Plan B ✓

Are You Going to Help Me or Not?

"Are you having an affair?" I ask him as he goes to retreat up the stairs.

He turns back around slowly, disbelief clouding his features. "What?"

"You're coming home late, you're not answering my calls, you blew off picking up your kid... What else am I supposed to think Chris?"

"I'm not sure Presley. It's not like I haven't been in love with you since junior high."

"Well, lately it hasn't felt like that. And none of what you said is a denial."

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." He walks upstairs and I hear the bedroom door open and close before the pipes start squealing a little as he gets in the shower. I wasn't crazy, was I?

*Next Week*

"I thought you said we were going out for dinner." Shanna complains from the backseat as her, Carly and I sit in my car in the parking lot of the bank my dad and Chris work at. Lisa had wanted the grandkids for dinner that night and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to do some snooping. However, I had had to con Carly and Shanna into helping me with the promise that I would treat them to dinner.

"And we will. But Chris has been acting really weird lately and I need to know why."

"Have you tried asking him?" Carly asks.

"Of course I have... in a roundabout way."

"What does that even mean?"

"I asked him if he was having an affair?"

"Just cut straight to the point I see."

"We've barely seen each other in weeks and I needed to get it out there while I had his attention. Do you realize we haven't had sex in months?"

"Oh god! Gross! That's still our brother. No matter how much I love you, there are some things I don't want to know."

"I'm sorry. I just have way too much pent up energy... of many kinds."

"Still gross."

"Well, help me prove that there's something else going on here and not what I fear and then you won't have to hear about this anymore and we'll go to dinner."

"Sounds good to me." They both say and we laugh. Before we could discuss anything further, Chris comes out of the employee entrance with a bunch of his coworkers. Five o'clock on the dot. We watch him get into his car and pull out of the parking lot. I quickly put my car in drive and we follow, at a distance.

"Stalker movies make this look so easy." I comment quietly as I try to maintain a far enough distance behind Chris so he doesn't spot us but also not enough to lose him entirely.

"Well those are movies. I would think it takes a lot more practice and skill in real life." Shanna says as we barely make the left turn as the light goes from yellow to red.

We're driving for about fifteen minutes before Chris pulls into the parking lot of one of the little bistros downtown. "What the hell is he doing here?" Carly asks.

I don't reply as we try to find a parking spot far enough away that he won't see us as he gets out. I think we're in the clear, that maybe he's meeting some of the guys for dinner and that all of my anxieties are just figments of my imagination when a girl walks up to him and gives him a hug... A girl I have never seen before.

"I'm gonna kill him." Carly says seething.

"It's not even worth it." I say softly, my voice thick with emotions and unshed tears.

"Bull shit. Ma's gonna kill him." Shanna speaks up from the back.

"Let's just go get dinner."

...

We're sitting in an Applebee's an hour later and I'm just pushing the food around my plate, not really hungry. "You gotta eat something." Shanna says while her and Carly look at me worriedly.

"I'm fine." I say and for a moment I almost convince myself that my family isn't about to fall apart.

"You're really not. And you have every right to be. Ma will set him straight."

I shake my head. "Please don't tell Lisa. I'm a big girl. I need to handle this mess without involving everyone."

"Just us?"

"Well I wasn't going to invite Elvis to come along. He'd have killed Chris before getting answers."

We all nod as we think back to when Elvis found out Chris and I had gotten pregnant the first time. "How is Elvis? How's he liking Vancouver?"

"He says Canadians are too nice. He's walking on eggshells waiting for one of them to snap." We laugh at that. Elvis had since moved away from home and was working for a web developer out there.

"So what are you going to do?" Carly asks.

I sigh. "I'm going to drop you two off and go get my kids and focus on them and not falling apart. And when I'm ready, I'll talk to Chris about this. Until then, I'd really appreciate a vow of silence about it."

They both promised me and we headed out. As I put my babies to bed that night, I tried not to cry at how much this could mess up everything I thought Chris and I had built together for them. Please tell me there was more to this story.