As arranged, I picked up Chelsea at school. I had already put our bags in my car before I went to work. I was careful to leave enough of my stuff so when Kristen woke up, she would not suspect anything. I had withdrawn the few thousand I had in a vacation fund in my name only. In addition, I had taken out the savings bonds my grandmother had left me with the instructions to leave them alone except in an emergency. I felt sure my grandmother would call this an emergency.
We took off in my car. I asked Chelsea if there were any place she would like to go. She said, “Costa Rica.” She had been there on a mission trip and loved the place. Her Spanish was better than mine, but that’s not saying much. She said she had brought her passport and I had mine. We headed for O’Hare Airport in Chicago. I found out that if one bought round-trip tickets, it was cheaper than buying one-way tickets. In addition, Immigration in Costa Rica would challenge you if you couldn’t prove you had a return ticket in order to discourage people who came on a tourist visa and didn’t leave. We would have 90 days to decide what to do.
At first, we did all the tourist things that Chelsea had only gotten a small taste of during her mission trip. Speaking of taste, we tried many different restaurants and few disappointed us. We spent time on our computers and playing games on our tablets. Neither of us had communicated with anyone back home which was killing Chelsea. Finally, as the 90 days were coming to an end, I called my Dad for an update.
“Davy, how are you and my granddaughter doing?”
“Great Dad, but I think she is ready to come back. She misses her friends and being spoiled by her grandparents. Bring me up to date.”
“Well son, you missed a lot of fireworks. Evidently, Derrick lied to his father about what you observed him and your wife doing. He convinced him that you totally overacted. George went into action. He closed the bank to stop the run on its deposits. He had a lawsuit filed against you and the radio station for slander. His staff called most of our advertisers and said the bank would have difficulty granting any loans to them if they kept advertising with us. As owner of the station, I got sent the lawsuit.
“George and I go way back. I guess his loyalty to his son overrode his common sense like I thought it would. I tried calling him. He refused to take my call. I counter-sued stating that we had iron-clad evidence that you told the truth on the air. I suggested he call me if he wanted to avoid a lot of embarrassment and the loss of a substantial amount of money. He agreed to meet with me and our lawyers.
“We were sitting in the conference room. Derrick was there and sweating bullets. George demanded to see the ‘iron-clad’ evidence. I first asked George if he had seen the video.
“He said no. By the time he tried to look, it had been pulled off the website due to its pornographic nature. Derrick assured him that you couldn’t tell who the people were in the video and that it was probably a deep fake anyway.
“I said, ‘George, you know me. I’m telling you that you better look at it before you do anything else.’
“Derrick interjected, ‘There’s no reason to look at their lies Dad. David, junior is super paranoid about someone stealing his wife. He made it all up to destroy me. Otherwise, why would he have run away?’
“George looked worried, probably because his son looked so frightened. ‘Let me see it.’ We showed him the video until he asked me to stop.
“He turned to me. ‘David, how do I know that it’s not a deep fake?’
“I handed him a certificate from a reputable photo analysis firm that said the video was 100% valid as far as they were concerned.
“George looked at his son and said, ‘Son, you have one chance and one chance only to tell me the truth. Your job and future inheritance depends on it. Now tell me the truth.’
“‘Dad, it wasn’t my fault. She seduced me one night on a business trip after we had had a few drinks. The next day she showed me pictures and blackmailed me. She said she would tell my wife and you if I didn’t continue the affair. I swear that’s the truth.”
“I grinned. At that moment, Kristen came barging into the room. She had been listening in next door. ‘You son-of-a-bitch! How dare you accuse me of seducing and blackmailing you. I fought you off for months before you convinced me that you would divorce your wife and marry me if I would let you fuck me. My husband wasn’t ever going to make the kind of money that you were already making. I saw my way out of paycheck-to-paycheck living and I took it. We’re both at fault, you asshole.’
“‘Dad, you’re not going to believe her, are you?’
“George had the reddest, angry face I had ever seen. ‘Yep son, I am. As of this moment, you are fired. In addition, I will tell your wife I will cover all of her legal expenses should she wish to divorce you and/or sue your lover. Kristen, you are fired also. I will promise your husband that I will cover his legal expenses for divorcing you. David what else would you and Dave like to see?’
“I want a full-page ad in the local paper apologizing to my son and admitting that your son and Dave’s wife were at fault. You can also buy some advertising time on our radio station to do the same.”
“‘What about financial retribution?’
“Dave has lost money over the last few months, but I’m not sure how much he would call as fair.”
“‘Tell him that I will give him what he wants, within reason of course.’
“I’ll do that.”
“‘And David, thanks for keeping me making a bigger fool of myself. I sincerely apologize on behalf of my family for the harm caused by mine. Good luck.’
“Soon there were just me, my lawyer and Kristen left in the room.”
“Kristen timidly asked me, ‘Mr. Longstreet, do you know what Dave wants from me? I would really like to talk to him, at least to apologize to him.’
“I have no idea, but from what he told me you said after Derrick beat him up, I think you need to be looking for somewhere else to live.”
“‘I figured that much. Is there any way I can see my daughter? I have missed her terribly. I hope she hasn’t been harmed by this mess too badly.'”
*****
Dave had Kristen served at her parents’ house. They had reluctantly agreed to let her stay there until at least they ascertained their future visitation rights as Chelsea’s grandparents. The petition let her keep all the money she had already taken in exchange for forfeiting her share of equity in the house. The main issue was giving him total custody of their daughter with liberal visitation promised to Kristen. She did not even have a lawyer look at it before she made a proposal.
“I will sign the papers after Dave gives me a chance to explain and apologize.” He agreed.
They sat at a conference room in his attorney’s law office. Kristen thanked him for seeing her and commented on how good he looked from his stay in Costa Rica. “I have an impossible task, Dave. I want to ask you to forgive me for the unforgiveable way I treated you and our marriage. My explanation was that I was selfish, greedy, arrogant and a few other expletive deleted adjectives. My mind already had me living in luxury with a new husband. I was so sure that I had everything figured out that I came up with that ridiculous statement about you not being able to do something about it. Boy, did you prove me wrong. I couldn’t believe it, but Mr. Prescott agreed to pay for counseling for me as part of my severance, ‘promise no to sue’ parting package. I think the therapy is going surprisingly well. I’m finding out things about myself I didn’t know. Unfortunately, I’m learning a lot of things I didn’t want to know.