I was scheduled to work all day, but at the last minute my client cancelled the appointment. Her child got sick and she had to take him to the hospital. Of course, I understood her, but everything was boiling inside me.

I really needed this job, but there was nothing that could be done. Besides, it would be stupid to be angry with her for something that wasn’t her fault. She was one of my best clients, so it was only a temporary inconvenience. On the way home, I noticed that my work truck was running low on fuel. I didn’t have much money with me, but at least I could write it off as a business expense.

Thank God for small miracles. I also needed to take the truck in for break repairs, but that would have been more difficult. It wasn’t that the business lacked money, but it would have meant time away from service and I needed every job I could get. While the truck was filling up, I walked into the convenience store and went to the checkout counter.

The cashier looked at me and said, “How are you doing on this fine Monday?” Trying to lighten the situation, I replied, “Not so bad. I unexpectedly had half a day free today, so maybe I can get something done around the house.” It was true. I could work at home, but I was still worried about not having work that evening.

I was hungry and this Valero had unusually good cold meat sandwiches. “Give me a club turkey sandwich,” I said. “And how about five tickets to tonight’s lot America with the All Star bonus?” She printed out the ticket and handed it to me along with the sandwich. “$15, please.” I gave her the last $20 from my wallet and she gave me $5 in change.

The change and ticket went straight into my wallet. “Heck,” I thought. “For 10 bucks, maybe I’ll get lucky.” Today’s jackpot was only $10 million, much less than competing lotteries like Powerball and Mega Millions, but the odds were better. Still terrible overall, but at least a little better. Even second prize, considering the All Star multiplier, wouldn’t be terrible.

Now that the truck was full of fuel, I drove slowly home. I told myself I was driving slowly to watch out for children who might be playing in the street, but in fact, I just didn’t want to go home. Home. I had no other choice though. I parked in front of my garage, took a few deep breaths, and decided to sit for a while and eat my sandwich.

My thoughts drifted and I reflected on how my life had turned out. A 30-year-old man with no money, a fallen apart house, and a wife who is never satisfied. I should probably introduce myself. My name is Matthew Lane and as you might have guessed from my red hair, my roots are 100% Irish. I was born in a hospital and then raised on a farm near the small town of Oakridge in the eastern suburbs of Columbus, Ohio.

With the exception of my four years in the Navy, I still live in my hometown, though no longer on my parents’ farm. I learned to work the land, care for animals, maintain and repair machinery, and do most home repairs, including plumbing and electrical work. We didn’t have a lot of extra money growing up. My parents usually invested additional funds back into the farm, but we always had enough food and clean clothes.

After graduating from high school, unable to find a better solution, I joined the Navy and was sent to San Diego. That’s where I met Emily Parker. She was physically charming, incredibly beautiful, two orders of magnitude more beautiful than me. She was 5 ft 7 in and perfectly proportioned, not plump, but well-shaped with shoulders covered with strawberry blonde hair and the most piercing blue eyes I had ever seen.

Those eyes seemed to penetrate straight into my soul. Like I said, she was too good for me. I am not without attractiveness, but no one will ever confuse me with an Adonis. I’m 5 ft 11 in tall and weigh about 180 lb of pure muscle mass accumulated from years of farming, military service, and my current job.

I also have reddish hair, which is further evidence of my Irish heritage. By the way, it was my best friend from Australia, Jack, who nicknamed me Red. It seems to be an Australian tradition to call anyone with red hair by the opposite color. I didn’t really like being called Matt or Matty and Matthew sounded too formal, so Red stuck and that’s what everyone started calling me.

When I met Emily, she didn’t want to date me at first. She dated a guy named Brad for a couple of years, but eventually realized that the relationship was extremely toxic and ended it. There was mutual attraction between us, but she said she wasn’t sure she was ready to fall in love again so quickly. We broke up that day and she took my number, although she didn’t give me hers.

The idea was that she would call me if she wanted to rekindle the relationship. I hoped she would call, but I didn’t really count on it. As it turned out, a month after our first meeting, she contacted me again just when I had almost lost hope of seeing her again. Having no other plans at the time, we met again and began to see each other more regularly.

After a few dates, we decided to date exclusively. Six months later, we were madly in love with each other. A couple of months before my contract ended, Emily and I had a conversation about our plans for after my return to civilian life. I wanted to go home because I knew where my roots were and where I thought I had the best chance of building some sort of life and career.

I loved San Diego, but I could never afford to live there. Besides, California didn’t appeal to me. Let me be provincial, but I like the simple life. Emily, on the other hand, knew nothing but San Diego. As far as she knew, I was from a place dominated by rednecks. I decided that education was the best way to bridge the gap. I explained that although we weren’t on the ocean, we had a nice lake with parks and beaches.

I emphasized the more changeable climate. I’ve always said that the easiest job in the world is being a weather anchor in San Diego. Emily was especially interested when I described the frozen water and the fun that could be had in the snow. I showed her that my hometown had almost all the amenities that San Diego had. She eventually agreed and I returned to Oakridge with Emily.

We lived with my parents in their big farmhouse for some time. At first, I wasn’t sure how it would work out. Of course, I knew I would have a place to come back to, but I was returning with a plus one. My parents were cool about it. “If it’s good for you, it’s good for us.” It was good, but I was still worried it might not be worth it.

Emily fell in love with my parents. In fact, she started calling them mom and dad. Her own parents had unfortunately died just a couple of years ago, so my parents became a sort of surrogate family for her. We married in a simple civil ceremony a few months after returning home and I set about looking for a decent job and a home.

We also decided to wait and get our financial foundation in place, but we would like to have children sometime in the future. We were still young, only in our 20s, so why rush it? After serving in the Navy, I didn’t want to work for anyone else. Too many bosses took credit for my work, but blamed me for every failure, even theirs.

I knew I wanted to work for myself, be my own boss, and have all the successes and failures be my own. What I would do, however, was still a mystery. Worst case scenario, I could always get a job at a local workshop. I’ve always had a talent for repairing mechanical devices and buildings, a skill honed to perfection when I was a facilities engineer in the Navy.

I knew college wasn’t for me. I did okay in school, but I never had the patience to sit in a classroom all day. Emily, for her part, seemed to show no interest in finding a job. With nothing more than a high school education and little real world experience, she didn’t have many professional opportunities, although even working as a waitress or in retail would have been fine for me.

Emily claimed that she didn’t have the strength for it. I didn’t think much about it at the time. Maybe if we’d had kids a little earlier than planned, she’d have been in a good position to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s what I convinced myself at least. My best friend Jack gave me the idea. Jack pointed out that there was a noticeable shortage of renovation contractors in our area.

It was all over social media, a lot of complaints and calls for help from people who couldn’t get a contractor to come in less than 2 months or 2 weeks in dire need. If you haven’t had renovation work done, forget it. And those who had often complained about shoddy and careless work. But what’s the alternative? Getting your hands dirty? Never.

So that’s how Jack and I set up our business. It was a home renovation and remodeling company specializing in kitchen and bathroom renovations, but we also did general contracting work when needed. In winter, we focused on interior renovations and basement finishing. With a solid business plan written by Jack, I was able to convince the bank to give us enough funds to purchase two work trucks and all the necessary equipment for construction and home repairs.

Everyone in town knew there was a lot of room for our type of business and it seemed like our loan officer was one of those who desperately needed help. He ended up becoming one of our best clients. We kept things simple, charged reasonable rates and since Jack was single, he was available for emergency calls at any time of day or night.

We invested all income into a common pot, paid all business expenses from it and divided the rest in half. Any cash tips we might receive remained the property of whoever received them. This was done for practical reasons. Once money entered the company’s common pot, it became subject to reporting to the IRS.

Technically, it should have been declared anyway, but what they don’t know doesn’t hurt them. Plus, it usually evened out and it was a good way to at least have some cash on hand that Emily didn’t need to know about. Looking for a home was an interesting time for us. In hindsight, this should have been another red flag. I had some money saved up from my time in the Navy, so we would at least have a decent down payment.

Despite this, it was difficult to find something in our price range. Because of my work, it was hard to obtain financing. The business was already doing well, but the banks considered the income too unstable, so they could only lend me a certain percentage. We thought about buying a home through the business, but Jack and I wanted to keep our personal affairs separate from the business as much as possible.

This left Emily and me with two options. Buy a much smaller starter home or a larger home that needed some renovation. In hindsight, we should have taken the third option, renting a place for a while, but Emily thought it was a waste of money. She just wanted a place we could call our own. Emily wanted a bigger house. I didn’t care.

I didn’t want to spend my free time renovating the house after a hard day at work. We could always sell and move to a larger home when the time was right. We had several arguments during the house selection process. She couldn’t seem to understand why I couldn’t just dig deep into my pocket and buy the house she really wanted.

I couldn’t understand how a person who contributed absolutely nothing could demand so much. Also, I couldn’t get her to understand that I simply didn’t have anything else to dig from. Again, this should have been a red flag. In the end, we came to a compromise and bought a larger house. It was an old house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms in a lower middle-class area called Maple Heights.

I don’t know what this place looked like 150 years ago when the settlement was founded and the city began to grow, but now there was nothing lush there and almost no maples unless you count the maple family who lived four doors down from us, but I don’t think the town’s founders had that in mind. It wasn’t a slum, but from our living room you could see one.

The house had a nice workshop with its own power and the almost acre lot had potential but needed time and work. The house itself needed updating. The wiring was starting to burn out in several places. The kitchen was outdated and the bathrooms had suffered some water damage over the years. Nothing I couldn’t handle given the time and money, but if it made Emily happy, then at least I could imagine the potential the house and grounds had.

This is how we arranged our lives. It didn’t take long for word of mouth to kick in and soon Jack and I had almost more work than we could handle. Sometimes we worked together, but more often we split up and did our own tasks. We actually thought about hiring more people, but decided we didn’t want to deal with taxes and full-time employee salaries.

However, during the busier summer months, we hired one or two high school students. It was a good way for them to earn some pocket money and at the same time learn some skills. Overall, we were really lucky and made good money. So much so that I should have been able to live quite comfortably and have enough money to upgrade my own home over time.

I started to notice a few things. First, no matter how hard I worked and no matter how much our business brought in, I never had any extra money. Every time I thought I had some money left, something would happen that required an expensive repair or Emily saw a designer handbag or a completely impractical pair of shoes that she simply needed.

She once took a fancy to a little Cadillac XTS and kept pestering me until I finally bought it for her. Secondly, Emily’s attitude towards me began to change. So subtle that I didn’t even notice until it had been going on for about 6 years. Now her little pet names took on an offensive tone. Third, she never stopped pressuring me to make more money.

What the hell do you want me to do, princess? I’m already taking on as much work as I can. I barely have enough time to get this house, the house you wanted in decent condition. Meanwhile, you seem to have a closet full of designer clothes that I’ve never seen, boxes full of expensive jewelry and the bathroom looks like an advertisement for salon products.

If you think we need money, try to find a job. Then you can buy every expensive thing you want and maybe I’ll have a few dollars left over to actually finish this damn house. I was almost screaming by the end. Big mistake. This led to her giving me the cold shoulder for almost a year, which to be honest wasn’t as bad as I thought.

At this time, thoughts about the what-ifs of breaking up with her began to swirl in my head. The problem was that I still loved her, although it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to do so. The fact is, I am generally a person who always hopes for the best. I also didn’t believe in divorce. I was raised to believe that marriage is for life to the exclusion of all others and my parents were the perfect example of this.

Plus, I had a bad feeling that divorce would be costly. I didn’t know very well how it worked, but I had heard several stories where a woman found herself a good lawyer and literally ran over the man like a steamroller. For now, I decided that it was cheaper to keep her. That’s how I found myself that Monday sitting in my truck.

Thank God for the occasional tips I received from grateful customers. Emily never found out about this money and it was the only way I could cope with everything and afford a little of what I needed or at least the products. Shaking the breadcrumbs off my chest, I got out of the truck and went into the house.

Strangely, the living room was in darkness. Lazy as she was, Emily was usually up by this time and at least watching TV if not walking around town spending my damn money. Whatever, I thought. I took off my boots, hung up my work shirt and headed to the bedroom when I heard you guessed it. Sounds that signaled that my marriage was completely and irrevocably broken that I stopped. Take me, Brad. Take me.

I heard moans from someone I assumed was Emily. Wait a minute. Wasn’t her toxic ex named Brad? How the hell did he end up here? So, baby, where you going to dump this loser so we can finally be real together? Brad said. Honey, you know I can’t just yet. I’m trying to save up some money so I can hire a good lawyer to clean him out properly.

Maybe I can even take over his business. He makes a good living out of it. In fact, I think he’s hiding something from me. He must be making a ton of money because he works all the time. The stupid woman clearly did not understand that running a business involves large expenses and that I was already spending the money I earned on her whims.

Was this what it was all about? Was I not providing her with the life she wanted? I later found out that even though Emily broke up with Brad years ago, Brad never accepted it. I guess kids today call it ghosting. Anyway, Brad eventually track Emily down. He came to town and just accidentally ran into Emily one day when she was shopping for unwanted jewelry.

By then, our marriage had already begun to lose its shine, so it wasn’t difficult for her to reconnect with him. He cleverly exploited her frustration that I didn’t have more money to spend on her demands. Baby, I’ve been waiting for you for eight long years. I’ve already had to spend 2 years in this shitty town.

I know it’ll be worth it in the end, but damn, we’re both tired of living on crumbs when this idiot has a lot of money. Isn’t there a way to get this money early so we can get out of this hole? Again, I’m not sure what kind of money they thought I had. I once read an article by a psychologist that described how lazy people with no income become insanely jealous of those who, in their opinion, have money. Perhaps this applies here.

Emily replied, 8 years? Interesting, but she never seemed to connect the dots and realize he was a stalker after her. After her last comments, all my thoughts about saving this marriage completely disappeared and my thoughts began to turn to how I could deal with the two of them. One of my thoughts was to literally confront them right there and then.

While this idea had some appeal, it had several obvious drawbacks. I had heard enough and needed to think about my next steps. I considered storming into my bedroom and confronting them, but quickly decided that discretion was the better part of valor. I had heard enough and needed to think about my next steps.

Besides, I suddenly realized that I really needed to go to the restroom. I considered using the bathroom in the hallway, but quickly decided that they would hear the flushing noise and wonder why I was home. Although they didn’t want me to catch them, I also decided that they didn’t need to know that I knew.

This would give me the element of surprise when I launched a trap on them. The problem was that I had no idea what this trap would be. I had a sneaky idea. I snuck into the garage, opened up her little Cadillac that she wanted so badly, and poured a bottle of foul-smelling liquid into the car’s ventilation system.

It was meager retribution for the evil she had done to me, but it did at least improve my mood a little. Job done. I slipped back out and got into my truck. I decided to go to my parents. They were surprised to see me. “I thought you were working.” they said. I told them how I suddenly had a free day, came home early, and what had happened there.

They were both shocked, and I saw Dad blush. Mom just said I should stay for dinner. She was preparing her world-famous lasagna, or at least it should have been world-famous if she ever shared her recipe. Over dinner, we discussed my options. Mom thought I should divorce Emily as soon as possible. Dad and I pointed out the obvious disadvantages of this.

We toyed with the idea of temporarily moving to another, more male-friendly state and getting a divorce there, but a quick internet search revealed that the only place in the US that was even remotely fair was American Samoa, and only because it has a tradition of throwing traitors into an active volcano. Mom and Dad also pointed out that the longer I waited, the more it would cost, both in terms of alimony and how much Emily would receive for my business.