That Was Before

by Dan Lawton

  “And as I said, it was just the three of us. So I inherited all of it. It was a lot. I could have stopped working then, if I wanted. But I didn’t want that. I enjoyed working. Until I didn’t. Then I just stopped.

  “Everything I inherited was put into a separate account, away from my own investments and retirement and whatnot. I made enough to support our lifestyle, so I didn’t need the money. We didn’t need the money. Needless to say, Patricia was my wife—is still, legally. I’d left her on all accounts, hadn’t gotten around to taking her off.”

  “Because you thought you still had a chance to reconcile.”

  “That’s right.”

  She reached across the shifter and placed a hand on his knee. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t know if she didn’t think I’d notice, or what. I don’t use the money, so maybe that was a fair assumption. But my accountant handles the rebalancing and reinvesting and all that, which maybe she didn’t know. It was never her deal. She was on the account simply because she was my wife. The beneficiary defaults to your spouse.”

  “I get it.”

  “She’s not technically stealing, either because she’s on the account. But that’s exactly what she’s doing.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He told her about his conversation with Herm and how he would temporarily freeze the account. When finished, Sheila looked at him blankly, confused.

  “What’s that face for?” he said.

  “You don’t see it, do you?”

  He flicked his eyes between the road and Sheila. “I guess I don’t. What am I missing?”

  “Her phone call earlier. Now this. It all makes sense.”

  He thought about it but failed to see a connection. What did the tapes have to do with the missing money from his inheritance?

  “About the divorce,” she said. “She must have realized she had access to that account when she was able to take money out. And as long as you’re married, she has access. Which is why she suddenly wants to wait.”

  It did make sense. How had he missed that? But there was something that did not fit. “What about the tapes? She had no way of knowing you and I were together. So the part about the tapes existing must be true. Right?”

  She pulled her hand away and sat back. “Maybe.”

  “And what you said before about O’Reilly—your theory about him being the one to initiate all this—how does the money play into it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Him either. “Well, my attorney is looking into it. He’s good. He’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “Your attorney?”

  “I told you I spoke to him.”

  “What’s he looking into?”

  “Whether the tapes exist or not.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t.”

  He could not understand this. “You mean to tell me you’re not curious about what happened after you blacked out?”

  “Why would I be?”

  “How are you not?”

  “Some things are better left unknown. Why open up that can of worms if you don’t have to? I’m here, you’re here, we’re fine. No damage done. Let it be.”

  He could not disagree more. That mindset could not be further from his, and it bothered him. More, it frustrated him. How could she feel that way? How did she not want to know what happened to them, especially if there was lost time? It shocked him. Unfathomable. “Sheila, I—”

  “Please drop it.”

  “Can you at least—”

  “Drop it.”

  “Just tell me—”

  “Randolph, drop it!”

  He leaned back, tightened his grip on the wheel. He was angry. Agitated. Annoyed. And while he would stop talking about it for now, he would not drop it. Not now, not ever. He was going to see this through. He would find answers about what was happening, whether Sheila wanted him to or not. It was his life at stake, and his livelihood. And his future.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  There was no sign of O’Reilly, no imminent threat. The detour seemed to have worked. Still, Randolph remained flustered. What Sheila said rang true—Patricia was unquestionably up to something shady. And the issue about the security tape and its connection to Patricia and the money situation irked him. He checked his phone every hour to see if Larry had called back with any news, but he had not.

  What did that mean? Was no news good news, as the saying went? He did not know. Patricia’s motivation for falsifying the story about the tape seemed to be a disconnect for him, something beyond his comprehension. There was no way she could have known about his excursion with Sheila. Impossible. There had to have been a tape.

  But what if there was not? What if what Sheila said was all it was? He would not put it past Patricia to thieve from him; she had nothing of her own. The evidence certainly pointed in that direction. She did not come from nothing, but her upbringing was not luxurious either. When they married, they drafted a loose prenuptial agreement that dictated financial terms to protect Randolph and his assets, but it was not airtight. A provision was never made to include his inheritance, as it was not something projectable at the time. Nor had he known about his parents’ net worth then.

  The court may force him to pay alimony because of that, which was something he was prepared for. But what that figure would be, or if he and Patricia could sit down at a table with their attorneys and come up with an agreeable number before that happened was one of the details to figure out. She would get half of the proceeds of the house, once it was sold, and she would be entitled to half of all their physical assets. The cash was a separate issue.

  That part of the process did not bother him. They were happily married for many years. They arranged that he would work and she would not, and though Bruce had been out of their home for nearly a decade and without the need for parental support for longer, the arrangement never changed. It was what it was. Frankly, he thought she deserved support for her years of being a homemaker. What they accumulated over the years together—regardless if the togetherness was earned in equal parts or not—was theirs to split. He had no issues with that.

  It was not entirely about the money—it never had been. He had plenty of it to sustain how he wanted to live. Frugalness was a trait he inherited from his parents, along with their assets. His net worth was in the low millions and growing every day with compound interest—his parents’ portion was at least half of that, maybe more. He could easily live on just the interest alone. But Patricia stealing from him, dipping into the money inherited from two people she barely coexisted with, was a problem. She was not entitled to that money in his view, nor was she the two-thirds of the cash the prenuptial stated was his.

  Two-thirds was more than enough for him. He could scale back and live smaller, and he planned to. His portion would cover him through his death with attentive financial planning. Patricia would not walk away with nearly as much. But the money from his parents’ estate was rightfully his, as it had nothing to do with Patricia. She had no right to that money.

  If only he had been smarter about it. He should have been more proactive when the talk of divorce first arose.

  While Patricia and his parents did not dislike each other, they only associated because they had to, because of the union. His mother never thought Patricia was good enough for him, and while his father did not outwardly express his concerns, Randolph sensed the man’s dissatisfaction too. They stayed at an arm’s length from one another but did find common ground when it came to Bruce. Good not grea
t was how Randolph would have described the relationship if asked.

  That was before.

  Now was after.

  They were gone.

  Now he wondered if perhaps his parents were right, if they saw something about her all along he failed to. Maybe his instincts were not as good as he thought.

  Bottom line: He would fight for the inheritance money.

  But that was a problem for another day. Larry would be on it—that type of family dispute was his specialty. He would assure Randolph got what he was entitled to. The bleeding had to stop, though, before it got further out of hand. Before there was nothing left.

  Randolph phoned Herm to check in on the situation with the account; he was told it was set, frozen. No more cash could be withdrawn. Herm reminded him it would not last forever. At least it bought him some time, which was all he needed right now.

  It was the same routine: he and Sheila drove, stopped, and ate; they drove, they fueled up, they swapped seats; they drove. A light illuminated on the dash to indicate the truck was due for an oil change. It was a reminder of how many miles they had covered in the past few days. And yet, there was still no solid plan for what came next.

  Daylight turned into darkness. Another night in a musty room—though this one was a hotel which felt like a serious upgrade. Another darkened sexual rendezvous. He did not ask, nor could he make a judgment about Sheila’s emotional state, but he found himself disconnected from the experience. His mind wandered. His stiffness was flaccid. He did not climax. He was sure Sheila did not either.

  He hated to disappoint her. She rolled onto her side and pinched her knees together and pushed her backside toward him. He sat up in the bed and pushed his back against the headboard, sighed in frustration. It was reminiscent of all those nights with Patricia, of all the times he left her unsatisfied. The buzz from the self-pleaser she would use afterward rang in his ears, reminded him of the emptiness he felt as a man who could not meet his wife’s needs.

  “Sheila?” he said.

  No response.

  “Sheila? I’m sorry.”

  Her weight shifted. The bedsheet tensioned against his waist as she rolled over and faced him. “I’m sorry too.”

  “Listen, I—”

  “It’s my fault. I’m sorry. My mind is preoccupied today. I’m a little anxious is all.”

  “O’Reilly?”

  She nodded.

  He sighed. “Yeah, me too.”

  “I feel terrible for getting you into this. I feel like it’s my fault.”

  “It’s not. I’m a grown man capable of making my own decisions.”

  She looked away, pulled the sheet over her sternum.

  “Is something else bothering you?”

  She looked at him with damp eyes but said nothing.

  He leaned in, smelled her flowery skin. “You can tell me. What is it?”

  She looked uneasy, nervous. Uncomfortable. Randolph felt guilty for making her feel that way around him.

  “Do you still love her?”

  He smiled and snickered, but sat back when he saw it was a serious question. It shocked him. “Patricia? Do I still love Patricia?”

  Her eyes were on him.

  “Patricia and I loved each other for a long time. Many years. But at some point, the love died. Fizzled out. Went up in flames. A natural progression, maybe? I don’t know. It wasn’t how I drew it up when we married, I’ll admit that. But when your spouse stops loving you, you eventually become hardened toward them. You put up a wall. The point of no return—it’s real. At least from my experience.”

  “Randolph—”

  “To answer your question—no, I am not in love with Patricia. Upon reflection, I’ve come to realize I haven’t loved her for quite some time. I was hanging on to something that was dead, something that was hopeless.”

  Sheila was no longer looking at him. He slid closer to her, close enough to reach her face with his hand, which he did. A finger on her jaw gently turned her gaze toward him. Sadness filled her eyes.

  “I am in love, though, Sheila. But not with her. I’m afraid to admit it, but here I am, putting myself out there. Being vulnerable.”—he stopped himself, caught the lump in his throat—”The person I’m in love with...I’m looking at her.”

  Tiny droplets of water fell from her eyes, danced down her cheeks like ballerinas. He let go of her jaw and thumbed the tears away, felt the dampness against his skin. She lifted her hands and wrapped her fingers around his wrist and cried.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked. Though he was not sure to whom—himself or her.

  “It’s just...I’ve never been in love. Not with someone who loves me back.”

  His heart fluttered. Then he pulled her toward him and pressed his lips against hers, determined to challenge the notion that women were better kissers than men.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  What the actual fuck? Benji missed his flight. The airline would not allow for a transfer, so he was out the cost of a round-trip ticket. The next flight would not be for twelve hours. There were plenty of seats available, the clerk said with a smile as forced as the one he returned to her as he handed her his credit card.

  He took an Uber home to not lose his parking spot and be forced to pay a second time. He napped, got high, made a phone call, texted Cheyenne an update on his situation, jerked off, and funneled an entire bag of Cheetos into his mouth as if he had never eaten before in his life—but not in that order. Later, he took another Uber back to the airport, passed through security a second time, waited at the gate, then in line again, and finally boarded.

  The man in the seat next to him was grossly overweight and unapologetic, and while the window seat should have been a blessing, it felt like a claustrophobic nightmare. Benji sipped room temperature water from a plastic cup not much larger than a Dixie, nibbled on a bag of no more than six pretzels, and tried to focus on the in-flight entertainment but was unable to. He was tired and grumpy and too warm. The behemoth of a man next to him snored like the wild animal he was.

  He could not get the mysterious man from before out of his mind—the creep from the first trip to the airport. The man remained nameless, which was an undesirable arrangement—he knew Benji’s name but it was not reciprocated. Benji was left without a choice in the matter—either work with the man and his digital ghosting would remain unknown, or refuse and be exposed. Twenty years in prison stared him in the face.

  So he agreed to help. A simple transfer of information for the exchange of his continued freedom. The man was equipped with pages of questions and a blank notepad. Benji sat with him for over an hour. The questions ranged from Benji’s relationship with Cheyenne to his sudden influx of troubling dark web searches. The man wanted to know who Shay was and how Benji knew her, and how they met and where. He asked about Benji’s skill set and his sudden travel plans to a location void of any substantial leisurely sightseeing ventures. The man was relentless. Benji was humbled by all the man knew, embarrassed he was not as sly as he thought he was.

  Benji answered all the questions as openly and honestly as he could—except for when he did not—though he later questioned his reasoning for doing so. He could have called the man’s bluff instead, but with the information he knew about Benji’s life—you never ask a question you do not already know the answer to, the man had said—and a copy of the footage Benji had already seen and dug through himself, he sensed the man was not someone to toy with. He had no leverage.

  Once the man was satisfied, he clicked his pen and pocketed it, then slammed the notepad shut and stood. Benji was free to go. If more information was needed, the man would contact Benji dir
ectly. Benji hurried out with his head down.

  But now, as he sat wedged between the buffalo to his left and the humming glass to his right, he wondered what it all meant. Was it truly as simple as telling the man what he knew and moving on with his life? It seemed unlikely. But with no name and no contact information to dig around with, he had nothing. His only choice was to try and move on and forget about it.

  The plane finally landed. The muscles in his lower back were stiff and his legs were in serious need of stretching. The pretzels from hours earlier did nothing to quell his hunger. He craved a smoke. Buffalo Bill took his time unpeeling himself from the seat—whether out of necessity or not, Benji could not say—and struggled to unclip the lock on the storage bin above the seat.

  Benji grew anxious, found himself getting angry—or worse, hangry. It had been a long, stressful day, and the current situation was not conducive to Zen. If the fat man did not get his shit together soon, Benji might lose it. Chubby laughed when he finally got the storage door open, only to remember that was not where he put his bag. Someone smiled at the man’s ineptitude, another offered her assistance. Benji felt the steam rise within him.

  “Fuck!” he yelled and instantly felt everyone’s eyes on him. “Can somebody please help blubber get his shit so I can get out of here?”

  All the chatter on the plane stopped. A man in a seat near the wing told him that was not cool, man. But nobody acted. So Benji pushed porky out of the way and stood on his toes and pulled all the storage doors open, yanked all the bags toward the seats. People grumbled and cursed and yelled hey, but nothing happened. One of the flight attendants glared at him from the front of the plane but said nothing.