He had turned my grief into something he could manage, just as he’d later turned his illness into something he could sell.
The pattern had been there all along.
Mark’s earliest great lie hadn’t been about his health.
It had been about our daughter.
And he’d spent the rest of our marriage perfecting the same cruelty.
Whenever life demanded money, loyalty, or sacrifice, he created a tragedy and made me responsible for surviving it.
The adoption records also exposed his motive.
In 1998, Mark’s first business had been close to collapse.
He owed creditors substantial sums.
A premature baby requiring extended medical care would have complicated an already desperate financial situation.
Correspondence recovered from the old records showed he’d approached the intermediary shortly after doctors became optimistic about our daughter’s survival.
He described himself as a father who couldn’t support a medically vulnerable child.
