Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“I’m waiting for you to calm down first, baby. It’s bad. It’s really bad.”
“I’m calm, mom. Now tell me what you’re saying.” I braced myself as if expecting a blow and watched her swallow hard and open and close her mouth twice before the words came spilling out.
“I’m saying that your wife is a snake. She and her friends planned this whole thing.” I barely heard her over the buzzing in my ears. I’d been trying to come to terms with all of this on my own during my time in the desert.
One of the things that had come back to me in bits and pieces was the reason for my hasty wedding. The anger never left me, and neither did the reason for that anger, though things had grown a bit hazy over the years. The one thing that had stuck with me, no matter what, was the fact that Elena had cheated on me while away on a trip with her friends.
That is the story that had been told to me and the reason why I’d treated her the way I had. Even when I doubted the truth in those words, I still made myself accept them. Otherwise, I’d have wronged her egregiously, and that’s not something I had been ready or willing to live with.
But now, as I looked at the proof in her hands, I had no other alternative than to accept it. “Do you know why I believe this? Because Reggie found the same thing. It’s only after he went digging that I received this anonymously in the mail. Someone he talked to must’ve got spooked and decided to come clean; I don’t know, I just know that we’ve got to fix this.
What she had were printouts of conversations between Janie, Mary, Noel, and Nicole, going back and forth for weeks, even months. They were first hashing out their plan and then laughing at Elena and congratulating themselves when their plot bore fruit.
Now, I know these things can be faked and manipulated, but for some reason, I believed it without question because this is exactly the kind of people they are, especially Mary and her spawn. But Janie? As certifiable as she is, this was a stretch.
I didn’t gather much at a glance, so I’ll have to take my time when my head is no longer hot and go over everything, but what Mom had highlighted was more than enough to make me lose my shit. The four of them had screwed me over royally. Not just me but the love of my life. The woman I would die for. They’d used me to hurt her, and what’s most abhorrent about the whole thing is that I believed them. I never gave her a chance.
“But why?” I shook my head as I read the messages over and over, focusing on the most pertinent points. It was like a blueprint for sabotage. The worst part is that if I had asked Elena outright, I’d have believed her if she told me that it wasn’t true, but I never gave her the chance because the night I heard about her cheating and was given proof, I’d gone on a bender and stayed there for the next four and a half years.
Mom rifled through the folders on the table and pressed something into my hands. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at in the beginning, all I saw were pictures of a much younger me, but nothing about them added up to anything.
“What am I looking at, Mom? What am I supposed to be seeing?” The photos were marked with dates and places, but I couldn’t see what that had to do with anything. Some of the images were of Elena and me, especially when we first started dating, but again, there was nothing suspicious about them, nothing to make my mother freak out the way she was doing now.
“Look at the evidence in your hands. She’s been obsessed with you since she was a kid. This whole thing is a setup, and we did Elena wrong.” She pointed out a younger Janie in the background of each and every one of the pictures in my hands. I felt something cold slither down my stomach, and my knees grew weak. I had to reach out and hold onto the chair to keep myself upright.
“Were these pictures doctored, Mom?”
“No, remember I told you that Reggie wanted to do a thorough investigation before giving us anything? He looked into everything; here, look, this is the proof. He matched dates, went back into Janie’s social media posts, found old friends of hers, even going back to high school, and they were more than happy to talk because none of them liked her. She’s not a nice person. She made this whole thing up with the help of Mary and her daughters, along with your manager and that Matt guy. Her dad also helped her, but I guess you can’t fault him for that. He is her dad, after all.”