Chapter 8 - Michael Kept Saying It Was Only Supposed to Scare Me
Michael’s first full statement came through his attorney.
He admitted helping restrain me.
Admitted shoveling dirt around me.
Denied intending to kill me.
According to him:
“It was supposed to scare her into telling the truth.”
That sentence made me physically ill.
Maya asked whether I wanted to stop reading.
“No.”
Michael said Linda escalated things.
Robert tried to keep control.
Ashley froze.
He himself was:
“emotionally devastated.”
Everybody had a softer word for their own role.
I looked at Maya.
“How deep was the hole?”
“About thirty inches where you were positioned.”
“Could I have gotten out alone?”
“Investigators believe it would have been extremely difficult.”
“Could the baby have been hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Could I?”
“Yes.”
Then I returned to his statement.
Michael claimed he believed the paternity report proved I cheated.
But investigators asked him directly about Riverside’s warning.
His answer changed.
First:
He didn’t understand it.
Then:
He thought it was unrelated.
Then:
His father said the issue was probably paperwork.
Finally:
He admitted Robert told him there was:
“a very small chance the clinic had a sample problem.”
A chance.
Before Michael put his hands on me.
Before he watched his mother pack soil around my body.
Before he called my baby another man’s child.
He had known another explanation existed.
Maybe remote.
Maybe frightening.
But possible.
I stopped reading.
For months, I had imagined Michael’s betrayal as a failure of trust.
He believed a piece of paper over his wife.
That was terrible.
The truth was worse.
He had not chosen evidence over me.
He had chosen certainty over uncertainty.
An affair gave him a villain.
A clinic mistake gave him chaos.
His infertility.
His father’s investment.
A child whose genetics he could not control.
A marriage that might survive but never return to simple.
May you like
Michael chose the story that made his pain easiest to direct.
At me.
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