Continuing On

We never thought we would still be at this point eight years later.

Our story continues—not with the same shock we felt the first time we uncovered all the fraud she committed—but with a slow, grinding realization: things never really leveled out. We kept telling ourselves they would. That somehow, eventually, “normal” would return.

We’ve been wrong before.

In our last update, we talked about her son building a house on land he essentially cheated out from under my dad. Oddly enough, Dad seemed proud of it. It became the main thing he wanted to talk about—how it was coming along, the progress, the details.

I tried to hold my tongue, but I know my face and body language said everything I wasn’t willing to say out loud.

When the house was finally near completion, Dad wanted us to see it. He actually snuck us in for a few minutes. We later found out the house wasn’t even in the son’s name—it was in the daughter-in-law’s name. I don’t know if that really changes anything, but it certainly didn’t make the situation feel any better.

I wasn’t impressed. Not with the house, and definitely not with what it represented. But for Dad’s sake, I pretended. Because at that point, we had already started telling ourselves: this is our new normal.

Crystal and I kept repeating it—this is how things are now. We needed to manage a relationship with him however we could, just to make sure he was okay. Because the truth is, we didn’t even know if anyone would tell us if something happened to him. We didn’t have access to the property.

We were on the outside.

That’s a terrifying place to be—wondering if something could happen to your own father and you’d never know.

And in the back of my mind, there were always those thoughts… what she might try to get away with next, especially when it comes to him and whatever assets he has left.

They finally moved into the house.

As usual, everything we knew came secondhand—filtered through whatever Dad chose to tell us. We weren’t part of it. We just heard about it after the fact.

Dad started talking about new furniture, decorations, and things she was planning on buying for the house. One detail kept coming up though—he mentioned that she always wanted to go to a specific store here in the area.

Around here everyone knows exactly what that means.

That store is expensive.

Not “a little pricey,” but the kind of place you go when money isn’t really a concern.

Then came the “gift card.”

Anyone who’s built a house knows that sometimes builders give a small closing gift. Dad told us the builder gave her a $300 gift card to that specific store that she wanted.

Crystal and I talked about it, of course. Why would the builder give her a gift card? She didn’t buy the house. She didn’t pay for it.

We even played out how the conversation would go if we asked Dad. We knew exactly what he’d say—that it was given to the daughter-in-law, and she passed it along.

So we didn’t push it.

Looking back, that moment seems small.

But it wasn’t.

Because that’s where we started seeing a pattern—the beginning of a long line of “gifts,” “bonuses,” and “charitable gestures” that somehow always ended up benefiting her.

Crystal and I didn’t even have to say anything out loud at first.

We both knew what the other was thinking.