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    Once a Widow, Ever a Wife: A Novel
    Once a Widow, Ever a Wife: A Novel
    Once a Widow, Ever a Wife: A Novel
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    Once a Widow, Ever a Wife: A Novel

    By Lou DeCaro

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    About this ebook

    This is a psychological novel about the lives of two couples that are forced to deal with forces and circumstances beyond their control. Extremely intense and surprisingly shocking, Once a Widow, Ever a Wife will capture the readers attention from the very first page.

    This psychological drama never ceases to amaze the reader with its complex structure and shocking turn of events. Lou DeCaro has once again crafted a novel that is an absolute must read.

    Ray Buurma
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateJan 16, 2015
    ISBN9781503535251
    Once a Widow, Ever a Wife: A Novel
    Author

    Lou DeCaro

    Lou DeCaro is the author of In The Dim Light Of The Day (Xlibris, November 2012), Marshmallow Dreams And Bitter Tangerines (Xlibris, October 2013), Anthony (Xlibris. January 2014), The Blind Eye of Love (Xlibris, October 2014), Once A Widow, Ever A Wife (Xlibris, January 2015), The Champion of Love (Xlibris, April 2015), Forever and a Day (Xlibris, August 2015), The Rose of Cuba (Xlibris, November 2015), The Writer of Lies (Xlibris}, January 2016), The Lonely and the Disabled (Xlibris, March 2016), Like Father, Like Son (Xlibris, July 2016), Maria (Xlibris, October 2016), The Pharaoh Club (Xlibris, January 2017), The Love Armada (Xlibris, May2017), Infirmed (Xlibris, October 2017), The Anger of Love (Xlibris, January 2018), A Moment in Time (Xlibris, March 2018), Johnny Reb's (Xlibris, May 2018), Jar of Broken Hearts (Xlibris, September 2018),Tears from the River of Love (Xlibris, September 2018),and False Love (Xlibris, June 2019).

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      Book preview

      Once a Widow, Ever a Wife - Lou DeCaro

      CHAPTER 1

      My name is Cathy. My marriage was both simple and complex. I realize on the surface that sounds paradoxical, but truthfully that was the case. It began simple enough. Paul and I fell in love. At least we thought it was love. After a couple of years, we got married. The same thing happened to my neighbor, Mary.

      The complex side of the equation began not too long after we got married. The proverbial honeymoon ended with the first sign of disapproval. At first, I thought it best to compromise my principles and play the good wife for the sake of the marriage. Whenever we were with family or friends I would smile, and in the process I would pretend that everything was perfect. But, no amount of smiles could compensate for the sadness inside of me. I suffered because I feared rejection. How would my family and friends react if they found out I was unhappy? What would they think of me if they figured out my marriage was on shaky ground. How would they react? Surely, I thought, I would be blamed. At least, I thought I would. As time went by, I built up a defense mechanism to shelter the feelings of undeserved guilt and pain I experienced every time my husband rejected me. Every time he lied to me, I spun another layer onto my protective cocoon. And every time I had to force a smile, I felt another dagger enter my heart. Yet, I forged ahead in the name of loyalty and devotion. I was the good wife. At the very least, I could hold my head high. I also did my best to control my anger. But, despite my best efforts, the eventual load became too heavy to bear. There came a point in time I couldn’t delude myself any longer. I became very demanding, and started to look elsewhere for fulfillment,.

      I remember the day my husband filed for divorce like it was yesterday. Was this the same man that professed his love for me a thousand times in the past? I guess they were just words. I did very little to save my marriage. I didn’t want to attend counseling, and refused to even became involved with the church. I didn’t do anything to try to change his mind. At the same time, I felt helpless, abandoned, and angry. These were feelings I had never felt before. Right away, I tried to figure out what went wrong. I tried to make sense of a situation that no reasoning could explain. I started thinking of what I would say to my family and friends. I hadn’t given it much thought, but now I had no choice. I now realized I would be the object of rumor and innuendo by a lot of people in my life. It didn’t take long for people to take sides. I began to feel like a trapped animal with no one to put me out of my misery. My self-worth began to disappear. I started to question everything I did from the time I first met my husband until now. And, worst of all, I was about to be alone.

      But much of my misery was brought on by myself. I stopped communicating with my husband. I failed to realize he was a good person, and instead made him out to be someone he truly wasn’t. The demons from my abusive childhood prevented me from acting properly. I didn’t care if I lost the only person that ever meant anything to me. I was out to satisfy my own desires.

      CHAPTER 2

      Paul and I believed marriage was a sacred act. While most people still do, things have changed. Certainly, the traditional wedding vows don’t hold the same meaning as they did years ago. But unlike now, marriage meant everything to me in the beginning. It was the step I had to take before my parents would consider me an adult. If you weren’t married by the time you were twenty-one, something was wrong with you. Maybe it was different for men. But, for a woman, if you couldn’t find a husband by then, you only had yourself to blame. Adding insult to injury, you were considered an old maid at twenty-five, and a total misfit if you were thirty.

      But I was twenty-one. A lot of people asked me why I got married at such an early age. After all, what does a twenty-one year old woman really know? I guess I wanted to be like all the women on television that played the part of the wife and mother. It was an idealistic lifestyle defined in simple terms. I would be the homemaker. My husband would be the breadwinner. I would have one boy and one girl, and be a stay-at-home mom. It was that simple. After all, what did I know? I was told that’s the way it should be. I also didn’t know any women that raised a family and worked a full-time job like most women do today. Today, there is something wrong with you if you don’t do both. For me, the definition of a good wife was written long before I was born. My grandmother spent her life teaching my mother what a good wife and mother should be like. And my mother did the same to me. That was every mother’s role in those days. They raised their daughters to be like themselves. Some mothers even told their daughters to look the other way if their husbands were unfaithful. They told us that divorce was out of the question. We had to stay married no matter what for the sake of the children. And most of all, we could never divorce our husbands because it would bring disgrace to the family. Our physical and emotional well-being was a distant third on life’s priority list.

      In the final analysis, it takes two people to destroy a marriage. No one abandons their spouse without a reason. The reasons may vary from marriage to marriage, but the end result is basically the same. Lives are destroyed, and families disintegrate. In the beginning, I blamed myself. For the longest time I was in denial, and struggled to find the answers to a thousand questions I would ask myself as I lay awake at night trying to figure out what went wrong. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Then one day the phone rang. It was my neighbor, Mary. The moment she told me she was going to file for divorce, I began to understand.

      CHAPTER 3

      Mary was like my alter ego. Our views about almost everything were so opposite, it was a wonder we remained friends. Maybe living across the street from each other in Westchester had something to do with it. My husband was an attorney. Mary’s husband was a doctor. Mary always said she had everything she wanted and needed. Everything, that is, except love.

      When Mary started suspecting her husband was cheating on her, she went out and bought a voice-activated recording device. Always a bit paranoid, Mary was hell-bent on catching her husband in the act. Even though spying on your spouse was unethical and illegal, Mary went ahead with her plan. However, Sam was one step ahead of her. When he was alone, he would

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