Finally, I arranged for a Skype session with her. Although she didn’t know it, I had to get up way before dawn to have the call. That didn’t improve my mood one bit.
New Zealand is literally the last stop on the Internet, the dead end of the big fiber-optic undersea cables that link the globe together. That means that connections are often bad and interruptions are common. But somehow we got lucky, and when we finally had our “face-to-face” our link was rock solid.
When the connection went through and her face appeared on my computer screen, it sent a shock through me. She still looked beautiful and her image reminded me of the woman I’d fallen in love with so long. “This isn’t going to be easy,” I thought.
The call didn’t start off well. She demanded to know where I was, and when I wouldn’t tell her she alternated between anger and weeping. “Why did you run away?” she sniffled. “Why won’t you tell me where you are?”
I sighed. “Honestly, Ginny, you broke my heart and I couldn’t bear to be around all the places and things that reminded me of you. Finally I decided that the only thing I could do was to get as far away from you as possible.”
To my surprise, she actually smiled. “That means you still have feelings for me,” she said brightly. “Why don’t you stop all this foolishness and come back to me?”
I tried not to get sarcastic. “Ginny, you cheated on me. You broke your marriage vows and had an affair with another man. How can I come back to you after that?”
Her face fell, but then she got a determined look on her face. “I know, Thomas, and I feel so terrible about that. But I was vulnerable.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why were you vulnerable?”
She shook her head as though I was dumb not to understand. “Well of course because I had just had my last laser treatment and I was still getting used to my new look. When he came along and told me I was beautiful, of course I was going to respond.”
That really galled me. “But I told you you were beautiful,” I said. “I’ve always thought so since the first time I saw you.”
“Yes, but you told me that before I got my birthmark removed. He had never seen me before, so his compliments meant a lot more to me,” she said brightly.
I couldn’t even find the words to respond to that, but the expression on my face must have made my reaction clear because Ginny’s tone suddenly changed and her face clouded up. “But I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve been so lonely without you,” she sniffled. “Literally there hasn’t been a day go by that I haven’t cried. I know what I did was terrible, and you don’t know how many times I’ve kicked myself for being so stupid and so gullible.”
She paused to dab her eyes and then went on. “But it wasn’t really my fault. I had no way of knowing that Ameer was some sort of spy trained at seduction. To me he was just a handsome guy who filled my head with compliments and sweet talk. I got swept away before I even hardly knew it. And the thing was, he wasn’t even interested in me! He was just using me to find out about you.” She blew her nose and added, “I guess that’s why he always wanted to go to our house.”
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