AN: Our power went out at work during the snow storm. It wasn't like we had any customers but the hilarity that we didn't actually want to work anyway didn't escape us. I spent two hours reading a really badly written novel sitting on the framing desk with my framer who laid there playing a game on her phone and my clerk who watched cartoons. Hubby asked if we needed him to come out and I explained no, that framer and I have anger issues and regularly lift heavy objects as part of our jobs and we know where all the sharp objects are in the store even in the dark. So remember that campers. If you decide to rob a craft store during a power outage the employees have a sadistic streak and we laugh off blood. Ours, yours...

Chapter 3 - Monday, three weeks later

"You have GOT to be kidding me." Pete all but shouted and threw up his hands.

"What was that?" Sam asked absently from her desk in the corner of her living room.

"You just got a letter from the diocese. They want you and your 'husband' Jack," Pete ground his teeth on Jack's name. "To attend mandatory marriage counseling." Pete waved the letter in front of him, annoyance clearly in his voice and face.

"What?" Sam asked incredulously. She and the General had filed their paperwork dutifully with the church. She had been told by the priest that the church would review it then assign a defender of the marriage to talk to them when they interviewed, not be forced to attend marriage classes.

"Yah, apparently neither of you gave sufficient reason why the annulment should be moved forward and they want to talk to you as a 'couple'." He snorted in ire.

Sam sighed. "Pete, we don't need a big church wedding. We can just—"

"No. I want this marriage to him erased, babe. Completely. I don't care how long it takes." He told her emphatically. He'd be damned if his new wife was going to have a trail of ex-husbands. It was bad enough she had a trail of ex-lovers.

Sam bit her lip. He'd care if he knew it might take a year or more, she thought, and what if he needed one too. Daniel had reminded her at their last lunch that Pete was also divorced. Since neither he nor his ex-wife were Catholic, this probably wasn't a problem in his case, she told herself. Sam had never been involved in the church outside of catechism and had no idea that they would just have to go through this a second time with Pete for the church wedding he wanted. "I'll talk to him in the morning." She said softly as she thought about what reaction she would get this time from Jack.

She was so distracted by the incident that she didn't even ask him why he was opening her private mail. He had a vested interest in the proceedings after all, since the church situation applied to him as well. But this was something that she and the General had to rectify themselves.