Chapter 5 - The Hidden Truth
I spent the next three weeks entirely focused on physical therapy and my children.
I was transferred to a high-end rehabilitation clinic where the twins could stay in a suite with my private nurses.
Every step I took on the parallel bars sent shooting agony up my spine.
But anger proved to be a magnificent substitute for painkillers.
I was determined to walk out of this facility on my own two feet.
My parents never called to check on my recovery, and I was grateful for the silence.
The thirty-day eviction notice was rapidly approaching its deadline.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, my private investigator finally arrived at the clinic.
His name was Vance, and he looked like a man who rarely slept.
He sat in the chair beside my wheelchair and dropped a heavy, sealed folder onto my lap.
"Your husband was a very busy man before his heart gave out," Vance said bluntly.
I opened the folder and found dozens of surveillance photographs.
The pictures showed Greg and my mother meeting secretly at expensive restaurants and secluded parks.
They were always huddled together, looking over legal documents and financial spreadsheets.
"Greg was heavily in debt to some very dangerous people," Vance explained.
"He was planning to divorce you and force a hostile takeover of your company to pay them off."
I stared at a photo of my mother smiling warmly at the man plotting to destroy me.
"Why was my mother involved in this?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Vance pulled a copy of a drafted legal contract from the back of the folder.
"Your mother agreed to testify against you in the divorce proceedings," he said.
"She was going to claim you were an unfit mother with a substance abuse problem."
Bile rose in my throat as I read the vicious lies printed on the legal paper.
"In exchange for ruining your life and taking your children, Greg promised her the Cayman Islands trust," Vance concluded.
My own mother was willing to destroy my entire existence for luxury vacations and country club fees.
I closed the folder, feeling a bizarre sense of calm wash over me.
The woman who gave birth to me was dead in my eyes.
"There is one more thing, Mara," Vance said, leaning forward with a grim expression.
"I looked into the autopsy report from Greg's sudden heart attack."
Vance handed me a toxicological report that had been buried deep in the county archives.
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"Greg did not die from natural causes," the investigator revealed.
"He was poisoned with a lethal dose of digitalis, and your mother was the last person to see him alive."
