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“Diane doesn’t want to share you. She wants to become the center of our house.”
Suddenly, I remembered everything differently, especially the massive fight Sarah and I had six months earlier, the night I’d nearly moved out.
I remembered standing in our bedroom holding screenshots while Sarah cried so hard she could barely speak.
“I swear none of this is real,” she kept saying.
I didn’t believe her.
Then came the sentence that shattered me.
Now I realized my wife hadn’t looked guilty that night. She looked terrified. Terrified that my mother was succeeding!
Then Sarah explained something else in the recording.
Toward the end of her life, she’d become constantly exhausted and dizzy. Doctors couldn’t explain why.
Around that same time, Lucy accidentally overheard Diane pretending to be Sarah during a phone call.
Lucy later asked my wife what it meant.
That’s when Sarah realized how far things had gone.
And with what she believed were her final chances to protect the kids, she told Lucy to warn me not to trust Grandma.
She looked terrified.
***
I collapsed onto the garage floor.
Every terrible memory hit me at once.
Every time Sarah begged me to believe her.
Every time I defended my mother instead.
I grabbed my phone and called my mother immediately.
The second she answered, I shouted:
“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?!”
There was silence.