by H.B. Corse

Created on: June 11, 2009

"...I was just so mad about what she tried to do to me I didn't think about it. Then, when I saw her following me, I thought she was following to make sure it happened," Shannon said, his face planted firmly in in hands, his elbows dug into the top of the painted steel table. He looked like he was holding the heaviest thing in the world.

"Shannon, I need you to start from the beginning, okay? I just want to make sure we get your side of the story down right, so start from the beginning and try not to leave out any details, okay," Detective Darren Ember said as he scribbled little squiggles in his notebook.

"Yeah, I can do that. Can I have a cigarette and something to drink first," Shannon said picking his head up at the thought of getting a cigarette.

"Sure Shannon, no problem, but we gotta go outside to smoke. You aren't planning on running off anywhere right?"

"Where would I go?"

"Okay buddy, lets get you that smoke."

*

"See you after work hon," Shannon said before pecking Emily on her cheek.

It was about as affectionate as he got with her anymore. When they had gotten married he had been all over her, and it had stayed that way for ten years. Sometime in the middle of the eleventh year of their marriage something had changed. Shannon had grown more and more distant from her, and she had slowly brewed to a boil inside. She had never been anything but the perfect wife to him, and he had one day just decided he didn't love her anymore. No Way.

Emily knew what was going on. She knew what he was doing. He was cheating on her. The long hours at work, he was computer programmer for God sakes, how could that possibly require him to work late? What exactly was a "computer programming emergency?"

Then she caught him. She packed up Teddy on a Tuesday minutes after he called and went looking for him. Terry Orchard is a tiny town, so it wasn't hard to find him. If he was stupid enough to stay in town, which he was, there was only one street in the whole town he could be on; North Cherry Street. Every place to eat, every hotel, motel and shopping plaza in the town was on North Cherry, so she started looking. It took her all of ten minutes to find his car parked in front of The Lighthouse Motel bold as brass without a care in the world that someone might see him.

"No, that's not it. He doesn't believe I'll see him. He thinks I'm too stupid to figure out what he's doing and come looking for him. I'll show him whose stupid. Isn't

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