THE AFFAIR Read online

  Copyright © 2011 by Frances Dyanne Davis

  Published by WD Publishing

  P.O. Box 1218

  Bolingbrook IL. 60440

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, locations, events and incidents (in either a contemporary and/or historical setting) are products of the author’s imagination and are being used in an imaginative manner as a part of this work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, settings, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9844348-3-1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition

  Cover Design

  A.M. Wells

  THE AFFAIR

  BY

  DYANNE DAVIS

  Dyanne Davis TITLES:

  The Critic

  Another Man’s Baby

  Many Shades of Gray

  Two Sides to Every Story

  Forever And A Day

  Let’s Get It On

  Misty Blue

  The Wedding Gown

  The Color of Trouble

  Anthologies:

  Continental Divide (Lotus Blossoms Chronicles 11) Anthology

  On My Knees (Destination Romance) Anthology

  Titles under F.D. Davis:

  In The Beginning

  In Blood We Trust

  The Good Side of Evil (Carnivale Diabolique) Anthology

  Lest Ye Be Judged

  Dedication:

  To David Abrahamson: Thank you so much for sharing your journeys with me. I don’t think I would have felt Jeremy and Dimitra’s story so deeply had it not been for you. You didn’t believe me when I told you it might take years to see the book in print, did you? (smile) It’s been years since we communicated but you are often in my thoughts and more so during the editing of this book. Here’s wishing you light to guide you on future journeys.

  Acknowledgements:

  As always, thanks and glory to God for allowing me without censure to tell the stories of the voices in my head.

  To Jeremy and Dimitra, thank you for choosing me to tell your story. I’m honored

  Mary O’Gara, a great psychic and teacher. The years of studying with you will no doubt be reflected in this and future work. Thank you for telling me of your own experiences to offer validity to a scene contained in this book that felt so real to me that I knew it had to be true. You confirmed that not only is the unbelievable possible, but happens each moment of every day.

  To Debbie Pfeiffer for putting me in touch with people who were willing to talk to me. Even fiction requires research and were it not for you I would not have been able to do such a thorough job.

  To Peggy Scolan and Patricia Smith: Thank you both for being so willing to share your impressions with me.

  Sidney Rickman, I wonder if you’ve goggled your name. I don’t think I go a month without mentioning you somewhere in the cyber regions. I know you can’t help wondering what’s next and groaning when you see another mss arrive for you with my name on it. I promise you it’s the characters that like talking so much, not me. (smile) As always, Sidney, I couldn’t do this without the world’s best editor.

  A shout out of course to the members of my Yahoo family. Hello family!

  Starting and ending with the best. Bill and Bill Jr. My prayer is that God continue to bless the three of us with a long and healthy life together

  THE AFFAIR

  Blood was everywhere. The smell of copper filled my nostrils and I gagged. My hands were covered with the warm sticky substance and my eyes burned with tears from the pain of leaving my beloved. One look at my husband Jeremy and the truth was evident. I was dying. His fear wiped away my own. I had to be brave for him. My dear sweet husband, my soul mate forever and ever.

  He was holding me in his arms, his own hands covered in my blood. His tears ran freely down his brown cheeks as he struggled with what he knew but couldn’t accept. And he obviously ached from the knowledge, determined to heal me, unwilling to let me go. It was apparent our gifts would not help. In all of the world there was but one mystic with powers great enough to combat the inevitable, but he was too far away and my link with him was weakened by the loss of blood. I gazed on my husband. His pain was more than I could bear. I listened for sounds of the baby I’d just given birth to and didn’t hear him.

  “Jeremy, the baby,” I said with all the strength that was left in me. “I want to see our son. He’s not crying. Bring him to me, please.”

  For the longest time Jeremy didn’t move. He was holding me so tightly that the bones in his hands were pressing into the small of my back, revealing his desperation. He seemed determined to link with me, have me take from his life force to sustain my own. He would die for me. I knew that as surely as I knew I would never allow it.

  “Jeremy, bring me our son,” I said, pushing him away from me. “Get the baby,” I cried, desperate to hold our son.

  I waited, praying for just another breath. I couldn’t die before I touched my son, made sure he knew he was loved. I passed my hand over his limp little body. “Breathe, little one,” I urged, “breathe, and live.”

  I stuck my bloody fingers into his small, silent mouth, pulling out the remnant of the hard birth he’d endured. “I love you, my son,” I cried. “I love you.” Then I gave him the only thing I had left to give, his birthright. My gifts.

  “Love him,” I urged my husband, pulling him toward me, laying his hand on the son I knew he no longer wanted. “Promise me you’ll love him. It wasn’t his fault. I wanted to give you a son. Love him as I do, Jeremy, and take care of him. Do you promise, Jeremy?”

  “I promise,” he said with a steady stream of tears cascading down his brown cheeks. My heart broke anew for my husband’s pain. I clutched his hand, kissed it with lips that even I knew were chilled and I placed his hand on the back of our son. I blessed them both, loving them, pledging to love them always, to find them in the next life.

  With my lips pressed firmly to my baby’s, I breathed the last of my life’s breath into my son. I could feel my spirit leave my body. Blood filled my lungs and I choked.

  I woke gasping for breath, tears streaming down my face.

  “Are you alright? Did you have the dream again?” Larry asked.

  “Yes,” I answered, looking at my husband Larry, feeling dazed that one moment I was with a man I knew I was married to, the other part of my soul, and the next I was in bed with this man I’d been married to for an entire lifetime. I trembled, shaken by the intensity.

  “Larry, it didn’t feel like a dream.” I wanted to explain but he shushed me as he usually did.

  “It has to be,” he asserted. “You’re not crazy enough to think it means anything. Go back to sleep, honey. It was just a dream.”

  “Larry, it was real.” I pleaded with him to listen. “I don’t know how, but it was real. I lost my son, I lost my baby.”

  “Your son is alive and well, Mick. Derrick is fine. Now stop this nonsense and go back to sleep. You need your rest.”

  His voice was stern, a bit of the anger, the disappointment he felt at my continuing to have the dream coming through in his words to me. In the beginning of our marriage, he’d comforted me. Now he merely wanted me to stop the dreams. As if I could.

  I lay back down afraid to sleep. I’d had some version of this dream for most of my life. Even as a child I’d dreamt of my husband with h
air the color of night and our baby son, and my heart ached for both of them. I wanted to find them.

  My mother had taken me to a shrink, demanding that I stop my nonsense, stop my obsession with the voices I heard calling to me. So I had. At least that was what I told her. But it hadn’t mattered; when my parents’ marriage fell apart my mother blamed the collapse on me, on what she called my craziness.

  For a while the dreams came less often and were less vivid. My life was so busy, consumed with everyday problems, a husband, children and a job. I had no time for the lover in my dreams, no time for a child I’d held for only a moment, a child to whom I’d given my dying breath. Still, I grieved, but I grieved alone, afraid to have Larry call me crazy as my mother had.

  Eventually I slept again, and the next day my husband and I woke at the same moment. It was the day of our twenty-sixth anniversary. I could tell in his eyes, in his kiss, that the memory of the dream lingered with him and it hurt him.

  I felt that he blamed me for having the dream and I knew that for the rest of the day I would walk on eggshells doing everything in my power to make him happy. Denying my own truths would do that. I was very aware of that fact and I resented it. But like everything else in my life, I would shove my own feelings aside. Larry’s wishes would come first. They always did.

  We gave each other several kisses and wished each other a happy anniversary. I knew my husband was still upset over this part of me that he wished he could banish. I couldn’t blame him. I had no business dreaming of another man, real or imagined.

  “Michelle, I’m thinking maybe you should see someone. Those dreams of yours are becoming more frequent. I don’t understand why you’re having them. Maybe you’re not happy with me, with us. There has to be something going on.”

  I looked at Larry, about to tell him that I wasn’t happy, hadn’t been happy for a long time. His next words stopped me before I could arrange the words I wanted to say.

  “Of course you’re happy,” Larry declared. “Who wouldn’t be? We have a good solid marriage, four beautiful daughters, a handsome son and wonderful grandchildren. You’d be crazy not to be happy.”

  And that was what stopped me. I’d be crazy not to be happy. I’d be crazy to keep thinking of this dark-haired lover, this child that had never existed.

  “Anything special you want to do for our anniversary?” Larry asked, giving me the look that said he did. He wanted to make love and I knew it was in part because he loved me, in part because he wanted to drive the thoughts of another man from my mind and my heart.

  So we did. We made love and I clung to my husband as memories rolled over me, memories I couldn’t shake. A supreme knowing filled me. This time I could not push it away. Something was going to happen to tear apart our home. I could feel it with every atom of my being and I didn’t know if I could stop it. I didn’t even know if I wanted to stop it.

  We exchanged no gifts, no cards for our anniversary. We simply made love, made that our declaration. Larry thought we had everything that we needed; he thought we should save our money for the kids, help them out, not waste it on useless gifts when we already had everything that we wanted.

  The only problem was that I didn’t have everything that I wanted. The home and cars meant nothing. I wanted to feel validated. I wanted to stop feeling dead inside as if I’d lost something very special to me and would never find it. I wanted to talk about this with my husband without fear that he would want to commit me. I wanted to find one person who understood what I was saying, who didn’t think I was crazy.

  Larry had an entirely different view of our marriage. He was happy. We were friends, we enjoyed each other’s company and we had sex regularly. The only fly in the ointment was my dreams, and those he dealt with by reprimanding me, advising me to get more rest, to stop watching romantic movies that were putting crazy ideas in my head.

  I suppose that was our main difference. He felt my dreams were something I needed help for, and I felt they were more. There were many times I felt that if Larry would simply talk with me about the dreams I could put them into proper focus. But he either couldn’t or wouldn’t. And what I felt in the end was cheated.

  There are times I can’t imagine my life without my husband Larry at my side. Then there are other times that I don’t know how I can continue another day, another minute of the sameness.

  Thoughts of Jeremy and our son haunted me constantly. I tried hard to keep it from Larry. I had to. I wanted to keep it from myself. I wanted it to end. Sometimes I wanted my very life to end.

  The day after our anniversary, I had an eerie, weighted down feeling. At the time it didn’t seem exactly like depression, but now I’m not so sure. I had to fight to remain in my own body. I continually felt a tugging of my spirit to leave. I’m not sure anyone can understand this unless they’ve lived through it, but that’s the only way I can describe it.

  I truly believe that if I had not fought against the sensations that day, I could have closed my eyes and died.

  I knew this. I was fully aware of my feelings. I knew it the same way I knew many things in my life. And like the other things that I knew, this too I shoved away from me.

  I decided to make a short run to the local grocer for a few things I didn’t really need. I felt a sense of urgency, that if I didn’t connect with other living, breathing humans, my husband would come home to a cold wife, stiff with rigor mortis. So, I grabbed my bag and left.

  The brightly lit store did little to lift my spirits. I was randomly picking out items, trying to prolong my time there, not wanting to go home alone to an empty house. I thought of Viola, the old woman I’d hit with my car six months before when I was leaving the grocery store. I’d seen her for only a nanosecond before she bounced off my car. Instantaneous guilt filled me. Why hadn’t I seen her? I gripped the handle of my cart, trying desperately to keep the memories at bay, knowing it was to no avail.

  I shivered, the sensation going all the way to my spine. I again saw the blood, heard the fragile bones as they broke. I stopped in the middle of an aisle and wiped away the tears that always accompanied the memory.

  “Don’t move, don’t try to talk.” I whispered, going down on my knees beside the limp body, grasping the elderly woman’s hand. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you in time. I’ll get help,” I said, reaching in the pocket of my jacket for my phone.

  “What’s your name?” I asked after finishing the call, wanting to keep the woman as calm as possible.

  “Viola.”

  “Viola, you’re going to be fine. Help will be here soon. They’ll get you to the hospital.”

  “I don’t have money for a hospital,” Viola answered grasping my hand. “I don’t have insurance.”

  “Ill take care of everything, I’ll make sure your bills are paid. I’ll come visit you, make sure you have what you need. I promise,” I said, clutching the woman’s hand in mine meaning every word that I spoke.

  It had seemed an eternity before the paramedics wrapped Viola up and carried her away on a stretcher. I’d stayed behind to talk to the police. And then I called Larry, frantic for him to meet me at the hospital. Larry told me to stay where I was, that I was too distraught to drive and at that point I was. So I waited for him to come.

  When he did, I began babbling almost incoherently, so glad to have him at my side. “Larry, they took her to St. Mary’s.”

  I managed to get those words out before collapsing against him. Overwhelming guilt filled me. Why hadn’t I seen her, why hadn’t I at least sensed her? I had always been good at sensing danger. There were too many questions I didn’t have the answers to. So I closed my eyes and prayed for the woman to be all right.

  I didn’t open my eyes again until the car stopped and Larry turned off the ignition. Again I prayed for the strength to go into the hospital and see the old woman. When I opened my eyes, I blinked several times in disbelief, then looked at Larry. He’d taken me home.

  “Larry, why did you bring me home?�
�� I asked, dumbfounded as to his reasons.

  “Come in the house, Mick. We have to talk.” He answered me in a tight voice, alerting me that something was wrong.

  As an attorney, Larry was concerned with our legal liabilities, I wasn’t. We fought about my wanting to keep my promise and go to the hospital. At one point, he physically held me down. That surprised the hell out of me. In all our years of marriage, Larry had never attempted to use brute force against me. For weeks, we fought about my going to see Viola, until at last out of sheer exhaustion I gave up, and then gave in.

  I knew Viola was part of the reason that I was feeling disconnected. I had hoped that I could escape thoughts of her by running away from my home. No such luck.

  I wished I’d had appointments, doctors to call on, but my calendar was clear. I had the day off. There wasn’t even a reason for me to go into the office. But regardless of that I found myself wishing that I had gone to work just to be around people. I didn’t need to be alone. I thought about calling Larry and asking him to come home, but right then, his was the last face I wanted to see. No, I’d have to wait out the feeling of dread alone.

  I hated this position I’d willingly placed myself in when I married the handsome go-getter who’d promised to protect me always. At nineteen, that had been exactly what I wanted to hear, what I’d always dreamed. Larry was my black knight.