Two Christmases

She suffered only a few minor abrasions from the beating, but had suffered a heart attack during the beating and died in the hospital a few hours later. The medical examiner couldn't prove any direct link between the beating and Sissy's death. In fact, it had been ruled that she'd have probably died from any exertion. She could have died sitting on the toilet or walking up the stairs.

Grubs was given four years, which was the maximum the judge could sentence him to and his attorneys had freaked out about that and filed several appeals. They claimed that he wasn't responsible for her death and even if he'd been charged with involuntary manslaughter he could have gotten out in three years with good behavior. The judge changed the sentence to no less than four years, which meant that even with good behavior; he had Grubs off the street for four years.

After that, things got even more interesting because Grubs demanded, while in prison, that his children were brought to visit him and that he wanted regular visits. The children were his only living relatives and he wanted to have a role in their upbringing.

The problem was that no one could find either of the children. None of the relatives had them. And no one had seen them since the day that Sissy died. Grubs remembered that she'd called someone to watch the kids while he took Sissy to the hospital, but he didn't know who it was and Sissy wouldn't tell him. He claimed that getting Sissy to the hospital was the priority. And he knew someone was coming to watch them and would be there soon. So he never actually saw the person she'd called. He'd been sure that the children would only be alone for a few minutes.

It was a small town and the fate of the kids had simply fallen through the cracks until Grubs asked about them. After that, it was just assumed that they were with a family member who simply hadn't been tracked down. No one really worried too much about Grubs or his right to see the kids, because he was, after all, a convicted criminal. The kids were probably better off without him.

I smiled a smile that would have horrified the Grinch then. I had my chink in the armor that the bitch wore. She was no better than I am. In fact, she was worse. Maybe I'd had an affair, but she was a fugitive from justice. If caught, she could be charged with kidnapping, transporting minors across state lines and a host of other crimes.

My happiness at that moment couldn't be measured. I went to Josh and got him to pay for the PI, since I had no money. My job really didn't pay well enough for my standard of living and according to the divorce agreement, Alan wasn't paying me shit. I was also having trouble making my payments on the condo. I estimated that I might be able to stay afloat drawing on my half of our savings, but by the end of the year, if Alan and I weren't back together, I'd have to down size. I hadn't seen it yet and they hadn't moved into it yet, but my mom had seen Alan's new house and she told me it was beautiful. It wasn't as big as her house and it was nowhere near the size of Alan's parents' place but it was in St Clair Shores along the edge of a lake. She told me that he had put a sprawling deck out behind the house with a built in hot tub. The deck ended only forty or fifty yards from the lake. She said there was a fireplace and plenty of wood and granite all over the house. It sounded like it should be my house. And if I had my way, it soon would be.

I had to stop Alan and that little whore from moving in there. I told Josh that the end game was afoot. I just needed a little bit more money for the PI and a trip. I had the PI reach out to Jared Grubs. It took a few weeks but I was able to contact him. He was a shifty, evil, little man who thought the world owed him something. I set up a meeting with him to discuss his future. I never intended to go to the meeting but just in case I needed more than a bluff, I wanted to have my ducks all lined up.

All of that took time. I found out from Josh that he was going to be Alan's best man. Alan had proposed to Cassie and they were supposed to get married on Christmas day. Who the fuck does that? I guess Christmas had some kind of significance to them. It had some for me too. Christmas was the day I'd lost him and she'd found him. But I didn't worry too much. We were coming down to the home stretch and I had yet to play my ace in the hole.

It was a bright September morning when I stepped into the office that Josh worked out of. I'd noticed his car outside but also Alan's Mustang. I'd called Josh and asked him why Alan was there and he told me that Alan wasn't. Cassie sometimes drove Alan's car when he picked up or dropped off the kids.

The jeep was bigger inside and more comfortable and it had all of those video things in the back seat to keep kids occupied. They hadn't gotten around to getting Cassie a car yet. I was getting angrier at that bitch every day. Alan had allowed me to drive his Jeep on several occasions, but he had never once, in all of the time that we were married, let me drive his Mustang. He barely ever wanted me to sit it in. In fact, he got nervous every time I looked at the car. But he just turned over the keys to her on a regular basis.

As I opened the door, she smiled at me and I had to admit she had all of the skills necessary to be a good receptionist. She was pretty. And she didn't look nearly as low-rent as I'd expected. In fact, the clothes that she wore that morning actually looked like something I'd wear. I had a bit more chest than she had but not by much and hers didn't appear to be enhanced. I had to concede, once she stood up to shake my hand, that in the ass and legs department, she had me beaten.

"Who are you here to see?" she asked brightly.

"You Cassie," I said. She looked at me with confusion coloring her face.

"Why would you be here to see me?" she asked.

"Well, you and I have something in common," I said smiling. I was enjoying this. "We've been sharing something and you've had it for so long that it's my turn now."

She looked towards the security guard in the corner and he started walking towards us. "There's no need to call Bob over here Cassie. He knows me. In fact, you know me." I said still smiling.

When Bob got close enough he recognized me and I waved at him.

"My name is Elizabeth," I said. "Elizabeth Taylor."

"I know who you are," she said. "I remember you from the restaurant I used to work at. Are you here because you want us to invite you to the wedding?" She looked hopeful.

"No," I said. "I'm here because you and I need to talk. I need you to do something for me. Let's go somewhere that we can have more privacy. Let's go and sit in Alan's car."

"No," she said. There was no discussion. She was simply not going to betray him.

"Okay then, Josh just stepped out of his office," I said. "He's with a client. Let's use his office."

We walked over to the office and I waved at Josh. We went inside and closed the door behind us.

She sat down in a chair and I sat down at the desk.

"Okay, let's get down to it," I said. "You're going to call off your engagement to Alan. I want you to do it slowly so he doesn't suspect anything. I need you to let him down easy and then hit him in the head with a hammer."

She jumped up as if she was going to hit me. "Get the fuck out of here," she said. "There is no way possible that I'd even consider what you're talking about. And you can't buy me off either. So don't bother trying."

"Sit down and let's talk calmly about this," I said. She sat down but she still looked like she only needed a reason to hit me. I hadn't expected her to be so ready to engage in violence. But I thought about it and realized that we were very much alike. Both of us were willing to do anything for the man we loved. Under different circumstances, we might have been friends, but when we both wanted the same man, that became unlikely.

"Do you like your life here?" I asked. "Or do you intend to leave here and uproot your children again. Are you going to pull them out of their schools and start all over again somewhere else? And I need to tell you that this time it won't be nearly as easy. Last time you managed to slip between the cracks, but this time Jared is looking for his kids and he might know where to at least start looking. He could probably put out an amber alert or one of those things and have every law enforcement agency in the country looking for you."

She melted before my eyes. She just slumped down on the desk and started crying. "He doesn't love you," she said. "Even if I do what you want, he won't go back to you just because we break up."

"Leave that to me, just do your part and I'll handle the rest," I said.

It took over a month for her to actually call off the engagement and even then they were still together. She treated him like shit and he refused to leave her. Seeing the changes in her was hard. It was as if pretending not to love him had drained the life out of her. But finally by the middle of October, Josh told me the wedding was off. Everyone seemed to be disappointed. Even my mother and sister couldn't stop talking about it. Josh looked at me as if I was a monster. He alone knew all of the details because he'd paid for it.

"I'm out," he told me one morning.

"No you're not," I said. "If you tell anyone, especially Alan, about this, I'll make sure he knows about your involvement in it. Besides, don't you want to be the man to put that smile back on her pretty little face? You're going to start dating her soon."

"She'll never go out with me," he said.

"Just watch," I told him.

Over the next few weeks, I watched as Alan changed too. The Alan that I'd always known and loved disappeared. Love has a shelf life. I know that a lot of people don't believe that. We're always inundated with all of that garbage about how pure and true love is, but the reality is that everything rots. And love has to be used. It has to be given away or it changes into something else. In my case, all of my love for Alan turned to bitterness. It made me hard and callous. In Alan's case, he became withdrawn and driven. My PI was still following him. Alan went to work each day and went home at the end of each day. He didn't socialize, he didn't visit. The only place he went other than home and work was that he still went to visit Cassie's children every God damned day.

I'd mentioned to her to have him taken off of the list of people who were allowed to visit them at school and she refused. She told me that it would be too cruel a thing to do to him and to them. She assured me that he didn't see HER at all and I relented. I knew enough not to force her into a corner because I didn't know how she'd react. At the same time, I decided to give Alan children of our own as soon as possible. I got wet just thinking about it because I hadn't had sex since he'd found out about John and me and it had been nearly a year.

I still called Alan occasionally and he said a few words to me and got off of the phone. I realized that it hadn't taken him nearly this long to get over me. His personality also hadn't changed to nearly this degree either. I was still biding my time though.

Just before Thanksgiving, I delivered my coup de grace. I got Cassie to agree to have lunch with Josh. This wasn't very hard to accomplish since I was still holding a gun to her head about her kids. I also told her that she either went out with Josh or she had to stop Alan from visiting her brats. Josh was happy as hell too. Neither of them suspected a thing.

I made the arrangements myself. Josh took her to Texas Roadhouse. It was Alan's favorite restaurant. What neither of them knew was that my dad had lunch with Alan there on the very same day. Check and mate I told myself. My dad was taking Alan out to discuss how miserable Alan was. With Alan's parents in Florida again, my dad was worried about Alan. He told him that love came and love sometimes didn't last but family was forever. He actually had Alan cheered up a bit. He told Alan that Thanksgiving was coming up and the family would love to have him spend it with them.

Alan balked at that. He brought up the subject of me and how we'd both be uncomfortable. He didn't want to do anything that would stop me from enjoying my holiday with my family. My dad assured him that I was fine with it and told him that it was actually me who had suggested it. He told Alan that I still loved him and I would probably love to see him. He reminded Alan that during the year that we'd been apart I hadn't done anything to hurt him or hinder him and that we should at least try to salvage a friendship from the ashes of what once was.

Alan agreed to take us all to lunch as a trial and if that went okay, maybe he'd come for Thanksgiving. As Alan got ready to leave, he looked across the restaurant and saw Cassie sitting there with Josh. I think that was when his heart broke. In fact, I'm sure of it. I think I heard the sound it made. It sounded like the shattering of a very fragile piece of glass splintering into infinitely small pieces. It was made even worse when Cassie looked up and saw him standing there staring at her. She quickly looked away and when she looked back, Alan was gone.

I was hiding in a darkened booth in the back and it was all I could do to contain my joy and my laughter.

I knew that it was only a matter of time before I had my husband back. In fact, the next day he called me. "Elizabeth," he said.

"Alan, is that you?" I asked. I hadn't been expecting a call that soon.

"I just called to ask you a favor," he said.

"You know I'd do anything for you," I said.

"Can you please tell your dad that I don't think I could come over for Thanksgiving," he said. "I'm not fit company so I'm going to go off and try something new. I think I'm going to learn how to ski or something. I need to change my life. In fact, I'm thinking about selling my house and leaving the state. There's no reason for me to stay here anymore. My parents are only here half of the year anyway. Maybe it's time for me to pull up stakes."

I panicked. This wasn't going the way I'd predicted at all. What the hell was wrong with him? Then I realized that he'd loved that whore far more than I'd ever considered. I'd been too abrupt. I should have made their breakup longer and taken more time with it. If I'd actually gone ahead and taken those kids away from him, he'd probably be gone already.

I needed to back things up just a bit. And I knew how to do it.

"Alan, you already promised my dad that you'd have lunch with us," I said. "Why don't you hold back your decision about turkey day until then?"

"Alright," he said. "But don't blame me if I'm not very good company."

I called Connie in after that. I also used every connection I had among all of the stenos in our pool. I got them to spread the rumor that Josh was up to his old tricks. It took less than a few days for Alan to hear that Josh was fucking Cassie.

Josh was concerned when Alan stopped showing up for their outings but he had no idea why. He told me that he thought Alan was avoiding him and that our plan was supposed to bring him and his best friend closer together. He told me that he was concerned because in all of their lives since college, he'd never seen Alan so unhappy. What an idiot he was. I was glad that I hadn't told him the reason for the lunch with the little bitch. He actually thought that I was trying to help him end up with her.

In fact, he started telling me how unsuccessful the lunch had been.

"I don't know what you're doing," he said. "But all she did was mope around and talk about how much she loves him and misses him. We're lucky that she doesn't know that we're in this together. None of my charm or none of my moves worked on her. She wouldn't even allow me to make casual contact with her. When I suggested that we go somewhere after lunch, she looked at me as if I was crazy. And I'm telling you Liz, something happened during that lunch. Because about halfway through it, she just started crying. She wouldn't leave but she also just cried and cried. I felt bad about it. You forced her to go to lunch with me didn't you?"

I just smiled. "That's why she wouldn't leave. She didn't want to be there with me at all. You threatened her fucking kids. She's never going to love anyone except Alan. I feel like such an asshole, Liz and you're a bitch. I'm out of this. You will never get another dime from me for this, so don't ask. And before you make another threat, let me remind you that if I go to Alan, you lose too.

Losing Josh wasn't a fatal blow to my efforts. In fact, I was probably ready to jettison him anyway. I hadn't planned on Alan leaving the state so I had to pull him back in and to make sure he showed up for my lunch. I'd gotten a complete makeover scheduled and when Alan and I had lunch together, even with my family there, he wasn't going to be able to take his eyes off of me. All I needed to do was to keep him in town for a couple of days.

I called Cassie and she started crying over the phone. "How could you hurt him like that?" she screamed at me. "How could you do something like that to someone you love? Do you even know what love is, you twisted bitch?"

"Why are you screaming at me?" I asked. "I'm your best friend. I'm about to give you a present."

"What are you giving me?" she asked. "A gun so I can blow my brains out? My heart is already aching, what the fuck do you want now? And you should know that nothing lasts forever. Sooner or later, you're going to make a mistake and leave me in a position to hurt you. And when that happens...I'm going to fuck you up."

"My, my, such language," I said. "I want you to tell those biddies who watch your kids that you want Alan to watch them for the weekend. You're going to tell him that you're going out of town for a business trip and you need him to take care of them."

"Why the hell would he do that?" she shrieked. "You've pretty much convinced him that I don't love him anymore and that I'm dating other guys."

"Because you and I both know that Alan loves your rug rats and he'd do it in a heartbeat. My plan seems to have been a tad too aggressive. Alan is thinking about moving away for good. Right now, neither you nor I could keep him here, but your kids can. So think about it dearie. Lose them for the weekend or lose them for good. It's your decision, unless, of course, you don't trust him with your kids. Or maybe you don't want him to stay." She slammed the phone down so hard, that she had to have broken it. I called right back and the number was out of service. I called a different extension and asked for her.

"Was that a yes or a no?" I asked.

"YESSSSSSS!" she hissed angrily.

A few hours later, Alan called me and told me that he'd be there for the lunch. He also told me that depending on how the weekend went he might even be around for Thanksgiving. He sounded a bit more upbeat as well. He was still depressed but at least he'd be there to see the new me.

Again, I was so happy I glowed. I didn't realize it but I'd fucked up royally. One of the things that great actors learn is not to ever work with animals or little kids. They'll steal the scene every time.

* * * * * *

Alan

About a week before Thanksgiving, I drove to a restaurant for lunch. It was a new place that had just opened in the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit. I took the glass elevator nearly to the top of the skyscraper that could be seen across the city and all the way into Windsor, Ontario, Canada across the river. I hate ties, but since the restaurant called for a jacket and tie, I'd worn one. I hadn't done it to impress my ex in laws, they were still family.

I saw them across the room and waved. I saw my father in law stuffed into a dress shirt and tie. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt. My mother in law, as always looked extremely beautiful for a woman of her age. Sarah smiled when she saw me. She was beginning to blossom as well. She shared the same features as her mother and sister. She stood up and kissed me on the cheek.