Aftermath of The Affair

Upon seeing the injuries of the couple and finding out that the attack had taken place at the motel outside of town, an occurrence which wasn't all that unusual, the responsible police officer had duly called for an ambulance for the couple and had dispatched some officers to the motel to investigate.

Unfortunately they arrived too late and found that the clueless owner of the motel had started clearing up the crime scene. The owner had found the room with its door open and the lock damaged, he assumed, by the occupants. When asked if he found anything or heard or saw anything unusual, the owner had shaken his head and said the usual "noises" were heard from the room since check-in and the occupants of other rooms had complained but they knew nothing much could be done. The owner had however revealed that a typewritten note apologising for the damage along with cash for the damaged lock was found in the room next to the TV. When asked for the note and cash, the owner shrugged and said he'd trashed the note and taken the money to make change for the occupants checking out.

In short, the paper concluded that the trail had run cold for the case and little else seemed to turn up. In fact, the police had gone on to say that they were treating the case as a crime of passion stemming from the female or male victims' sexual encounters outside of marriage. Thus, both victims' spouses were under investigation.

All members of the group were tickled pink by the report, even Miller who was invited to assist in the police investigation. Jenkinson, in his capacity as the hotel manager where Miller claimed he had been the night of the attack on his wife and her lover, had been happy to provide security tape footage when the police requested it. Jenkinson had also provided similar aid when Mrs Sullivan was asked to provide information regarding her whereabouts the night of the attack. Both aggrieved spouses maintained they hadn't plotted or instigated the attack on their unfaithful spouses and the police didn't find any evidence to suggest otherwise.

Terry volunteered information regarding his assignation with Mrs Sullivan on condition that he not be identified publicly. The police assured him of their utmost effort in protecting his privacy with the police superintendent himself actually giving reassurance in this case.

Just when the attention surrounding the assault began to die down, the proverbial crap hit the fan. First, Miller acted according to plan and resigned his post of auditor for Sullivan's employer. The new auditor, using Miller's meticulous notes, began discovering a chain of questionable transactions leading to his qualifying the accounts of Miller's employer. This set off a chain of events that led to Dan Sullivan being investigated for bribery, embezzlement and fraud.

Meanwhile, Becky had noted the developments and decided to take some precautionary measures of her own. She started checking Dan's assets and her store of evidence against Dan and naturally discovered that all of the files and evidence on her laptop had disappeared. When she discreetly checked Dan's laptop for videos of his trysts and sluts and found them missing, she guessed rather accurately that the husbands of Dan's sluts had something to do with that. The chief suspect was naturally Terry and she tested him out by threatening to make his wife's video public. When Terry refused to give in to her demands despite the threats, she knew somehow that Terry and perhaps some others were behind the string of disasters that had befallen Dan.

Taking advantage of the fact that their shared accounts had not been frozen and her knowledge of Dan's secret account, she virtually emptied them. By then, the attack on Christmas night and the investigation by both Dan's employer and the authorities had made life very difficult for Dan, Helen Miller and their families. The rumours sweeping the neighbourhoods and the school had led to cruel teasing and bullying of Dan's two boys and Helen's daughter, Charlotte. Becky decided to leave town with her kids after several episodes in the schoolyard left Joshua and his brother with bruises and in tears.

Gary Miller had foreseen the pressure on his daughter but knew this was inevitable in any process that would rid them of the cancer that was Helen. Helen never let up with her accusations against Gary and she'd taken to drinking when she found she had lost both her lover and her standing in society. Helen's behaviour and attitude deteriorated rapidly. Using the evidence of Helen's affair, verified by the police no less, and her increasingly erratic behaviour plus reports from the school and counsellors regarding the pressure faced by Charlotte, Gary filed for divorce and fought successfully for custody of Charlotte. His case was helped no doubt by the bomb Becky detonated before she left town.

Becky had managed to convince or arm twist Jenkinson into allowing the PI to install cameras and listening devices each time Dan brought someone new to Room 614. She now used copies of Dan's damning videos of his sluts and the footage provided by her PI that she had stored on a cloud service. She'd uploaded photos of all of Sullivan's sluts, stills taken from all the videos she had of their fuck sessions at the hotel and elsewhere. She reserved her venom for Terry's wife Julia whose pictures and 2 short videos along with a compilation video of all the other wives were posted on several popular porn sites. Then she sent links to the videos and pictures to the email addresses of associates, family members and even friends that her PI had uncovered in the course of their surveillance and investigation of the women. Prior to her malicious act of payback, Becky had never accessed her account on the cloud so while the group knew she had material in the cloud storage, they had never been able to access it. This was to prove a major flaw in their plans. The backdoor and spyware that Lincoln had planted on Becky's laptop the night of the attack made it possible for the group to retroactively access and eliminate the evidence stored on the cloud drive she used, but the damage was done.

Julia and many of the other wives became known as Sullivan's Sluts within the community and the damage extended far beyond their reputation. Terry's eldest two kids were subject to the teasing and bullying that had been dished out to the Sullivan and Miller kids, as were the kids of the other married women exposed in the compilation video. Julia was reprimanded and demoted by her boss who was shocked and disgusted by the video link he had been sent. What infuriated him further was the date and time stamp on the video of the fuck session in Room 614, which indicated Julia had lied about meeting a client when she was actually fucking her lover on company time.

Julia had been beyond caring about her job at that point in time. Her eldest two kids, traumatised by the gossip and bullying in school, refused to talk to Julia. The eldest even began to resist going to school. Things got so bad Terry had to agree with the school and got his kids private professional help through a paediatric psychologist. Julia herself got help but it was largely ineffective because her instinctive reaction after the scandal broke was to shrink inwards, feeling shame and despair and convinced that everyone was now against her. She knew the public exposure of her affair would force Terry's hand in terms of the divorce proceedings. Indeed, Julia and the other wives who starred in the compilation video Becky posted were all served divorce notices. None contested the terms offered by their husbands and that meant the spate of divorces filed that spring and summer in that town had some of the fastest processing times ever.

The impact on the women was not pretty; some like Lincoln and Morrison's wives had to leave town in hope of finding new lives in a new place where their adulterous acts didn't define them. Several started drinking heavily like Helen whose divorce from Gary was finalised just after Becky's bomb was detonated. When Becky's videos and pictures made her notorious, Helen drank so much she ended up in hospital after driving off the road in her drunken state. Gary didn't weep when told his ex-wife might not wake up and even if she did, she would likely face a DUI charge. He didn't celebrate either. He just stared at the unconscious figure on the bed hooked up to various machines and tried to recall the vibrant woman he had fallen in love with years ago. He continued to pay the costs of her care and brought Charlotte to see her mother regularly, hoping the whole incident didn't leave further scars on his daughter. At least three infamous wives were briefly institutionalised after the trauma of dealing with their newfound notoriety made them severely depressed. This included Julia who was discovered unconscious on the floor of her sister's guest bedroom in an unsuccessful suicide attempt the morning after her divorce was finalised.

Julia's desperate act made Terry take stock of his life. After the initial satisfaction of seeing punishment doled out to his ex-wife and the bastard Dan Sullivan, he had felt empty. While his new divorcee status made him briefly popular among his female colleagues and acquaintances, he knew they were just avenues for physical release. He couldn't risk starting a new relationship when his kids were still recovering from the trauma of the breakup of his marriage. And try as he might, he could no longer bring himself to actively hate Julia though he was far from being in love with her. When Julia's sister called and asked if he could visit Julia 2 months after she was institutionalised, he shocked himself by agreeing. When he visited the facility, he was surprised to see a place very different from that he had imagined. Even Julia surprised him. She looked a lot calmer and more composed, rather than the wreck of a human being who had wandered around the house in the aftermath of the scandal.

Julia's doctors also spoke to him, explaining the affair probably originated from a combination of a mid-life crisis and low self-esteem. Of course, it didn't help that Dan Sullivan was a predator who had a knack for targeting women he thought were easy targets because of their vulnerability. The doctors reassured a disgruntled Terry that none of that excused Julia's choice to conduct an extramarital affair but it would help Terry understand what happened and go some way in resolving the doubts and bitterness that was still tormenting Terry. Terry stared at the doctors, amazed that they could assess him so accurately when they had just met for the first time. Terry voiced his amazement and was further taken aback when the doctors laughed and confessed that Julia had approached them with her concern over Terry's state. Her guilt over the affair and ensuing scandal was to a large extent due to the effect it had on Terry's self-esteem and emotions. She was terrified that if the acid of doubt and bitterness continued eating at him, the kids would lose the only parent they had by their side at the moment. Terry didn't respond to that information but he did get counselling after that visit.

Things started settling down in summer. Dan Sullivan was charged and convicted of fraud and bribery. While he admitted receiving bribes, he denied having received the large amounts found parked in accounts under the names of his "sexual partners". The prosecutors were puzzled by his stubborn denial of having created those accounts. He protested all the way to the penitentiary. Coincidentally, the week after the police superintendent sent a message to a former informant who was now serving time, rumours began circulating that Danny boy was fond of hitting on the wives of other men. His fellow inmates, already frustrated and insecure about the women they left outside the fences, took their frustration out on Danny. Word filtered back to the group that Danny was now a "shared resource" who was learning the other aspects of being fucked.

That was the main highlight of the whole mess for the group. While Becky's act had implicated other wives, the group was aware that they were still possible suspects as members of the group that assaulted Dan Sullivan. To ensure they didn't provoke further suspicion, the group agreed not to meet up again and to deny even being acquainted with each other where plausible. They did collectively agree on one last bit of retaliation, this time against Becky. Compiling videos of Becky fucking the husbands, Lincoln uploaded a video that was to prove most popular among porn site audiences. Naturally people wondered who the men were since their faces were masked but Becky became an overnight sensation and was last heard to be headed out of the US for destinations unknown.

Epilogue

Tis the season

Christmas Present

Terry smiled after his youngest, Chris, was finally in bed. The rambunctious boy was so overwhelmed by all the bright lights, sounds and smells of Christmas that it was near impossible for anyone to persuade him to sleep though he was clearly exhausted after a day of chaotic fun. It had taken a combination of Julia and himself to coax the excited toddler into slumber. Terry knew he overindulged the boy and that a big part of it was the guilt he had carried around for the last year. He had deliberately withheld his affection from the boy when he was born just before last Christmas, his lingering distrust of Julia after his discovery of her affair the previous Christmas prompted the need to have proof that the boy was his before he dared risk opening his wounded heart to the boy.

By the time the DNA test results had arrived, shortly after the New Year, Terry had already capitulated to the charm of the newborn who refused to let go of his thumb every time he carried the restless infant. Julia had not made a fuss over his initial refusal to voluntarily carry their newborn. Instead, Terry had only carried the newborn each time it was thrust into his arms by a family member or relative who had to attend to something else. The look of sadness she barely concealed was a silent reproach Terry bore with some patience.

When the results arrived, Terry almost lost the courage to open the envelope. He wondered if he might lose it completely if the results proved Chris was not his son. The rush of breath he felt against his lips as he read the 99.99% figure made him suddenly aware that he had held his breath as he read the result. Julia's surprise when he voluntarily picked up his son from his crib that day was matched only by her sadness when he handed her the DNA results. While Becky's PI had confirmed that Julia had broken things off with Sullivan months before she got pregnant, Terry at that point of time didn't trust Julia not to have secretly renewed her relationship with the bastard or found a new lover.

The flare of anger that flashed through Julia was swiftly followed by the realisation that her betrayal had so transformed Terry that he no longer believed in anyone or anything. Her role in so transforming her husband was perhaps the hardest thing for Julia to bear in the last year. The pictures and video footage of her and Sullivan brought to the attention of those who she knew and loved had caused immense shame, humiliation and pain for her. Yet, it was nothing compared to the confusion and pain that caused her kids to turn away from her or the renewed rage and pain that made Terry completely unapproachable. She had voluntarily moved out of the house and stayed with her sister, unwilling to subject her kids and Terry to further stresses.

There was little that she remembered of that period, numbly going through the motions at work, in court and finally crying herself to sleep the day the divorce had been finalised. The only perverse satisfaction she derived from the entire situation was the certainty that Terry had broken things off completely with Becky since he would never forgive her for what she did in terms of the impact it had on their kids.

The pain lingered and when she woke up all disoriented in a hospital bed with her sister and Terry sitting nearby, she couldn't remember what had brought her there. Terry's silence and look of guilt gave her some comfort and the rare tenderness he showed those days in the hospital gave her strength and hope. Hope that saw her through the months in the facility she agreed to enter to get treatment for her depression. There were days when everything seemed gray and hopeless, but the pictures of her kids and Terry that she was allowed to keep with her gave her strength to pull through. Terry's visits and news that he was getting counselling too brought colour back into her world, making it easier to overcome the gray.

Then the day came when she was released and was pleasantly surprised to see Terry waiting with her sister as she exited the place. She had expected him to drive them back to her sister's but instead, she found herself standing in the driveway of their house, her vision blurred with tears that flowed out of joy as her older kids awkwardly hugged her before Chris was transferred from his father's arms into hers.

Terry stood watching his kids slowly relax around their mother until Chris tugged impatiently on her blouse indicating his wish to feed. Julia had to fight tears as Terry gave him a bottle instead and the infant fussed over it before reluctantly feeding from the bottle while in Julia's arms.

"Don't worry, the little thing doesn't know you can't breastfeed him because of all the medication, he'll get used to it."

Terry's simple words made her tears fall even more rapidly.

Terry cleared his throat and looked away. Having Julia back in their home was one of the most difficult decisions he had ever had to make. He knew that the kids were angry with Julia but that they also missed her. He still remembered the sobs of his eldest the day Julia moved out. He also remembered the panic that gripped him when he received that phone call about Julia. He didn't remember how he got to the hospital but he remembered the fear that hit him in the stomach when he saw her pale and unconscious on the hospital bed. In that instant, he knew he had forgiven her.

Even when the panic wore off, he couldn't summon the bitter hatred that seemed to have taken up residence in him two years ago. Instead, the random meeting with Miller in the hospital lobby further convinced him. Miller had been there to complete the documentation for Helen who had lapsed into a coma.

"What I wouldn't do to have Becky's neck in my hands!" Miller ground out when they had a chance to retreat to an obscure corner to talk.

Terry thought pretty much the same way. It was curious how his illusions of being half in love with Becky had self-destructed so quickly when she pulled that stunt. He had realised though he wouldn't admit it, that whatever feelings he had imagined himself having for Becky was his ego's way of compensating for the humiliation of losing his beloved wife to Sullivan. Loving that bastard's wife and fucking her was his most direct way of retaliating against the adulterous couple. Even that wore off as Becky's blackmail tactics repulsed and eventually alienated him.

When Miller learnt of the reason why Terry was at the hospital, Miller had sighed and patted him on the back.

"If there is any possibility of repairing things, take the chance buddy. Don't throw the chance away and regret it later."

That was the last he saw of Miller. A few months later, Terry heard Helen had passed away without regaining consciousness and Miller had moved away with Charlotte, hoping to start life anew.

In the days and weeks that followed Julia's return, Terry went over his list of pros and cons regarding Julia's return to their family. While the con stood at a grand count of one, the pros far outstripped that count; the kids, her health, keeping the family intact and letting everyone heal, his feelings for his wife. The last was ironically the strongest and yet the weakest factor, the weakest because it invariably brought up memories that were the sole con: her betrayal of their marriage and him through her affair. It was also the strongest factor because he could not seem to kill that love he had for Julia. It was almost as if he couldn't pull away.