Read Online The Winners Circle by Christopher Klim - Free Book Online Page B

heart against the suggestion. That wasn’t what Chelsea wanted. She was angry for some reason. He just didn’t know why.
    “ Her claim is bogus,” Jerry said. “I want children. So does she.”
    “ Where are they? That’s what the court will ask. Where are the children? It’s the basis of her suit.”
    “ We haven’t gotten around to children yet.”
    “ Do you realize how you sound?”
    “ I’m being honest.”
    “ This woman wants a divorce.”
    “ She’s being led on by that Cogdon man.”
    “ She’s expediting her departure.” Tisch put down the paperwork and cast a staid look on Jerry. “Accept her terms, and you’ll have a clean break. Most men would jump at that.”
    Jerry wondered if they spoke the same language.
    “ They’ll be no recourse in the future,” Tisch continued. “Once the paperwork is approved by the courts, she won’t be able to make another claim. No alimony. Nothing. Your money will always be yours.”
    “ It’s not about the money.”
    “ At this juncture, it’s only about the money.”
    “ I want children too. I want them.”
    “ You’re missing the point.”
    “ But it’s not true.”
    “ What does the truth have to do with this?” Tisch walked around the desk. His long limbs moved with grace, like an alien Jerry’d seen on late night TV, gliding toward its human subject on the examination table.
    That’s how Jerry felt, strapped down and dissected by strangers with large probing eyes. There were the secretaries with their questions and forms, not to mention Tisch and his legal pad full of scribbled notes. A dry record of Jerry’s personal life with Chelsea was being gathered and fed into files and computers for the courts. The emphasis centered on dates, figures, and property—not days, laughter, and memories. It was inhuman, exposing all the wrong parts of their characters.
    “ Let the case proceed uninterrupted,” Tisch continued. “The annulment will come to fruition without a legal battle. It’s the smoothest, if not the cheapest path.”
    “ What if I contest?”
    “ You’ll have to answer the primary question in her suit. Where are the children? Their absence strongly supports her argument.”
    “ I can say it’s her fault.”
    “ What are you trying to accomplish, Mr. Nearing? That will only drag this out to the same end. Do you understand?”
    Jerry refused to understand. Chelsea was confused, her mind clouded by Haskell Cogdon. If Jerry discovered a way to jog her memory, she’d snap out of it and return to him. She used to say, ‘There isn’t a place in the world for me without you.’ How could she forget that? How could anyone?
    “ I want to talk to her,” Jerry said.
    Tisch hovered close, his head shifting like a slow motion pendulum. “Mr. Nearing.”
    Jerry kept waiting for some hideous probe—a jagged spiraling tool—to come whirling toward his brain. He’d wake up without Chelsea, stripped of his memory of the event. “I need more time.”
    “ What do you want me to do?”
    “ It’s a game.”
    “ Excuse me?”
    Jerry followed events backward, drawing a line to the instant that Cogdon first set foot on his farm. He’d been a fool to let the little attorney seize the upper hand. Chelsea was his girl. He understood her in ways that Cogdon could never grasp. Life was ideal for her now, but what if things went sour? Who knew her then? He was experienced at lifting her from the hole that she’d inevitably dig for herself.
    “ Mr. Nearing?” Tisch stopped moving, fazed by Jerry’s deep current of thought.
    “ Let Cogdon try anything he likes.”
    Jerry stormed from the office. He rushed past the secretary pool and another massive array of books. His heart beat like when he broke Peter Kurt’s nose by the creek, but this time, he set his sights on Haskell Cogdon. Let Cogdon come close and—wham—he’d drive the creep to the ground.
     
     
     
     
     
    Jerry drove to the mall. It was what Chelsea used to do when she