The Trust Factor (from "My Short Stories (Book One)") - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

Friendship is one of the most valuable things you can ever have in life.  That’s always been my premise and I’m sticking with it.  And, that philosophy has been working for me most of my life.  Then I met and married Paul and I thought that I was the happiest woman alive.  That is, I was up until the time that I found out that my best girlfriend had been ‘porking’ my husband for well over a year.  Is that what ‘best girlfriends’ are for?  If only it weren’t for her, I thought, my hubby and I might still be happy together.  Or, maybe I should say instead that, if it weren’t for him, my best girlfriend and I might have stayed friends. 

But, I guess it’s too much to expect that a woman’s marriage will never interfere with her other relationships in life.  However, marriage is a complex relationship.  I wasn’t quite ready to give up on him yet.  So, I devised a plan to have him followed and have his illicit activities with other women recorded.  I hired a private investigator and had him follow Paul around and report back to me once a week.  I only hoped that Paul wasn’t seeing another one of my girlfriends this time.  I resolved to try trusting him as much as I could in the meantime – not an easy task, let me tell you.  I did my best not to question him whenever he was going somewhere without me.  Unfortunately, that would not matter in the long run.  I suppose I was meant to discover these things, regardless.

Last week, when he was working late one night, he had forgotten his pager at home on the kitchen counter.  As it started to vibrate and move all over the counter, I looked at the call display and saw a “33” there, which is a speed-dial number.  So, I called the person’s number that was being displayed.

A strange woman’s voice came on the line saying, “So sorry, darling, I can’t make it tonight, but I’ll make it up to you…promise!”  Honestly, I’d get more respect from him if I were his secretary!  I was livid, to say the least!  I wanted to know who this strange woman was and what role she was playing in my husband’s life.

I said to her, tersely, “Don’t worry, my dear, I’m sure he said that he’d be out tonight with another female friend.  I’ll give him your message though.”

When the jerk got home that night, I told him about the woman’s message.  I asked him, “Who is she?  Someone I know and usually trust?  You never seem to go out with a woman unless she’s someone I knew first.” 

He made up some lame excuse and said, “She works at my office for me.”

However, I couldn’t believe him – it was just too convenient a thing to say to me.  I screamed at him, “She’s a whore and you’re a two-timing cuckold SOB!  I want you to pack up your things and leave now, tonight.  I want a divorce and I never want to see you or hear from you again.”  I had finally had enough of him and his endless philandering.

He became very angry with me, belligerent and threatening, and I thought for a moment that he was going to hit me, but restrained himself somehow.  He screamed back at me, “Even though we’re living so ‘happily’ together [his words], I still have a man’s need for other women as sexual outlets, and you will just have to learn to live with it.”  His tone and attitude were very frightening to me. 

He sneered at me saying, “If you want to leave me, you’ll leave with nothing.  Not only that, I will do everything in my power to prevent you from leaving me or I’ll kill you if you try to leave me.”  I was so shocked at these words, I didn’t know what to say.

After a while, he calmed down and reverted back to his usual charming self and proceeded to get ready to go out.  I decided it was futile to try to stop him.  It was obvious he intended to see a woman. 

I really did try to live with this situation for a while, knowing that every time he went out the door for the evening, he was going to be spending time with another woman.  Yet, he still expected me to stay with him as his wife and perform my “wifely duties” (whatever that meant).  But, it was not a good situation and it was getting worse by the minute.

Finally, while he was out one evening, I moved all my personal stuff out of our bedroom into one of the smaller bedrooms that had been used as a spare room and I had a lock installed on my new bedroom door.  He didn’t like it when he found out, but once the move was complete, he couldn’t do much about it.  I then started hoarding money and some small jewellery, hiding it in a locked box in the basement where I knew he wouldn’t find it.  I couldn’t hoard too much at a time because he would’ve become too suspicious, and, in this way, I did manage to put away something over time, without his knowledge.  I saved every spare dollar from the grocery money that I could over the next six months.  Finally, when I thought that I had saved enough, I started making secret plans to leave him. 

I knew I would also need a brand new identity, and an entirely new look (a wig that was shorter and darker, since my own hair was longer and fairly light in colour).  To get a set of false papers made up for a new identity, I asked for help from an acquaintance of an acquaintance who had done this kind of thing in the past for others.  This guy was used to doing clandestine things like this. 

I would plan my escape so that I could board a bus when Paul was on one of his out-of-town trips, going to live in a small town in another distant province.  But, I would have to cover my tracks carefully by not telling anyone (family members and friends) where I was going.  That part would be the most difficult for me, since I would have to leave everyone I knew and loved behind to start a new life somewhere else.  I wanted to be a completely anonymous person, creating few, if any, ties to the local community.  He would have a hard time finding me – that I made sure of – otherwise, it would be fruitless for me to try this and have it not work out.  I was determined to leave and start over again where he wouldn’t be able to find me.

My plan also included getting work in a place with minimal public exposure, perhaps a large office or plant, where it would be hard to get to know my co-workers or boss.  I didn’t want them to start asking me a lot of awkward, personal questions that I wasn’t prepared to answer.  In this way, I felt that I would be relatively safe, at least for a while.  But, if I thought that Paul might have even a small chance of finding me, I also had to be prepared to move again without notice. 

I also asked for help from a local support group made up of women who had been in abusive relationships with their husbands.  I wanted to know what had worked for them.  Besides, I felt that this was one group of women that I could trust to keep my identity secret.  We had all made a common pledge of secrecy to each other.

Still, I knew my husband had friends and influential contacts in strategic places all over.  These people might very well help him track my whereabouts.  And, he had money too, more than enough to finance a search operation.  One thing was for sure – making any close friends on my part was pretty much out of the question.  Keeping friends would be even more impossible.  I didn’t know who I would be able to trust anymore of the people I was to meet, both in the short term or long term future.

published by Authorhouse, copyright 2011, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.