Page 84 - The Letter By Ann Newhouse

‘We’re flying to Africa and from there we are going on a cruise around the coast before coming home’, Sherry informed us, but she remained slightly deflated for the rest of the evening. At one-point Brian asked her to ‘ease up’ on her drinking making the strained atmosphere even worse.
Thankfully at midnight Brian ordered a taxi and they both left, I hate to admit it, but I was glad the night was finished.
‘I think Brian wears the trousers in that relationship and that is putting it lightly’, Penny expressed what we were both thinking. ‘I think your right I worry for the future of that marriage, Sherry is usually a very strong person I hope she hasn’t made a mistake’, I felt so bad for her after what I witnessed tonight.
We ordered a nightcap of hot tea having had our fill of cocktails for a very long time. ‘Brian reminds me a little of my husband’, she picked up her cup of steaming tea and gently blew across the top, ‘a good man but very old fashioned and set in his ways. He always felt he had the right to tell you what to do and how to do it we had many a heated argument I can tell you. I always gave in to him though, back then you were told ‘you made your bed now lie on it’.
‘I’m going to let you into a secret Amber!’ She looked up from her cup and staring me directly in the eyes she continued, ‘I’ve never told anyone this before not my husband not my son. I wanted to tell Stanley before he died but felt by then no good would come from it’, pausing to sip her tea she seems to brace and then continued, ‘before I met my husband I was in my last year of college I was nineteen and an only child with very strict conservative parents. I fell in love with my teacher and we began an affair, he was ten years older and we were so in love’, a gentle smile flitted across her face at the memory but just as quickly her expression changed, ‘I became pregnant very soon into our relationship but he didn’t want to know, apparently he