Andy suspects his wife, Sonya, is cheating. So this is what he asked her as he came home from work and saw her sitting on the edge of the bed looking tired and worn out,

“What you did today honey?” His voice was pretentiously chirpy as he listened keenly to her reply. Walking towards the dresser he noticed her burgundy make-up bag was unzipped and out of place, this threw his radars deeper into suspicions.

“Me? Well … Umm, let’s see. Nothing really. The day was just boring as usually. How was yours?” Her smile seemed as if she was straining her lips to do so against her will. Andy dropped his black briefcase and it tumbled flat on the burgundy carpet. He stood untying his tie in front of the dresser. He took off his thick retro-styled test-glasses, begun unbuttoning his white tall sleeve shirt and answered casually,

 “Same old, same old. Just a regular day at the office, punching numbers. Ms. Anderson being a witch as usual. Bet if I was as young as Dalton she’d be flirting with me too. And Claudia a royal pain up the hind, she just never stops. Trust me.”  He sighed, as if tired of work and all the stress it came with, the people, the environment or maybe the situation with his wife. He glanced at her and pried further into her day with a second question, “So … You went anywhere today? Just stayed home?” He paused a breathe and looked at her body’s reaction, her face seemed quiet and innocent, he added, “All day? I know you little hot missies love the mall?”

Her brows slightly knitted in thought. Her mouth pouted as she pressed her bottom lip against the edge of her front teeth before she replied, “Well … Yeah. Had nowhere to go really. And facebook was boring. Listened the new Tommy Lee on youtube but I didn’t like it. Maybe I’m actually getting up into age now. So I just slept most of the day. Why?”

Andy had no idea who Tommy Lee was, the name sounded like a karate expert to him rather than a singer or dj. But he didn’t bother to ask her because he didn’t want to highlight the age gap between him and his wife. He replied “Ohh, nothing, nothing. Just curious if you enjoying what you doing with your vacation since its almost one week now. And you still haven’t gotten around to making dinner not even one evening yet.” He smelt a feint scent in the room. Not food. A scent of body splash, or cologne, and a lighter stench of something else. The more he wondered the more his pent up anger swelled beneath his heart.

“Believe me Andy, the days are such a drag. Nothing lively to do. All I do is sleep, sleep, sleep all day. Don’t know how I’m sleeping so much. Maybe I’m finally pregnant.” The word pregnant made Andy’s ears perked up, his heart galloped like steroid-overdose. Wrath bubbled in his throat. Angry thoughts flashing through his mind. He couldn’t bear to know that another man might have gotten his wife pregnant. Before he did. He slaved at it for over a year now. Still no baby. Went to see doctors. No baby. The few wrinkles in his face made him think that maybe he was getting too old now to get his wife pregnant. He tried to seem unscathed by her reply though and simply replied with a,

“Eehhmm.” And nodded his head slow, but his eyes didn’t blink, he was just staring at her as she brushed her purple oversized handbag over in the bed. He pondered, why was it out if she claimed she went nowhere.

Sonya sensed something. She felt a weird, uncomfortable tension coming from Andy in the room. The questions weren’t really straight, what is he trying to get at? She swallowed her spit, her mouth was dry. Not knowing how to act or react, she followed her intuition and got out the bed and walked out of the bedroom.

What bigger proof had Andy needed than what his bestfriend, Gary, had told him? Right? Gary had no gains, to be telling such bare-face lies on her. Well, Andy wanted concrete proof, not hear-says, and he knew just how to get it. He was out to prove his wife was a cheating little brat. Once and for all. She wanted to pin him with a jacket, a kid that wasn’t his. No way in hell would he be a father to a jacket. He kept all his suspicions to himself, not giving her a clue that he knew what was going down. With plans in place, here was what Andy did the very next morning.



PART 2 

Before leaving Andy peeped into his wife’s red Honda CRV. His thick eyeglass lenses hit clumsily against the lightly tinted van window, his hand caught the frame by where it was glued back together before it had fell off his face. He squinted and strained his eyes to see the mileage on the meter on her dashboard. He opened his briefcase and scribbled down the mileage. 1035 miles. If when he came back from work and he asked her where she went and she said the same thing again, ‘nowhere’, but the mileage on the van had moved, then obviously, she would be lying. And why? Was she really cheating? Was she even pregnant by a different man? He was about to find out this evening. He was shutting his briefcase, it fell out his weak hand’s grip and a few of the lighter documents blew about.  The white papers floating in the air scattered and landed wide apart, a couple blew under the van. The first paper he scuttled to pick up was the one he had scrawled down the mileage of the van on.

He heard a door opening inside the house, the steps of his wife, Sonya, heading to the front-door. He didn’t want to get caught snooping around her van. She would desecrate him. He fumbled to pick up all the papers quickly and did so in time. All of them, excepting one. A blank white computer sheet of paper was left right behind his wife’s red CRV. As he chucked the calculator, that he insist on taking to work though the office assigned a calculator to each accountant’s desk, his wife shouted from inside before reaching the door,

“Honey, you okay out there?” He was flustered, clammed the briefcase shut and yelled back at her, not wanting her to come through the front door,

“Ahh, yes dear, I’m fineee! Bye now!” Stepping off awkwardly and in hurry to his plain white Toyota Corolla 1992. It  drove just fine and though he could afford to update his car, he didn’t see the reason to. When he calculated the numbers, the few dollars he paid on wear and tear plus the insurance on the aging Corolla was way lower than the preposterously exorbitant insurance on a SUV. He fumbled to get his car door open, set his old repaired glasses on his face and he heard his wife opened the front door. She spoke to him through the grill of the veranda where she was standing in her baby blue see-though nighty. The silhouette of her shape was nothing but curves. Her left hand was waving through the grill, the monstrously huge diamond in the wedding ring flashing side to side. He spent a handsome on the ring, quite frankly, he flattened it, to satisfy her fancy.

“Love you honey! Don’t you forget that.”

Andy looked down at his acquired gut. Turned the key in the ignition and stared through the windscreen, not looking in her eyes, looking above her forehead at the black mesh net that she wrapped her hair with. Since her vacation, she had not get up early once to make him a hot cup of tea much less breakfast. But she was always up to happily tell him goodbye, he thought. He felt the same anger about her cheating coming back again in his chest. He didn’t reply to her. She yelled louder,

“Love you honey!”

Andy always replied ‘I love you too.’ This time he answered,

“Okay Sonya. Bye.”

As he wound his window down manually, he mumbled under his breath, ‘Cheating wretch.’ The words he mumbled had made him so emotionally choked up that he slammed down his foot on the gas pedal whilst he was reversing out the driveway. Speeding to run over his dog, Casper. Sonya saw, she gasped, her two hands flew to her cheeks, she yelled,

“Oh Gosh! No! Mind you kill off Casper!” He mashed the brakes. The car eerks to a stop and Casper ran away and barked at the car. Andy said softly to Casper,

“Sorry boy. Sorry. It’s not you Casper. Sorry.” He looked at his wife glaring at him from behind the grill, he felt disgusted. How could she? I gave her everything, he thought to himself, then spat out at Casper “ I wish it was Sonya behind the damn car. I would gas it harder.” Casper barked once. Maybe he had witnessed something. Andy rammed the gearstick into drive, Sonya shouted annoyed at her husband,

“You’re always so clumsy!”

He stared at the clean white piece of paper behind her van. Drove off. He repeated the mileage he wrote down,

“1035 miles. 1035 miles. We’ll see about love when I get back home. We’ll see for sure.”

PART 3

Andy couldn’t think straight at work. He couldn’t think lean, he could think at all. The poor man’s wife, Sonya, was cheating. He was certain but needed proof. Oh, how it was eating him to the his very bones to catch up on her and prove she was cheating. He knew she was leaving to go by Millsborough, by her ex-boyfriend’s house because his bestfriend, Gary, had told him. He recorded the mileage on her van this morning to prove she was telling lies that she stayed home all day on her vacation. Andy couldn’t wait to get home to check if the mileage had moved on her van. 1035 miles it was. 1035 miles. Work was over. Time for Andy to go home.

Andy got a ticket for speeding on Hagley Park road. He threw it in the glove compartment and slammed it shut.  His Nokia rang. It s was Gary, his best friend who had told him about spotting his wife at her ex-lover’s yard. Immediately the thought of her being pregnant by this same dude fuel so much anger in Andy that he didn’t take the call. He drove within the speed limits down Hagley Park road. The traffic was a bit tighter anyway.

He was approaching the three mile stop light when his cell rang again. Gary again. What was Gary’s problem? He rejected the call. He thought maybe Gary was trying to balance the receivables account for Seprod again and was having problems. He couldn’t deal with work stress right now. All he wanted to do was go home and check the mileage on his wife’s van. Then a thought bumped into his brain. What if Gary had more intel about his wife’s promiscuity. He should have answered the call, he thought. The stoplight was on green  ahead and the traffic flowing. A cesspool truck switching over to his lane slowed down the flow. He wound up his window, stretched over to the other side and spun the window lever around till it was up too. His phone suddenly ringing again made him jumped a bit. It was Gary again. He answered immediately. Gary spoke,

“Yow, where you reach?”

“Three mile stoplight basically. Is what?”

“Your wife.”

“What happen?”

“She go Millsborough today again. She good as all still there now, from what mi hear.”

“Say what?”

The whole traffic became a blur to Andy how hot the blood in his head got. Gary commented on the situation,

“Something sweet her up there, cause she could still be up there this time of the evening.”

“The same yard?”

“Where else Andy.” It wasn’t a question Gary was asking.

“You sure?”

“Is not me see, so mi not sure. Just hurry go on home go find out if she is there.”

Andy didn’t tell Gary bye, he just hang up and called his wife right after.

Her phone rang twice. Then three times. No answer. Voicemail chipped in. He pressed the end call button. Called again. No answer. Redialled. None.

He threw his Nokia on the passenger seat and it fell between the side of the seat and the passenger’s side door. He couldn’t care less. The green of the stoplight was changing over to amber. The cesspool truck in his lane was moving slow. The light went to amber and Andy got uncomfortable waiting. With no indicator on, he switched lanes wrecklessly like a taxi driver would and sped onward to catch the amber light.

But with all that effort it changed to red before he could drive through. Andy broke the redlight without any hesitation. As he raced by the police station, he chanted inside his head, ‘1035 miles, 1035miles. Me and her when mi reach.’

He pulled into the driveway and Casper ran out his way. Casper then ran to the car door as he always did every evening, to get that pat and pet on his head from his master, Andy. A world of joy in the pup’s big bright eyes. He was wagging his fluffy tail, springing at Andy’s feet playfully, as Andy step out his Corolla. Andy didn’t touch Casper in the head. He didn’t even looked down at Casper, he ignored his dog totally. He went straight to Sonya’s van to check the mileage.

This is an exerpt of the book to be released  July 2013 on Smashwords, Amazon and everywhere that my books and ebooks are available