so. Mr. Giadino was not in town the night of the fire. He was with reputable business associates at a meeting held in Baltimore.

My gut feeling was that he was guilty. Nevertheless, I was certain that with so little concrete evidence against him I could easily get him acquitted. I might even have the charges dismissed.

I wanted to know more. I called my contact at the private investigation company our firm used, the Drake Detective Agency. The principal investigator was a friend and we used him exclusively when we needed to get the facts. I explained what I knew and what I suspected: Giadino had hired an arsonist, a good one, to set the warehouse fire.

Giadino owned a variety of businesses that supported his real estate endeavors. There were several real estate offices and a construction company. He owned several small office buildings. Plus, he had partial interests in various other enterprises.

The Drake detective agency looked into all of them. The investigator they assigned checked the backgrounds of every employee Giadino had in his organizations. There were about seventy of them, and they were all clean and above suspicion. However, the reason Paul and I used this particular investigative service was that they were so thorough. They even looked at employment applications of personnel that were not hired by Giadino, and they found one man of interest. His name was Henry Williams. He had applied for a part time position as a night watchman. What made his employment application stand out was the fact that he was a retired fireman.

The detective asked me if I wanted more information on Williams. I told him I did. In a few days, I had an up-to-date picture of Henry Williams’ life.

Chief Williams had been retired for more than seven years. Five years previously, his wife became very ill with a strange disease that left her essentially housebound. The disease had progressed to the point that Mr. Williams’ sister-in-law had moved from Florida to live with Williams and his wife and help in her care. Although Chief Williams had a fair retirement pension, the cost of dealing with his wife’s illness was financially overwhelming. It was at that point that he applied for work as a night watchman for Giadino’s warehouse facility. On paper, he was never hired. The detectives also told me that he paid most of his bills with money orders. In other words, he used cash–cash that did not go through his bank account.

Holding the employment application of Mr. Williams gave me a sense of anxiety, and I didn’t know why. His work history was long and distinguished. It was replete with honors and awards. He had worked his way up from basic fireman in his mid-twenties to fire chief of a large urban fire station. He also served as a fire inspector and an arson investigator. I had the feeling I was holding the dossier of the man who started the warehouse fire for Giadino.

Rather than entering this latest information into our data files for the case. I withheld it completely. In fact, I buried the file and folded up Chief William’s employment application and put it into my coat pocket. As I stepped out of the office, I told my secretary that I would be away for the rest of the day.

I drove to Williams’ residence. I observed the home for a few minutes and noted it was a single-story middle-class house in a nice neighborhood. From the report I had, I knew that Williams and his wife had lived there for over twenty-five years.

Before I walked up to the door, I took off my coat and loosened my tie. I left my briefcase in the car. A minute or so after I rang the bell, a woman came to the door. I explained that I wanted to talk with Chief Williams on a private matter. I assumed this was the sister of Chief Williams’ wife. She didn’t invite me in, but told me to wait and closed the door. A few minutes later, Chief Williams appeared. He was a tall lean man with deep lines in his face and thinning gray hair. He appeared to be very distinguished, even though he was wearing only Dockers and a pullover sport shirt.

I introduced myself and gave him my card. He looked at the card and then asked me what I wanted.

“I’m a lawyer for Girard Giadino. I’m defending him in an arson case.”

“What does that have to do with me?” he responded.

I felt uncomfortable standing on his porch and asked him to take a walk with me. The Chief pointed off in the direction of a park he said he often walked to for exercise.

“You do know Mr. Giadino, don’t you, Chief Williams.

The Chief was slow to respond. In fact, he didn’t answer any of my questions directly.

I concluded very quickly that I was going to have to be very pointed with him. As we reached the edge of the park, I stopped and untucked my shirt. “Chief, I want you to see that I’m not wearing any sort of recording device so whatever we say to each other is strictly between you and me.”

The Chief continued walking and asked me again what I wanted with him.

“Chief Williams,” I addressed him, “I have good reason to believe you were the arsonist who started the fire that burned down Giadino’s warehouses on the dock. I can’t prove it at this point, but if I were to take the evidence I have now to the police, I’m certain they could find the truth.”

Still remaining stoic, the Chief said, “I’ll ask you for the last time, Mr. Martin, what do you want with me? Blackmail? Good luck with that.”

I came to the point of my visit. “I want you to burn and sink a boat for me.”

Chief Willams was surprised. “And why would I do that for you, Mr. Martin? Do you think you could blackmail me into doing it?”

“Not at all,” I countered. “I want to hire you. I will pay you fifty-thousand dollars to burn and sink a boat for me. It’s a big boat located in a small marina outside of Miami.”

“And just why would you want me to sink this boat, Mr. Martin?”

I will tell you exactly why, Chief, because I want you to know how committed I am to doing this. After I have done so, you can do one of three things. You can reject my offer and go to the police and turn me in, you can just forget I made this offer altogether and go on your merry way, or you can accept my offer.”

“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Martin,” he said. “I have to go to Miami anyway to check on the home of my sister-in-law. Give me the particulars of the boat you are interested in and I will look the situation over.

“I’ll be back in a week. Meet me here at the park. I walk here every day around two in the afternoon. Don’t call me, text me or communicate with me in any electronic manner whatsoever. Never write anything down. I will be back here in the park next Wednesday.”

I gave the Chief the information on The Seductress, owned by Juan and Hector and their family, and told him where he could find it. He didn’t write anything down. Once he had the information on the target, he turned and walked back the way he came. I followed about five minutes later, went straight to my car and drove home.

I managed to get through the next week with great difficulty. It was hard to keep my mind on work matters, although I think my partner and I did a very good job of designing a defense for our client, Mr. Giadino. Essentially, the police had nothing that could suggest that the warehouse fire was anything other than accidental even though Mr. Giadino benefited substantially from the incident.

On Wednesday, I was sitting on a table in the park near Chief Williams’ home. At 2PM, he walked into the park and sat on a park bench close enough to talk, but far away enough that nobody would think we were together.

“I can do what you ask,” Chief Williams stated casually. “Give me some more details.”

“I want the boat set on fire and sunk on the seventeenth of June in the estuary in front of the resort that is about a quarter of a mile downstream of the marina.”

“You know that I’ll have to do this in the middle of the night, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes, that’s what I want.”

The chief went on, “You also realize that this is not going to look like an accident. It will look intentional.”

“That’s what I want it to look like,” I rejoined. “It is less likely that insurance will pay off if the boat is intentionally scuttled.”

Not wasting words, the chief added, “I want fifty percent of the fifty-thousand up front, along with ten-thousand in expense money. I want it in cash… used twenties and fifties.”

I’ll see you in another week, Chief, at this same time.”

As the Chief started to leave, he said, “Meet me on the other side of the park next time, near the picnic area.” Without another word he walked in the direction back to his home.

I had been working for several months on getting a large amount of cash together. I couldn’t just pull thirty-five-thousand dollars out of my savings account without raising red flags if I was ever investigated. Instead, I took a little out at a time and I gambled with it–or, I appeared to gamble with it. I went to the racetrack quite often and made dozens of bets of from one-hundred to two-hundred dollars bets at a time. Surprisingly, I sometimes won but most of the time, I lost. I would always save my tickets even if I lost. I would also pick up tickets from the ground that were discarded by other gamblers that had lost. After several months of this, I had enough tickets to total more than fifty-thousand dollars. Although self-serving, the documented losses would support a story that would indicate that I had lost a lot of money gambling.

The following Wednesday, I was back at the park. Very little was said between the Chief and me. I simply handed him a grocery bag that I had brought with me and walked off. The one thing that we did arrange was to meet one last time in the park on the Wednesday after the sinking took place so that I could give him the balance of his payment.

As the time for the next class reunion approached, I received the invitation in my email. In the past, I had always enjoyed these reunions. This time, I wanted to go but I did not want to show my face down there. Too many people knew what Jill had done, and everyone knew that we were divorced because of it. At a school event for Jake that both Jill and I attended. I told her that I was not going. Not surprisingly, she said that she had no intention of going, either.

When we RSVPed that neither of us were planning to attend, Steve called me personally to encourage us to reconsider. I told him in no uncertain terms that neither of us wanted to go. Both he and Meredith were very disappointed.

On the night of the reunion, I had a date. Not only did I need one badly, but I wanted to establish an alibi for my whereabouts that evening. I had been on dates before, but usually when it was Jill’s turn to care of Little Jake. On this night, I asked her to babysit Little Jake for the evening.

I dropped Little Jake off at Jill’s condo after I had dressed for my date. Jill noticed that I was dressed up for the evening, and asked me if I was seeing anybody. I told her that I dated occasionally, but there was nobody with whom I was exclusive. She was obviously not happy knowing that I was taking another woman out and that I was likely to get laid that night, but, nevertheless, she straightened my tie and told me I looked very handsome. I asked her if she was seeing anybody. She said she wasn’t interested in going out socially yet. For some reason, that made me feel both good and guilty. Good that she wasn’t seeing someone, and guilty because I was.

I tried to act normal and I was happy that I had my date with me to distract me from my thoughts about what might be happening at the reunion. We actually had a very good time together: drinks, dinner, dancing and then back to her place for the evening. By the time we finished having sex, we were both tired and we slept soundly.

At 2AM in the morning, my phone rang. It must have rung ten times before I was awake enough to answer it.

“Who’s calling me at this hour,” I said as I answered the incessant ring.

“Jake! You’ll never guess what is happening!” said an overly excited Steve.

Suddenly, I remembered the arrangements I had made for the night, and I was instantly wide awake. Nevertheless, I tried to sound sleepy and uninterested.

“Can’t this wait until the morning?” I said. “I was dead asleep.”

“No, no! You have to see this Jake,” an excited Steve was shouting. “The Mendoza yacht is on fire in the estuary. It’s lighting up the whole sky! I’m sending you some pictures and a video. You can’t miss this, even if you’re in Boston.”

Steve signed off and a few minutes later, I received a video clip on my phone. It was spectacular! In the middle of the estuary, the boat was totally engulfed in flames. The whole deck of the boat from bow to stern was ablaze. Steve was apparently standing on the beach in front of the resort with dozens of other people. They were all oohing and awing at the sight of the conflagration. Some were dressed in just shorts, others had on only a bathrobe. They had all been aroused by the noise and the fire and had come to the beach to watch.

The video clip was a full minute long. My date woke up to see what I was watching. I showed it to her. She was as mesmerized as I was. After watching the clip two or three times, she dragged me back onto the bed and my interest in her satisfaction suddenly returned.

I slept very well after that. My date might have thought it was because she wore me out, which she did, but I slept well knowing that Juan and Hector were now minus one multi-million-dollar yacht.

My date made breakfast for me on Sunday morning. After that, we parted ways, promising to see each other again soon.

I was home by 11AM and just walked in the door when the phone started ringing. Predictably, it was Jill.

“Jake, did you hear the news?” she asked.

I told her that Steve called me early in the morning and had sent me a video.

“Meredith called me last night.” Jill said. “She sent me pictures. I was going to call you, but then I thought that perhaps you were not alone and I didn’t want to disturb you.

“Who would do such a thing?” she asked me.

“I have no idea,” I said, “but I imagine the Mendoza brothers have lots of people that dislike them…me included.”

I discovered that the incident made the national news. On Sunday, several channels carried stories of the yacht fire…and more. It seems that after about an hour, the first harbor police vessel, a high-speed trawler, arrived on the scene. They could do nothing but observe, but they did take lots of close-up videos of the fire. About an hour after that, the first fire boat arrived on scene. As the fireboat, with its huge water cannons in action, was approaching the burning vessel, there were two underwater explosions only seconds apart. The first one lifted the bow out of the water about four feet and the second explosion lifted the stern up an equal amount. The fireboat was forced to pull back for its own safety. The yacht settled back in the water but it soon became apparent that it was sinking rapidly. After five minutes, the water was up to the gunwales. Then the deck went underwater. Finally, the entire boat disappeared below the surface and was gone from sight.

In an email from Steve, I was told that the Mendoza twins were standing on the beach along with everyone else, watching the fire. Steve said he told Juan and Hector that it looked like their boat that was on fire. They panicked right away and ran down to the marina where they saw that their boat was missing from its slip. They were beyond panic at the realization that their multi-million-dollar yacht was sinking in the estuary. Somehow, they found a run-about boat at the marina and drove out to their vessel. They approached within several feet of it as if they were going to board the ship, but the flames on the deck prevented them from doing so. They circled close to the burning ship for an hour, until the harbor police trawler ordered them to back away. They sat in their small boat and watched it until it sank beneath the surface of the water.

The Mendoza family immediately made the claim for salvage rights and requested that other parties back away from the site of the sunken ship. They were notified by the police and the Coast Guard that, although they may have salvage rights, there was going to be an investigation into the cause of the fire and the loss of the ship. A police boat was assigned to stay on top of the position of the lost boat.

That was the extent of the news until Sunday night. Evening broadcasts of the news had new information on the lost vessel. It seems that on Sunday afternoon, a crewman on the police trawler noticed a bundle of some sort floating on the water. They netted it and pulled it aboard. It contained five kilos of a white powder, triple-wrapped in plastic. A few minutes later, another bundle surfaced and then another and another. A quick analysis by the police lab confirmed that the white powder was cocaine.

Within another hour, divers from both the Coast Guard and the Harbor police were on the scene. They reported that there were two external compartments on the yacht, accessible only from the outside of the hull below the waterline, which contained dozens of bundles similar to the ones that had been found floating on the water. The explosion on the bow had breached the front compartment and allowed the bundles to escape to the surface.

Soon thereafter, a warrant was issued for the arrest of the yacht owners, namely the Mendoza family. It was too late to stop the escape of the parents of Juan and Hector. Their dad and mom had taken a chartered flight to New Orleans that landed, instead, at a small airport outside of Havana, Cuba. Juan and Hector, along with Maria, were arrested at a small airfield on the outskirts of Miami as they were boarding a similar flight to New Orleans.

When I heard that news, I said to myself, “There is a god after all.”

The next Wednesday, I was in the park talking with Chief Williams. I thanked him for doing exactly what I paid him to do as if he were a cabinet maker who had out-performed himself on some shelf project. Although I knew it would be best for me not to know how he did it, I had to ask him how he pulled it off.

He told me that the opposite side of the estuary was a regional park. He camped there that weekend. At midnight, when everything was quiet, he moved his equipment down to the edge of the water. He was wearing a black wetsuit and had black greasepaint on his face. Using scuba gear and a battery-propelled towing device, he navigated across the estuary to the marina. He surfaced just enough to use a pellet gun to shoot out the two flood lights illuminating the dock, and waited. When nobody came, he concluded that no one was watching the dock or had any video coverage of the boats.

Next, he went to the slip where The Seductress was moored. First, he took the blue sarong I had given him and tied it to the railing in front of the slip. Next, he boarded the boat, took a small, battery-powered pump out of his equipment bag and set it on the deck. One hose went into the diesel fuel tank. The other end was an octopus of three hoses. Two were stretched out along either side of the upper deck. The third hose was placed in the cabin.

Chief Williams untied the mooring lines on the bow and stern of the ship and threw them in the water. He

quietly returned to the water and secured the stern line to his underwater tug. The tug was not designed to pull a load as heavy as The Seductress, but it slowly started backing out of its slip. When it was clear, he moved to the bow and attached that line to the tug. Ponderously and silently, the yacht floated along the dock, now hidden from sight by the many other boats parked in their slips. Finally, the big ship moved unnoticed through the entrance to the marina and out into the open estuary. From there, the boat was towed downstream toward the resort.

It was past 2AM when Chief Williams climbed back aboard The Seductress and dropped the anchor. The channel in the middle of the estuary was about thirty-five feet deep at that point. The deck and cabin areas were awash in diesel fuel. He said he thought about removing the electric pump and the hoses, but decided against it because the fire was supposed to look intentional.

Returning to the water again, Chief Williams attached explosive devices to the hull–one at the bow and one at the stern. They weren’t very big charges, but more than adequate to blast a hole through the superstructure. They were on two-hour timers. He figured that would be enough time for observers to enjoy the fire before the boat was scuttled.

Chief Williams gathered up all of his equipment and moved away from the yacht. Surfacing briefly, he popped a flare and threw it onto the deck of the Seductress. The deck started on fire immediately, and the flames soon spread the length of the boat. He really wanted to stay and watch, but he now had to disappear under the water and out of possible detection by the onlookers who would presently grace the beach.

The Chief navigated underwater back to the site where he had entered the estuary. He quickly stripped out of his scuba equipment and wet suit, bundled everything up and put it in the trunk of his sister-in-law’s car. About that time, the sleepy campers were aroused out of their tents by the commotion in the estuary. He followed a group of them down to the shore where they could see the boat on fire. People were oohing and awing, and taking pictures and videos as they watched the ship burn. After it had sunk and the excitement was over, most everyone went back to their tents to get what sleep they could before the sun came up.

Before he returned to his sister-in-law’s house, the Chief disposed of all of his underwater equipment in a place and in such a manner that it would never be found.

I asked the Chief what his plans were. He said that his terminally-ill wife had only weeks left to live. After she passed, he and his sister-in-law were going to take her ashes with them to Miami where she would be buried in the same cemetery as her parents. He and his sister-in-law would probably live together in her home for the foreseeable future.

I marveled at the devotion the Chief had for his wife. He loved her to the end of her life.

I followed the investigation into the loss of The Seductress on the news. The only clue that the police were able to find, if it was a clue, was the blue sarong tied to the railing at the front of the boat slip where The Seductress was berthed. Speculation, however, was that the boat was intentionally burned as some part of a drug deal that had gone bad.

The Mendoza twins fought the charges against them very hard. They, apparently, had lots of money and hired a very prestigious law firm to represent them. Unfortunately, they were caught dead to rights. The prosecutor separated the twins and made them each a deal. He said they were both going to jail no matter what, but whoever wanted a plea deal of any sort would be the first one to turn state’s evidence. As it turned out, they both took the deal so fast that they trampled on each other, giving up the entire operation in which they had been involved. Nevertheless, the investigation and the arrangements made for them by their lawyers drew out negotiations for months before they were actually sent on trial.

From the very moment I decided I wanted to sink The Seductress, I had a guilty feeling. I was a lawyer, sworn to uphold the law. And I was a court officer with strict rules of ethical conduct. That feeling became stronger the more I acted to make the sinking a reality. I became a criminal.

Once it became evident that I had unknowingly exposed a large drug operation, I lost my apprehensions and my sense of guilt. In fact, I felt good–as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I was not a sullen, humorless, sulking man anymore. I was happy–as happy as I could be as a divorced father.

Jill was probably the first to note my happy disposition. I no longer looked at her with contempt and animosity. I don’t know whether or not she associated my new attitude with the sinking of The Seductress or not. She never asked, but obviously enjoyed the much friendlier atmosphere between us.

We saw each other often, always in association with Little Jake’s life and activities. We tried to keep Little Jake’s life as normal as possible. We were together for the fourth of July when we took him to the beach to watch fireworks out over the ocean. For holidays, such as Halloween, we did what we did the previous year. Jill stayed at home and handed out candy to trick-or-treaters and I followed Little Jake and his friends around the neighborhood, keeping an eye on them and taking pictures.

It was time for Thanksgiving. This year, it was going to be at Jill’s parents’ home. Regardless of our divorce, her mom and dad went out of their way to make certain I was coming, too. My parents and brother and sister were going to be there, too, with their kids, Little Jake’s cousins. Since their home was about a two-hour drive, Jill suggested we go together. I didn’t necessarily want to give the impression to family members that we were back together, but driving together was a logical thing to do. Initially, I was a little anxious about how I was going to be received, but nobody said anything one way or the other. In fact, most of our relatives still looked at us as a couple.

The fact that Jill never took off her wedding rings after she found them contributed to that impression. I asked her soon after the divorce was final why she didn’t take them off. She said, “I wear them to discourage men from asking me out.” I didn’t believe her. I knew how she felt about me and she hadn’t completely let go yet. I guess I hadn’t either. Although I didn’t wear my wedding ring on a leather lace around my neck anymore, it was still prominently visible in a silver bowl on my dresser where I kept cuff links, tie tacks and lapel pins.

It was obvious to both of our families that our hearts were not in the divorce. They never knew the real reason for it. It was officially recorded as “irreconcilable differences.” I think they thought it was their mission to get us back together again.

For Christmas, we spent it as a family, just the three of us. Jake was staying at Jill’s condo. I had dinner there on Christmas Eve and went home. While there, Little Jake was under the tree shaking and rattling all the presents–even those that were not for him. I returned early Christmas morning. Jill was already up and had made coffee mixed with eggnog–a tradition we had started. Jill and I would sip our morning drinks while Little Jake opened his presents. Finally, Little Jake pulled out a present that I had tucked far under the tree and he gave it to Jill.

“Who is this for, Mommy?” he asked.

Jill looked at the label and said, “It’s for me.” Reading the rest of the label, she said, “It’s from Daddy.”

Jill looked at me and her eyes seemed to get moist. “Thank you, Jake. I wasn’t expecting anything from you. You didn’t have to…”

“Open it, Mommy,” Little Jake said.

When it was opened, Jill saw a pale blue amethyst tennis necklace with a matching bracelet and earrings.

“Oh, Jake, it’s beautiful!” she said very slowly. Now a tear was running down her cheek.

“You aren’t supposed to cry,” I said.

Jill didn’t respond verbally. Rather, she moved from the sofa where she was sitting over to the easy chair I was in, put her arms around my neck and put her head on my shoulder. “Thank you, Jake,” was all she whispered.

Later, after breakfast, Jill was cleaning the dishes and I was drying. Out of the blue and without looking at me, she asked, “Jake, are you happy?”

I didn’t know what to say at first but then I blurted out, “I was happier when I was married…before…” I didn’t finish the sentence.

Still without looking at me, she hit me with another out-of-the-blue zinger. “My law firm is having a big New Year’s Eve party on the thirty-first. I would like you to go with me as my date.”

I didn’t know what to say at first. This would be the first social event we would attend that had nothing to do with our family. I finally spoke up, “I would be honored to be your date. Thank you for asking me.”

“I was so afraid that you already had a date,” she said.

“I actually hadn’t planned on doing anything,” I replied. “I would probably just stay at home, drink too much and watch the ball drop on TV. A New Year’s Eve party will be so much more fun.”

It was a great party, too. Jill’s Law firm was very large and very prestigious. They spent a lot of money on a hotel ballroom, food, an open bar, and a band. Jill really looked good. She was sexy without being meretricious. She wore a dark blue sheath dress that accentuated her amethyst necklace and earrings. We sat at a table with her good friends and co-workers–some of whom I knew and knew me. We danced together a lot and even became a little too comfortable together during slow dances. Occasionally, one of the single lawyers would approach me and ask if they could dance with Jill because they knew she was unmarried, even though she was with me, her ex-husband. Usually, even before I could answer, Jill would intercede and say that she was dancing with me exclusively tonight. I told her that I didn’t mind if she danced–fast dances– with her friends. She explained that most of them were wolves she had been fending off for months. Even her wedding rings did not discourage them, once they knew she was divorced. She went on to say that if I had not agreed to be her date tonight, she would not have come to the party.

At midnight, we were on the dance floor as the last seconds of the year ticked off. When the magic hour came, the balloons went up, the horns were blown, the confetti and streamers sailed across the room. Everybody started hugging and kissing. I didn’t let Jill out of my arms. We held each other, looked in each other’s eyes and then kissed. It was not a tenuous kiss, but a long deep meaningful kiss that was half love and half lust. Everybody must have noticed how into each other we were, because they didn’t try to break us apart for hugs and kisses that celebrated the new year.

When we finally broke apart, we were a little embarrassed. People were looking at us. It was only then that we hugged and kissed a few people and shook a few hands. We returned to our table and the band played “Auld Lang Syne.” We stayed for a while longer and danced together a few more times, but we were both tired. I told Jill, “I’ll take you home.”

“Please take me to your home, Jake. I want to stay the night with you.”

The next morning, we were both a little uncertain about how we felt about each other. Since she did not bring any clothes with her except the party dress she had been wearing, she was dressed only in her panties and my long-sleeved dress shirt. Jill was watching me make breakfast while she was drinking coffee. “Jake,” she said, “there’s an elephant in the room.”

Now it was my turn not to look at her as I hit her with an out-of-the-blue question. “Would you like to be exclusive?” I asked.

“What?” was her only answer.