Collateral Damage

Bill tried to deny everything he'd just said and the videos we'd already shown, but his kids had been in the other room watching everything. Eventually, the two siblings turned and stormed out of the office faster than they had entered and Bill was left to make sense of what had just happened. I guess he finally got it, because he turned to us with murder in his eyes and said, "You sons-of-bitches! You set me up!"

"Damn right we did." That was me. I'd been silent throughout this meeting, but I wasn't above taking credit for my plan. "You're a piece of filth. You don't deserve to walk among decent men. We're going to watch you like a hawk and if your kids ever transfer ownership of your house or company back to you or return the money from your bank or retirement accounts, we will be there to file this suit and share what we know with the other husbands. In the meantime, you'll need to beg your kids for every scrap and every dollar. You'll depend on them for everything and I have a sense they won't be feeling all that generous from here on."

Bill stormed out of the office and I made a mental note to watch my back. I doubt he would be a real threat to me. Bill was fundamentally a coward who would sneak around behind other men's backs to fuck their wives. He wasn't going to do anything.

Harvey watched Bill off and on for the next few months and less often after that. Two interesting things happened very fast. First, Bill lost his office job running the company that he had started and was back on calls, crawling under homes in the dust and dirt to fix their pipes. The company seemed to do well with the change in management. In fact, employee moral went up. Second, Bill moved into a small apartment and his daughter moved her growing family into the home she grew up in. The kids loved having their own rooms and loved the big back yard with a pool even more. Just to be sure that Bill's kids didn't change their minds about him, anytime Harvey found Bill messing around with another woman he would send the pictures to his kids. His wife was long dead and at some level it didn't matter anymore who he messed with, but it continued to remind his kids of the way he cheated on their mother. They never wavered in their decision to keep what Bill had given them. Bill spent his later years working for his son, doing the exhausting and sometimes unpleasant work that he learned at the beginning of his career, and waiting for his Social Security checks to start.

I never got a dime from Bill and contrary to Burt's promise, I did wind up paying his bill. However, everything evens out. Burt introduced me to his sister-in-law, Jean, who had recently divorced her cheating husband. That case Burt did handle pro bono. She is just a few years younger than me and after a few months of dating and getting to know each other she turned out to be the kind of woman who genuinely enjoys being with her man. She's an amorous little minx, too, and some mornings it takes everything I can do just to get to work on time.

The divorce didn't go through as quietly or as smoothly as the above might suggest. Claire fought it. There was court-ordered counseling and mediation, but in the end I was free. That's the other thing about being married a long time: when your spouse has no use for you and you suddenly file for divorce, you somehow become the most important thing in her life again. She was no longer mine.

Claire still lives in the same town and we do see each other from time to time, mostly when we visit with the kids for birthday parties and such. For some reason, she doesn't seem to like Jean very much even though the rest of the family thinks she's great. Jean likes Claire just fine and sometimes thanks her for making me single again.

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The idea for this story originates with a memory I have from many years ago. A neighbor died due to a freak accident onboard a mutual friend's boat. By all accounts, the dead man was responsible for the unfortunate accident, but his family sued the boat's owner anyway. That owner put all his assets into his son's name to avoid litigation against him. I thought the whole matter was rather sleazy on both sides, but it occurred to me that the same idea might be used to hold someone accountable for their actions if done correctly.