Diary of a Nightmare in WIlliamson County

By Sherrilyn Kenyon

All Terri Woods wanted was a nice, simple life. A safe place to raise her sons. Then one day, she woke up to an unbelievable nightmare of small town corruption. judicial insanity, and a plot to ruin her that defied all rational thought. ?Now, Terri must summon every bit of faith and strength she can to stay alive, and maintain her

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strangelit
• Release date: Jan 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951111205

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sherrilyn Kenyon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several series, including the Bureau of American Defense novels BAD Attitude, Phantom in the Night, Whispered Lies, and Silent Truth and the Belador series that includes Blood Trinity, Alterant, and The Curse. Since her first book debuted in 1993 while she was still in college, she has placed more than eighty novels on the New York Times list in all formats and genres, including manga and graphic novels, and has more than 70 million books in print worldwide. She lives with her family near Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her website at SherrilynKenyon.com.

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Copyright

NIGHTMARE IN WILLIAMSON COUNTY

All rights reserved. Made in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright ©2019 Sherrilyn Kenyon

All rights reserved.

Book and Cover design by Shutterstock

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First Edition: 2019

Printed in USA

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Note

This book is a threat to national

security and must be destroyed!

~A U.S. Trustee in Nashville

Praise

A must read for any law student or lawyer. A captivating tale that realistically portrays how much harm one single out-of-control judge can do... And how little those who are supposed to protect our rights will do for those who need it most. A chilling tale of injustice in modern-day America.

~Nancy J. Rainer, Appellate Attorney

"I’d say it (Diary of a Nightmare in Williamson County) was unbelievable, but having been a Tennessee attorney for over a decade, I know all-too-well how often this sort of thing happens in our courtrooms. Thank you, Sherrilyn Kenyon, for being brave enough to take the bullet and shine a needed light on the American Injustice System."

~Keith Hatfield, Knoxville Attorney

Quote

Let the bodies hit the floor...

~Drowning Pool

The Beginning?

ALL GOOD NIGHTMARES BEGIN as a beautiful dream. I had survived the nightmare of a horrible childhood to build what I’d deluded myself into believing was a great life, with a great career, three amazing sons and a man by my side I thought was dependable, and relatively good.

Granted, he had moments that in retrospect should have been giant waving red flags that warned me to grab my babies and run, such as screaming, lunatic fits over absolutely nothing at all; like when the kids had left their dirty socks on the floor, or someone, usually him, forgot to rinse out a dish in the sink.

Yeah, I was an idiot for not leaving him when I had a chance. I won’t even try to deny it.

But we all delude ourselves into thinking that this was the best we could do.

That this was what we deserved.

After all, no life was perfect. That was what everyone said, right?

Mine had always been flawed. So, I’d done what I did best.

Made do with an asshole in tin foil, instead of a knight in shining armor that we’d all been promised would ride in one day on that fucking white horse.

You know, the wolf in the proverbial sheep’s clothing. That animal that no one saw coming until it ripped out your throat.

Why not? Those around me seemed to envy my life, even though I kept assuring them all that there was nothing about it worth envying (this included talk show hosts and interviewers who’d told the world how charmed my life was—I was sure that they’d said and thought the same thing about Tina Turner while she was married to Ike). God knew that everyone had thought John Wayne Gayce and Ted Bundy were sweethearts, too. And let’s not even discuss the BTK and how wonderful everyone thought he was.

Just like the police who’d returned the victim to Jeffrey Dahmer thought he was normal and harmless.

Until they found the bodies.

They kept telling me how lucky I was even though loud, screaming sirens went off constantly that no one should have missed. But as with blaring car alarms on the street, no one paid attention to them.

As we’ve seen with couples like Ike and Tina, and on so many episodes of Forensic Files.

People were too busy being jealous. Too busy focusing on the bright and shiny coating, and not on the glaring rust underneath. All they saw was the sleek, pretty hood that distracted them from the rods that kept knocking, loud and clear.

Face it, I once lived in what some would term a mansion, with more cars than people to drive them, and to those who didn’t know better, I appeared to have all the money in the world. Because of authors like Nora Roberts and J.R. Ward who had family money long before they began writing and who proudly flaunted their wealth in the faces of others, the general public thought that all authors were ungodly wealthy when the vast majority of us weren’t.

How could I possibly have any problems?

But as I’ve always said, grief and tragedy were equal opportunity tormentors.

Injustice was far more blind than Justice. And unlike Justice, Injustice wasn’t a whore who could be bought and sold if you knew the right people and had enough money.

No, Injustice and Tragedy preyed on us all, regardless of birth, religion, social order, or race. They were merciless beasts who took pity on none and who spared no one.

And on March 7, 2018, those bitches decided to move their asses into my home, take up permanent residence, and party like it was the end of the world.

Because it was the end of my world.

Now, I won’t lie. I’d been sick for a long time. As in years and years of mysterious illnesses that no one could figure out.

The symptoms were awful and scary. Fatigue, choking on nothing, vomiting, swollen and bleeding gums, bloating, antaxia, hair loss. Constant stomach upset. Joints that ached for no reason, and horrifying headaches that wouldn’t leave me no matter what I eliminated from my diet or added to it.

Brittle bones and teeth; as in I would bite into yogurt or yeast rolls and shatter a tooth. That kind of brittle.

My bones, themselves, ached all the time. I had trouble swallowing. My eyes would swell completely shut, and my lips would tingle and yet no one could tell me what I was allergic to even though I seemed to keep having a severe allergic reaction to everything and yet nothing at all.

My sinuses stayed infected and throbbing. All kinds of respiratory troubles that had never existed before. Backaches. Dizzy spells. I had strange vitamin deficiencies that the medical community blamed on everything from stress to menopause.

No one could figure out what was causing it or how to fix it.

All I knew was that every day when I woke up, I was in brutal agony that had me struggling for every breath. And there were days when I couldn’t get up at all.

Yes, I was a crabby bitch. Who wouldn’t be? I felt like complete and utter shit from morning, noon to night. There was never any let up from the unending misery.

I was so weak at times, I couldn’t walk across the room without help and if no help was there, then I was trapped in my chair. Trapped in my brutal agony. I had to take breathing treatments and carry an inhaler everywhere I went. If I tried to eat, I would choke on my food and more times than not, I would vomit whatever I was eating right back up.

Not that it mattered. I couldn’t taste what I was eating. Everything had a weird metallic ick to it that wouldn’t go away. My mouth, lips and tongue stayed numb, or they tingled to the point of distraction. It was so weird.

Hey, Dad! Mom’s choking! I think she needs some help! My oldest son, Maddox, had been panicked about my inability to eat a single meal without dire consequences a couple of weeks before he’d left to teach in Japan.

At only five-eight, and with pneumothorax that could strike him immobile at any moment, Maddox couldn’t lift much and had to be careful, or his lung could collapse. I’d always adored my brown-haired little cherub, with his kaleidoscope blue eyes.

That day, we’d been having lunch at home, and he was trying his best to help me as I struggled with a peculiar foam that seemed to close up my throat any time I attempted to eat something. No matter how small a bite I took, it was as if my food expanded like the Foaming Bubbles cleaner. It invaded my mouth and throat, and solidified until I choked on it, forcing me to my knees where I’d gasp for air.

It was insidious.

And painful.

I would invariably begin regurgitating. Wheezing. Unable to catch my breath at all.

It was terrifying to experience. Imagine the worst asthma attack of your life, compounded by a thick substance clinging to the walls of your throat and epiglottis. And I would vomit up ten times whatever I’d consumed.

No one could tell me why, or what caused it.

My husband, Lester Theodore Manly, III, or Les as his mother had so graciously nicknamed him (because she hadn’t emasculated him enough with her constant insults and poor clothing choices she’d forced on him as a boy and young man), had shrugged it off. Oh, don’t worry, son. She does that all the time.

Yeah, but she’s turning blue! Dad, I think she’s in trouble!

Still, Les hadn’t cared.

Unlike the time, days before, when his assistant, Karen Hogg, had fallen out of the same chair, and he’d rushed her off to the emergency room in case she’d injured herself. Then, he’d been panicked with worry.

God forbid, the mighty Hogg might fall.

But when his cash cow was wheezing and turning blue at his feet?

Fuck it! Let the bitch die.

In retrospect, that should have been a major clue about what he and his assistant were doing, in more ways than one, behind my back. But while I was on the ground, fighting for my life, it was easy to miss such important warning signs.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

Just as I should have known by the weird relationship he had with a mother who’d thought so little of him that she’d given him the name of someone she hated, then a nickname that made his name sound ridiculous.

Of course, she was only one-half of the parental unit that Les swore he despised: Lester and Elaine Snooty Manly. The same pair that had refused to help us at all while Les went to law school in a futile attempt to gain their love and respect, and to find the self-esteem they’d torn down and ravaged while he was a boy living under his mother’s scalding, embittered tongue.

His mother’s most commonly uttered phrase? You made your bed you can lie in it.

She used that phrase for all the most inappropriate things.

It was something she’d even said to my oldest son, Maddox, when he’d made the mistake of reaching out to the only grandmother he had while he was on the brink of suicide, living near her in college.

Wasn’t she a paragon of virtue?

Grandma had actually told my pain-filled boy that his agony was his own fault because his generation was lazy. You made your bed you can lie in it. Instead of getting in her car and going to him to make him feel better as any decent, loving grandmother would do.

Instead of lifting him up and helping him, she did what she’d always done. Kicked him down harder, and stepped on his precious, baby fingers as she tried her best to pry him off that ledge he was barely clinging to.

Just as she had blatantly and coldly refused to help my middle son, Caleb, after his car wreck, when he was also in town with her, not long after she’d buried her oldest grandchild, Taylor.

Caleb had an injured back and a totaled car, with no way to get help or to a doctor.

Neither she, her husband, nor Les’s nurse sister (Taylor’s mother) who also lived in town could be bothered to help my child. Or even call him to see if he was okay. Rather, it was my elderly aunt with gout, who was even older than Snooty, who had to drive in from over five hours away to take care of him.

And this after Snooty had already caused her eldest grandchild to commit suicide by turning her back on Taylor’s pain and allowing the world and others to abuse her. Just as it had abused her children while she not only gleefully turned a blind eye...

She gloated to them about their mental and physical misery.

Or worse, after Snooty had aided in the abuse of her own children.

But then, that was what Snooty did best. Put down others so that she could float to the top like the piece of shit she truly was.

How cold was this portly, shallow wretch who fancied herself the Southern version of Princess Diana, but who lacked Diana’s sophistication, taste, beauty and heart?

I’ve met maggots that I admired more. At least those parasites recognized what they were and didn’t lie or try to disguise their real intentions behind a high-pitched cruel laugh.

Now before you think that I was completely heartless where she was concerned...

After she refused to ever pay a single cent of her son’s law school bill or even purchased a single meal for him while he attended it (knowing we were starving the entire way through, which she thought was amusing), and while knowing her grandson, Maddox, was on life-support, fighting for his newborn life, what was Snooty’s biggest concern the day Les graduated law school?

I want a photo of me and my son in front of the school with its name on it!

How I wish you could have heard her hick accent as she spoke those words. She fancied herself the elite sophisticate, in her always tacky designer-wear while driving around in an outdated BMW. But really, when one hears the expression, lipstick on a pig, it conjured the near perfect image of who and what she truly was.

While she might pass on a good day as a bad Martha Stewart knock-off (low rent version) if you squinted hard enough, the minute she opened her mouth, that illusion she was trying so pathetically to create was shattered by the godawful thick North Georgia hillbilly accent. Seriously, it should come with the Deliverance dueling banjos in the background. There was a reason my mother had nicknamed her Saucer-head. And it wasn’t because of her bad haircut, or the fact that she’d been bleaching it blond for so many years that I wasn’t too sure the bleach hadn’t shriveled her Narcissistic brain.

But back to the point, her concern wasn’t returning to the hospital where my baby, her second-born grandchild whose birth she’d missed, was alone, fighting for his frail life. Snooty wanted a photo to show her pretentious friends that she hadn’t been lying about her son, the lawyer, from a campus where he’d never taken a single class, or even stepped foot on until graduation—which she would have known had she ever possessed a nano-ounce of maternal instinct.

All the law school classes were at a satellite campus in Jackson, Mississippi where we lived, and not at the main campus in Clinton where the graduation had taken place.

Naturally, this was after the two-hour grueling ceremony where Snooty had spent the entire time lecturing her son on what a loser he was because he hadn’t graduated at the top of his class like all those other intelligent students or berating him because he didn’t have a job waiting on him like they did, either.

‘Course those students weren’t all law students, and most of them came from families that had helped them through school and encouraged them with their studies. Not families who reveled in their children’s penury and misery and gloated to them about how happy they were to see them suffer and fail.

I need all my money for retirement, son. Sorry you’re starving and having it hard, but you made your bed. You can lie in it.

But Mom, Les would always whine. Your parents helped you! Her parents had been dirt farmers and trash collectors who’d scrimped and saved their whole lives, not white-collar, college-educated Narcissistic assholes.

"And I’ve spent all that money, Les. You just had to get married (she’d originally thought I was pregnant when he told her we were getting married—sorry, Snoots, I was not your teenage daughter who finally got married while pregnant after she’d aborted two other children before that). It’s your job to take care of things, Les. You made your bed. You can lie in it."

As a friend of mine once said after spending a couple of minutes with old Snooty, that woman doesn’t have a kind word or thought for anyone. That included her daughters, her husband, her son, her grandchildren and her friends.

Snooty Manly was a nasty piece of work and didn’t bother to hide it.

She’d always hated me because unlike Les who took her cruelty in petulant stride, I dished it right back, like my mother had taught me to do.

I don’t start shit. I finish it.

As my mama used to tell me, Terri, you ever start a fight, I’ll beat you every step of the way home. But if someone else starts it and you don’t hand their ass to them, I’ll beat you twice as hard.

Not Les.

He drew up into a fetal ball until his attacker went away and then he’d go for their back with a knife, because that contaminated fruit grew straight off his mother’s rotted-out limbs. And he’d suckled venom and poison straight from Snooty’s shriveled, heartless tit.

Only someone that emotionally bankrupt and cold could do what Les Manly did in March 2018.

At three in the morning, we as a family had carried my eldest baby, Maddox, to the airport so that he could begin his great adventure, teaching in Japan. His dream job that broke my heart, but I knew how much it meant to him.

Scared for my baby, I choked back my tears, knowing this was what he wanted.

I had to let go, even though my innate tendency had always been to protect my kids above all, and from anyone who would do them harm. As the old saying goes, when they’re little they step on your toes, and when they’re grown, they step on your heart.

My heart broke as I watched that eager smile on his handsome face. Hopeful and brave, he waved back at me, then shifted his black backpack over his thin shoulders.

I rarely cry in public, but that morning, I was bawling as if my heart had shattered. My baby was leaving. It would be a year before we’d see him again.

Les had refused to book him a return flight.

We don’t know exactly when he’ll return, so it would be wasteful.

Wasteful from a man who’d never saved a dime of what I’d earned? God, at the money he’d spent on absolute bullshit. Such as a million-dollar lawsuit I didn’t want filed in the first place. He had two Rolexes he’d insisted be bought and then refused to wear because they bruised his tender little wrist. Expensive Shinola watches, and others he wouldn’t wear for reasons unknown. And he once took a Porsche back less than twenty-four hours after buying it because he decided that he liked the one he’d traded in better and wanted it instead.

Yeah, that was a costly hissy fit.

But he didn’t want to spend a couple extra hundred dollars on a return flight for his son after he’d made me set fire to five thousand dollars a week before on a paid-for vacation trip I’d bought him for Christmas because I just don’t feel like going.

Yeah...

He was such a pinchpenny.

Of course, everything was always about Les or Baby Huey as I now liked to call him. It was why he’d canceled having dinner that same week with the dean from my former college. He’d told them that I was too sick to go when the truth was, he was too eaten up with jealousy that they kept honoring me over him at a school that he’d graduated from and that he’d forced me to withdraw out of to tend to his little baby feelings, twenty-seven years before that day.

God, the stupid things we do when we’re young. It pained me that at a time when we had so little world experience and knowledge, we made the decisions that we’d spend the rest of our lives paying for.

What a cruel twist of fate.

God had a sick sense of humor, and I was really tired of being the punchline.

What if something happens? Maddox should have a way to get home. I was always paranoid about things going wrong and my kids being harmed. Life had a way of sucker-punching you when you least expected it. It was the one lesson I’d learned the hardest.

And I’d been to enough foreign countries to know that they didn’t like it when you couldn’t give them an exit date. They always wanted to know that you weren’t there to stay, and that you planned to leave.

Les had scoffed at me. Everything’s fine.

So, I watched my baby vanish into the busy airport crowd, praying for God to keep him safe for me.

My youngest son, Nick, helped me back into the car. Even in height to me, Nick was almost an identical copy of my middle son, Caleb. Except he had a charming, mischievous glint in his brown eyes, and unlike Caleb, he’d never had a problem with me playing in his head full of dark curls.

Caleb had always tended to be moody and out of sorts for no reason, much like his father.

Nick was ever cheerful and sweet. There was no duplicity in his innocent smile, and his biggest worry had always been dealing fairly with others.

Out of all three of my children, Nick was the most like me, which had led us to quarrel more than I had with my other two. We were both stubborn to a fault and would hold our ground until doomsday. We had a very strict moral code, and a rigid sense of what was right and wrong.

Our integrity would not be compromised for any reason.

And we would argue any point we were trying to make into the ground.

That was what I adored most about my Nick. And it was what drove me craziest.

Maddox was like my little brother, Esteban Norman Woods. They couldn’t have been more alike in looks and actions had Esteban been his father.

It was weird at times. First, I raised Esteban, and then I raised his doppelgänger.

Caleb was the most like his father. Moody. Secretive, and always holding something back. Not that it was his fault. Les had trained him to be that way.

They were even close in height. Same dark brown hair, and angry caustic putdowns for a world that they believed had done them wrong, even when it hadn’t.

Because they were so similar, Les had been a lot harder on Caleb than he should have been. Right down to accusing him of lying and stealing even when Caleb hadn’t even thought about it.

I couldn’t count how many times I’d had to run interference between them because of Les’s unfair abuse of his middle son.

He’s just like my sister, Annette! I can’t stand her, and I won’t tolerate him acting like her, either! You can’t ever believe a word he says. He’s nothing but a liar!

I would roll my eyes at Les. He’s nothing like your sister! For one thing, my son had a heart, which Annette must have had at one time until her mother devoured it.

But Les wouldn’t listen. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Terri! I can look into his eyes and see it! He’d climb a tree to lie before he’d stand on the ground to tell the truth.

Les said that to me a lot about Caleb.

Unfortunately, the sentiment was echoed by Caleb’s friends and teachers who’d all talked about how much Caleb lied. But again, it wasn’t Caleb’s fault. It was what Les had taught him to do.

Les was so cruel to my child. He once publicly humiliated poor Caleb over a Ring Pop sucker that Caleb had won in school for doing well on a paper. Because Caleb hadn’t told Les about it, and they had just come out of Kroger when Caleb pulled it out of his pocket, Les naturally assumed Caleb had stolen it, even though my children had never stolen anything in their lives.

Stealing was a Manly trait, not a Woods’ one.

You have to remember that Les judged everyone based on what he would do.

And that told the world everything it needed to know about Les Manly. He was a barking dog who telegraphed his crimes.

This was extremely important to keep in mind. He constantly projected his sins onto others.

Because he was a lying thief, he naturally assumed everyone else was, too.

Especially his sons.

Poor Caleb.

Rather than believe his seven-year-old who was mortified by the accusation, Les dragged him roughly back into the store, and made him hand over the Ring Pop he’d won and apologize to the manager. Then he dragged him home, screaming at him the entire time.

In that moment, he’d stolen away his son’s achievement and his innocence. Les was real good at doing that to all of us. We were never allowed to have one minute of success or one minute to bask in any kind of happiness before Les turned it into a moment of utter and complete embarrassment for us.

He was his mother’s son.

After all, Snooty wrecked Maddox’s graduation.

Twice.

When Les returned home with Caleb and told me of the event, I looked at him like he was the idiot he’d been. "Did you ask his teacher?

Why would I do that?

Because his son might have been telling the truth. God forbid a father should ever believe his highly intelligent son had done well in school. But why should Les think that since he’d never done well in anything? He’d graduated at the very bottom of all his classes, with a Hail Mary.

For that matter, why should a father back his child when his own parents had never once backed him into anything other than a corner?

But then, Les had no reason to doubt his son’s words either, other than his own neurotic idiocy.

You should have seen the der stare on his face. It was as priceless as the time he came into my office to announce, Uh, Terri, the kitchen’s on fire.

I had a moment while working where I thought it had to be a joke because no one in their right mind would come in and be that calm if the house was actually on fire. Then I remembered that I’d married a complete and utter moron. If anyone would be nonchalant while the house burned down, it would be Les Manly.

And of course, the Emperor Nero who’d fiddled while Rome burned.

So, I ran to check it out, and sure enough. My kitchen was on fire.

Les, in his infinite wisdom, had dropped an entire handful of pasta onto my gas stove and instead of using salt to put the flames out or grab the fire extinguisher under the sink, or a pan to smother the flames, or nine hundred other intelligent things he could have done to put it out, had casually walked over to my office to get me, and had left the rapidly burning fire unattended with three small children and two cats to fend for themselves while the flames spread throughout my kitchen.

Yeah, he was that bright.

So that day after he’d traumatized my little boy in Kroger who was upstairs crying his eyes out, I calmly asked his teacher if he’d won a prize for doing well on his paper.

Come to find out, Caleb had won it, just as he’d said.

Les had been the biggest jerk of all time, and my son had been publicly humiliated for no reason other than the fact that his father had wanted to look like a big shot to the Kroger store manager.

Yeah...

And sadly, the lesson Caleb had learned that day was that even when he told the truth, he got beat for it in public, and that he shouldn’t bother to do well in school since any reward he received would not only be taken from him, he’d be traumatized over it (again, this rang familiar).

Father of the year.

For the record, Les never apologized. That was the kind of human and father he was. He would never admit he was wrong on anything, and he jumped to the worst, most ludicrous conclusion of all time.

Like when he first filed the lawsuit, he forced on me in 2016, and we found out that the other author was out of the country on a trip. He said and I quote, oh my God, she’s jumped the country and won’t ever come back! With her money, why would she? She’ll just stay abroad forever and won’t face justice! What are we going to do now?

Like that made all the sense in the world. Rich people always gave up all their U.S. homes and holdings out of fear of a simple civil suit, instead of allowing their lawyers to battle it out in court.

Yeah.

Les had a severely damaged thought process that he somehow thought was brilliant.

The rest of us, however, simply found the inner workings of his mind painfully hard to follow.

And on that morning when we left the airport after dropping off Maddox, Les was unusually quiet, but since it was before dawn, I didn’t think much about it. Honestly, I was glad he wasn’t rambling on and on with his usual nonsense.

Everything seemed normal.

I should have remembered that normal was a word that fell between neurotic and nosebleed in the dictionary.

As a girl, I’d never had it. Born Terri Ann Woods, I grew up in the poverty-stricken area of Riverdale, Georgia, in a place where things tended to explode into violence without warning.

Constantly.

So, chaos was my familiar stomping ground. That I could handle. As they said, a tiger lies low not from fear, but for aim. When things got quiet at my childhood home, they were indeed taking aim and about to go for your throat. That was the quiet before the storm and you needed to duck and cover.

Or run for the door.

I should have known that morning a storm was gathering. But Les had lulled me into complacency, like Alexander the Great with the Indian army.

Walk your horses downstream as if nothing’s going on. A few at a time, day by day, until your enemy’s no longer paying attention.

Then strike hard and fast, and stab them in the back, right between the shoulders. Because from there, you can still reach their heart and they won’t see it coming.

Les was the soulless, sneaky coward Snooty had raised.

Like begats like.

His mother should be proud of him. Too bad she was incapable of praising anyone other than herself.

After we returned home and because I was so sick, I went to lie down for a few minutes. I knew Maddox wouldn’t board for at least two hours, and he had an hour until he reached Minneapolis for his layover. I’d need to be up by six to check his gate connection and make sure he made it.

Nick headed upstairs to bed.

Les followed me to our room and crawled into bed beside me. Everything seemed fine.

Fine—Freaked out. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional.

How could I ever forget that acronym? My older brother’s diatribe about women whenever they said they were, fine.

"The most frightening word in the world, Terri, is when you ask a woman if she’s okay and she shoots back, with ‘I’m fine.’ ‘Cause fine is the last thing she is. About to kick your ass is what she’s about to do."

Freaked out. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional.

Les had always joked with everyone that he was the woman in our relationship. He knew I was self-conscious over the fact that I’d been raised with boys and had been mocked abysmally in school for being a lesbian. Not because I was one, but because I had many friends who were, and for the fact that we were poor, I’d often had to wear the hand-me-downs of my male cousins we were helping to raise.

Not to mention, I’d taken a girl to the prom at a time when no one did so. Of course, I hadn’t thought anything about it. My best friend had wanted to go and asked me to the junior prom, so I went. No big deal.

Except people were judgy asses.

People like Les. And his humor was forever cruel. But then mockery and shame were what I’d cut my teeth on, so I thought nothing about his caustic barbs that often bled my soul. That was mother’s milk to me.

As I’ve so often said, my dad was a drill sergeant, and he was my sympathetic parent. Having someone criticize and belittle me was all I’d ever been exposed to.

Little did I know, Les was luring me in for the kill, because that was what Les did.

With a peculiar bipolar mix of entitlement and persecution complex, Les had been blessed early in life with one thing going for him; the ability to appear harmless and meek to disguise his ruthless, cold heart. Like a lumbering, lovable panda bear. So cute and adorable as it innocently chewed on its bamboo. How could that awkward, tubby teddy hurt anyone?

Yet it could shred you to pieces if you got too close.

That was Les. He even moved like some arthritic old man with a walker.

And that was when he was eighteen.

Right at six feet, he wasn’t tall enough to appear off-putting or dangerous. He had a lean build and a pudgy beer belly that was in no way intimidating as it reminded you of some old, swayback mule. Big brown eyes that held so much stupidity in them that no one would ever think him capable of plotting any kind treachery (my mistake).

Or holding any kind of thought for that matter, other than, Honey, where’s my brain?

That was his cryptic coloration. That screwed up bit of nature that allowed creatures who should be prey to camouflage their movements, identity, or real intentions and blend into their environment to give them an advantage around predators so that when they, the prey, attacked others, no one saw them coming.

Until it was too late.

That had been the downfall of many who were lulled into underestimating ole Les. His little lisp and that effeminate demeanor were edged with a brutal need to prove himself at the cost of anyone who got in his way.

Even his own sons.

Remember that he was born with a severe persecution and inferiority complex that only worsened after his parents abandoned us in Mississippi and turned their backs on his suffering while we were homeless. It, and our homeless poverty that he’d tried so hard to deny in spite of the fact we lived that way, left a festering wound in him that had never healed.

A wound that made him lash out at everyone like a rabid, wounded animal.

Including his own sons.

And me.

The ones who were by his side, suffering, through it all, and who’d loved and supported him, while the rest of his friends and family had abandoned him to it. His children who once worshiped the ground he’d walked on. The saddest part?

So had I.

Before he’d turned on me, too.

I slept for about an hour on that fateful morning of March 7, 2018.

In that one hour, my entire life changed.

I got up, wanting to protect my Autistic son. He was on his way to a foreign country to live on his own without the backing of his school or a friend. While he’d been to Japan before, he’d gone in a group to study, and had lived in a dorm.

This was entirely different.

He had no security blanket. No one to watch out for him when he arrived there. I was terrified. It was a big adventure, and he would need his parents’ full support as he navigated the world that often left him baffled and confused. He’d been so nervous the days before he left.

Les had assured him that everything was fine.

Don’t worry, son. Nothing’s going to happen while you’re away. We’re here for you. I’ll hold down the fort. Les had said those words to him. Those exact words, knowing he was lying to his own son with every syllable that came out of his venomous mouth.

That same week while I helped my son pack to leave, Les had stolen every single cent from Maddox’s trust fund that I, not Les, had earned for him and put aside to ensure Maddox wouldn’t have to worry about anything. That none of our sons would have to be homeless or stalked by creditors as we’d been.

That was the most pathetic part of all this. Les had stolen from his own children, for no reason other than selfish, pathetic greed.

No. Worse, he’d stolen from them because he was jealous of his own sons that he’d fathered.

Jealousy.

How many times had he said, I wish I were one of them. They don’t appreciate anything.

Neither did he. I was the one who’d worked twenty hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year with no break and no let up. Tending my sons and making sure they had everything they needed. While Les sat his ass on my couch and delegated everything from meals to having light bulbs changed.

Literally.

He did nothing for any of us, other than hire someone else to do it. It was why my sons had dubbed him the Great Delegator.

Oh no! Don’t make me have to call someone to raise their voice to you! That would be too much work for me! You’re hungry? Let me text your mother to get you food. You need help with homework? I’ll text someone to do it for you, son!

I have the records and employee statements to prove it. He didn’t even put gas in his own cars.

He was that lazy.

Honestly, I was amazed he hadn’t found a way to pay someone to wipe his own ass. Although, he had found a way to have someone come to the house to put toilet paper on the racks and in the bathrooms. To dye and cut his hair for him and the boys. To give him facials and massages. And pretty much everything else.

Just not the actual ass-wiping.

Only the ass-kissing.

Les even had his trainer from the gym, Pat Hanson, come over to work out with him, and he paid for people to go to the gym with him so that he’d have the illusion of having friends.

And to the movies.

He called them friends even though Les had to pay them to get them to do anything with him.

Weird, I know. My friends would go to things like that with me for free.

They even paid my way sometimes and bought my popcorn.

But then Les really was that hard to get along with. No one had ever been his friend for long, unless he paid them.

He couldn’t even find enough friends to be groomsmen for my bridesmaids during our wedding. I had to cut my bridesmaids in half because he didn’t have enough friends (and keep in mind that he’d been in a fraternity where his best friend was the president... until the day they debrothered him).

Never once in our marriage had he said, thank you, Terri, for the wonderful life you’ve provided for me. A life I could never have given to myself or you or the kids.

Because he was a failed loser who’d quit at absolutely everything he’d ever done in his entire life.

Everything.

He kept trying to quit law school during every semester from Day One, but I wouldn’t let him because I knew if he quit, he’d have blamed it on me.

I had to give up law school to feed you, Terri! It’s all your fault! I’d have been a lawyer if I wasn’t married to you! (Completely not true).

Instead, I dropped out of school and worked three and four jobs (even while pregnant) to keep him going in law school while he worked none.

And he dared to accuse my children of being ungrateful and lazy?

He was Lord King Asshole of Ingrates.

At the time he abandoned us without any warning whatsoever, I had two homes completely paid for. All cars were paid off. We had no debt (or so I thought—no one had bothered to tell me that he’d taken half a million dollars out against my house that had been paid off so that he could leave me with over a million dollars cash in his pocket). My sons all had college funds and trust funds.

We were set and should have had a nice future with no financial worries whatsoever.

Beyond the American dream.

Because of all my hard work while he sat on the sofa and didn’t even help the kids with their homework or make a single meal.

And for no reason whatsoever, he’d ruined us in a matter of months and completely bankrupted everything I’d ever worked for.

All of us.

Even himself.

In particular, he’d ruined our sons. For no logical reason.

Lust? Greed?

Jealousy?

Each of those has a part, but in the end, none of it made any sense because his brain didn’t work like a normal brain. That was why they said that truth was stranger than fiction. Because fiction, unlike real life, had to make sense.

Characters, unlike real people, have to have a logical motivation for their actions.

But you couldn’t fix a broken mind. There wasn’t enough duct tape in the world to hold that hot mess together.

I won’t ever understand how, even as broken as he was, Les could prey on his own children. How anyone could steal from their babies.

How he’d found a court system so broken that it allowed him... no, encouraged him to rob us blind.

Knowing what he’d done to us, without any remorse and for no reason, and that he’d continued to abuse and torture us for almost three years without any let up or mercy whatsoever, how could anyone ever doubt that Les had tried to kill me and our son?

That Les had killed our beloved cat, and tried to kill another?

It happened every day in the news. That nice old man next door who went psycho and killed everyone.

He was such a nice guy. No one ever saw it coming.

What I never dreamed was that the psycho was in my home.

Sleeping in my bed.

That he’d fathered my three special needs children. And while they were very high-functioning and intelligent, they were still special needs and had trouble navigating this complicated world where they couldn’t always interpret or understand the people around them.

Especially their father’s erratic insanity and emotional instability that never helped them gain any form of clarity on human behavior.

One minute he’d be fine and the next he’d be throwing things and screaming. Over something as simple as a box of something he’d ordered that had been delivered to our home that would cause him to go into a Rage-Virus level hissy fit.

There had been a huge, permanent scar in my foyer where he once tore the floor up during one of his more stellar tantrums.

My sons each have trouble understanding rather basic things, such as social cues and tone modulation. What was appropriate and when, even when I tried to explain it. Autism and Asperger’s have their own unique ways of processing information and defining the world. There was a special beauty to it. But other people have trouble appreciating it the way I do (because I have it, too). And strangers have trouble recognizing what was going on with my sons as they, unlike my Cerebral Palsy sister, don’t have any apparent physical signs that they weren’t quite like everyone else.

Like I have with my hearing problems and dyslexia.

Even when I’ve tried to explain that I couldn’t hear properly or that I was seeing, hearing or thinking out of order, people often thought I was kidding. Believe me, there was nothing funny when you really couldn’t process information. Others quickly got frustrated and angry and lashed out.

Or worse, they mocked you.

I’ve been on the receiving end of it enough to know that I didn’t want my children treated so cruelly by an impatient world because people didn’t want to take the time for those of us who needed just a few more minutes to understand what was going on.

I’ve worried every single day of their lives about what this world would do to them, because I knew that the world had never taken mercy on me.

I’d had to fight tooth-and-nail for everything I’ve had since the moment I took my first breath and wasn’t smart enough to exhale it and let go of this life. My boys were defenseless babes in this harsh landscape.

That scared me most of all.

While all three of them kept me up at night with fears of what might come for them, Maddox was the one I worried about most. He’d spent weeks in NICU when he was born, and I was told on two separate occasions to pick out funeral clothes for him.

Every mother’s worst nightmare.

When his monitor kept going off in the hospital because he wasn’t breathing, I grabbed a nurse who looked at me and said, oh honey, he’s just a little wimpy white boy. We don’t expect them to live, anyway, so we don’t worry about them until they start turning blue.

I’ve never wanted to hit anyone in my life more than I wanted to slug that nurse when she’d said those callous words to me. I couldn’t believe any human being could be that cold and unfeeling.

And that any hospital was stupid enough to put such a person in charge of newborn babies while they were fighting for their lives.

That was one of many reasons I’d left Jackson, Mississippi to move my children to Franklin, Tennessee. A place that looked so perfect on the outside.

Just like Mayberry.

But then I’d forgotten that Mayberry was far from perfect or ideal. It was a freakish landscape that lacked all color and was only one channel click from The Twilight Zone.

So much for thinking I was giving them a better life.

Yet my Maddox had beaten those dire odds he was given. He’d always been my fighter.

Which didn’t mean that I didn’t worry about him. It was what a mother did.

So, when I got up to check on Maddox and to make sure his lungs were holding, I saw that my bed was empty.

Weird.

Les had almost never gotten up before me. Ever. After all, he fashioned himself the good old Southern plantation owner in charge of servants aplenty to cater to his every hedonistic need.

In fact, when he found out from my uncle, Carlos, that I had Native American blood in me, Les said, Cool! I always wanted to have my own squaw!

Yeah, I should have divorced him then, but there was a really good reason I didn’t.

And we will get to that. But in the meantime, I was on the hunt for my missing husband.

Where in the world are you, Les? He typically slept ten to twelve hours on any given day. To call him lazy was an insult to those with a preference for sleeping as their favorite pastime.

Not to mention, he knew that Maddox was flying out of the country with a severe lung condition, and that the changes in pressure could cause his lung to collapse. We’d been told, repeatedly, to never put him on a plane without knowing where a hospital was when we landed.

Maddox had had his lung collapse spontaneously in the past.

So, I went to Les’s office to see if he was there, looking for new cars to buy. His favorite pastime; wasting my hard-earned cash, instead of working to earn his own money.

Or watching the news so that he could complain about the world and how he was getting screwed over, even though he wasn’t doing anything more than sitting on my couch, living off his hard-working wife.

His office was empty.

Probably at the gym. That was the only other place he’d be as it had his only friend, Pat Hanson, there. The trainer he’d hired for his workouts, though I didn’t get it. You couldn’t tell by Les’s Scotch belly that he spent three to four days a week at the gym, and thousands of dollars working out to maintain his pudgy physique.

The only workout I ever saw was him lifting his coffee cup, that had more Scotch in it than coffee, to his lips.

And it wasn’t Pat’s fault. He tried. Les just wouldn’t cooperate. Pat would push him, and Les would just sit down and refuse to do anything.

Literally.

Like the mule he was.

I’d been to the gym enough with him to know. Les was that useless.

Besides, Pat was more his therapist than anything else. Since Les didn’t have any friends, he talked to Pat more than he worked out. But it got Les out of the house and out of my hair, so it was worth it.

I headed downstairs to my office to start working, and to check on Maddox’s flight and text him the information.

Since I had a hair appointment that morning, I knew Les would be back soon. He never allowed me to go anywhere or drive myself any place.

You’re too sick, Terri. You don’t need to be driving. You could get hurt, and then where would we be? He’d even confiscated all my car keys, and if I ever raised the garage door for any reason, he’d come flying down the stairs like a madman to yell at me for even thinking of leaving the house by myself.

He was that terrified that I might leave him.

It was why he kept all our money in his accounts and doled it out to me like I was a kid. And because he had such abandonment issues from his heartless mother and psycho dad, I tolerated it.

I couldn’t do anything without his watching me. Not even swim or shower. Over the years, I’d never understood why he was so concerned and obsessed about it. I was a grown woman.

But it wasn’t worth a fight. I simply accepted his weirdness and thought it stemmed from his pathological fear of abandonment. One so bad, that he often stood on my toes to keep me planted by his side.

Don’t leave me! His favorite whine whenever I had to travel for business (or go to the bathroom). One so bad that he’d often tried to sabotage my plans.

Les, the plane won’t wait for you to shampoo the rugs! I have to go, now!

But the boys spilled a Coke.

Steam clean it after you drop me off.

I couldn’t count how many times he’d done things like that. So, in my mind, there was no doubt he’d be back to drive me to my hair appointment.

Hell, he’d practically kicked Maddox out of the house. You have to make him leave, Terri! He’s grown! Get him out of here! He’s a bad example for Nick! He doesn’t need to see his brother sitting in his room, all day, doing nothing now that he’s graduated from college.

Because seeing his dad sitting around doing nothing with a law degree on the wall had ever been a bad example?

Oookay...

Besides, Maddox wasn’t doing nothing. He was writing, which told everyone what Les thought of my career choice and what he used to say to me before my writing had started paying all the bills—in other words, Les accused me constantly of sitting around, doing nothing.

Of eating bon-bons all day long.

He’s graduated, Terri. He needs to go! You have to kick him out of this house!

Uh, no, Les, I don’t. This is his home as long as I’m here.

Then, the last couple of weeks when Maddox was packing, Don’t leave me, son! You can’t go! You have to stay here! I don’t know what I’ll do if you’re gone!

Les really was that psycho, and unreasonable.

So, without much thought about his whereabouts, I answered emails and texted Maddox his flight information from the brown armchair I had strategically placed in front of my three wall monitors where I spent an average of twenty hours a day because Les was too good to hold down a job and help me pay our bills.

As he told our sons, you’re descended from royalty. You don’t have to do menial tasks and labor. That’s why we have servants.

Yeah. I wish I were making that up.

And yes, I know I should have divorced him. I admit freely that I was a fucking idiot.

Everything seemed normal, until it was time to go to my hair appointment.

No Les.

I texted him.

No response.

What the hell?

He never allowed me to go anywhere alone. Seriously. He even went to the bathroom with me about half the time.

Or stood outside the door while I went.

I hadn’t been to a hair appointment on my own in years. He wouldn’t even let me make the appointments or contact my hairstylist.

I ended up being late because I had to hunt down a set of car keys that Les had hidden in his office desk drawer, and then go tell Nick that I was leaving. Since he’d stayed up all night with his brother, he went back to sleep.

Off I ventured to my hair appointment, and about an hour into it, I pulled up the strangest email of all time.

Gone to check on my parents.

~Lester Manly

What the fuck? I said those words out loud.

Now to most people that note might seem normal, but there was nothing normal about this.

First, he’d signed his whole name to it like I, his wife of twenty-seven years, was a stranger.

Or like he was setting up something he intended to present to a judge.

Second, his parents lived in Georgia, not Tennessee. Over five hundred miles away, and Les hated to drive. So much so, that in the past, he’d always paid to have a driver take him on long car trips.

More than that, he hated his parents.

No exaggeration.

He. Hated. His. Parents.

In ways you could not imagine.

Les and I had been together for thirty years and married for twenty-seven. In twenty-seven years, Les had never, ever left home to stay overnight somewhere else without giving us weeks of warning about it.

Who did?

For that matter, he’d never packed his own bags, and no bags had been packed before he left. At least none to my knowledge. Nor was Les a quiet person when he got up in the morning. Or if, on any rare occasion, I was trying to nap because I was sick or might have had surgery.

Or one of my notorious cluster migraines.

He was famous for yelling at everyone and slamming every single door in the house. So much so, that he’d pulled some of our doors off their hinges. I swear to God, that is a true statement. He was so abusive about it that I would often sleep in my chair in my downstairs office just so that I could get a nap without his shouting antics causing me to wake up in a panic.

Remember what I said about his cruel streak?

He knew that my grandparents used to wake me up with a belt-buckle across my back in the mornings. And that I have severe C-PTSD whenever I hear a door slamming while I slept, or someone shouted unexpectedly as my grandparents would often enter my room that way prior to beating me.

It was why I’d married what I thought was a Beta personality type. I didn’t want shouting in my home.

But, as I said, that was how Les lured you into thinking he was this quiet, sweet man.

He was not.

His screaming was so psychotic that my eldest son once ripped the intercom straight out of his wall because Les was using it to scream obscenities at him, and then filter loud, obnoxious music into his room while he was getting ready for school.

While Maddox was a patient, sweet boy, everyone has a breaking point, and Les had pushed him too far that morning.

Les had a way of pushing everyone too far. It was why he couldn’t maintain any long-term friendships unless he did it by rarely spending time or seldom talking to his old friends.

That was also why I refused to have an intercom in my office. I didn’t want Les to use it to torment me.

Mornings in our home were like a war zone because of Les and his absolute need for control, and his problems managing his anger.

If he was up, everyone was up. He prided himself on that cruelty. No one slept on his watch.

Not even if you had cluster migraines and were lying on the floor of the bathroom, puking. Just ask my friend and fellow author, Nikki Kane. She had not only witnessed him doing that to me, she had chewed him out for his cruelty over it.

The third reason that this made no sense?

And please pay close attention as this was why I’d been trapped in a twenty-seven-year marriage with a madman.

His father was a known pedophile who was the son of an even better-known pedophile.

Not being mean. And this wasn’t the case of a woman in a divorce making false allegations. I would never do that to anyone.

I wasn’t Les.

Being an abused child, I was born knowing that no one wanted to believe you whenever you said someone had been molested. That was the trap.

It was what had kept me in this travesty of a marriage to a madman.

It was why no one wanted to report that crime. Why you had to think long and hard before ever reporting it.

Because the pedophile wasn’t the