Chapter 12 - WHAT GRANT WANTED ME TO UNDERSTAND
The confrontation happened six weeks later in a supervised conference room at the prosecutor’s office.
My attorney sat beside me. Grant’s attorney sat beside him. The prosecutor remained near the door.
Grant had lost weight. He wore county-issued clothing and kept his hands flat on the table.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I waited.
“My mother convinced me you were trying to take everything.”
“You buried me.”
“I know.”
“You poured water on me.”
“My mother did most of that.”
“You held me down while she did it.”
He looked away.
I asked the question that had followed me through every medical appointment and sleepless night.
“When I told you the baby wasn’t moving, why didn’t you stop?”
Grant pressed his lips together.
“I thought you were lying.”
“No. You needed me to be lying.”
His eyes filled, but I felt no urge to comfort him.
“If you believed me,” I continued, “then you would’ve had to choose between your mother and your child.”
Grant’s shoulders folded forward.
“She spent my whole life telling me I was the only person who could save the company. After Dad died, every mistake felt like proof that she was right about me.”
“That explains why you were afraid of failing.”
“I know.”
“It does not explain why you needed me beneath you.”
He looked at me then.
“I wanted you to stop being the person who could say no.”
That was the first honest sentence he gave me.
Teresa wanted money and escape.
Grant wanted obedience.
The financial crisis gave him an excuse to turn a private belief into physical control.
He asked whether I would let him receive updates when the baby was born.
“I haven’t decided.”
“I’m still his father.”
“You were his father in the backyard.”
Grant lowered his head.
The prosecutor ended the meeting after Grant confirmed Teresa had instructed him to destroy several preliminary loan drafts and to claim I had voluntarily entered the trench as part of a landscaping disagreement.
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His statement supported the records.
But before accountability could become unavoidable, investigators still needed to prove Teresa had participated in the restraint rather than merely witnessed it.
