Finished with checking the daily updates for the websites, Max sat back in his office chair waiting to be called to dinner. His thoughts turned to the events of the past eight months. It had been a wild ride. It was hard to believe that it had all started with the best day of his life followed by the worst day of his life. Things had changed a lot since that time.
He was a millionaire and well on his way to being a multimillionaire. The websites were doing so well that he had six people working for him. His skills as a salesman had paid off. Most of the specialty websites had three revenue streams. In addition to membership fees and advertising revenue, he had lined up corporate sponsors who paid him to put their content on his website. It was hard to believe that there was so much money in knitting, scrap book making, carving, fishing, and canning.
He never would have attempted it without being laid off. His anger at his old company had led him to be a little more reckless than was his nature. The cheating spouses website was so far from anything he would have considered that he was still amazed that he had actually done it.
Some people wondered if he didn't resent having partners who did nearly nothing in the day to day operation of the websites. The fact was that he didn't mind all. Without Guy and Maggie as partners in the cheating spouse website it would never have existed. Personally he was disgusted by Maggie's extra-marital affairs, but it was the video clips of her cheating that had started everything.
Without Guy's help, the special topics websites wouldn't have existed. After the first check, most of the money they sent to Guy was returned to be put back in the website. It had really helped knowing that there was a cash reserve to call upon during those early days when he was calling upon potential corporate sponsors. He would never mind a dime that went to Guy.
It wasn't only his economic future that had improved tremendously, so did his family life. His kids had really straightened up over the past eight months. It was like they had matured overnight. His son was serious about his future and took a lot more interest in his school work. He had gone from being a B student to being an A student. Everyone had been proud the day he came home with a report card saying that he had made the honor list.
His daughter had shown the greatest improvement. It was like she was a changed person. Gone were the freaky hair colors and ratty clothes. She had let her hair return to its natural color and had grown it a little longer. It was brushed to the point where it shined. She wore dresses almost all of the time – something that was rare among teenagers where blue jeans and tee shirts were the norm.
Her attitude had shown the greatest change. She pitched in around the house without having to be threatened. She vacuumed the carpet, dusted, and even did the laundry on occasions when Marylou was busy with the business. She accepted failures as learning lessons rather than insults against her dignity. There had been a few burned meals with subsequent trips to restaurants while she was learning the fine art of cooking, but that was to be expected.
She had acquired pride in herself. It was a subtle difference from the high self-esteem she had once possessed. Now she pointed to things and said, "I did that." Now she talked about skills and said, "I know how to do that." She had even taken up knitting as a hobby. She was a far different woman from the vacuous girl who boasted about how great she was without anything to back it up. She had depth.
Both kids had taken parttime jobs over the summer. They were surprised to learn that bosses could be even more critical than their father. Seeing a coworker get fired for screwing around had been a real eye opener. They had spent their wages on things important to them. It was amazing to see the difference in how they treated things they had purchased with their own money from the things that had once been given them.
His marriage had gotten deeper and better. In a way, it was a reaction to the cheating spouses website. Repeatedly, they had watched one partner in a marriage destroy something that was precious to the other. Seeing and hearing one spouse badmouth the other had brought home how special their marriage was and that it was worth working on in order to improve it. Intimate discussions had increased in frequency and the subject matter of their talks had gotten deeper.
It was strange how even trivial conversations had changed. In the old days, she would ask him how his trip had gone when he returned home from a sales call. Now, she greeted him by telling him how much she missed him and how she had thought about him the whole time he was gone. In the old days, he would have grunted that the trip went well and dropped the matter. Now, he would tell her of some incident and how he had wished she had been there to see it. It was a minor shift in emphasis, but now they each felt a little more special after the conversation.
Their sex life was better than ever. Maybe it was the improvement in communication between the two of them that accounted for it. He suspected it was watching a cheating spouse do things for his or her lover that they wouldn't do for his or her spouse. It had opened their eyes to what their reluctance to explore such matters was doing to their marriage. Regardless of the cause, they were now doing things in bed that had been unimagined eight months ago. They were both happy with the expanded repertoire.
There had been a rather embarrassing moment when Robert had caught him and Marylou testing an update to the cheating spouses website. He had been dismayed to learn that his parents were visiting porn websites. He had been floored to learn that they actually owned one. It had taken some fancy footwork to explain that one. He occasionally called them the King and Queen of Porn in a teasing manner.
It was September when Selena's business finally turned a profit. It was a considerable profit when all was said and done. All of the calendars were printed, shipped to the distributors, and payment received. She had paid the business loans, the printer's bills and all of the photographers were sent royalties with more than enough left over to fund the next year and cover her personal bills. She was busy working on the calendars for next year. He was happy for her.
Thinking back on it, he had come to the conclusion that she had been the saddest case of the four of them. Sure, Cody's problem was the ugliest and Guy's problem had really hurt. That didn't change the fact that Selena had never really known what it was like to be loved. The one lasting relationship was with a girlfriend who apparently didn't value the friendship all that much. Her only relationship with a man had been with a guy who was using her for a place to live while he lounged around unemployed. He felt that was a sad commentary on the life of a woman in her early thirties.
Even her job had been awful. She had worked for an overbearing man who used her without paying her a tenth of what she deserved. She was making him a millionaire while she was earning poverty wages. It hadn't been fair. Working alone in the office had just reenforced how lonely her life was.
According to Marylou, Selena had blamed a lot of her unhappiness on her appearance. She was just one of those women who was naturally big. She'd never grace the cover of a fashion magazine. Despite her substantial breasts, she didn't have the body type that would get her into a men's magazine. She wasn't fat, just stout and that didn't seem to attract men. Her features weren't really that plain, she had just never discovered the knack of presenting them well. Her choice of dowdy clothes had given her the appearance of an old maid.
Things were changing for Selena. The day Guy's divorce became final, he and Selena had their first official date although there had been a few weekend long sci-fi film marathons before then. One weekend wasn't long enough to watch fifty sci-fi movies. They had gone out for dinner and dancing. According to his kids, it was quite late when Guy finally returned home with a smile on his face. They were thrilled with the prospect that the relationship would continue.
According to Marylou, Guy learned during the date that women could still look at men in a certain irresistible way. He wasn't sure what that meant, but that night his wife had given the best handjob of his life. She had this look of fascination on her face when he came that was etched forever in his memory. Guy could only be so lucky if some woman ever looked at him like that.
Guy's kids were handling the divorce quite well. Ellie had gotten a parttime job as a filing clerk at the office of the lawyer who had handled Guy's divorce. She loved it and would come home from work talking about all she had learned that day. She was even more interested in becoming a lawyer. He didn't doubt for a moment that he'd be invited to watch her cross the stage with law degree in hand.
Sean was taking advanced programming courses in high school and making good grades. After researching the job market, he was seriously considering a degree in software engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. He had heard good things about their program.
The divorce had been hardest on Bill. He had been of the age where parents were still pretty much infallible. The initial hints that his father was cheating on his mother had shaken him. Learning for a fact that his mother was having an affair and had a sexually transmitted disease had turned his world upside down.
Max thought it funny that Guy credited the cat with saving Bill. Without even being asked, the boy had taken on the responsibility for feeding the cat and taking care of the litter box. It had to be the most pampered cat in the country. It wasn't always a perfect relationship. Bill discovered the hard way that you don't give a cat a bath. That was a story that provided a lot of laughs around the dinner table.
About a month back, he and his wife had found a website that they suspected belonged to Cody's daughter. If so, then Cody had understated the degradation his daughter was going through. He had mentioned that she was thinking of going into fetish material. He didn't know about that. Some of the images looked more like rape than anything else.
The other day, he had gotten an email from Cody that he had sent of everyone. It was the first he had heard from the man since the day he had driven off for parts unknown. He opened it to read it again.
"Hello everyone,
I know that I kind of disappeared off the face of the earth. I thought I would let you know what happened to me after I left home.
Discovering that my daughter was a whore and that my wife was proud of her was indescribably awful. That was the blackest day of my life. I was numb and I know my brain was barely working. My leaving was an instinctual fight or flight reaction in which I chose flight. I just wanted to get out of there.
I drove around the country for a month living on cheap burgers, sleeping in my car, and checking out the sights. I visited Yellowstone, Mount Saint Helens, the Grand Tetons, and the Grand Canyon. I can't even tell you what I saw at all of those places. My eyes were open, but I wasn't seeing anything.
It wasn't until I hit the Grand Canyon that I started to pull myself together. I sat there on a bench looking at that gouge in the earth. I kept thinking that it was small compared to the jagged hole that my wife and daughter had created in my soul.
My soul -- I hadn't thought about that since I was a kid. Naturally, that got me to thinking about spiritual matters. I kept asking myself how God could have allowed this to happen to me. What had I done to deserve this? There for a while, I wanted to have a nice long discussion with God and let him know what I thought of him.
I left there and drove around for another week or so thinking about God. One day, I noticed a sign to a monastery. I passed it and then turned around a couple miles up the road. I guess I had always pictured monasteries as dark foreboding places. It was not that way at all. It was a nice, clean looking place with a peaceful atmosphere.
I went up to the head guy, Father John, and asked if I could stay there for a while. I guess he could see that I was a truly troubled soul. He invited me in for a chat. We started talking and the time passed like magic.
I told him about what my daughter had done and my wife's reaction to it. I asked him how God could allow that. He talked about how God gave us freewill. We were free to chose our own paths through life and that not everyone chose wisely.
At first, that didn't help. Then he explained about redemption and how it was always available to those who had strayed from a righteous path. He said that redemption was God's greatest gift to us. It was a gift that was sweetest to those who had strayed the most.
I don't know if his words helped all that much. It did help to think that there was a chance that my daughter could turn away from the lifestyle she had chosen and that God would welcome her back into the fold. Maybe things weren't quite as black as I thought they were.
I know you're wondering if I got all religious and everything. I didn't. I needed a place that was quiet and where I could think about things in relative solitude. The monastery filled that need very well. I think the world would be a better place if more folks with problems weighing heavily on their soul would spent a little time at a monastery. It seems to me that the world doesn't value places like that anymore. It's a shame.
I slowly got over my anger and bitterness. There were even a few times when I laughed at Father John's jokes. Believe me, religious jokes aren't all that funny. It was good to know that I could find things humorous again. I hadn't realized how much I had missed laughing. You don't normally think about things like that.
One day I woke up and realized I had been living at the monastery for three months. It was time for me to move on. I went back the Grand Canyon. This time I actually saw the grandeur of it. If you ever get the chance, go visit it.
Looking at that view made me wonder what I had missed of the other places I had been. It made me realize that all too often we get caught up in our little problems and fail to appreciate the beauty around us. I've made it a point since then to stop and look around at least once every day. Let me tell you something, God made a wonderful world. It's a shame us people had to screw it up so bad.
Any way, back to the Grand Canyon. I sat there on that same bench I had sat upon during my first trip there thinking about my situation. It was time for me to settle down and get on with my life. Of course, there wasn't anything for me to do locally so I got in my car and drove off looking for a future.
Let me tell you something, starting over is not as easy as it sounds. It doesn't take much effort to say that you're searching for your future. It's an entirely different thing to seek it. There are opportunities out there, but not many good ones.
It was a month after leaving the Grand Canyon that I found a job working on a corn farm in Iowa for a widow. I met up with her in a feed store that had a help wanted sign on the door. It took me a whole minute to realized that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working at a feed store. Any way, this woman told me that she was looking for someone to help out at her farm, but that all she could pay was room and board until the crop came in. Well, I didn't need much more than that. I still had a little money left from my savings to tide me over until I was paid. I figured that the physical work would do me some good. I figured right. I've lost some fat and gained some muscle. I feel better than I've felt in years.
I guess she noticed my improved physique. Now I'm a farmhand who is romantically involved with the farmer's widow. I sometimes think that there has to be a joke in there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. To tell the truth, I'm happy to have her in my life. She's an honest down-to-earth woman who has good morals and knows how to put in an honest day's hard work. Don't kid yourself, it is hard work out here.
About the time Nancy and I started making cow eyes at each other, I figured it was time to put an end to the past. I contacted a lawyer and started divorce proceedings. According to him, my wife went to work with my daughter shortly after I left. I guess my daughter was too selfish to give her any money. She did help my wife in starting a website of her own. So now my soon to be ex is a whore banging college aged boys on her own website.
I wasn't really surprised by how things ended up for my ex. She had really been impressed by the money my daughter was making. Looking back on that last day, I could see thoughts of doing that were running through her mind. I'm convinced that she was envious of how much money my daughter was making.
I've often replayed that day, and the months proceeding it, over and over in my mind. I should have known something was off. It was like my wife was losing respect for me. I guess in her mind I was a poor schmuck making an honest living while my daughter was raking in the big bucks. Maybe I was a schmuck, but that's how I was raised. I make no apology.
My attorney told me that as a result of her website and the fact that I hadn't worked, that my ex had more assets that I did. He said that I was entitled to a portion of them. She wasn't happy to hear that and threatened to contest the divorce. I told my lawyer that I wasn't a pimp and wasn't going to accept one red cent of the money she made as a whore. I wanted half the value of the house and nothing more. She agreed and the divorce is progressing. It will be official in a couple of months.
Maybe I'm a sap, I don't know. Since the house has lost value, I'm effectively getting nothing. All of those years of work and nothing to show for it. It hurts, but at least I have my pride. I can't say the same for my daughter and my ex.
Okay, maybe I'm still a little bitter. Can you blame me?
Anyway, life is good out here. Nancy is a wonderful woman. The place where I'm living is beautiful. There are times when I'm out on the tractor that I just stop and look around in awe. The sky out here is huge. I think that if I were to meet up with God today, we'd have a very different conversation than what would have occurred seven months ago.
Enough about me.
I don't know what has happened with any of you since I left town. Did Max get a job? Did Guy divorce his wife? What about Selena? Did she reunite with her boyfriend or is there a new man in her life? I hope that things have turned out as well for all of you as they have for me. Write me back and let me know what's happened there. I'd like to hear from each and every one of you. I think of you often.
From under the blue skies of Iowa,
Cody"
Max smiled when he finished reading the email just like he did every time he read it. It seemed to him that Cody was doing okay. He would like to swing by the farm and say hello one of these days. He wanted to meet the woman that Cody had fallen for. He imagined she was something special for Cody to ever trust another woman.
It seemed to him that it was only in fairy tales that stories ended with 'They lived happily ever after.' Real life wasn't like that, although in this case he wondered. The foursome who had taken matters into their own hands during the robbery attempt were definitely on the path for a happy ending.
It seemed to him that just about everyone got what they wanted; even the so-called villains of this drama. The cheating wife had her boyfriends, evenings out, and trips to distant places. The wayward daughter and the clueless wife had money. Perhaps they were really chasing the security that money could provide. He hoped they were getting what they wanted. If so, then maybe everyone was on the path for a happy ending.
"Supper is ready," Barb said while knocking on the frame of the door.
Startled by the sudden interruption to his thoughts, Max said, "You startled me."
"What were you thinking about?" Barb asked.
Max said, "I was thinking someone needs to say – they lived happily ever after."
"They lived happily ever after," Barb said while rolling her eyes. "Are you happy?"
"Yes," Max said. "Thank you very much."
"Anyway, supper is ready."
Max asked, "What are we having?"
Barb said, "You'll like it. I made lasagna with Italian sausage."
"I can't wait to try it," Max said.