“You went through my phone?” he gasped.
“Your phone? That’s what you’re worried about right now?”
That’s when Jennifer stepped out from behind our garden shed, pushing Emma in her wheelchair.
Tyler stumbled backward, knocking over his chair.
“Hello, Tyler!” Jennifer waved her hand.
“Or should I call you by whatever name you’re using these days? Is it Jacob? John?
Mark? Rick?”
“You sat at our dinner table. You told me I was like the little sister you never had.
You promised to help me get the equipment I needed to go to college,” Emma added.
“Thirty-two thousand dollars!” Jennifer continued. “Three years of saving. Three years of believing in a future you never intended to give me.”
I stood up and pulled an envelope from under my plate.
“Divorce papers, Tyler.
Already filed. The house is mine! Seems when you commit fraud, you forfeit certain rights to marital property.”
“Mindy, please.
This is all a misunderstanding. I never meant for things to go this far. I can fix this.
I can pay everyone back…”
“With what money? The money you stole from Sarah in Portland? From Rebecca in Denver?
From the widow in Phoenix whose husband’s life insurance you convinced her to ‘invest’?”
Jennifer held up her phone. “The FBI was very interested in your operation, Tyler. Turns out, when you cross state lines to commit fraud, it becomes a federal crime.”
Tyler tried to run.
He actually got to the gate before two federal agents stepped out of the unmarked car that had been parked across the street.
Six months later, I found myself sitting in that same backyard, though everything around me had changed. The hedge was gone—completely removed and replaced with a butterfly garden. Emma helped design it, giving instructions from her new wheelchair, the one Jennifer was finally able to buy using the restitution funds.
Tyler was serving an eight-year sentence in federal prison.
The house was now legally mine, along with whatever few assets he hadn’t already squandered. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was something—and it belonged to me.
Jennifer and Emma still come over every Sunday for dinner. What we have now is a genuine friendship, forged from the ruins of Tyler’s deceit.
