“I understand,” I told him. “But if you’d like to talk about it afterwards, I’ll be here.”
“Thanks,” he said, “I’d like that. You’re really the only one who knows what’s going on.”
That evening Marge invited me to go out for a drink but I declined. I was exhausted from the drama that had played out that morning, and now I was concerned about Peter. I couldn’t seem to get my mind off the confrontation he was facing, and I knew I would be lousy company for Marge.
For the second night in a row I had trouble sleeping, and once again I wound up going in to the office early in hopes of seeing Peter. I was waiting outside his office when he arrived, and he thanked me for the cup of coffee I’d brought for him.
When we were seated on the sofa and arm chair in his office, I couldn’t wait any longer and asked him how things went with Callie. “About like you’d expect,” he said, and proceeded to tell me the whole story.
I was waiting at the kitchen table when Callie got home from work. She was startled to see me; usually, I get home much later than her. Anyway, she came over, sat down across from me and asked me what was going on. I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer so I handed her an envelope.
“What’s this?” she asked, but I just told her to see for herself. She opened the envelope and began to look at the screen-captures I’d taken from your video of Scott’s screened-in porch. When she saw the first shot she wasn’t sure what she was seeing, but when she turned over the next photo, she gasped in shock. Then she hastily thumbed through the rest of the set before looking up at me. Her face was red, and I wondered whether she was more upset about what she’d done or the fact that she’d been caught doing it.
“Peter, I know what I did was wrong but this was just a one-time mistake I made. You’d been so tied up at work and it had been so long since we made love that when Scott came on to me I just couldn’t help myself.”
I shook my head in disgust. “That’s not true and you know it, Callie. This wasn’t a single moment of weakness, it was an ongoing affair.”
“No, I swear, this was the only time it happened.”
Instead of arguing with her, I held up my cellphone and started to play the video I’d copied from your phone. The expression on her face was priceless as she went from discomfort to defensiveness to outright anger as she was forced to watch her antics on the small screen. But when the soundtrack began to replay her laughter at making me her cuckold, she was embarrassed enough to yell, “Turn it off, dammit!”
I let it play a moment longer, then stopped it.
“Alright, fine, you know about us. And I suppose those are divorce papers in the other envelope?” she asked coolly.
I pushed it across the table and she quickly riffled through the pages. I thought she’d be taken aback, but she seemed pretty nonchalant about being served. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “I was planning to file for divorce myself as soon as Scott gets that big promotion at work.”
“So you tossed our marriage away because you wanted the money and prestige of being married to a big executive?” I asked bitterly.
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