Chapter 7 - The Discovery
With Jessica locked away safely behind bars, a strange, profound quiet finally descended upon our family. But the drama wasn't entirely over. Two weeks before the final court hearing, Garrett called me from the house he was clearing out—the suburban property he had shared with Jessica that was now being liquidated to pay off her debts.
"Emily, you need to come over here," Garrett said, his voice sounding hollow over the speakerphone. "I found something in the crawlspace under the stairs. It... it changes things."
I drove over to the house, leaving the kids with my mother. The home was stripped bare, cardboard boxes lining the hallway. Garrett met me in the living room, holding an old, dust-covered metal filing box.
"She kept everything, Emily," Garrett said, setting the box on the kitchen counter. "I thought she was just angry about the fertility treatments. But look at this."
He opened the box, pulling out a stack of documents dated six years ago—right around the time my divorce began in Seattle. There were printouts of my ex-husband’s financial statements, private investigator reports detailing my movements, and copies of letters sent anonymously to my ex-husband's lawyers.
Jessica had been secretly feeding my ex-husband information during our custody battle, trying to ensure that I would lose the kids or be forced to stay in Washington, entirely out of the family will. She had been actively trying to destroy my life long before she ever threw the science kit against the wall.
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"She was terrified that if you came back to Ohio, Mom and Dad would realize how much money she was stealing from the family business accounts," Garrett explained, his head down. "She wanted you gone so she could remain the only child left to inherit the estate."
I stared at the documents, the final layers of deception peeling away. It wasn't about fertility, and it wasn't about envy. It was about pure, calculated greed.
