When my parents got divorced in November 1988, they agreed that Mom would keep the children and the good station wagon, Dad would get the house and the old station wagon. Dad said that we could stay in the house until Mom could afford to rent a new place. Meanwhile, he moved into a tiny apartment on the beach.

Soon after that, we discovered the reason Mom had finally asked for a divorce after enduring 14 years of a bad marriage. She had a new boyfriend, a man she worked with named Dale. Dale was handsome, kind and charming. He was also still married to his third wife, Constance, who was very pregnant. I don't know if Dale told Constance about my mom, or if my father was the one who clued her in. I do know that my father spent a lot of time at Constance's house, cooking up revenge. Sometimes we would go with him to her beautiful house in her beautiful neighborhood. When I think of her house I think of apple pies and maple trees, and beautiful oak furniture. She and Dale had a toddler son, and we four would entertain him outside while she plotted with our father.

The main thing Dad and Constance did together was hire a detective to get video footage of my mother with Dale and mail the tape to his commanding officer. The military is very serious about adultery, and he was demoted a rank. After that Constance didn't have an active hand in the mischief-making, other than keeping my father informed of Dale's whereabouts and his meetings with my mother.

Dale moved a few of his things into our house, including his computer. When my father found out, he broke in and destroyed anything he could find that might be Dale's. He picked up the computer components and smashed them on the floor, broke all of the disks, and threw everything else into the fireplace and burned it. We came home from school to find Dale and our mother talking to the police amidst the mess.

It was obvious and easily proven that my father was the culprit, and he was subsequently demoted a rank, but didn't face criminal charges. Dale moved back in with Constance, but secretly kept seeing my mother. It was making my mother miserable, but she was too much in love to cut him off completely.