Mick and Keri

Mick and Keri and The Foundation of Failure

Chapter 34

Keri is smart and money wise. She makes in excess of $1.7 million a year and her net worth in liquid assets is in the $30 million range. She keeps what she calls an "adventure account" of about $500,000 for times when she wants to take me and go somewhere on a plane.

When we became serious, she talked me into letting me live off of her so that I could take my entire income and put it towards my retirement. I know what you are thinking, why would I need a retirement account when she is set for the rest of her and my life. She told me on the day we agreed to take these financial steps that she loved me and wanted to be sure that if I did ever leave her, that I would be set for my life as well.

I told her that I'm not leaving unless she throws me out, but she has kept the account and it is growing at a rate of about 18% per year. If I want to buy something for myself, or for a gift for Keri, I use my own money. Otherwise Keri covers all of the bills. I had a one-bedroom apartment when we met, and I kept it for almost a year before letting it go. She went to the landlord and negotiated a flat fee for the rent for the rest of the lease and saved me about $2500.

You know by now the situation with Barb and her kids, well our kids. Barb lives in Japan and did a worldwide search for a financial advisor that would meet her specific criteria. Barb chose Keri from a final list of eight financial people to manager her money. It was a lot of money, in the hundreds of millions by now, but Barb also wanted something else. She came to the US in person to sign the contracts, when she could have done it from home, because she wanted to get pregnant by some total stranger and have the child she had always yearned for.

She had no interest in a permanent marriage or other such arrangement. She just wanted a sperm donor. But when she arrived here, and she met Keri, she knew that this was a special woman and businessperson and it did not take long for her to intuitively feel that Keri and I were together. We were hiding it a bit back then, but she noticed that I loved Keri and she decided that I would be the perfect sperm donor. The three of us had an all-night orgy and sure enough she caught the magic bullet. It turned out to be a real magic bullet too, as she ended up pregnant with twins.

After she left and flew home, she wrote us to let us know what her plan had been and that she was, indeed, pregnant with twins. She then wrote us again to let us know that she had a son and a daughter. She named them Mick and Keri and her plan is to tell them that they are named after their aunt and uncle in America. Barb said that when the kids were older, she would tell them the truth, but she wants no money from me or support from me.

After we had been together, it became apparent to Barb that she cared for me and that I would be a good father, but she did not want to move from Japan and did not want the kids raised in the US. So, I was told that I was just a sperm donor and nothing else was required of me.

However, Keri and Barb took steps to ensure that should anything happen to Barb that I would be revealed as the father and I would become their custodial parent and her sole beneficiary. So, she told me that she did not want me in their lives and that I was, after all, just a sperm donor.

Keri set up the whole financial deal and Barb has decided to hide most of the money and has decided to raise the kids as middle class types in Japan. The plan was that until Barb passes away or they graduate from college, the kids will not know that they are worth hundreds of millions.

I came home one night to find Keri sitting in the TV room looking at her laptop. She was crying a little and I, of course, asked her what was wrong. She quickly closed the laptop and told me that it was nothing, just some news from an old friend. Keri never cries and that got me worried. I love her and when she is unhappy, so am I.

I moped around for a few days and the incident kind of ate at me. I asked Sarah, but she either did not know or would not tell me. She had one hell of a poker face. I got a feeling that something was up, and I could not put my finger on it. Then, the demons took a hold of me.

Was Keri pining for an old lover? I thought that we never had secrets. Now there was this. After a few days of letting it rot inside of me, I sat Keri down to talk.

"Keri, I love you."

"I know, Mick. I love you too from the bottom of my heart."

"I'm having a problem and I'm worried."

"What's wrong, my love?"

"When I came home a few nights ago, you were looking at your laptop and crying. When I came into the room, you closed the top. When I asked you, what was wrong you said nothing, just something to do with an old friend. We have never kept secrets, and so now I'm wondering what is so important or worrisome that you cannot tell me about it."

"Mick, I'm sorry. You're right that we don't keep secrets, but this IS a secret and I cannot share it with you. I promised a friend that this would go no farther than me. I gave my word. Will you trust me when I tell you that it is not anything that you have to worry about? Do you trust me enough to not pressure me to telling you?"

"Hon, I have trusted you up to this point. But I still worry. I still think that I'm in way over my pay grade with you. It haunts me every day that some guy with more of everything will come along and turn this wonderful dream into a nightmare."

"Mick, you have to trust me when I say that this is a secret that I have to keep and it is a secret that will not in any way hurt you, ever."

"OK, well then I won't worry about."

I lied. I had never lied to Keri, but she had never had a secret before, that I knew of. Now there was a secret that she knew I knew about, but not what it was, and she had asked me to put it out of my mind if I trusted her.

I have never been cheated on. I don't know what it would feel like or seem like or what the signs would be. Certainly, hiding things would be a sign. I was afraid of hiding things. My first wife hid the fact that her feelings for me had changed for two years. After seventeen years of marriage she hid from me the fact that she was falling out of love with me. I was working my ass off to give her and the kids a roof over their heads and the things they wanted, but I had lost sight of the fact that what they needed was a husband and a father.

Now I was looking at another case of something emotional, something that had to do with feelings was being kept from me. That had me worried; I m a guy. Sometimes the little intricacies of life have to be pointed out to me with a 2 x 4 upside the head. I was not able to divine the nature of the feelings of women on my own.

I already had a lot of things to worry about. We were coming up on the end of the season. I had a National Championship competition to sweat and I even had a few kids that were good enough to be selected as members of the US National Team for this year's Olympics. The pressure of that was immense. The kids had put their faith and trust in me for the past several years and I had done all I could to get them to the top of the pyramid.

My focus had to be there. We had all worked so hard, I owed them nothing less that my 100% attention and devotion. So, I put the question of Keri's secret out of the front of my mind and let it bubble and boil and cook in the background. I would come home after practice and be an emotional and mental vegetable.

During the month prior to the competitions, I often went from practice to my apartment and did my practice evaluations and my plans for the next day if I had to make adjustments to the original path. When I went home, I often just ate and sat quietly as I tried to sort things out in my head. Sometimes I even forgot to kiss Keri hello or goodbye.

Keri would sit down next to me and we would cuddle and try to make sure that we knew that we still loved one another. But too often my mind was on my work. This was the first time in the years since we had gotten together that I was so preoccupied. I'm sure that I seemed distant, but it would be OK as soon as the competitions were over. I would not have anything to do if my kids did make the US National team for the Olympics. The National Team coaches would take over with consultation with me.

Keri's company was hosting a conference covering new financial policies and practices. She was sweating the details of that and I had been so wrapped up in the present workload that we had not made love in over two weeks. I was either at my apartment at night or I was home with my head wrapped around my work or up my ass depending on how you look at it. And so it went, for about a month, until that fateful day when I got mad at practice and threw my three-ring binder down and broke it.