Egg Money

At that moment, Donna said, "I'm going to be forward here and ask this excellent gentleman to dance."

That's how I came to first hold Donna Miller in my arms. A woman who from that moment seemed to perfectly fill the space between my arms and the emptiness in my life. I drove Donna home that night, leaving my wife to find her own way back to the house we sometimes shared.

Donna lived in a small saltbox house on a side street. She invited me in for coffee. I watched her lovingly check on her children asleep in their beds. Then she paid the young girl who babysat for her, pulling the cash from a small purse in her pocketbook. The little she paid the girl left the purse empty. Once again, my attention was drawn to how often there was a distinction between domestic happiness and financial wealth.

We sat in her kitchen drinking coffee until the early hours of the morning. I pushed her to tell me about her life. She told me about her childhood and attending nursing school, and then about meeting her husband and falling in love. She spoke of giving birth to first her son and then her daughter. All this flowed out of her like a spring-flooded river racing to the sea. Then it hit a dam, and she slowly told me of her husband's tragic death. She and the children were in the car with him, traveling to visit his elderly mother when a truck jackknifed and killed him and injured her.

"Fortunately, the kids were safe in the back, but Jason died, and I was three weeks in the hospital. The truck was in some corporate thing that had little insurance. Jason's settlement was soon exhausted on our living expenses that first year." She tried to gloss over the hardship she faced on the death of her husband, but I wouldn't let her. I made her tell me it all, knowing that the telling was relieving the burden of it.

"I don't know what I would do without the reduced daycare I was granted by the center where you work," she said. "I wonder how they manage it?"

"Oh, you know," I said, "People like me donate some time, and parents like you help out. Plus, we have benefactors."

"Yes, I'm very grateful to you," she said, covering my hand with hers and giving it a squeeze. "And I'm very grateful to that Ovum Foundation. I should write them and tell them how much they have helped me and how grateful I am."

"Oh, I'm sure they know."

"Well, I'd still like to tell them," she said. "Could you get their address for me?"

"I'll work on that," I said. "But it's very late, and I should be going."

"I think you're wrong," she smiled. "In fact, it's very early. But I'll let you go if you promise to come back and tell me all about yourself, and not let me do all the talking, as I did last night."

I made that promise, and I intended to come back. At home that night, I found my wife waiting for me. She was furious and bent on a fight, but I had no reason to give her what she wanted.

"Look, I'm tired, and whatever your problem is, I'm going to bed."

"Oh no you don't! You can't just leave me without a word at a public affair. How did you expect me to get home?"

"I expected your boyfriend to drive you home," I said, giving her a look that I hoped conveyed that I knew about her extramarital involvements.

"How dare you make such an accusation!"

"As I said, I'm tired, and it's not an accusation, but a fact known by most if not all of your coworkers. You and—I believe his name is Dr. Anthony Vincent—have been carrying on very publicly for several months. Tonight you were flaunting it in front of your colleagues."

"Tony is a friend, and that's all!"

"Well, I'm assuming your friend gave you a ride home."

"If you knew anything, you would know that Tony rides a motorcycle, and I wasn't dressed for that."

"Nancy," I sighed, "can't you understand that I just don't care anymore?"

"Why? I suppose you have something going with that slut you left with tonight."

With that, I turned abruptly. She nearly fell down the stairs, not expecting me to confront her.

"Donna Miller is no slut. She's a widow and a mother. The kind of decent woman someone like you can't understand."

She wasn't expecting a defense of Donna, and as she grabbed the banister to keep herself from falling, I could see something cross her face, a mixture of fear and loss. But then she regained her anger and as we reached the top of the stairs, she said, "You hate me because of my success."

At the door to our bedroom I turned on her again, out of curiosity, not anger.

"Why would you think I hate you?" I asked.

"Because I'm a prominent surgeon, and you are an unimportant grade-school teacher."

I could only shake my head as I entered the bedroom and prepared for bed.

Apparently, she thought she had scored a point with her last statement. "All this is mine, you know," she asserted. "The house and everything in it. The Mercedes and the SUV, the money in the bank accounts, and our 401(k) are all from my earnings."

But not the money in the Egg Fund. Not a dollar came from her of the tens of millions that earned more in a week than she earned in a year. Nor could she claim full ownership of the rest of our possessions purchased with the aid of my teaching salary. However, I felt only disappointment that she had placed things before love in our marriage.

"Why, Nancy?" I asked. "How can you be so fixated on material things?"

As I said this, I thanked Uncle Ned for his advice. I had kept the egg money my secret because I could not be sure of my bride. I entered the bathroom in the master suite and locked the door behind me. Nancy first tried the door and then yelled through it, "In a divorce, I'll see that you don't keep anything!"

Then, thank goodness, she went quiet. She wasn't there when I finished in the bathroom and reentered the bedroom. I shrugged and went to bed.

****

The day after Thanksgiving, Nancy effectively put a knife into our marriage. We had spent the holiday at her parents' with my Nancy pretending we were the loving couple. When the food was served and her mother finally sat down at the table, the first words out of her mother's mouth, with all the family listening, were, "Silas, when can I expect to see some grandchildren?"

"Ask your daughter," I replied.

Nancy gave me an angry look and then launched into her standard response about how we had to wait until her career was more established. At the end of this, her mother gave her standard advice that we should not wait too long. The following day, Nancy assured that we had waited too long.

"I'm going away for Christmas break," she informed me.

"Where is it you propose we go?" I asked.

"Not we," she said. "I'm going with a friend."

"This is a male friend, I assume."

"None of your business!" she hissed.

"Well, it's not Tony Vincent, because I heard he dumped you for a younger model."

She became incensed at this and stormed out of the house. I sat for a while and then decided to call a travel agent. "Yes, I can book that trip," the woman informed me, "but I have to warn you that it can come at a steep price over Christmas week, and that's without the park admission and ride fees."

"Just make the reservation, but hold the final commitment until the lady says yes," I told her.

I had been seeing Donna fairly frequently over the past year. I had often taken her and her kids to dinner when she came to pick them up from daycare on the weekends. The children had become familiar with me. There was Darrel, six, and Cheyenne, four. Darrel was named after his paternal grandfather, and Cheyenne was named after Donna's mother. Although Donna and I had become close, there was no physical relationship. It wasn't that I was holding back out of some misguided morality. As far as I was concerned, I owed nothing to Nancy or our marriage. But I could sense the conflict within Donna; the good wife still trying to recover from the death of her husband.

It was in this vein that I asked Donna and her children to accompany me to Disney World in Florida over Christmas week. I first broached this to Donna out of hearing of the kids. She was immediately reluctant. "Do you think it wise?" she asked.

"If you're worried about my wife, don't be. She informed me she'll be vacationing with a friend."

"No, that wasn't my concern," Donna said. "I was considering the expense."

"Well, don't concern yourself. I have money set aside for just such occasions."

When we told the kids, they were thrilled, but it occurred to me that Donna already knew my wife would be no problem. What she knew was something I would have to explore.

I did one other thing. I called and hired a private investigative firm, a large firm, and one with the resources to follow my wife on her trip. Again, someone reminded me of the expense, and I assured them it would be no problem. "How about I send you a twenty-five-thousand-dollar deposit, and you bill me weekly?"

With my wife being followed, I prepared for the end of the school term and my vacation. For the first time in years, I was looking forward to Christmas.

****

We flew to Orlando on Christmas Eve. The trip with two small children was exhausting. The suite I had booked had two large bedrooms, and Donna took one with the children. I slept alone in a king-size bed. The kids woke us early on Christmas day, raring to go. We spent a day on the rides and wandering the park. However, by late afternoon, we were all worn out. It was a hectic day in the park, but I hoped for fewer crowds for the rest of the trip.

Not long after an early dinner, first Cheyenne and then Darrel fell fast asleep. I opened a bottle of wine from room service and Donna and I settled in on the couch. Donna took a sip of wine and then excused herself. I figured she was tired and heading for bed.

Donna returned in a sheer, baby doll nightie. I was stunned, and barely managed to stutter a "What the hell?"

"Oh, you don't like?" she teased, holding the hem out from her sides and doing a little twirl.

When I first saw her, I thought she looked a bit like a classic sex nymph, but seeing her this way, I knew she was the sexiest nymph there ever was. As she came to the end of her little turn, I jumped up and grabbed her. The sex that followed cannot be described. There seemed no material end to our passion, and that was because it wasn't just passion. We each knew the other had fallen in love without sex. We now advanced to a state of physical intimacy that many aspire to, but few achieve.

Exhausted in the early hours of the morning, we lay holding each other and I asked her, "Why now, Donna?"

"Because," she said, "I love you, and I've wanted you for some time and knew you wanted me. But you respected him and me enough to wait."

I knew the him of which she spoke was her dead husband. We slept then, and it was not until almost the last day, sitting at a small café drinking overpriced coffee, that I asked her what she knew of my wife's new friend. Her children were playing nearby and she was watching them and not looking at me while she spoke.

"It's Dr. Sherman, and it's a bit of a scandal, I'm afraid."

"Not Thomas Sherman, surely. He's the hospital's chief of medicine."

"Yes," she replied. "That Thomas Sherman."

"But he's happily married, and he must be at least fifteen years older than Nancy," I argued.

"More like twenty, and rumor has it that he was just having a fling with a younger woman until his wife caught him with her in bed and threw him out. Now they say he's trying to put a good face on it. However, no one believes he will last long with the hospital slut," she opined.

Then, realizing what she had said about my wife, she turned to me red-faced and apologized.

"Don't fret yourself. She's that and more," I admitted.

I didn't want to go home, but I knew we had to. We arrived home on New Year's Eve, just in time to celebrate the ball drop. I didn't go home that night but stayed at Donna's. My wife returned home the following afternoon, barely an hour after I arrived.

She looked well and tanned, clearly from a vacation in the sun. I think her own tan kept her from noticing mine. At any rate, we exchanged no welcome-home kiss. The cool atmosphere remained between us until February, when I came home from school to find her sitting in our living room.

I knew what her problem was. I had kept up the surveillance on her. The news of the affair between the chief medical officer and the surgeon had reached the hospital trustees, and one of the lovers had to go. They chose the slut. She wanted me to comfort her, but I found that hard to do. She also tried to get back into my good graces. However, as the saying goes, that ship had sailed.

In April, my marriage to Nancy came to an abrupt conclusion. I waited for her to get back on her professional feet before I demanded a divorce. Her return to her vocation didn't come easily. The hospitals in our region were aware of her reputation and wanted nothing to do with her. Finally, she found a place at a small hospital that had taken on bariatric weight-loss surgery as a specialty to survive in the current health care environment. The chief surgeon was a woman, and Nancy was her assistant. I assumed it was a substantial comedown in prestige, but perhaps not in salary.

At any rate, things blew up over something on my end. Donna and I had been careful at first to take precautions. When we got back from Florida, Donna went on the pill or, more precisely, a patch of some kind. I am not knowledgeable enough to know what went wrong, but she was pregnant, and I couldn't have been happier.

With her working in a hospital, the news quickly got out. I came home one afternoon from school, intent on changing and departing for Donna's residence. I found Nancy waiting for me.

"Well, you got your little tart pregnant," she accused.

I merely shrugged and said, "Yes, we're very pleased."

This set Nancy off, as I knew it would, and she began cursing Donna and me. When she came down off the ceiling, I said as calmly as I could, "This has to be humiliating for you; as your notable slut status is for me. But if you want to mitigate the pain, I suggest you divorce me as quickly as possible."

"You bastard," she swore. "You're not even ashamed."

"As far as I'm concerned, I have nothing to be ashamed of."

"I'll claim adultery and name the little mother as your paramour."

"No, you won't," I laughed. "You see, I have pictures. I've had you followed since before last Christmas. I'm particularly fond of a set of you and Tom Sherman on a nude beach in St. Martin. If those hit the Internet, what little reputation you have left will evaporate."

"You wouldn't dare," she said.

"Try me!"

I left then and headed straight for Jack Anderson's office. He had been expecting me for some time.

Seated in his office, he said, "You know she's going to ask for everything."

"She can have it all except the egg money, but I want it done quickly, obviously," I said.

"She can't reach the Egg Trust. It's irrevocable, and you took my advice on transferring your financial profits into it slowly over time," Jack told me.

"Good, let's get it done."

Donna was not so sanguine. "How can you give her everything? You need to fight this. I'll lend you money for the lawyers. I can take a second mortgage on this house. I don't care a fig about my reputation. But I won't let you destitute yourself on my account."

I brought a bottle of expensive champagne with me. "Here, let me pour you a glass of this. You will probably need it," I said.

She was seated at her kitchen table and rose to stop me. "No!" she demanded. "I'm pregnant, and we can't afford it!"

"It's just one glass," I said, gently pushing easing her into her seat.

When I had her seated and a bit of wine in her, I took a knee and said, "Donna Miller, will you please agree to marry me? And then I will tell you about the egg money."

She frowned, but nodded her head yes to my proposal, muttering, "Egg money, indeed."

So I told her, "It began with my great-grandfather Silas...."

The End