2 Stories That Will Leave You Shook

Legal Warfare

After I hung up, Olivia came into the kitchen and sat down across from me at our small table. She pushed hard about getting a lawyer involved right away and said her dad knew someone good who handled this kind of mess.

My pride wanted to handle it myself without dragging more people into my problems. But she grabbed my hand and said this was too big to face alone.

She was right and I knew it, even though accepting help still felt like weakness after everything. 2 days later we drove downtown to meet with Melinda Goodwin in her office on the third floor of an old brick building.

She had gray hair pulled back tight and reading glasses on a chain around her neck. Olivia’s dad had called ahead so she already knew the basics but she wanted to hear everything from the start.

I showed her the bank statements with all the transfers to Kyle going back 4 months and she took photos of each page with her phone. Then I pulled up the video from Chili’s on my phone and she watched Kyle making out with that blonde woman while wearing his wedding ring.

She wrote notes on a yellow legal pad the whole time, asking questions about dates and amounts and whether I had any emails or texts from Stephanie about the money. When I finished talking, she set down her pen and explained that we needed to preserve every piece of evidence and avoid any contact with Stephanie except through legal channels from now on.

She started typing up demand letters for the stolen money right there while we watched and pulled out forms for the paternity issue that would need to be filed with the court. She said Kyle and Stephanie had committed clear fraud and we had a strong case, but these things take time to work through the system.

My phone buzzed on her desk and Stephanie’s name popped up with a text saying she needed to talk to me privately about the baby and our future. I took a screenshot, forwarded it to Melinda’s email, then typed back that all communication needed to go through our attorneys now.

Trauma and Healing

Melinda nodded and added the screenshot to her file. 3 days after that meeting, I had my first trauma therapy session with Tyrone Ainsworth at the VA.

He was a tall black man with kind eyes who’d been an army medic before becoming a therapist. I sat in his small office with the fake plant in the corner and finally said out loud how scared I was about maybe being a father.

The anger at Stephanie mixed up with guilt about possibly walking away from a kid who didn’t ask for any of this. Tyrone helped me start sorting through those feelings without judging me for being confused and angry at the same time.

That evening Olivia and I sat on our couch and had a hard conversation about what would happen if the baby turned out to be mine. We talked through boundaries with Stephanie and how we’d handle sharing custody without letting her manipulate the situation.

Olivia said she’d support whatever I decided, but we both agreed on never letting Stephanie back into our personal lives no matter what the test showed. The next morning her dad stopped by with coffee and a check.

He sat at our kitchen table and offered to cover Melinda’s retainer fee until we could get money back from Kyle and Stephanie. I wanted to say no but he reminded me that soldiers look out for each other and this was what family did.

I swallowed my pride and took the check, promising to pay him back every penny as soon as possible. The next morning my phone started blowing up with notifications from some military blog called Honor Watch asking for an interview about being left at the altar.

The Slow Wheels of Justice

And I showed the messages to Melinda who told me to ignore everything and stay off social media completely while she handled the legal stuff. 2 days after that we drove to the police station downtown where I sat in a small room with a detective who looked tired and went through every single bank transfer to Kyle’s account while Olivia held the folder with all our printed statements.

The detective took photos of each page and typed notes into his computer, saying it was clearly theft. But these cases move through the system slow and we shouldn’t expect quick results.

That same afternoon while I was at the gym trying to clear my head, an email came through from Stephanie with the subject line “Please read” And it was three pages of her saying she was homeless and sleeping in her car and hadn’t eaten in 2 days and was thinking about ending everything.

I forwarded it straight to Melinda who sent it to social services with a list of shelters and food banks while reminding me to maintain the no-contact boundary we’d set up. The following Monday, Melinda filed paperwork with the court asking for an official paternity test with proper chain of custody since we couldn’t trust whatever Stephanie had shown me at the VA.

She called that afternoon to say the hearing was scheduled for next week and warned me my anxiety would probably get worse as the date got closer, which turned out to be completely right. I barely slept for three nights straight until I called Anaisa at the VA and asked if she could move up my prosthetic fitting since the stress was making my stump hurt more than usual.

She got me in 2 days later and while adjusting the socket she quietly added some mental health referrals to my file without making a big deal about it, even though she clearly knew something was wrong. At my next session with Tyrone, he taught me this breathing pattern where you inhale for four counts and hold for four and exhale for six, which sounded stupid but actually worked when I tried it that night.

Delays and Strategy

For the first time in weeks I got five straight hours of sleep without waking up in a cold sweat thinking about IEDs or Stephanie or the baby situation. The next evening Olivia and I were eating takeout Chinese when she brought up our wedding plans and said maybe we should postpone until all the legal stuff was done, which made sense but still hurt to hear out loud.

We sat there picking at our food and agreed to delay everything quietly without telling anyone yet, since we didn’t want to deal with questions from family and friends about why we were waiting. 3 days before the court hearing, Melinda called asking permission to share the video from Chile’s with Chelsea who was representing Kyle’s wife in their divorce case.

She explained it could help us get leverage for recovering the stolen money since Kyle would want to avoid having that video come out in his own divorce proceedings. I told her to send it and hoped it would make Kyle nervous enough to settle instead of fighting us in court for months.

The morning of the hearing I put on my only suit and Olivia drove us to the courthouse where we went through metal detectors and found the right courtroom on the third floor. The judge was an older woman with gray hair who looked at the paperwork and ordered official chain of custody testing at a certified lab with results to be sent directly to the court.

Stephanie sat two rows behind us looking rough with unwashed hair and the same clothes she’d been wearing at the VA, but Kyle wasn’t there at all which his lawyer said was because of a work conflict. After the judge dismissed us I walked out first and was almost to the elevator when I heard footsteps behind me in the hallway.

Stephanie was standing there looking exhausted and much thinner than before with dark circles under her eyes and her hands shaking slightly. Something in my chest tightened seeing her like that.

But I kept walking past without saying anything and pressed the elevator button while Olivia caught up and grabbed my hand. The elevator doors opened and we stepped inside with two other people who kept staring at us, probably recognizing me from the courthouse drama.

The DNA Swab

2 days later I drove to the lab address Melinda had texted me for the official DNA test. The building was one of those generic medical complexes with beige walls and that weird antiseptic smell that always made my stomach turn.

Cormarmac Marshall met me in the waiting room, a tall guy with glasses who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. He took me back to a small room and explained the whole process while pulling on latex gloves.

The swab felt weird against the inside of my cheek and he sealed it in three different bags with signatures on each one. He said results would take 2 weeks minimum because of the court’s chain of custody requirements.

I walked out to find Olivia sitting in my car reading a book, not wanting to make things more tense by coming inside. The next morning Melinda called while I was doing my prosthetic exercises and said Kyle’s lawyer had sent over a settlement offer: $5,000 total with no admission of wrongdoing and a clause saying I couldn’t pursue any further legal action.

She actually laughed when she read it to me. She said it was insulting and started preparing the full civil suit paperwork that afternoon.