Consolation Prize

Rollie Meminger loved his mother-in-law, but spending time in a hot attic on a sunny spring day had him rethinking some of his recent life decisions. This one, for example.

When he had originally agreed to help his mother-in-law with her spring cleaning, he didn't anticipate 85 degrees on April 4, even if it was Atlanta, Georgia. He was bringing boxes up to her attic above the second story, and he figured it had to be about 100 degrees in the storage space.

He had just carried a box of Christmas decorations up to the attic and was back on the first floor, breathing heavily despite being in pretty good physical condition for a 45-year-old man.

"You've got a hell of a lot of boxes up there, Mom," he commented. "Anything that maybe needs thrown out?"

Helen Satterthwaite reflected thoughtfully for a few seconds before answering.

"Actually, there are several boxes up there that are your wife's that you could take home with you. They've got her name written on them. Been sitting up there forever. Probably a half-dozen or more. They could take up space in your attic."

"I can do that," Rollie responded. "Next time I head up, I'll find them and start bringing them down."

"Thank you, dear," she said, her love for her son-in-law evident.

Rollie and Helen's daughter, Liz, had been married for 22 years and had dated for two years before that. Helen and her late husband, Luke, had really come to love Rollie, and that love was reciprocated, which is why Rollie was helping his mother-in-law on this day.

After Rollie trudged back up to the attic with yet another box of Christmas decorations, he looked around at the piles of boxes and found several with his wife's name written on them. There were four with Liz's name on them, so Rollie moved them aside to carry downstairs later. He still had two more boxes to bring up.

Rollie looked at the four boxes off to the side after he brought up the final boxes. He decided to take a peek inside to see if they were worth taking home.

The first box Rollie looked into had several Barbie dolls and accessories in it. He knew those were probably worth something, so that box was definitely going home with him.

The second box contained what appeared to be dozens of old photographs of his wife at various ages, several old report cards and... a sonogram. What the fuck! The sonogram was dated from 24 years ago. Rollie felt sick to his stomach.

When he calmed down, Rollie looked over the sonogram as if he was a doctor, examining every part of the document. The sonogram revealed that it did indeed belong to Liz Satterthwaite, and indicated the fetus shown in the test was several weeks old.

Rollie's mouth suddenly got dry, his hands started to shake. The time frame indicated on the sonogram was the summer before Rollie and Liz's senior year at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. The two had dated for most of their junior years and had been exclusive since before spring break. They had even discussed getting married in the future before they went to their respective homes for the summer, Rollie to Des Moines, Iowa, and Liz to Atlanta.

Rollie and Liz talked every week during the summer break. He never looked at another girl during the summer and assumed Liz hadn't dated either. She never indicated she had been anything other than Rollie's loyal girlfriend, but apparently blatantly lying to him the whole time.

Rollie sat down on the attic floor and again fought hard to keep his lunch inside his stomach. The more Rollie thought about things, the worse it got. He was positive she wasn't pregnant when she returned to school in August, although she did put him off from sex for several weeks by claiming to have had a yeast infection.

Getting pregnant and having a secret abortion didn't exactly scream celibacy, let alone exclusivity.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The two got married a year after they graduated, and up until five minutes ago, Rollie would have said the marriage was just about perfect. They had a son, Greg, 20, and a daughter, Jeannie, 18. They both had good jobs and lived in a nice house in a good neighborhood.

Rollie got up from the floor, put the sonogram into his pocket and closed the box he was looking into. He checked the two unopened boxes and found nothing of importance. He then brought all four boxes downstairs and loaded them into the trunk of his car.

He would have liked to have gone home at that point, but he knew his mother-in-law had a few more small tasks for him to do. While he did those tasks, he wondered if his mother-in-law and late father-in-law knew about their daughter's despicable deception. He felt his stomach twist at that thought.

Helen looked askance when she saw Rollie flinch as they hugged good-bye an hour later.

"You don't look so good, Rollie. Maybe you should rest a bit before you drive home," Helen said.

"It's only an hour, Mom. I'll be okay. Just a small headache," Rollie said. "Probably got too much heat in the attic."

By the time Rollie got home, the small headache had turned into a large one, and his stomach had joined the fray. He had so many questions, but he knew that getting answers would most likely lead to a shitstorm. Was he ready for the possibility of destroying his marriage and his life?

Liz had dinner almost ready to be served when Rollie walked in the door. She expected him to have a good appetite after working at her mother's house for most of the day, so she was disappointed when he said he had a queasy stomach and didn't want to eat. He reached into a cabinet and pulled out a packet of Alka-Seltzer and dropped the tablets into a glass of water.

"Maybe you should go lie down for a while," she said to her husband.

He agreed and went to the couple's bedroom to lie down. He didn't fall asleep, though, because his brain was too busy asking--and not being able to answer--questions, such as how many times in their relationship his wife had cheated on him, and were his son and daughter his biological children?

Rollie got up from his supposed nap no more rested than when he laid down. He sat quietly in his recliner for the remainder of the night. Liz knew something was wrong with her husband, but he wasn't talking... literally.

Rollie tossed and turned all night when the couple went to bed. By the time he got out of bed Sunday morning, he knew that unlike his wife, he couldn't act like everything was sweetness and light in their marriage. He would not live a lie.

He waited until he and his wife sat down at the table for dinner before blowing up the world for both of them. Liz had just put a forkful of lasagna in her mouth when Rollie slid a copy of the sonogram toward her plate.

Rollie quickly realized he should have waited for her to swallow her mouthful because he found it really disgusting when she spit that quid of food back onto her plate with a loud gurgle. He almost threw up right there. She, on the other hand, was having her own reaction, turning so red in the face she was almost purple, her eyes getting as big as saucers, as the saying goes.

"Fuck," she whispered, the first time in their 25-year relationship he had ever heard her drop the "F-bomb." "Wh-wh-where did you get that?"

Needless to say, dinner was over at that point.

Her eyes still wide and her face still almost purple, she slowly reached over to the sonogram, running her fingertips over it as if it was Braille and she was a blind person reading it. She stared at the paper and Rollie stared at her for probably the longest 15 seconds of both their lives.

"You need to give me back the original. It's mine and I want it back!" she snapped at him harshly.

"In due time, my dear," he responded softly. "Do you want to fill in the blanks for me?"

"Not really," she said as she glared at him, "But I don't suppose at this point you'll take that as an acceptable answer. Will you?"

Rollie shook his head while staring back at the woman he had considered the center of his universe up until a day previous. He watched her emotions play out across her face as she considered exactly how much truth to tell him, knowing that too much would end their marriage just as surely as if he caught her in a lie. She quickly wondered exactly how much he already knew.

"I hooked up with my old high school sweetheart several times that summer. You know, the one I told you about, the one who took my virginity. I got pregnant... I had an abortion. I told you I had a yeast infection when we got back to school so I had a little more time to heal internally.

"I made a mistake. You didn't need to know. Haven't I been a good wife and mother all these years?"

Rollie expected tears. What he got instead was almost a self-satisfied smirk. To say he was surprised was an understatement.

Rollie was also surprised by how economical she was with her explanation... and the fact that she hadn't apologized for any of it.

"Despite the fact that we were supposed to be exclusive and were talking about marriage, you fucked an old boyfriend several times, got knocked up, had an abortion and kept all this from me for all these years... and you call that a mistake and tell me I didn't need to know. That's what you're going with?" he asked, his voice dripping incredulity.

Liz dropped her eyes momentarily. Even to her ears, the way Rollie explained it made her actions sound heinous and heartless.

"We weren't married then, so I wasn't cheating on you. And since we've been married, I've never once looked at another man that way," she cried in her defense. "That was almost 25 years ago, before we were married."

"Were we or were we not supposed to be exclusive at that time? We were exclusive. We were even talking marriage. You cheated on me, no matter what you want to call it," Rollie growled. "And you getting knocked up and having an abortion without mentioning any of this to me is the height of deception, you bitch. Don't you think I had a right to know any of that?"

"We really hadn't talked too much about our past when we got together. The past was the past. Neither one of us was a virgin. What difference did one more guy for me make to our relationship?" she questioned.

"Except this one wasn't before us," Rollie growled. "We were together... a couple... supposedly a committed couple... but one of us obviously wasn't quite as committed. And we're not even getting to the pregnancy and abortion. You wanted him, you got him... and his kid."

Liz suddenly got up from her spot at the table, picked up her plate and dumped the mess she had made in the garbage. She peeked up at Rollie and saw the light bulb go off above his head--figuratively.

"At least answer me this, Liz. Did your parents know about you and what's his name? Did they know about you aborting their grandchild?"

She looked up at her husband with what he thought was a deer in the headlights look. He knew she didn't want to answer, but he kept glaring intently at her, silently demanding an answer. She cleared her throat and pursed her lips.

"My mom knew about us... but she didn't agree with my decision to abort. Yes, she knew you and I were a couple when I was dating... him. She never said a word one way or the other, although she did warn me that I'd probably lose you if you ever found out."

"How did you find this?" Liz asked. "Were you up in my mom's attic snooping around for the hell of it?"

"I was up in the attic putting away some Christmas decorations. Your mom told me there were several boxes of stuff that were yours that I should take home with me. Just out of curiosity, I flipped open each box to see what was in them. That sonogram was in the second box with a bunch of old photos.

"By the way, those boxes are sitting in my trunk right now. Where do you want me to put them?"

Liz wasn't naïve enough to think her husband was going to let this discovery go unpunished. She knew there was going to be some pain involved. She certainly didn't want to be surprised.

"So... what's going on in your mind right now, Roland?" she asked quietly.

"I'm not sure, Liz. I guess I'm still in shock to a big extent... finding out that the woman I love beyond reason cheated on me... and all the rest," he said softly, his voice choked with emotion.

"I don't consider it cheating, Rollie. We weren't together," she remarked.

"You wouldn't consider it cheating... because you were the cheater," he said. "But from the other side of the aisle, it's most definitely cheating. We were together enough that we were talking marriage. We were exclusive... at least we talked like we were. I'd say you fucked me, but in reality, you fucked him."

The pair spent the rest of the night in silence. Liz kept peeking at her husband, watching his face for telltale signs. She saw anger in abundance mixed with sadness. The fact that he didn't rage at her disquieted her.

Neither partner slept well that night. Liz briefly considered and discarded the idea to try to sidetrack her husband with sex, realizing that sex was at the core of Rollie's problem. Regardless of what she told her husband, she was fully cognizant at the time she slept with her old boyfriend that she was, in fact, cheating on Rollie because they were supposed to be an exclusive couple.

Not only were Rollie and Liz supposed to be an exclusive couple, they had already paid for an apartment together off-campus for their senior years at Tulane and had discussed what was to come after that. Rollie Meminger seemed to be everything Elizabeth Satterthwaite was looking for in a mate. He was handsome, fit, smart and appeared to love her more each day. As a chemical engineering major with good grades, it looked like he was set to make a nice living as well.

Why then, had she slept with her former boyfriend, Scott Wilkins, multiple times during the summer after her junior year at Tulane?

Wilkins was the quintessential high school stud at Martin Luther King High School. He was 6-3, 200 pounds of muscle with longish blond hair and bright azure eyes. He was the star quarterback on the football team and a starter on the basketball and baseball teams as well. Of course, he dated the school's head cheerleader and prom queen, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, busty Elizabeth Satterthwaite. The two were a couple from their sophomore years in high school until the middle of their sophomore years in college. Most people assumed they were on the way to a trip down the wedding aisle. They had given each other their virginities.

That was the plan until Scott broke up with Liz on Christmas break of their sophomore years. While Liz went off to Tulane, Scott went to Auburn, where he apparently met his soul mate, who just happened to be the daughter of the founder of a successful accounting firm in Mobile, Alabama.

Needless to say, Liz was heartbroken. She didn't date anyone seriously until early in her junior year at Tulane, when she met the brown-haired, brown-eyed Rollie Meminger at a party. He was a little smaller than Scott at 6-1, 185, and good-looking but not quite as handsome. She found out that unlike Scott, Rollie was both humble and smart. She had given Rollie her cell number at the party, and he called for a date three days later. A month later, the two were dating and enjoying sex on a regular basis.

After seeing her daughter mope around for the summer after breaking up with Scott, Helen Satterthwaite was thrilled when her daughter told her she found a new boyfriend. When they were still a couple three months later, Helen encouraged her daughter to bring the young man home for spring break. She enjoyed seeing her daughter once again happy, and she found the young man to be friendly and almost polite to a fault.

Helen's husband, Jack, also liked Rollie, and it didn't hurt when Jack won a golf bet with Rollie. Liz knew Rollie was a pretty good golfer, so when she heard that Rollie lost a bet, she surmised that her boyfriend was being prudent by getting on her father's good side. Rollie smiled but never answered when Liz asked him about it.

Helen was fully aware that Rollie and Liz were going to be living together in their senior years, so she was more than a little surprised when she saw Liz getting ready to go out on a date two weeks after she got home for summer break.

"Umm... what's with the get-up, Elizabeth?" Helen asked her daughter when the latter entered the kitchen on a Friday night.

"Uh... got a date with Scott. Just going out as friends," Liz said, feigning nonchalance. "I ran into him at the convenience store the other day, and we decided we needed to catch up."

Helen stared at her daughter with raised eyebrows. Liz fidgeted where she stood. They both remembered the tears Liz shed when Scott broke up with her.

"It's just as friends, Mom. Don't make it more than it is," Liz whined.

"Right. Like I'm buying that. Aren't you still an item with Rollie?" Helen asked sharply.

"Well... Yeah," Liz said weakly

"And?" Helen inquired. "Shouldn't that count for something?"

Liz knew Helen was right, but the younger woman wasn't asking her mother for her opinion.

"We're just going to catch up, Mom!" she whined.

"That's what you kids are calling it these days, huh? In my day, we would have called..."

"I don't want to hear it, Mom," Liz interrupted sharply.

Much to Helen's chagrin, her daughter went on several more dates with Scott over the next few weeks. Helen was always awake when Liz got home, every time after midnight. Helen wasn't born yesterday.

Helen held her crying daughter in a tight embrace on her daughter's bed several weeks later, the sonogram lying on Liz's desk. Liz had come in early from her date for the first time since she started seeing Scott, and Helen could tell it was not going to be a good night for her daughter.

Helen's husband, Jack, clueless as ever, continued watching a baseball game on TV as Helen slipped out of the family room and went to her daughter.

"What did he say?" Helen asked of Scott's reaction to finding out Liz was several weeks pregnant.

Helen knew it wasn't good news by the way her daughter broke down in tears and trembled in her arms.

"He said he'd help pay for an abortion before he left to go back to college and his girlfriend. I don't think he even considered for a second marrying me and keeping the baby," Liz sobbed.

Helen thought about it, but was too much of a caring mother to tell her daughter, "I told you so." She stroked her daughter's back and quietly asked her next questions.

"So will you go back to Rollie? What are you going to tell him?" she queried.

"Of course I'll go back to Rollie," Liz said as she dried her eyes and seemed to gather strength. "And he doesn't need to know anything more than I just got over a severe yeast infection and I won't be able to have sex for a while. He's a good guy, and as long as I occasionally satisfy him... some other way... he'll be okay."

Liz blushed as she talked. She knew her mother was smart enough to know she was having sex, but she hadn't really ever talked about it out loud. She was pretty sure her father still probably thought she was a virgin.

"You're not going to tell him anything at all about Scott? Didn't you tell him anything about him this summer on all those phone calls?" Helen asked.

"God, no, I didn't tell him anything about Scott," Liz asserted. "We talked before we left and I know he thought I was going to be celibate, but he thought wrong. It's my body and I can give it to whomever I want, when I want to. We're not married yet. As for the other thing, I'll take that to my grave, thank you. You, me and Scott are the only ones who will ever know about that."

"Not ever? Even if you someday wind up marrying him?" Helen asked.

"Like the old saying goes, what he doesn't know won't hurt him," Liz said.

Helen left the room and Liz got ready to go to bed. She picked up the sonogram from the desk and made to drop it in the small trash receptacle by the desk. She had a second thought, though, and slid it into the middle drawer of the desk.

******

Rollie spent much of Sunday staring at the big-screen TV on the wall in the family room. Liz could see he really wasn't watching whatever was on the screen; she knew he was in deep thought as to what he was going to happen in his marriage moving forward. She hoped he would be his usual rational self, which she believed would be better for both their marriage and her personally.

Rollie's initial reaction upon finding the sonogram was to "divorce the cheating bitch." Having much of a day to think about it, however, had brought several other thoughts into his internal discussion, including the very obvious fact that he and Liz had what he considered an excellent marriage for 23 years. Could he completely discount that fact?

She was also a great mother to his two wonderful children. Although they were both in college now and basically out of the house, a divorce would still hurt them, he knew.

Still, he kept coming back to the fact that Liz had cheated on him, gotten pregnant with another man's child and then had an abortion, hiding everything from him for almost 25 years. He knew deep in his heart that if he hadn't been lied to and deceived, there was no way he would have stayed with Liz, let alone married her.

But he also knew deep in his heart that for the entirety of his marriage, she had been a great, loving wife. He objectively doubted he could have found a better mate if he had thrown Liz on the scrap heap before they were married.

While he absolutely hated what Liz had done, he tried to reason out in his mind whether it was her betrayal or his hurt ego that was the bigger detriment. It was not like everybody knew Liz had cheated on him, so the humiliation factor was negligible.

As she watched Rollie blankly staring at the TV, Liz couldn't understand completely while her husband was in a quandary. Even if they didn't agree that her sleeping with another man was cheating, what happened had occurred almost 25 years ago... and she had been completely faithful since then. A questionable cheat 25 years ago... and practically a perfect wife since then. How could it be anything but a no-brainer, she wondered.

"I'm sorry. Did you say something? I missed it," Rollie said when he thought he heard his wife say something.

She blew out an exasperated sigh.

"It was almost 25 years ago, even if you want to call it cheating. Twenty-five years, and I think I've been a damned good wife for those almost 25 years," she reiterated, the volume of her voice rising. "Tell me I haven't been."

"I wish I could say you haven't been," he responded. "I wouldn't even think twice then. But you cheated on me, lied to me and deceived me. You don't do that to someone you profess to love."

"It was a mistake... from 25 years ago, for God sake!" she whined loudly.

"So you've said," he said quietly. "You're assuming that I'm just going to take your word for that, like I had done on everything until I found that fucking sonogram. How can I trust that you haven't done it since we've been married. I can't... not anymore."

Nothing changed in the Meminger household for the next several days. The pair barely spoke to each other, and when they did, it was to argue about an event from almost 25 years ago.

"Lord, you've got a one-track mind when you get your teeth into something. That was 25 years ago! Twenty-five fucking years ago! Get over it already!" Liz yelled when the subject came up again Thursday night.

Now it was Rollie's turn to be stunned at his wife's use of the "F-bomb," the second time in all their years together he had ever heard her use that particular word. Rollie knew that this was not going to go away all by itself. The next move was his to make. In the meantime, he decided he needed to at least remember the good times before he found that fucking sonogram.

Nothing Rollie did resolved the conflict in his mind. Nothing Liz said helped either. He was tired of her repeated assertion that she didn't cheat, and that whatever happened, happened too long ago to matter to their lives now. Why couldn't she try to see things from his standpoint, maybe try to understand his feelings instead of continuing to rely on the argument that what happened in the past should stay in the past.

"So you're telling me that if I had killed someone a quarter-century ago, but I've lived a good life since then, that everything would be erased back to default? Does it take a full 25 years, or can this life-cleansing be done in less time? Does that depend upon the wrong?" Rollie sniped back.

"Aarrgghh! You know you're an insufferable prick?" she yelled as she walked off.

Rollie expected to be called much worse when he had Liz served divorce papers a couple of days later. He wasn't disappointed.

"You've got to be kidding me! Not going to be a divorce. Get over yourself, Rollie. That was ancient history," Liz yelled.

"That's part of the problem, Liz. You think it's ancient history. For me it's a recent occurrence. I only just found out about your cheating recently... just a few weeks ago. The wound's still fresh for me. And that's part of the problem... this time differential thing."

"I'm not going to wait several years for you to get over this. Deal with it, Roll," she hissed.

Liz's attorney got the judge to agree to a dozen sessions of marital counseling. Even Rollie had to agree that the sessions were warranted. In his heart, he was looking for a reason not to divorce his wife. He knew he still loved her, although her actions had shaken his faith in her to the core. Could he get over what he considered the epic lack of respect she showed him all those years ago, and could he trust her going forward? He hadn't slept worth a damn in the last several weeks because he couldn't answer those questions.

Liz had repeatedly tried during those several weeks to soothe her husband's feelings by getting him into bed. It was a strategy that had always been successful in the past. The problem this time was that Rollie wasn't letting his wife manipulate him by his dick. This decision was way more important than the color of the living room walls, the thread count of the bedroom sheets or the location of their next vacation. The two hadn't been intimate in a month, one of the longest dry spells of their relationship.

"You're killing me here!" she said to Rollie after yet another knockback one night. "It's just sex, not a lifetime commitment."

"And that's why we don't see eye to eye on this problem. Sex with you, to me, is a lifetime commitment. Whether we were playing or trying to have a family, sex with you was always special. I didn't realize until recently that you felt different," Rollie said.

"You're very nonchalant about cheating on me before getting married. How do I know you didn't carry the same attitude going forward?"

Within days of Liz being served, virtually everyone in the family who counted weighed in on his wife's side, all citing the time that had elapsed since Liz's "questionable offense."

"Questionable?" Rollie asked when his son used that phrase. "We were talking marriage. We had agreed that we were exclusive. She was barely out of my sight when she started sleeping with her old boyfriend... bareback no less! Not questionable. Objectionable.

"Then, by not telling me before we married, she deceived me... and lied by epic omission. She knew we probably would not have gotten married if I had known she had slept with another guy several times while she was home for that summer, let along gotten pregnant by him and had an abortion.

"Come on, Justin. That's not questionable. That's... unconscionable."

Rollie's discussion with his mother-in-law was more contentious.

"You knew. You knew she cheated on me. You knew about the abortion. Yet you never said a word to me. You let me hang out to dry, then and now all these years. I thought you loved me," Rollie said.

"Just one question. Did Jack know what his precious little girl had done?"

Helen sighed loudly over the phone line. She did love Rollie and thought he was an excellent son-in-law; even better since her husband had died. She didn't agree with her daughter's decision to keep her dalliance and the resulting abortion secret from Rollie, but Liz was family, Rollie, at that time, was not. Since the marriage, she had wrestled with telling him several times, but always came back to the old adage of blood being thicker than water.

"Bless his clueless heart, Jack went to his grave thinking his daughter was a virgin until the day she was married to you," Helen started. "But, yes, I knew what Liz had done was wrong. We didn't agree. I suppose, looking back on it, I should have spoken up.

"Still, Rollie, she's been a good wife for 23 years. Doesn't that earn her some leeway?" Helen asked.

"That leeway is the only reason I didn't just walk away when I first found out," Rollie said blankly.

Even Rollie's parents seemed to be on Liz's side, again talking about the 23 years of a good marriage.

"But was it real?" Rollie questioned. "I was deceived by a master. The whole marriage was a sham. The relationship should have been over the minute she cheated on me. What would you have done if Mom had done this to you, Dad?"

Rollie's father didn't want to answer, but he knew this was not a time for silence.

"I probably would have slapped her silly if your mother had done that to me and I had found out before. There wouldn't have been a wedding," he said sadly. "But that said, you did have a good marriage..."

"Because I was deceived. There should never have been a marriage," Rollie growled.

"Look, the kids are basically out of the house. They're not a consideration anymore. They, at least, won't be hurt too much by the divorce."

The counselor completely understood Rollie's thoughts on the time differential as one reason why he was having so much trouble getting past Liz's cheating.

"This is all new to him, Liz. You've had a lot of years to move on from the incident..." the counselor, Ralph Siegel, started to say.

"Incident? What incident?" Rollie interrupted. "This was no incident. It was blatant cheating, multiple times. We were a couple, supposedly exclusive. We had never discussed any timeouts in our relationship.

"Based on the information on the sonogram, she had to be fu... doing him almost from the day she got home. This was a planned betrayal. The only thing I don't know is if she planned it before we left for the summer."

"It... it wasn't planned," Liz jumped in. "I ran into my old boyfriend soon after I got home and... We weren't married, Rollie and I, so..."

"But we were committed to each other. We talked about that," Rollie said.

"Yeah, I guess so," Liz answered, her tone admitting her guilt.

"But then I gave you 23 years and two great children. You have to know how much I love you," Liz said.

"That's exactly what I keep wondering in all this, Liz, exactly how much you love me," Rollie said quietly.

"I know you as much as you know me. That means I know you asked your old boyfriend if he would marry you and you could raise your baby together. The fact that you aborted your baby tells me what his answer was.

"But what if he had agreed to marry you and raise the baby? You would have said yes, right?"

Liz fidgeted in her seat as both Rollie and the counselor stared at her. The seconds ticked by.

"Yes, because then I would have gotten to keep my baby," she said barely above a whisper.

"Only partially true, babe," Rollie said. "You still would have married him even if he didn't want the baby. Isn't that true?"

There was no response for more than 10 seconds. She finally nodded silently.

"I get it," Rollie said. "He was your first love. Your true love. I was your back-up plan... your consolation prize. You might have loved me... somewhat, but he was your first love. I became your plan B, and you at least loved me enough to give me and our family a great life.

"But imagine how much greater things might have been if I was your first choice. Nobody wants to be somebody's consolation prize."

Liz's face dropped. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out.

"I've lived a sham for this entire marriage because after you cheated on me, you deceived me and lied to me. Had you not done that, I would have been free to look for a woman who chose me as her grand prize, not her consolation prize. You took that opportunity away from me by your selfish choices.

"But at least you gave me two wonderful children. I have to thank you for that."

"But we had almost 25 years. I was a good wife and mother. You've said so yourself," Liz whined.

"You've always been in love with the guy. You're probably still in love with him now," Rollie said, looking hard at his wife. "If he showed up now, your heartbeat would probably be dancing.

"The abortion didn't matter to you. You wanted him. But he didn't want you. He wanted another woman. You loved him, but he just saw you as free pussy. To him, doing you really was 'just sex,' like the cheater's handbook says."

Tears were leaking from Liz's eyes. Rollie was looking like he was exhausted. The counselor, too, looked like he needed a break.

"I guess I've said everything I need to say," Rollie whispered before rising from his chair and leaving the room.

Even the judge in the case was baffled by Rollie's insistence on a divorce. He called Rollie into the courtroom to talk to him one more time before signing off on the divorce.

"I'm confused and saddened by your insistence on a divorce, Mr. Meminger. Even you admit you had a great marriage... despite how that marriage came about. Do you know how many people would kill for what you have?

"There was no guarantee that your marriage would have been even better had you married someone who hadn't cheated on you when you were dating. I can't believe you would willingly throw away that great marriage," the judge said.

"I don't look at it as if I'm willingly throwing away a great marriage, your honor," Rollie said. "I was deceived prior to the marriage. There probably wouldn't have been a marriage without that deception."

The judge looked at Liz, who just blushed and dropped her head. He pursed his lips and blew out a long breath before signing off on the divorce. Liz dropped tears when the judge made his pronouncement.

"It was 25 years ago," she sniffled. "I can't believe you would do this."

"Yeah, well I can't believe you cheated on me repeatedly, apparently without remorse, so I guess we're even," Rollie fired back before he gathered his stuff and left the courtroom.

Epilogue:

Rollie continued with counseling on an individual basis because he knew he had severe anger issues, not only because of his ex-wife but also because his entire family blamed him for the divorce. His parents and children said they understood his feelings, but they continued to harass him for his decision, mostly citing how long ago the cheating had occurred. His argument always was that there was no deadline on Liz's cheating and deception.

Rollie didn't have a single date for the first 18 months he was divorced. He finally got a date when he literally ran into a woman at the grocery... bumping into her with his shopping cart when it drifted away from him while he read the label on a frozen pizza.

He started to apologize to a tall, thin Asian woman who looked to be about the same age as himself when he realized she was smiling broadly at him. He stopped his apology in mid-sentence and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"What did I miss?" he asked, looking guilty. "Please don't tell me my fly is unzipped or something like that."

"You're still pretty new at this divorce thing, aren't you?" she asked.

Rollie looked perplexed. How could this woman possibly know he was divorced? She caught his look.

"Nobody reads the label on a frozen pizza box... except those new to the game. And you've still got an indention on your ring finger. Busted," she said, her smile remaining on her face.

He sighed and returned her smile. He surreptitiously looked at the ring finger of her left hand, and found it empty. She was looking at his eyes when he looked up.

"I'm Mai Nordgren. Been divorced eight years after having been married for 10 years. And you are?" she questioned, sticking her hand out for a handshake.

"Roland Meminger. Rollie," he replied as he shook her hand. "Divorced about 18 months after being married for 24 years by the time the divorce was final."

The two made small talk for a couple of minutes before Rollie asked the woman for her phone number. He also made a date with her for the coming Friday night.

During their date at a Hungarian restaurant, Rollie asked about Mai's Asian features but Scandinavian surname, noting that it didn't seem to be a common combination. Mai giggled softly and acknowledged that Rollie was right in his assessment.

"My mother is a 5-foot Chinese-American, and my father is a 6-4 Norwegian-American. There are like six Norwegian-Chinese people in the United States, and my older sister and I are two of those six," she explained. "That practically makes me a unicorn."

"I guess that means we're a perfect match. I've been called a unicorn for divorcing my wife after 24 years of a great marriage. Well, to be more accurate, I've been called an idiot for divorcing my wife after 24 years of a great marriage... if you want to ignore the lies and deception that led up to the marriage," he said.

The pair of unicorns was married about a year later. Both of Rollie's children and his parents attended the wedding, along with both of Mai's parents and her sister and family.

Liz didn't date at all until after Rollie was remarried, hoping until the very end that her ex-husband would change his mind and take her back. Her children and her mother all tried to tell her to let go. Liz, however, was incapable of that, in more than one way. What they didn't know was that before she decided to wait on Rollie, she first checked on the marital status of Scott Wilkins. Wilkins, however, was still married to the woman he had chosen over Liz a quarter-century earlier.

She would never admit to Rollie that he was right; he was still her consolation prize.