Dear John--part 3 of 15 - Sex Stories

Dear John--part 3 of 15

... get the Army to tell them where to deliver the divorce papers. Her new guy clearly did have the bucks: and he clearly had influence.

They were delivered through the mail slot in the door of my new apartment. I could see what they were without even opening the manila envelope that they came in. But, I did open them and I did read them. But, I did not sign them.

As she said, she asked for nothing. And, as she also said, I would be given money: a half million was what she’d, they’d, come up with to bribe me. Was I tempted? Not in the least. The guilt she must have been feeling to offer me that kind of money had to be enormous, well knowing how important money was to her. No, I wanted her to feel some small smidgen of the emotional pain that I was feeling. And then there were the children: “The respondent shall be entitled to have unlimited and unrestricted visitation and access to his children as per the wish and with the consent of the petitioner.” How fucking wonderful was that—she was giving me permission to see my kids!

There was one further codicil, actually a note, included with the papers that she must have prevailed upon her lawyer, some Cedric Johnson J.D. of Phoenix, Arizona, to send along with everything else. It was an offer of a job in the tech field. Details were not specified, but she posited that the pay and working conditions would be first water. I had to smile at the brash temerity that she exhibited in making me an offer she probably felt I couldn’t refuse. If she did indeed feel that way, she was dead wrong. I wheeled myself over to the tiny fireplace my apartment was afforded and burned her papers then and there. Me not signing them wouldn’t stop the divorce, probably not even delay it, but what the hell, she was no longer mine regardless of what any court ever said.

******

She was pacing up and down, thinking. Her man was out making money on a truly large scale. For the first time in her life, she felt truly secure, and she was grateful to God in heaven that she had met and had fallen in love with her new man Owen Cord, and he with her.

No more worrying over the bills. No more needing to worry about the electric bill—they could be truly worrisome in the summer months because of the air-con—or the car insurance or the food or any of it. And her new residence: five bedrooms, five baths, three car garage; all on five cultivated acres north of the city off highway 93 near Wickenburg; oh and a two bedroom two bath guest house in the back of the property. Then there was the condo on the ninth floor of the Milford Building in town. The irony in this last: The Milford was where her used to be man once worked as a security guard.

2003

And what of her used to be man. He had not responded to the divorce petition. She kinda thought that he might not, and, he had not. It was over three years gone now since he’d gone off to war. He wasn’t killed or maimed or any of that she was sure. Surely she would have heard had ...