Page 50 of The Liar I Married
FOUR WEEKS LATER
It’s hard to believe it’s only four weeks since Dolly tried to kill me.
I’m well, the broken blood vessels in my eyes have healed, and I look almost normal.
My weight is good and the physical therapist has improved my fitness.
Best of all I’m home with my girls. My parents are staying with us; I know it’s an excuse to make sure I can cope alone.
I’m almost a stranger to my kids who have grown like weeds but we’re getting along just fine.
I’m bursting with love for them. John and I are like newlyweds, and his new work schedule means we have more time together, although I did dump my portfolio on him.
I’m still good friends with Alex and will be starting back at art class again soon.
He and John have become good friends and we and Alex’s new girlfriend, Suzanna, spend much of our downtime together.
It’s like a new normality, a new life has emerged out of the tatters of a miserable existence that had all been engineered by my brother, but more of that later.
Of course, I was cleared of causing the accident.
Michael’s fingerprints were all over the steering wheel.
The computer in Dolly’s office confirmed there never was a doctor watching over me.
The only emails were between her and Michael.
The plan to get my inheritance had started way before the accident and was well recorded in the emails.
When I didn’t die in the wreck, and for the following year, I’d been asleep, Michael was in a panic.
He needed to pay people and had almost run through his inheritance.
Fearing being discovered and sent to jail, he encouraged John to switch off life support.
They sent me to Grandma’s house but when I still didn’t die, Michael arranged for Dolly to take over.
He needed to control my outcome and decided to wake me because he’d already laid down the groundwork to make me appear I was losing my mind and believed he could finish the job. It had almost worked.
After viewing the video and the evidence gathered by the auditors at the firm, Michael was charged with embezzlement and attempted murder along with Dolly.
The justice system takes a long time to make their conclusions but since I changed my will again, I don’t believe Michael or Dolly will be a problem for us anytime soon.
We’ve had many family meetings. The entire fiasco was a shock to my mom especially when my dad sat down with us and came clean about Andrea Long and her daughter Michelle.
The story went this way: Michael met Andrea at a party and had no idea she was underage by a month or so.
When Andrea discovered she was carrying his child, she contacted him but he stonewalled her, so she went to my father.
At first, Dad believed she was a fortune hunter but after she divulged some personal information about Michael and threatened to go to the media, Dad agreed to support her until the baby was born.
After a DNA test proved her case, he went to Michael who swore he didn’t remember meeting her.
The chance of being charged would ruin his career, so Dad decided to continue to support Andrea and her child.
He set up a trust fund for Michelle. However, since her birth, Dad has become attached to her and wants Michelle included in our family. We all agreed.
Everything came to a head the night Grandma died.
She’d decided to confront my dad after receiving the report from the private detective.
It all started when my grandma’s friend ran into Dad in a restaurant when he was dining with Andrea.
Dad suspects she went straight to Grandma to spread the gossip and Grandma took it from there.
She flung the accusations and the photographs from the private detective into my dad’s face and fired him.
Hearing what had happened, Michael used Grandma for his own ends to make her change her will.
He turned her against John with the same lies he fed me.
She went to her grave believing John and my dad were unfaithful.
I have no desire to live at Stonebridge Manor—not for some time, at least. The strange things that happened there still haunt me, hovering in the back of my mind like the bad dreams you can never forget.
Maybe one day we’ll all gather there for the holidays again to trim the tree and make new happy memories.
In the meantime, it will be kept pristine by a proficient staff.
There is one thing that remains a mystery: the phones throughout Grandma’s house were never disconnected—I guess, I must be a little crazy after all.
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