Life is Uncertain... Ch. 02

It was a very near thing. Blake's boat was found nearly completely buried in the mud at a large bend in the river near Fort Eustis. It was our eighth site of the ten planned areas to search. By the time Navy divers had cleared off enough mud to hook up a cable and pull it onto a nearby destroyer there were less than two projected hours of breathable air left inside, but Blake and his crew of two were alright. Mission accomplished.

I declined to attend the party that celebrated the rescue. The sight of my ex-wife (soon to be official), along with a small boy hugging Blake and crying tears of joy as he and his crew emerged from their crippled deathtrap was more than enough motivation to make me want to scurry off and plan for a very hasty departure. There was talk of medals and other awards, and a rumor of an impending personal telephone call from the President of the United States, but I declined semi-gracefully.

The moment the last Navy person was off of our ship, we immediately turned her nose to the sea. After a last minute diesel fill-up at a dock at Virginia Beach I told the Captain to make flank speed and get the hell out here and get us back to Nassau. I'd done my good deed and now I just wanted to get back home as soon as possible.

We finished up our job in the Bahamas' and crossed the Atlantic heading toward the Med to handle our final contracted job of the spring to find an old 18th century shipwreck of a British ship of the line near Oran. We didn't enjoy great success with that one; the ships powder room had apparently exploded when she sunk pretty much destroying the entire ship. We found a ballast mound and some cannon but not much else. Our client couldn't really prove definitively that this was the exact wreck they were after. The water depth there was also a bit too deep for normal diving so this wreck might remain a mystery for a few more years, if it is ever solved at all.

It was almost the start of summer and time to go home. Yonca's water broke while we were still about fifty miles out of Izmir and for a few scary hours we thought she would actually give birth on-board, but we got her to the hospital just in the nick of time and our son Hugh David Morrissey was born.

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The summer seemed to pass slowly.

The US Navy kept sending me various letters and envelopes of increasingly obvious importance and I treated them all with equal distain. I used them to start BBQ fires without ever having opened a single one of them. I had hired a big law firm that specialized in patent law and had given them all of my 3DS³ process materials so they could get it properly patented for me within a few months. I'd also let them handle most of the licensing arrangements at usurious rates. The USN would get their chance, but they could now stand in line with everyone else ... they didn't need anything particular now from me, in my opinion. I had no intention of wasting a moment of the probable last year of my life dealing with any bureaucratic agency.

My divorce lawyer reported that things were moving along again, and that I could soon expect to meet a courier that would arrive with the final signed agreement. Upon my final signature then, everything would be a done deal. Yonca and I started to make arrangements for a simple civil ceremony, with the Captain of our ship actually conducting the wedding. There was just one odd surprise when the courier arrived with the paperwork. It was Captain Blake, now retired from the USN.

"Give me five minutes to say my piece without interruption and you'll get this signed divorce agreement and everyone will be out of your lives forever." He said waving a stack of documents at me as he came on-board our ship docked in Izmir harbor. It sounded like a fair deal to me. I even offered him a chair in our little parlour room of the ship and Yonca offered him some Turkish coffee.

"First of all — NO INTERRUPTIONS. None. Or I'll leave with this agreement unsigned and you can then deal directly with Josie."

"Second. You are the single biggest idiot I've meet in twenty years either on land or at sea. Oh, you're clever enough, it's true, but you don't even have the sense of a drowned sea rat. I still don't know why she loved you — and still does. Never once was Josie unfaithful to you, and certainly not ever with me."

"Yes, we have been close friends since childhood, but that is all ... more like brother and sister in fact. We have always talked to each other when times were hard and shared hugs and other comfort, but we have never once desired to go to bed with each other. I am gay, and have been for my entire adult life. I had to keep this mostly secret during my Navy career but now that I have retired I look forward to openly spending time with my own partner — who is most definitely not your wife."

"If you had bothered to read, let alone believe, any of the letters she mailed you, you would have known that for about two days during your first visit to Turkey you were declared by the local Embassy here to be dead in a ship explosion. They notified Josie via telegram of this incorrect news and she immediately called me. In fact, here is another copy of that telegram ... we made a lot of copies of it and kept mailing them to you but you apparently couldn't be bothered to see or read them."

"Only after she believed you to be dead did she allow me access to your research notes, which I might add were a masterpiece of misdirection. That binder alone probably cost the Navy an entire man-year of research time trying to figure out if any part of it was useful. She had kept her final promise to you and had refused the Navy all access to your research materials ... until the day she received the telegram declaring you to be dead. By the time she found out later that this report was false, it was too late. She had already given me what she believed to be your records, only so that your family work would not die with you."

"You have thus very falsely maligned Josie, the sweetest and most loyal woman I have ever known in my life on these two accounts of being unfaithful to you, via both the love of your marriage and the sanctity of your research. You never trusted her and in the end you have betrayed her, rather than her betraying you. She still does not want this divorce — she still loves you for some incomprehensible reason, but she agreed to it in order to gain your assistance to save my life. She had already lost the man she loved and she could then not bear to also lose her friend

I only had one remaining unanswered question. "Who was that small boy by your sides at your reunion on the destroyer in the James River? I assumed that this was your son."

"That is your son. Josie had just found out she was pregnant when you left for Turkey. That was why she didn't wish to make the trip here with you. She didn't want to take any chances overseas and risk losing the precious child. She knew and understood that it was likely that you would die a regrettably early death and that this might be her only chance to keep something of you for the future."

This was an awful lot to swallow at one sitting, and all of it made me feel like a complete heel. Even Yonca, who was normally never at a loss for words, remained silent and just keep looking down at her feet.

"I'd like to speak with Josie." I told Blake as we shook hands right before he left our boat a few minutes later.

"I thought you might ... now." He replied. "She flew over with me and brought along little Patrick. I think it's about time that he met his father. She's staying at the Hilton in Izmir. Would you like to meet there tonight at 7:30 for dinner?"

The dinner was pleasant; very cordial but nevertheless quite strange. Everyone was on their best behavior and there were no accusations or recriminations. Josie said that she thought she would stay for another week or so and she especially wanted to see our boat, and watch 3DS³ working after all of those long years of hard work. She also wanted to meet our students, especially some of the older grad students who had studied under my late brother Dave so she could hear their old funny stories about him. She had never met him before his tragic death.

Blake flew back home a few days later, but Josie and our son stayed.

Young Patrick took to the life of a sea dog with alacrity and soon became our official cabin boy whose new favorite word was a loud piratical "Arrrrr". Josie had never told him that his father had deserted the family, just that he was a very busy and important man who had to work overseas all of the time far away from home. This was an act of quite unexpected kindness compared to the alternative things she easily could have said instead. It made our bonding considerably easier, and soon we really began to feel like a family.

Yonca displayed the most surprising flexibility. For the last six years she had had me all to herself and had expected to soon be able to officially marry me. Already she had borne me a child and had been hinting that she wouldn't mind having another ... soon. Immediately, if not sooner. The complication of my wife reappearing into my life, along with a five year old son that I had been previously unaware of, could have been a great and unpleasant shock to her. I expected anger and ultimatums, or annoyance at the very least. Instead, she showed remarkable patience and support, and to my unexpected delight, she and Josie appeared to hit it off together remarkably. Within days, Josie had taken up Yonca's extremely casual attitude towards dress, and Josie's pale white breasts were soon on indefinite display along with the rest of the other women students and TA's.

They tanned up very nicely ... and so did the bikini area a few weeks later.

A visit of a week or two soon turned into 'for the rest of the summer', and then was extended again until after our fall series of contract jobs, and then she just stopped making deadlines entirely. Even the announcement that Yonca was now pregnant with our second child didn't depress her in the slightest. The two women spent every non work moment together, often took naps together, and had become as close as sisters. On New Years I discovered that they were even closer.

I had stayed up a bit late doing some Happy New Year's celebrations, drinking Raki (vile stuff — I don't know how I got talked into it) with some of the crew and local University staff and it took a few hours to push the last happy merrymaker out of the house so I could get some sleep of my own. Yonca wasn't in our bed; she and Josie had left the party right after midnight. I went to check Josie's room as Yonca often napped there with her and heard a good number of rather loud, but not unhappy noises. Peeking through the doorway I saw that the two ladies were engaged in mutual lovemaking in a 69 position. They noticed me eventually but didn't stop, so I blew them a kiss and shut the door to give them some privacy.

I awoke late in the morning to find a lovely pair of tanned breasts on both sides of me, and a pair of equally smiling faces.

"We've made an executive decision!" Josie announced. "We've decided that despite your numerous faults you're worth keeping. So we've decided to share you. I'm still married to you back in the States and Yonca can marry you over here, so as long as we stay out at sea, everyone should be happy. Besides, you make beautiful babies, and it's my turn to have another one!"

There wasn't much said after that and Josie did get her chance to become pregnant again ... repeatedly, but since she didn't give birth to our daughter until late October I think it took quite a few repeat applications. Josie and Yonca together make a superb set of wives and we were all deliriously happy.

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Last November 5th, a historic occasion in the annals of the Morrissey family took place. I had my fortieth birthday party! No other man in my family tree since 1863 had lived so long!

We kept the celebration private, just family. Josie and Yonca, along with our four children. Dinner was a cake — a huge magnificent cake, with the words "Life is Uncertain — Eat Dessert First!"

I did. I squeezed a lovely tit on both women and pulled them together with me for a group kiss that lasted until all forty candles had burned out.

Will I live to reach the age of fifty? Who knows, but I don't much care. I'll be too busy eating my dessert.

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Author's End Note:

This is a rather odd duck of a story. It's one of my early ones and still isn't as smooth and polished as I would have liked. At the time I was writing quite a bit in the 'Cheating Wife' genre but was already pretty much bored with the five usual plots that nearly everyone does over and over again, ad nausium. My goal was to write a uniquely different sort of cheat story, something slightly more philosophical, something along the premise of 'Can a woman 'cheat' without actually having sex with another man?'

Most readers said 'Yes', that Josie had technically cheated by betraying her husband's research. Many also thought that her husband was an idiot too and I wouldn't disagree. So in short the entire story really becomes another example of an otherwise loving couple that didn't communicate with each other well.