“I…I don’t understand,” Peggy finally choked out. “Why…?” That was all that came into her mind.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Whitely,” Mr. Macmillan said.
There was a ring of truth in his tone. He probably didn’t know, Peggy decided, but he wasn’t a bit upset about losing her from his section. She let her hand drop away from her mouth while she took a deep breath. When she was ready, she brought the phone back up.
“All right,” she told her ex-supervisor. “I’ll just have to wait until Monday then. Thank you for calling,” she said. She touched the button to break the connection without waiting for his reply. She had that tiny satisfaction, that final bit of control over him.
********
Kyle’s big pickup wasn’t in the driveway when the taxi drew up at the curb. Peggy was irritated. Her husband should be here. He was her only solace now. He wouldn’t care why she’d been discharged. He would comfort her and love her.
When she walked in the front door, she immediately knew something else was wrong with her day. The grandfather’s clock that had stood against the long wall in the foyer since they’d bought the house was gone. The umbrella stand in the corner was missing too. When she walked into the living room, it was empty save for a few scraps of brown wrapping paper scattered here and there. The house was silent. A chill worked its way down her spine. The house felt abandoned…empty.
Her cell phone rang again. She looked at the display. It was Kyle.
“Kyle!” she said sharply. “Where are you? Where’s all the furniture? What’s going on, damn it?” Her voice rose the longer she spoke. She was angry, hurt…and a little scared. She didn’t understand what was happening.
“I won’t tell you where I am, Peggy,” Kyle said calmly. He sounded tired, almost too fatigued to speak.
He was, in fact, laboring under a tremendous sense of weariness. It was partly physical. Getting a house full of furniture and personal possessions packed and loaded into a big U-Haul truck had been exhausting. Dealing with telling the kids had been accomplished surprisingly easy, but his own internal turmoil had been emotionally draining. He had been dreading this conversation, but he had it to do.
He’d hardly slept since Brad brought him the early pictures of Peggy’s escapades the first night of her stay in Orlando. He hadn’t been able to even close his eyes after viewing the DVD of her energetic fucking on the balcony. That had come in Friday, yesterday, morning. Brad’s private investigator had access to a laptop that converted a digital camcorder’s raw input into DVD-quality movies. The investigator had dumped the videos and a multitude of still photos into Brad’s office server via a broadband connection. It was all in Kyle’s briefcase now, locked away so Peggy’s children wouldn’t see it by accident.
Kyle and the kids had already been packed. The first pictures and video had been more than enough for Kyle. Thursday night’s romp had just provided him and Brad with evidence that could be used in court. The night vision feature on the camcorder had captured the adulterous pair in a setting where they had no right to expect privacy. The other pictures and movies couldn’t be used in any legal action since Peggy and Harold had been in Peggy’s room. He had other uses for those photos and movies though.