The FALL (part 2)

THE FALL (PART 2)

Click to read the first part of THE FALL

She loved me so much that when my mother told me that Clarice was nothing but a cold blooded gold-digger who only wanted my money.  I stopped talking to my mother for a month.  And when I finally did start talking to her again, I told her that if she ever said anything bad about Clarice that my mother would never – ever hear or see me again and that she would not get a dime of my money.

That was the end of it because my mother told me that she could never stomach seeing a gold-digger like Clarice rob me, ruin me and destroy me.  She told me that it just wasn’t in her to witness such a tragedy.  That was the last time I told to my mother.  Which was a shame because I knew that my mother and Clarice had talked over the phone and that Clarice had always come out of her room after talking to my mother with the largest smile on her face.  So, maybe there was room for forgiveness in my mother, maybe there was hope. 

I knew my mother was talking to her because in secret I was checking my wife’s phone records.  I knew it was wrong of me.  After all didn’t I trust my wife?  But my mother’s comments had sparked something inside me, after all, she was my mother and still held a powerful sway over my thinking. 

Boy, was I glad when I saw that the only people that my wife was talking to me was Randall and me.  And didn’t you know it, I found that just yesterday my mother had gotten a call from Clarice, that was when she had come from her private cabin, with that big smile on her face.  It must have been because she was trying to cook up a surprise reunion for my mother and me. 

Poor Randall.  It was Randall who had not been having any luck with the woman.  True, he would bring them around, but they seemed more like showpieces to help assuage his ego, allow the fiction of thinking he was still “getting the girl”. We never chided him, nor made him feel inadequate. In fact we praised him for it.  Clarice had just told him the other day that she was glad that he had not just any woman.  That all the girls he had brought home were nothing more than trollops and skanks, not worthy of dating such a “fine man” as he. 

Here I am in the water, slipping further into unconsciousness, my life flashing before me.  Thinking of all the mistakes I had made, the regrets, the hopelessly lost moments I would want to retrieve and redo.  All of this, while darkness began to overcome my vision.  My mind drifting back to those last few moments before I feel back.  Poor Randall, I thought again.

And then that last image replayed itself again.  Clarice hadn’t moved to catch me nor had she acted surprised as I crashed into the water.  And then I remembered.  Randall’s other hand ...