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Even the best marriages have their secrets, don’t they?
From marriages on the rocks to those going strong for decades, everyone has a private world in which they live separate from their spouse. All’s well and good with a few secrets, but too many spell trouble. Too many secrets collapse a family like a house of cards.
This story is about me, a wife determined to find answers … And my husband, a man determined to keep his secrets.
It was a beautiful day to drive fast.
That’s what I thought on the hot, summer morning I sped down the coast, heading straight for a small, rich South Florida enclave known as Tempest. You had to go through a lot of tiny backwater towns to get there – ones that had a lot of “THE END IS NEAR” signs, if you catch my drift – but I didn’t care.
I’d go through hell and back to get to Tempest so I could do what I needed to do.
“Tempest, Florida. McGrady Funeral Home, One Eleven South Street. 12 P.M. June 14th. Anyone who knew or loved Robert Sheldon is welcome.”
Note the “or.” When I saw that, I chuckled. It was just like my secretive ex’s family to put that on there.
That was the main line on the funeral invitation, the line that played over and over in my head. A time, a date, and a place: it was just what I needed.
This setup would work perfectly – when I got the funeral invite, which had only been circulated to a few people, I thanked my ex-husband’s sister, who had received $250 for her troubles.
I wasn’t above a bit of bribery to achieve my goals, not in this case. “I’ll be there,” I’d said to her.
After a moment’s pause, perhaps contemplating the cardinal sin of selling her brother out, she grinned. I didn’t really trust Sharon (for obvious reasons), but she’d come in handy this time, and without much convincing either.
Before you start thinking I’m some crazy ex-wife, think again. I was not trying to stalk my ex-husband; quite the opposite. He had been ducking me for months, refusing to respond to my lawyer’s requests.
He had no lawyer. Why he wanted to stay in an unhappy marriage, doing nothing, when his father was some sort of rich military tycoon was beyond me. He could be living on a beach in Cabo or something, but he chose to hole up in South Florida.
I hoped that, by serving papers to him in person, he wouldn’t be able to duck and dodge this divorce anymore.
But of course, paying off my ex-husband’s sister to tell me where he was going to be was only going to get me so far. I realized that the second when my phone rang, showing Matt’s number as the caller. I sighed. $250 hadn’t bought loyalty after all.
“You know your sister was paid $250, right?” I said, by way of hello. “To rat you out.”
“Mary,” my ex-husband said. His voice sounded tired and strained. I was a bit taken aback by that. I hadn’t heard him sound like that before.
“He lives!” I continued. I was slightly mollified by his tone, but not overly so, “Good morning, Matt. I’m so glad to have this conversation with you … 6 months after we should have had it.
Especially since you ended the marriage. And then you ran away suddenly and dodged my lawyers for months. We have property together, stuff that needs to be squared away. I’m not even going for your money. I’m not a gold-digger.
I just want out.”
But of course, my abject pleading had no effect on Matt Sheldon. It hadn’t worked during the marriage either, not all the times I’d begged him to let me in on his family, why he was disappearing so much, and other important things you’d think a wife should know.
“Mary,” he said, “Don’t come. Stay where you are.”
I blinked. That was an odd way to phrase it. His dad’s death, though a long time coming, must have really stressed him out. For most people, that would be obvious, but Matt and his dad hadn’t seemed close. He was taking this surprisingly hard.
“Huh?” I said.
Matt hadn’t spoken about his father in a long, long time – though, of course, I had no idea why that was. That was one of many secrets he kept from me during the marriage, and his secretiveness was the main reason it didn’t work.
Frankly, I was shocked when I called his sister, offered her money, and she agreed to tell me where he was going to be and when. As for Sharon, she wasn’t going to the funeral, and she had just laughed when I asked her why.
Matt’s sister was one of few people from his family that I had met, and I wasn’t shocked she sold out her ducking and dodging brother for $250. There had been a couple moments of hesitation, but she’d been easy to convince.
I jumped on the chance she gave me.
“Never mind,” I told my ex-husband. “I want out of this marriage. You cannot keep me in it, and I don’t care where you’ve been or who you’re with. I’m coming, Matt, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I hung up, gunned the car to ten past the speed limit, and stared at the divorce paperwork on the front seat. I was going to stay at a small hotel in Tempest that night, just in case Matt proved elusive.
If all else failed, I could hire a grimy, no-holds-barred process server to stalk and serve him, but that was money that wasn’t necessary to spend just yet. I had a time, date, and place; that was the chance I needed.
Music blaring, I pressed on to Tempest.
I ignored the multiple calls I received from Matt after that. I knew that I was already on a bit of a moral backfoot by serving him divorce papers at his father’s funeral – that just sounded bad (out of context).
Even with context, it wasn’t great.
I was going to be subtle, I told myself as I tore down Florida’s interstate, leaving the tarry pavement steaming in my wake. Just walk in and hand the papers to him. Then, simply walk out, no scene-making necessary.
There wasn’t much to the marriage, really. Unlike with most divorces, Matt and I had no juicy backstory.
We had dated in college, married in grad school, and split when he told me he didn’t want to continue the relationship. I was half out of it anyway, tired of his secretiveness and refusal to tell me why he’d disappear for days on end. He drove me to my wits’ end, and I forgot why I fell in love with him.
As for his father, I never met the guy.
Attempts to talk about Matt’s family and find out more information were useless. He’d brush past the questions as though I hadn’t asked, and, in some cases, he’d outright lie. I’d caught him in a few lies. He said he had to leave every few weeks for “family business,” but what that was, I had no idea. He never really spoke of seeing his father while on these “business trips.”
His father had been a military man; that was all I knew.
Most marriages wouldn’t have even started with this level of secretiveness, but I thought I could crack Matt. I was wrong.
I had really only met his sister. Though I thought Matt would introduce me to more people as time went on, he did not. He only grew more secretive.
His father was Robert Sheldon, a man who didn’t show up to our tiny wedding at a chapel near Jacksonville. He was some bigwig in South Florida, and he also happened to be the mayor of the tiny town of Tempest. Defense contractor, mayor … he was an interesting guy, I’d surmised.
His funeral would be a big to-do, I was sure.
