Betrayed

by Carly Fall

  Chapter 7

  As Adela and Liam flew through time and space, Jeff Waters sat in the psychiatrist’s office on Earth. He had just completed his shift and was now fulfilling his mandatory counseling. Jeff’s wife, Sara, had left him four months ago for another man, and he was having issues. Actually, he was depressed as hell, and those “issues” and anger consumed him. His shift in behavior had caught the eye of his superiors. It was one thing to be angry; it was another to be an angry police officer.

  One of the people he ticketed the other day called in not to complain about the ticket, but about Jeff’s rude demeanor. His captain had summoned him into the office to discuss it, as well as talk about how bad Jeff looked and ask if he was sleeping. He had demanded that Jeff started seeing the department psychiatrist to help get a handle on the issues.

  Or issue. The only issue was his wife running off on him. God, he wanted to hate her, but he couldn’t. Despite what she had done, he still loved her. The pain lancing through him overshadowed any hate he could muster up.

  As he sat in the psychiatrist’s waiting room, he thought about his recent shift and was happy it had been steady and nothing too dangerous: a couple of accidents, a stolen car, and a drunk and disorderly who became very cooperative once Jeff rolled up on the scene.

  “Come in, Jeff,” the shrink said. The guy was such a stereotype, with his glasses, salt-and-pepper hair, and mustache. “I’m Dr. Fitzgerald.”

  Jeff shook his hand and moved past him into the office. It was small, maybe about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. The walls were painted a creamy white, and two dark green La-Z-Boy chairs sat in the middle of the room. Jeff’s shoes clacked on the hardwood floor, and he noted the wall of diplomas the good doctor had earned.

  Jeff stood in the middle of the room. “Which chair do you want me in?” he asked.

  “Which chair would you like?”

  Jeff felt the anger within him come to a slow boil. Not only did the guy look the part of psychiatrist, but he acted it by answering a question with a question.

  “Just tell me where to sit, okay?” Jeff said.

  “You can take the one on the left.”

  Jeff sat down and leaned his head back against the soft leather, closing his eyes. He was tired.

  “So, your captain said that you’re having some trouble, Jeff. Tell me about it.”

  Jeff opened his eyes and shrugged. “Not much to tell. My wife left me for another guy. I’m depressed and pissed off. That about sums it up.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  Jeff sighed.

  Jeff had met Sara when he stopped at a downtown diner for a quick bite to eat during his shift. He usually worked the east side of Phoenix, Arizona, but that day he had been assigned to the west.

  The day had been hot, and he had an urge for a good, old-fashioned chocolate milkshake. He had spotted the small diner nestled into a row of shops and immediately pulled over. The outside of the building looked as if it hadn’t been updated since the 60s or 70s, and he hoped the inside was the same.

  As he walked into the small building, he let his eyes adjust from the sunlight. There were a handful of people in the diner, but no one paid him any attention. He slid into a stool at the counter, the blue vinyl creaking under his weight. He was pleased to see that the interior looked like something out of a classical magazine. Black-and-white pictures of the icons of the fifties—Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis, and a few faces he couldn’t quite place—decorated the walls. There was a black-and-white tiled floor, and the booths and chairs were a light sky-blue vinyl. Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” floated from the silver jukebox in the corner.

  Sara came out of the back carrying a piece of pie and a cup of coffee for another patron.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she had said to him with a smile. He noted her blue fifties-style uniform hugging her slight curves, and although she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, there was something about her that he was immediately attracted to.

  And she made a mean chocolate milkshake.

  As they chitchatted, Jeff was already making plans to come back again the next day.

  And he had.

  “In fact,” Jeff said, “I gained five pounds before I got up the nerve to ask her out.”

  Dr. Fitzgerald smiled. “Go on.”

  They dated six months, and at age twenty-eight, he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

  They went through the same trials and tribulations all newlyweds went through, and the first year was hard. It took a lot of getting used to living with one another, and she yelled at him about whiskers left in the sink after shaving, and he got irritated with her nit-picking about putting his dirty clothes in the laundry basket. After the first year, they seemed to settle into a groove and the bickering stopped. They were a good pair and lived another year in relative happiness.

  “So what happened, Jeff?”

  “Things changed.”

  He noticed a slight shift in Sara after she’d decided to go back to school. They had discussed it at great length, and at thirty years old, Sara was ready to go back to college and find out what she wanted to do with her life. She’d attended a community college in her early twenties but never received a degree.

  “She was tired of waitressing and felt like her life was slipping away,” Jeff mumbled.

  “And how did you feel about that?”

  “I supported it. I always knew I wanted to be a cop—there was nothing else. Some people take time to find out what they want to be when they grow up.”

  “Very true,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. “Did she keep her job?”

  Jeff nodded. “I told her she didn’t need to. Things would be tight, but we could make it.”

  “Please continue.”

  Six months after Sara started school, she began to stay late to study. Jeff noticed she seemed to take a little longer to get ready in the morning and wore a little more makeup than she usually did to work.

  “She’d start work at six at the diner, head to school for her three o’clock class, and then sometimes I wouldn’t see her until midnight.”

  “Long days.”

  “Yeah, except she wasn’t studying English or accounting like she said she was.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. She was studying human sexuality with some douchebag named Phillip.”

  “I see. And how did you find that out, Jeff?”

  Jeff rubbed his forehead feeling a headache coming on.

  “Jeff?”

  The visions exploded behind his eyes, and he tried to push them away. He didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about it.

  “Jeff, would you like to continue next time?”

  Exhaustion overtook him, and he nodded. “Yeah. I’ll tell you the rest next time.”