Like Father, Like Son

By Lou DeCaro

This is a poignant story about family values and interpersonal relationships. Like Father, Like Son will capture the readers attention from the very first page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524524555

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).

Book preview

Chapter 1

My name is John Solomon. I’m a private investigator. I’ve been a P.I. now for ten years. During the past ten years I’ve worked on some very high-profile cases including the one I’m about to describe. This case was very unique, and required the assistance of another P.I. named Helen. It’s not unusual for some cases to have a strange ending. Last week we finished a case for a woman that was convinced her husband was cheating on her. After the case was heard in court, the woman thanked us and went home. She was found three days later sitting in front of the television set with a bag of potato chips in her hand. She was dead. We never learned the cause of death. Helen swore she died of a broken heart. In some ways, marital cases are the hardest ones to deal with. They can be very emotional, and it’s really hard to remain objective and not get personally involved with your client.

Dr. L.J. Foote was forty two-years old. He was a general practitioner. His wife, Jane, was thirty-eight years old. They had two children. The oldest was an eighteen-year old daughter named Marsha. Their son was sixteen-years old. His name was John. Dr. Foote was a great provider. He gave his family everything including a beautiful home in Washingtonville. It had everything a person could possibly want in a home.

Then one day everything changed. Without any advance notice, his wife told him she wanted a divorce. As a matter of fact, Jane told her husband the sooner he signed a separation agreement the better off his family would be. All of this, of course, made no sense to Dr. Foote. He seemed to be a good husband for twenty-three years. Most people thought he worshiped his wife. When he asked her why she was going out almost every night during the week, she said she was shopping with some girlfriends. Then one day, Dr. Foote figured out how to get into Jane’s email account, and uncovered one incriminating email after another with a guy named Rod. Rod was twenty-five years old. He was a trainer at a gym on the north side of town.

Apparently, Rod was Jane’s fantasy come true. Twenty-three years her junior, he was considered a real stud by the women at the gym. He made Jane feel good about herself, and that empowered her with a sense of control she never truly had with her husband.

In the final analysis, what appeared to be love was only lust. After twenty-three years of marriage, Jane finally was able to domineer a man and use him for whatever purpose she desired. He was nothing more than a pawn in her little game of life. She enjoyed making fun of him whenever she got together with her girlfriends. Women like this have no clue what they’re doing until it’s too late.

Chapter 2

When Jane first met her husband, both were very naïve. And while there was nothing very unusual about that, it took time for them to learn how to make intelligent decisions. Of course, the most important decision they faced at the time was whether or not they should get married.

One thing I could never understand about people was why they got married at such an early age. I had a client that got married at a very early age only to find out it was the biggest mistake she ever made in her life. This woman suspected her husband was cheating on her even before they got married. I used to tell my clients to trust their instincts. If they thought their spouse was cheating on them, then it was probably true.

Jane was very paranoid and insecure. She and Dr. Foote got off to a rough start as a result. Jane thought her husband was unfaithful even before they got married. That certainly proved to be false. She would apologize to him for making false accusations, then make the same mistake over and over again. At the end of the day, she wound up blaming others for the breakdown of her marriage instead of herself. She even convinced herself she did nothing wrong, and lived in denial her entire life.

However, women like Jane tend to skip all of the delusional steps, and try to eliminate their husbands from their lives right away. To them, a husband turns out to be just an obstacle in their path to freedom. They forget their vows because they are convinced what they are doing is justified. Suddenly, they develop an entitlement mentality. Unfortunately, they quickly forget their obligations to their husband and children.

In Jane’s case, her children became an afterthought. The fact that they were eighteen and sixteen-years old made Jane think they didn’t need a full-time mother any longer. Strange as it seemed, I got the feeling that Jane felt she had done enough for her children, and that it was time she enjoyed life the way she wanted to enjoy it. That logic, twisted as it was, did not take into account their mental well-being at all. Their confusion was evident from the day they found out about the affair. Neither was given any reason why their parents were getting a divorce. Both also started to build a wall between them and their parents. This dysfunctional existence very quickly affected their ability to live a normal life. Fortunately, Dr. Foote realized the need to pay very close attention to his children. Jane wanted nothing to do with them. Dr. Foote feared his children would turn to drugs or alcohol to cope with the situation. That was the last thing he wanted.

Chapter 3

In a rare display of consideration for her family, Jane asked her husband if he would agree to attend marriage counseling. At first, he thought she wanted to go to counseling to save the marriage. But when he found out Jane was only interested in having the counselor convince him a separation agreement was in everyone’s best interests, his optimism and hope for a reconciliation quickly evaporated.

Jane was an intelligent woman. She knew her husband hadn’t done anything wrong. Despite that fact, she filed for divorce under the no-fault law. Realizing she had the advantage in this matter, she told him she would go ahead with a contested divorce unless he cooperated. He realized there was very little he could do to prevent the divorce because the law was written in Jane’s favor. All she had to do was live apart from him for six months. After six months, she would automatically be granted a divorce. In all likelihood, Jane would get custody of their son. John was sixteen-years old, and a star baseball player at Washingtonville High School. In all likelihood, Jane will probably get custody of John because he is still a minor. John fell under the protective blanket of the Family Court. The Court’s long standing policy has always been to leave the children with