Con Artists - Part II

Tuesday Morning
My mother wakes me up on Tuesday morning telling me to ask my sisters if she should divorce my Dad as it is our decision, thus beginning another day of e-mails and phone calls with the four of us. Claire decided on Monday night to leave the iPhone with me and I try to piece this whole story together in hopes that somehow we can figure out the truth. Right now, we’re all angry with my Father and India since they’ve placed my Mother in such a horrible financial position.

The morning is spent with researching software that will save text messages, notes, etc. off of iPhones so even if my Dad deleted the information, we would always have it. I can say that my Father never slept with India (trust me – that’s what I thought but thanks to Evernotes, my dad kept a journal of this whole ride and he never cheated on my Mom) but he keeps denying the fact that she’s a con artist. My request to him that morning is to no longer have contact with India or he would indeed lose his daughters.


Tuesday Afternoon
Mr. M and I decided to go to a very good family friend who is a lawyer to see if we can go after India since she still has the car but hasn’t paid for it yet as well as swindling my Father out of a substantial amount of money. That’s how we found out about Ben’s past jail time and the fact that they are both judgment proof. Lovely.

However, since Ben has a parole officer, I now have the officer’s number to call in case Ben tries to harass my family. Not the best news but it’s something.


Tuesday Evening
Claire, Mark and my mother travel to my house for dinner and we together as a family (with the other two sisters on speaker phone) try to create a plan (enter my Type-A self) on how to help my Dad for the future. This was another great point that Gamblers Anonymous gave me – create a contract with all the family member’s input so everyone gets a chance to express their feelings and the family is all on the same page. My guess is so this eliminates the finger pointing within a family and not to break up siblings on who sides with Dad and who sides with Mom. We discover that my Father added India to their cell phone plan and my Mother has been paying for her phone bill since January and that through her text messages, she stole additional money from my Mother.

I become the one elected to talk to my Father that night and tell him of the contract. Not going to lie, this was very hard to do and took every ounce of myself not to scream, threaten, and cry on the phone.

Wednesday
My sisters and I e-mail back and forth about what we want to have in the contract. For whatever reason, my Mother decides not to cancel India’s cell phone so she can see if she contacts my Dad.

Claire calls me to tell me that my Dad thought about jumping off the freeway overpass this afternoon to end his life.

More e-mails, more phone calls, it all feels like a vicious cycle.

Thursday
We’ve decided to divide the contract into three sections – Communication, Financial and Well-Being. Mr. M and I drive over my parent’s house after work to discuss this with my Dad and to get him to sign it.

He has the hardest part with our request for him to no longer have a texting plan for a while. You would have thought that I had asked him to eat dirt for a few months. Mr. M and I requested that he goes through Financial Peace University and we would pay for it (which thank the good Lord went on sale yesterday). This was a very extremely hard conversation because if he doesn’t follow through with what we asked him, then my sisters will not talk to him again – ever.

Friday
My mother is now taking her anger over the situation out of me. It is now my fault that my Dad is in this situation and I went over the line with asking him to sign a contract (a contract that I had her approve before I showed it to her). Jennifer is working on getting my Dad a counselor due to the bridge issue the day before. I feel like a walking zombie.


Can I please tell you that this has literally been the longest summer in my life? Not to sound dramatic, but if terrible things happen in threes and we’ve already experienced the whole baby mess and now this financial mess, I’m afraid for the third disaster. When did my life turn into one of those “Intervention” television shows?