2 Stories That Will Leave You Shook

Revenge vs. Peace

3 days later Olivia’s dad showed up at our apartment unannounced with a folder of printouts about criminal fraud statutes. He paced around our living room for 20 minutes, explaining how we could get both Kyle and Stephanie arrested for theft and fraud.

His face got red when he talked about Kyle taking advantage of a disabled veteran. I had my weekly session with Tyrone that afternoon and spent most of it talking about whether I wanted revenge or just wanted this whole thing to end.

Tyrone had me write down my values on index cards and then sort them by priority. Safety came first, then peace, then justice.

We talked about how criminal charges might feel good but wouldn’t actually get my money back faster. The next week Anaisa called to say my new prosthetic socket was ready for fitting.

I’d been having bad pain where the old one rubbed against my stump, sometimes so bad I couldn’t walk for hours. The new socket had better padding and a different angle that took pressure off the sore spots.

After the adjustment, I went straight to the pool and managed three full laps without stopping. My arms burned and my lungs felt ready to explode, but I touched the wall for the third time and actually smiled.

The Public Spectacle

Small victories still counted as victories. 4 days later my phone started blowing up with texts from people I hadn’t talked to since high school.

Some gossip website had picked up the wedding story and turned it into this crazy love triangle thing with madeup quotes and old Facebook photos. The headline said something about a war hero’s bride running off with her secret lover while his best friend waited in the wings.

Melinda texted me within an hour telling me not to respond to anything and definitely not to post on social media. She said “These things blow over faster if you stay completely silent.”

The following Monday the court sent a letter saying I could attend the next prenatal appointment as the potential father. Stephanie had apparently requested I not be there, but the judge overruled her.

The appointment was at a clinic downtown and I sat in the waiting room for 40 minutes before they called us back. Stephanie wouldn’t look at me and kept her arms crossed over her stomach.

The technician squeezed gel on her belly and moved the wand around until we heard it. That rapid whoosh whoosh whoosh sound filled the room and my chest got tight.

The baby’s heartbeat was real and strong and suddenly everything felt more complicated. I left the clinic and sat in my car for an hour just staring at the steering wheel.

Preparing for the Unthinkable

Part of me had been hoping this was all some sick joke, but that heartbeat made it real. That night Olivia found me at the kitchen table with a legal pad trying to figure out custody schedules.

She sat down and we spent 3 hours drafting a realistic plan for if the baby turned out to be mine. We wrote down everything from pickup times to holiday schedules to how we’d handle medical decisions.

Both of us cried at different points, but by the end we had five pages of notes that made us feel slightly more prepared for whatever came next. 2 days later Melinda forwarded me a new email from Kyle’s attorney.

This time they were offering $20,000 but with a non-disclosure agreement attached. The NDA said I couldn’t talk about the affair, the stolen money, or anything related to Kyle and Stephanie ever again.

Melinda explained that 20,000 was better than five, but still way less than what they’d stolen. She also said NDAs were tricky because violating them even accidentally could mean paying everything back plus penalties.

I had my session with Tyrone the next day and we spent the whole hour talking about what closure actually meant to me. He asked if getting money back was worth never being able to tell my story.

We talked about how silence can feel like shame even when you’ve done nothing wrong. By the end of the session, I realized that keeping my voice mattered more to me than quick cash.

The Price of a Voice

I called Melinda that afternoon and told her to reject the NDA offer completely. She said she’d already drafted the full lawsuit papers and warned me things would probably get uglier before they got better.

I told her I was ready for whatever came next. 2 days later my phone buzzed with a text from Stephanie asking for $800 for rent or she’d be evicted by Friday.

I took a screenshot of the message and sent it straight to Melinda who replied within 10 minutes with a whole list of housing assistance programs and food banks in the area. She told me not to respond at all and to keep documenting everything.

The next morning Melinda called me while I was doing my physical therapy exercises and said Chelsea Chavez had just contacted her about Kyle’s wife filing for separation. Apparently his wife wanted to cooperate with our case and had bank records showing Kyle had been hiding money from her too.

It felt good knowing we weren’t the only ones who’d been played, but I also felt bad about their kids getting caught up in all this mess. I was still thinking about that when the lab called 3 days later saying the paternity results got delayed another week because of some backlog in processing.

My chest got tight and I could feel my heart racing. So I used those breathing exercises Tyrone taught me, counting 4 seconds in, holding for four, then 4 seconds out.

It took about 5 minutes, but I managed to calm down enough to finish the call without losing it. That same afternoon I got a letter from the VA saying they’d approved a retroactive reimbursement for medical expenses from the past year which came out to about $3,000.

Small Victories

It wasn’t much compared to everything we’d lost, but Olivia and I sat at the kitchen table figuring out which bills to pay first. We decided to catch up on my prosthetic maintenance and put the rest toward credit card debt from when I couldn’t work.

A week later I was at Target buying a baby shower gift for my buddy from rehab when I walked past the newborn section and just froze. All those tiny clothes and happy couples picking out cribs hit me like a truck and I couldn’t breathe.

My hands started shaking and I dropped the gift bag I was holding and had to get out of there immediately. I made it to my car and sat there with my head on the steering wheel trying to remember what Tyrone said about grounding myself.

I called his emergency line and he picked up on the second ring. He walked me through the exercises, telling me to name five things I could see, four I could touch, three I could hear, two I could smell, and one I could taste.

20 minutes later I was stable enough to drive home and Olivia met me at the door with a glass of water and no questions about why I came back without the gift. The following Monday, Melinda officially filed the civil suit against Kyle and Stephanie for conversion and unjust enrichment, asking for 60,000 in damages plus legal fees.

She said the court date got set for 3 months out, which seemed like forever, but apparently that was actually pretty fast for civil court. 2 weeks after that we got a notice saying the court was ordering mediation before the trial to try reaching a settlement without going through a whole court battle.