Dallas, Texas

"Good afternoon, Shepard residence, Kristin speaking", JR listened and was a little disappointed when Sue Ellen's younger sister picked up the phone instead of his wife, it was Thursday afternoon and Sue Ellen had been gone for almost a week, and he thought that that was surely enough time to calm down. He thought it was time to establish some form of contact with her and a phone call seemed the most appropriate first step, though just showing up on her mother's doorstep would have possibly been more effective; however, he didn't feel like dealing with Patricia and his wife all in one go, so he chose to just call her instead. "Kristin", he adjusted his voice to reflect a charming and charismatic tone before he continued to speak, "how are you? How's school?" he made polite conversation with her, though he was actually vaguely interested in her schooling because for some insane reason, he was still footing the bill for the private school she attended, despite Patricia's side of the original negotiation falling flat years ago. Giving him a short, polite answer, Kristin's mind began to wander, because as much as she liked JR Ewing, he'd never been particularly interested in her life, and from the overly jovial tone in his voice, she knew that there was some hidden meaning behind his phone call. "Good, good. Now, is your sister there by any chance? I'd like to speak to her", he paused and waited for Kristin to answer and he was surprised when she sounded more confused than anything else at his question and he genuinely believed her when she said that she hadn't seen Sue Ellen since their visit to Southfork over the holidays. Covering his tracks by acting as if he'd forgotten that she was actually visiting a few college friends this week, he said goodbye to Kristin and hoped that she didn't get suspicious. If Patricia found out that her daughter had left her husband's house and wasn't planning on coming home to her mother's house in the meantime, she would throw a fit and JR would be the one she blamed for everything, and JR really didn't want to deal with Patricia as well as his wife. Patricia Shepard had very conservative ideas of acceptable behaviour for a lady, and being out, alone in the world was not one of them; no, JR wanted to avoid involving Patricia for as long as possible. Leaning back in his chair, he considered the situation; if she wasn't staying with her family in Austin, then where was she staying? He'd willingly allowed her a few days alone to cool off without his interference, but that was when he'd believed she was under the rule of Patricia Shepard and he'd assumed that she would return home with her tail between her legs soon enough. Now he was worried though, because things were a lot different than he'd originally assumed and he didn't like the direction his thoughts were taking. Picking up the phone, he dialled a familiar number; if she wasn't going to play fair, then neither was he.

Austin, Texas

Staring absentmindedly out the window of a coffee shop, Sue Ellen let out an audible sigh when she lifted the mug to her mouth and realised it was empty; focusing on drinking her coffee had been the only thing distracting her from the boredom and loneliness she felt, and now that it was finished, she felt empty and lost again. Despite the fact that Austin had been her home for over twenty years, the minute she'd graduated college, a large percentage of her social connections had disappeared, then when she stopped modelling, her social circle got even smaller, and now, two and a half years later, she had almost no friends or acquaintances. The only people she knew in Austin now were her mother, sister and their family 'friends', and none of those people were people she wished to make contact with. There was one thing and one thing only that made Dallas look appealing right now and that was that at least in Dallas she had had some social interaction, even if it was only with her mother-in-law and the DOA ladies. However, her present loneliness wasn't bad enough to push her into actually making any plans to go back there, because despite the fact that she did miss having someone to talk to, her entire life in Dallas was connected to JR Ewing and going back there would mean seeing him, the exact opposite of what she wanted right now. She'd had a lot of time to think about everything that had happened and she was now entirely convinced that JR's cheating was not a one-off incident, there was just too much evidence pointing in the direction of him being a serial cheater for her to believe that he'd only strayed once. She'd been too naïve and trusting when she believed his insistence that he had to work late nights at the office, even when Jock and Bobby were at home, and the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that he hadn't been anywhere near as lonely as she had been every time he went out-of-town on business. She felt foolish and humiliated as she analysed the way their marriage had played out, because with the knowledge that he'd cheated on her when they were dating, realistically, it was silly and naïve to think that he'd changed when he'd married her. It pained her to think about all the times where she had driven herself into an emotionally fragile state in pursuit of making their lives perfect, because now, those efforts seemed like a total waste and she felt like an idiot for worrying so much about them when it was apparent that he couldn't care less. Sighing to herself, she stood and walked out of the coffee shop, though as the door closed behind her, the emptiness and loneliness consumed her again and she felt hopeless as she realised that not only did she have no direction for her afternoon, she had no direction for her life in general.

Dallas, Texas

"She withdrew how much!?" JR was speechless as the man on the other end of the line detailed the four large cash withdrawals from their joint bank account. In the grand scheme of things, the withdrawals were pennies to JR Ewing, and in their everyday life, he didn't really have a problem with his wife spending money, because it gave him great satisfaction to know he could well afford her expensive tastes. What rendered him speechless though was hearing someone else repeat the number back to him over the phone, because he didn't usually pay much attention to her spending habits and just hearing the sheer amount of money she could burn through in less than a week was a bit of a shock to him. However, as he wrote down a few numbers, the total sum of her withdrawals made a little more sense. He didn't know where she was staying, but he knew it wasn't with her mother and with the amount she'd withdrawn, it was safe to say that she wasn't living in poverty. She had more than enough to cover her general living expenses and participate in her favourite hobby: shopping, and if she were doing that, then she was living a more normal life than he'd expected, and that gave him hope. In the past, she'd ignored her problems and buried them so often that when they did finally come to the surface, she was usually an emotional mess, one that needed to be calmed down by intervention of either her husband, her mother-in-law or by a doctor. So if she was successfully surviving in Austin alone, without any support and without having had a breakdown, then truthfully, she was dealing with things better than he had expected. It was a thought that annoyed him somewhat because of course he wanted his wife and child to be happy and healthy, but he hated the idea that they could be that without him; he liked being the one she relied on, even if it was only for the power trip. Walking over to the bar in his office, he sighed to himself as he poured a drink and considered the situation; after some deliberation, he decided that the smartest thing to do would be to wait until his private investigator got back to him with a full report of Sue Ellen's activities before he decided his next move. A lot was riding on the contents of that report and his actions following it, because she'd been gone almost a week and by the time Sunday afternoon arrived, his cover-excuse with his parents would be expired and they would certainly start to get suspicious. They had an image to portray to his family and to the world and separating or divorcing for any reason, but especially at this point in time, just before the birth of their child, was not an option; no, she would be back at Southfork soon, whether she liked it or not.

To be continued…