Michael and Susan

Chapter 5 (Michael): Unwilling

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

***TW for use of Bible quotes***

For a minute, I stood there, my chest heaving with the effort my lungs were making to pull in air. I didn't know what to do, what to think, how to act.

Susan was gone. My wife had actually left me. Wives didn't leave their husbands. They stayed and didn't walk away.

I knew I needed to follow the one clue she left me, so I grabbed my keys from the table and headed back out the door, trying not to drive like a madman on my way to the parsonage. This wasn't like Susan. This had to be a way to get my attention. Maybe she was even staying at the parsonage with the Ellises until I came to pick her up and bring her home.

As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I knew that had to be it. Definitely the most reasonable explanation. That was why she mentioned Father Ellis in her letter. I relaxed a little as I riddled this out. Susan would never leave me. She'd stay and we'd work this out, get her over her upset and life would go back to normal.

I didn't relax my foot on the accelerator, even knowing where my wife was. That she hadn't left me. Parking in the driveway, I ran up to the door and knocked. A few minutes later, Mrs. Ellis answered, her smile welcoming.

"Mike!" she said. "Come in. It's good to see you. Is everything OK?"

That wasn't the response I was expecting and my manners flew out the window. "Is Susan here?"

She looked confused. "No. Bob and I are just finishing up dinner. Would you like to join us?"

"Susan's not here?" I could feel that sinking feeling inside again.

"I'll handle this, dear," said a voice from behind us. "You go finish your dinner. I just finished mine."

Father Ellis waited for his wife to return to the kitchen, and he walked toward me, his hand gesturing toward a room off the living room.

"Let's go talk in my study, Mike."

Once in there with the door closed, I started in. "Is Susan here or not?"

Shaking his head, he indicated the two chairs that were off to the side of his study, a low, round table between them. I didn't want to sit, but I also didn't want to pace in front of him and show how agitated I was. Fear like I'd never felt, even when I was in the Army and on the front line, was filling me with its poison.

"I take it you read the letter from Susan?" he asked me.

"Yes. And I thought she mentioned you to point me here so I could find her."

"No. She told me, not under the seal, that she mentioned me in her letter to you. That way, you'd know that someone knew where she was in case you wanted to send her any legal correspondence."

He was talking about me divorcing my wife. She'd mentioned the same thing in her letter. I felt as if the world had gone mad, and I stood up, too restless to sit.

"I don't want a divorce. I don't know where she got that idea."

"Don't you?" he said mildly.

I turned on him. "No, I don't. What has she told you?"

"I had a brief conversation with her before we talked under the seal. She told me she found out very recently that you've been lying to her about working late for the last seven months and you've been with another woman."

"Not like that! I wasn't with Linda like that! Susan's made this out to be something it's not. I've just been helping her friend who lost her husband right before he was supposed to come home from Korea."