Chapter 6 - Confrontation at the Dining Table
"I did what I had to do!" Barbara flared up, slamming her hand onto the table. "You were drifting away from me, Daniel! Ever since you married her, I became an afterthought! She turned you against your own family!"
"No, Mother," Daniel said, tears welling in his eyes again, though his tone remained iron-clad. "You did that all by yourself. Laura never asked me to distance myself from you. She made sure I called you every week. She bought your birthday presents. She invited you here!"
"She's fake!" Barbara hissed. "All modern women are! She would have left you eventually and taken half of everything! I was just speeding up the process so you could keep what’s yours!"
"I love my wife," Daniel said, looking at me with a profound clarity that had been missing for months. "And I love my son. What you did wasn't protection. It was abuse."
"You can't kick me out," Barbara sneered, shifting tactics as she realized her emotional leverage was gone. "I have residency here now. You'll have to formally evict me, and that will take months."
May you like
I leaned forward, placing my hands flat on the table. "Actually, Barbara, the bank transfers you made without Daniel's explicit signature constitute grand larceny and financial elder abuse, considering you filed papers claiming mental incompetence to avoid Arizona property taxes last year. We spoke to an attorney this morning."
The silence that followed was total. Barbara's mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out. Her own paper trail of lies had boxed her into a corner.
