I slid the folder across the table.
She didn’t speak for 10 minutes, just flipped page by page, expression unreadable.
Then she closed it and leaned back.
“This is more than enough to counter Sue for fraud.”
“I’m not interested in dragging it out,” I said. “I just wanted to stop.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You sure about that? Because this is blood in the water stuff. You could bury her like no metaphor. Bury her.”
I thought about it about the years, the sacrifices.
The way mom had commented on Mandy’s Facebook post like I was the unstable one.
“I’m not looking for drama,” I said carefully. “But I am going to make sure they never pull this on me or anyone else again.”
Jyn tapped her fingers against the ceramic coffee mug.
“Then we play it quiet. No scorched earth. Not yet, but we prepare for it anyway, just in case.”
I nodded.
Over the next week, we built the foundation of a counter case.
Fraudulent use of identity, financial manipulation, long-term coerced dependency.
Jen even pulled an angle I hadn’t considered, false claims to shared ownership of my finances.
Mandy had once told people I was basically co-parenting her kids with her.
Turns out that statement had legal implications when paired with her lawsuit.
But the real gold came from dad.
One night he called me.
“I was thinking,” he said cautiously. “I still have access to the old desktop in the basement. That’s the one Mandy used when she first moved back in. I never wiped it. If you want, there might be something on it.”
There was.
Emails, years of them.
Messages from Mandy to mom complaining about me, mocking me, plotting.
One from four years ago where she literally wrote, “I’ll just guilt him like always. He caves faster than wet cardboard.”
Another where she said, “If Jake ever cuts us off, I’ll say he’s unstable. That’ll shut him up.”
But the worst wasn’t even about me.
It was about her kids.
One email said, “Nah’s not even grateful. She doesn’t deserve that phone Jake bought her. Honestly, I wish I’d returned it for the cash.”
Another:
“Mason’s therapy bill came in. Forward it to Jake and tell him it’s urgent or something. He always folds when it’s about the kids.”
I printed them.
All of them.
But I still wasn’t done.
I wanted something more personal, something to twist the knife, not out of spite, but out of truth.
So, I did something risky.
I reached out to Mason.
The kid had always been a bit of a brat, but he wasn’t cruel, not like his sister.
And unlike Mandy, he was old enough to understand consequences.
I texted him a simple message.
“Hey, Mason. Just wanted to say I miss hanging out. Hope you’re okay. I’d like to talk sometime. Just you and me. No lawyers, no drama.”
He responded an hour later.
“I didn’t know mom was suing you. That’s messed up.”
We met at a park near his school.
He looked older, more tired. He sat on the bench beside me, arms crossed.
“You okay?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Things suck at home. Mom’s freaking out. Grandma’s trying to pretend everything’s fine, but she keeps whispering about you. Nah’s grounded cause she threw a fit about not having Wi-Fi.”
I nodded.
“I wanted to see you because I needed to hear something from you directly.”
He turned to me.
“What?”
“That day. Nah’s birthday. When she said that thing about me being the background character. Did your mom tell her to say that?”
He looked down at his hands, picked at his nails, then nodded slowly.
“She thought it would be funny, like a joke. But Nah didn’t get it was mean.”
My chest tightened.