"The Nod"

She sat on the bench across the street from the motel. Bill took a step outside.  She nodded and the shot rang out.

Six months earlier, she heard the whispers.  But when she approached her co-workers, silence.

It was a Friday and the women, all paralegals, went to O'Malley's after work.  The others didn't see her returning from the ladies’ room when they unwittingly revealed Bill's affair. But certainly, this couldn't be true.  They had been married for 21 years...happily and faithfully.

She tried to convince herself of it for months, trying to reassure herself that her husband would never cheat.

Nonetheless, the whispers continued. She finally confronted the others, insisting that they were wrong, that the rumor mill was churning out lies.

Was it fate when she became ill at work?  Her boss, an influential attorney, insisted she go home for the rest of the day.  Upon taking one step through the front door she knew she wasn't alone. She heard the cries.  The cries of passion.  She had heard enough.

So, the whispers were true.  She was a broken woman.  The man she thought she knew she didn't know at all.  She could not forgive.

She went to her boss and told him her story. He told her all she had to do was nod.

~written by Laurie C


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