Shattered Vows

I’m typing this in a hospital room, my hands trembling slightly as I try to make sense of the last twenty-four hours. The fluorescent lights overhead cast everything in a harsh, clinical glow that seems appropriate for the dissection of my life that’s about to unfold on this screen.

Yesterday, my wife Mari and I were in a car accident. I walked away with minor cuts and bruises—a few scrapes on my forearms, a bruise blooming purple across my ribs where the seatbelt caught me. But Mari suffered catastrophic injuries: a crushed shoulder, a broken collarbone, three broken ribs, and a collapsed lung that required emergency surgery. The doctors say she’ll make a full recovery, but for now she’s heavily sedated, her chest rising and falling with mechanical precision as machines breathe for her.

That’s not why I’m writing this, though. I’m writing because in the hours surrounding the accident, I discovered something that has broken me more completely than any car crash ever could. I discovered that my wife has been cheating on me. My heart is shattered into so many pieces I don’t know how to even begin gathering them up. I feel like a fundamental part of me is missing, and that part is lying unconscious in a hospital bed three feet away from where I sit.

Mari and I have known each other since we were children. Our mothers were friends, and we grew up playing together at neighborhood barbecues and birthday parties. We started dating our junior year of high school—she asked me to homecoming, and I was so nervous I could barely dance without stepping on her feet. We’ve been together ever since. She was the only woman I had ever been with, and until very recently, I believed I was her only man. We married right after college, in a small ceremony at her parents’ church. We had our son, Michael, a year later, and our daughter, Carrie, three years after that. My kids are my entire world. If not for them, I’m genuinely not sure I would be here right now, in this room, watching the monitors track my wife’s vital signs.

We had felt a distance growing between us for the last three months, a coldness that had settled over our marriage like frost on a window. But I couldn’t figure out why. I kept trying to talk to her about it, asking if something was wrong, if I had done something to upset her. She would just shake her head and say she was tired, that work was stressful, that she was fine. I believed her because I wanted to believe her.

We were supposed to fly to Florida yesterday for a cruise we’d booked months ago—a celebration of our tenth wedding anniversary. The night before we were supposed to leave, Mari told me she was going out with her best friend, Rebecca. I urged her to stay home. It was snowing heavily, the kind of wet, heavy snow that makes roads treacherous and visibility terrible. But she insisted it would just be a few drinks, that they’d stay at Rebecca’s house if the weather got too bad, that I was worrying over nothing.

I went to bed around eleven, tired from packing and getting everything ready for the trip. I slept soundly, dreaming about nothing in particular.

Around five in the morning, I woke up to use the bathroom. Something made me glance out the bedroom window, and I noticed Mari’s car wasn’t in the driveway. The snow had continued falling all night, and there were at least eight inches blanketing everything, undisturbed by tire tracks.

I assumed she’d stayed at Rebecca’s as planned. I got dressed in warm layers and went out to my SUV to drive through the deepening snow to get her. As I started the engine, I sent her a text: “Don’t try to drive. Snow’s too deep. I’m coming to get you.” I watched the message sit there, showing as delivered but unread. I often wonder now what would have happened if she’d read that text. Would she have had time to cover her tracks? Would I still be living a lie, but without this particular anguish? Would ignorance have been better than this?

Rebecca lived about fifteen minutes away in good weather. It took me nearly thirty minutes to navigate the snow-covered roads. Her driveway hadn’t been plowed, and I had to gun the engine to make it up the slight incline to her house.

The front door was unlocked—Rebecca was notorious for forgetting to lock up, something that drove her husband crazy before he left her last year. I walked in quietly, expecting to find Mari and Rebecca passed out on the sofa, surrounded by empty wine bottles and the remnants of whatever snacks they’d been eating.

The living room was empty. The lights were off. There were no wine bottles, no signs that anyone had been socializing down here at all.

A terrible feeling started forming in the pit of my stomach, a cold dread that made my hands shake as I climbed the stairs. I told myself I was being paranoid, that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe they’d gone straight to bed when they got home. Maybe they’d stayed up late talking in the guest room like they sometimes did.

I reached the upstairs hallway. The master bedroom door was open, the room clearly empty. The guest room door was closed.

I stood outside that door for what felt like an eternity but was probably only seconds. My hand hovered over the doorknob. Everything in me wanted to turn around, go back downstairs, wait in the living room like a normal person instead of creeping through someone’s house like a paranoid detective.

But I couldn’t. Something was wrong. I could feel it.

I opened the door.

The room was dark except for the gray light filtering through the curtains. I could see the shape of the bed, and two heads visible on the pillows, two shapes under the covers.

My brain tried to make it make sense. Maybe Rebecca had let Mari sleep in the guest bed while she took the couch? But there were two heads. Two people.

I walked closer. I pulled back the comforter.

And my life as I knew it ended.

I saw my wife—my Mari, the woman I’d loved since we were seventeen years old—with her head resting on some shirtless man’s chest. His arm was around her. They were asleep, peaceful, tangled together in a way that spoke of intimacy and familiarity.

The next thing I remember clearly is Rebecca, Mari, and the half-naked stranger trying to pull me off of him. I honestly don’t have any memory of the attack itself, of how I went from standing there in shock to having my hands around this man’s throat. I came back to myself with Mari screaming my name, with Rebecca pulling at my arms, with the stranger—younger than me, maybe in his mid-twenties, with a stupid tattoo on his shoulder—gasping for air and scrambling backward across the bed.

When I released him and stepped back, my hands were shaking so badly I had to clench them into fists. The man grabbed his clothes and said something about getting himself to the hospital if he needed to, that he wasn’t going to call the cops, that he didn’t know she was married. That last part was a lie—Mari wore her wedding ring everywhere.

Mari was sobbing, trying to explain, her words tumbling over each other incoherently. Rebecca was screaming at me, calling me crazy, telling me to get out of her house. I was screaming back, asking how long she’d been helping my wife cheat on me, asking what kind of friend does that.

Finally I turned to Mari, who was pulling on her clothes with shaking hands, and I said with a calmness I didn’t feel, “You have five minutes to be in my car or don’t bother coming home at all.”

She was there in three, clutching her purse and phone, her makeup smeared from crying.

The drive home was silent except for her occasional sobs. I kept both hands locked on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the road. I was driving too fast for the conditions, I knew I was, but I was so angry I couldn’t make myself slow down. The rage was like a living thing inside me, demanding action, demanding speed, demanding some kind of outlet.

Mari kept trying to talk, starting sentences and then stopping. “I’m sorry” and “Please let me explain” and “It’s not what you think.”

I told her to shut up. I told her I didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. I told her she’d destroyed everything and I never wanted to look at her again.

That’s when I saw the other vehicle.

It came out of nowhere—or maybe it had been there all along and I’d been too consumed by rage to notice. A pickup truck, sliding on the ice, veering into our lane. I yanked the wheel hard to the right, felt the car skid, saw the guardrail coming up fast.

We hit it at an angle that sent us spinning. The car rolled once, twice, before finally coming to rest on its side. The airbags deployed with explosive force, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t process what had just happened.

Then I heard Mari screaming.

The next several hours were a blur of emergency responders, ambulances, hospitals. Mari was rushed into surgery. I was examined, treated for minor injuries, and then left to wait. And wait. And wait.

The kids were staying with my parents for the night before our scheduled trip. They don’t even know about the wreck yet. I haven’t called anyone—not my parents, not Mari’s parents, not our friends. My life has been completely wrecked, and I’m trying to gauge the extent of the damage before I bring others into this chaos.

I’m numb, yet I hurt like hell. It’s a strange combination, like my body can’t decide whether to feel everything or nothing. I don’t even know the person lying in that hospital bed. She obviously doesn’t love me anymore. No one with a soul could cheat on someone they claim to love. No one who actually cared about their spouse and children would risk destroying their entire family for a few hours with a stranger.

The instant she was unfaithful, our marriage ended. The vows we took ten years ago were shattered. A huge part of me wants to just walk out of this hospital room, call her parents, and tell them their daughter is their problem now. Let them deal with her recovery. Let them figure out how to help her pick up the pieces of the life she’s destroyed.

The only thing keeping me in this uncomfortable chair, keeping me here at her bedside even though looking at her makes me physically sick, is my children. They need their mother, as much as that kills me to admit. I’m a damn good father—I know I am—but I can’t be a mother too. But how can I sit here and look after someone who has stabbed me in the back so cruelly? What do I tell my children when they ask why Daddy looks so sad? They’ll see the anger on my face, the devastation in my eyes. How the hell did my life come to this?

Update One

After my initial post, which I wrote in a haze of shock and grief, I stayed one more night in that hospital room. I tried to sleep in the uncomfortable recliner the nurse had brought me, but every time I closed my eyes I saw them together. Saw her head on his chest. Saw the peaceful expression on her sleeping face, the intimacy of their position.

Around three in the morning, still unable to sleep, I finally let myself cry. I cried so damn hard, trying to keep quiet so I wouldn’t wake Mari, my whole body shaking with sobs. I cried for my marriage, for the life I thought we were building together, for my children who would grow up in a broken home. I cried for the naive younger version of myself who had believed that loving someone completely meant they would love you the same way in return.

The next morning, as soon as Mari’s eyes fluttered open, I left without a word. I couldn’t stand to hear whatever excuses she was going to make, whatever lies she was going to tell to try to minimize what she’d done.

I drove straight to her parents’ house. Her father, Tom, was in his workshop in the garage, building something out of wood like he always did on weekend mornings. He looked up when I knocked, surprised to see me.

“Everything okay?” he asked, wiping sawdust from his hands.

“No,” I said. “We need to talk. You should wake up Linda.”

I waited while he went inside to get Mari’s mother. When they both came down, wrapped in bathrobes and looking concerned, I took a deep breath and explained that there had been an accident. That Mari and I had been in a car crash. That she had sustained serious injuries but the doctors expected a full recovery.

They immediately started gathering their things, preparing to rush to the hospital. That’s when I told them the rest.

I described walking in on their daughter with another man. I explained that I would be filing for divorce. I watched their faces go through a progression of emotions—shock, disbelief, denial, and finally a kind of defensive anger.

“You can’t just give up on her over one mistake,” Linda said, her voice rising. “She made a terrible error in judgment, but she’s your wife. You have children together. You have to work through this.”

“One mistake?” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Your daughter was sleeping with another man in her friend’s guest room while I was at home with our kids. That’s not a mistake. That’s a choice. A deliberate betrayal.”

Tom tried a different approach. “Look, son, I know you’re hurt and angry right now. But don’t make any hasty decisions you’ll regret later. Give it some time. Go to counseling. People can work through infidelity.”

I just looked at him, at both of them, these people I’d loved and respected for over a decade. “I loved having you as in-laws,” I said quietly. “You’ve been wonderful to me and wonderful grandparents to Michael and Carrie. But your daughter destroyed our marriage, and I cannot stay in a relationship with someone who would betray me like that.”

I walked out before they could say anything else.

From there, I drove to my parents’ house. The moment I walked through the door and saw my father, I completely broke down. I hadn’t cried in front of him since I was a child, but I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I hugged him and cried like my heart was breaking—because it was.

When my mother came running in, alarmed by the sound of my sobs, I managed to tell them everything. The cheating, the accident, my decision to divorce Mari. They held me while I cried, didn’t try to offer platitudes or suggest I reconsider. They just let me grieve.

Just as our conversation was winding down, I heard a squeal of “Daddy!” and the sound of small feet running. My daughter Carrie came barreling down the stairs in her princess pajamas, launching herself into my arms. My son Michael followed more slowly, rubbing sleep from his eyes but smiling when he saw me.

Seeing them, holding them, smelling the familiar scent of the baby shampoo my mother still used on them even though they were getting too old for it—that made me want to live again. That reminded me I had something worth fighting for.

I sat them down and explained in age-appropriate terms that Mommy and I had been in a car accident, that Mommy was in the hospital but was going to be okay, that she would need to stay there for a little while but would be coming home eventually. I didn’t tell them about the divorce. That conversation would have to wait until I had figured out how to explain it in a way they could understand.

For the rest of the day, I just played with them. We built elaborate Lego structures, read stories, played hide and seek around my parents’ house. I held them every chance I got, physically reassuring myself that they were real and safe and mine. It was a lifeline, pulling me back from the dark place my mind kept wanting to go.

Mari’s phone had been destroyed in the accident, but by evening I started getting texts from her mother’s phone. I knew they were from Mari—the writing style, the desperate tone, the pleading.

“Please talk to me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was a mistake. I love you. Please.”

“Don’t throw away ten years over one night.”

I ignored all of them.

The next day, still staying at my parents’ house because I couldn’t face going home yet, I started making calls. I spoke with three different law firms, explaining my situation and asking about divorce proceedings and custody arrangements. Custody was my primary focus—I wanted to make sure I could get primary custody of my children while still ensuring Mari remained in their lives. They needed their mother, even if she could never again be part of mine.

I also made an appointment for a full STD screening. The results came back a week later—all clean, thank God. At least she hadn’t given me any diseases along with her betrayal.

I learned through mutual friends that Mari had been released from the hospital and was staying with her parents. They hadn’t brought her to our house, hadn’t contacted me about retrieving any of her things. That was fine with me. I wasn’t ready to see her.

The woman I’d loved for over half my life, the woman I’d built a future with, the mother of my children—she had become a stranger. And if I could do it all over again, knowing how it would end, I would choose differently. I would choose someone else, anyone else, who would actually honor their vows and be faithful.

Update Two

I hired a lawyer named Nadia who came highly recommended as the head of a firm known for representing men in divorce proceedings. She was in her late forties, professional and composed, with an air of competence that immediately put me at ease. During our initial consultation, she was kind about my situation but immediately practical in her approach.

“Do you have any documentation of the infidelity?” she asked, pulling out a legal pad to take notes.

I explained about walking in on Mari with another man, but admitted I had been too shocked and angry to think about taking photos or gathering evidence.

“That’s understandable,” Nadia said. “But we’ll need something concrete if we want to ensure this divorce goes in your favor. I’m going to set up a meeting with a private investigator we work with. He might be able to recover deleted texts or emails from her accounts.”

Over the next several weeks, Nadia’s firm arranged everything. They set up a go-between service to handle communication and custody exchanges with Mari’s parents, since I still couldn’t face seeing her. She gave me a detailed list of things I needed to do—gathering financial documents, changing passwords, documenting expenses for the children.

One item on her list stood out: “Purchase two DNA paternity test kits from the drugstore.”

I stared at that line for a long moment, something cold settling in my stomach. But I told myself it was just standard procedure, that lawyers probably recommended this for all divorce cases just to be thorough.

That night, I swabbed my cheek and then gently swabbed both Michael’s and Carrie’s cheeks while they slept, telling myself I was being ridiculous, that of course they were both mine. I mailed the kits off the next day and tried not to think about it.

Two days later, I was at work trying to focus on the quarterly report I was supposed to be preparing when the email arrived. Two separate messages, one for each child.

I opened the first one with shaking hands. The document loaded, full of genetic markers and percentages and technical language I didn’t fully understand. But the conclusion was clear: Michael was my biological son. Probability of paternity: 99.99%.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and opened the second email.

I read it once. Then I read it again, certain I must be misunderstanding something.

Probability of paternity: 0%

The tested man is excluded as the biological father of the tested child.

My daughter, Carrie—my sweet, funny, intelligent daughter who had my mother’s smile and Mari’s stubbornness—was not my biological child.

I can’t imagine that having an arm severed would hurt much more than what I felt in that moment. It was like my soul had been physically ripped from my body, leaving a gaping wound that would never heal. My vision blurred, my breathing became ragged, and I thought I might actually be having a heart attack.

Somehow I managed to forward both results to Nadia before stumbling out of my office, ignoring my assistant’s concerned questions. I made it to the parking garage before vomiting violently, my whole body heaving until there was nothing left.

My phone rang—Nadia. I couldn’t answer it. It rang again. And again.

Finally, a text: “Stay there. Someone is coming to get you.”

Within fifteen minutes, a paralegal from the firm arrived. She drove me to their office in my own car, keeping up a steady stream of gentle commentary about traffic and weather, giving me something to focus on besides the devastation in my mind.

Nadia was waiting in her office. The first thing she said, before I could even sit down, was: “Sometimes these tests are wrong. False negatives do happen. We need to do another test, in a sterile laboratory environment, before we draw any conclusions.”

But even as she said it, I knew. Deep down, I knew the test wasn’t wrong. It explained too much—Mari’s guilty behavior, the distance between us, the way she sometimes looked at Carrie with an expression I couldn’t quite interpret.

The go-between service arranged to pick up Carrie from Mari’s parents the next day under the pretense of taking her to a doctor’s appointment. They took her to a medical laboratory where a trained phlebotomist drew blood for the most accurate test possible.

Three days later, the results came back the same. I was not Carrie’s biological father. The probability was zero.

I cried even harder the second time, if that was possible. I drove straight to my parents’ house, walked in, and managed to choke out the words: “Carrie is not my daughter.”

My mother’s face crumpled. My father made a sound like he’d been punched. And we all just cried together for hours, grieving not just for the loss of the truth we’d believed, but for the innocent child who would eventually have to learn she wasn’t who she thought she was.

What was I going to do? The only thing I knew for certain, even in my devastation, was that Carrie would never want for anything. As horrible as I felt about Mari’s deception, I felt even worse for Carrie. She was completely innocent in all of this. She hadn’t asked to be born from her mother’s affair. She hadn’t asked to have a lie embedded in her very identity.

I met with Nadia again a few days later, once I’d composed myself enough to have a rational conversation. She informed me that the private investigator had managed to access Mari’s old phone—the one that had been sitting in a drawer at our house after she’d upgraded months ago.

What he found was devastating. Texts to and from various men whose names I didn’t recognize. Pictures I declined to look at. Videos I absolutely refused to see. The evidence went back years—not just months, but years. Enough evidence to sway any judge in the country toward granting me whatever I wanted in the divorce.

I declined to review any of it personally. I couldn’t stomach it. But Nadia assured me it was documented and backed up in multiple locations.

Together, we planned how I would confront Mari about Carrie’s paternity.

The Confrontation

We arranged a meeting at the law firm. I wanted neutral territory, a place where I couldn’t lose control of my emotions the way I had in Rebecca’s guest room. I arrived first, wanting to be settled and composed when Mari entered.

She came in supported by her mother, still wearing casts on her arm and shoulder from the accident. She looked smaller somehow, diminished. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she’d lost weight. Part of me felt satisfaction at her obvious suffering. Another part hated myself for feeling that way.

My lawyer began the meeting by asking if we could record it. Mari, probably on advice from her own attorney who was present via phone, agreed.

She immediately launched into an apology, her words tumbling over themselves. “I’m so sorry, I know what I did was terrible, it was the worst mistake of my life, I love you so much, please can we—”

I cut her off. “How many men have you cheated on me with, and when did it start?”

She froze, clearly not expecting such a direct question. “I… it was just that one time, the night you found me. I swear. I’d had too much to drink and—”

Nadia interrupted smoothly. “Mrs. Patterson, lying during these proceedings will only make things worse for you. We have evidence recovered from your phone showing extensive communication with multiple men over a period of several years.”

Mari’s face went white. She looked at her mother, who seemed equally shocked, then back at me. “It wasn’t… I mean, it was just texts, nothing physical except—”

“The truth,” I said, my voice deadly calm. “Right now. All of it.”

Over the next excruciating hour, with frequent interventions from Nadia to keep her focused, Mari confessed to years of infidelity. It had started about two years into our marriage, she admitted. Multiple one-night stands with men she met through her friend Rebecca, who apparently ran in circles where infidelity was treated as recreational entertainment.

But even as she confessed to years of betrayal, she was still trying to minimize, still trying to make it sound less awful than it was.

That’s when Nadia asked, very gently: “Mrs. Patterson, your husband has been an excellent father to both Michael and Carrie, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Mari said quickly, grasping at this seemingly neutral topic. “The best. I couldn’t ask for a better father to raise my children.”

I wanted to flip the conference table.

Nadia nodded sympathetically. “And do you think the biological father of your other child will be as good a parent? Will he step up to take responsibility?”

Mari looked confused, her eyes darting between Nadia and me. “What? What other child? What are you talking about?”

Nadia slid the paternity test results across the table.

I watched Mari’s face as she read them, needing to see her reaction, needing to know if she had known all along or if this was news to her too. I saw shock, genuine shock, followed quickly by horror and then a desperate attempt at denial.

“No,” she whispered. “No, that’s not… these must be wrong. You’re her father. You’re the one who raised her. You—”

“Who is Carrie’s biological father?” I demanded, my voice shaking now. “Who did you sleep with around the time she was conceived?”

She looked down at her hands, at least having the grace to show some shame. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

“You don’t know?” I repeated, my voice rising despite my attempts to stay controlled. “You don’t know which man fathered your daughter? How is that even possible?”

That’s when the full story came out, prompted by Nadia’s relentless but professional questioning. Mari spoke of postpartum depression after Michael was born, of feeling disconnected from her body and her life. She talked about how Rebecca had convinced her to go out, to reclaim some of her youth and freedom.

The first time had been innocent enough—just drinks and dancing. But the second time, she’d gotten drunk and let some guy she’d been dancing with kiss her in the parking lot. That had led to more in his car. She claimed she felt guilty for months afterward.

But then, she said, she’d started to resent that guilt. Started to resent me for being the reason she couldn’t do what she wanted. Started to feel like she’d missed out on being young and wild and free by marrying her high school sweetheart.

So she’d started hooking up with men regularly on her nights out with Rebecca. She claimed she never developed actual feelings for any of them, that it was purely physical. She swore she always used protection. She never slept with the same guy more than two or three times to avoid attachments.

I listened to this confession feeling like I was in a nightmare, like this couldn’t possibly be my life, my wife saying these things.

Nadia asked if Mari had any idea who Carrie’s father might be. She swore she’d always assumed Carrie was mine, that there had never been any reason to think otherwise.

My lawyer, with impressive patience, pointed out that something must have happened for the test to show zero paternity. Some encounter where protection had failed.

Mari’s face crumpled. “There were a few times,” she admitted quietly. “A few times when condoms broke. With a few different guys. I… I thought it would be fine. The timing seemed right for it to be yours.”

I completely lost it.

“Who the hell are you?” I screamed, standing up so fast my chair fell backward. “When did you start hating me? When did I become someone you felt justified betraying over and over? What did I do to deserve this?”

I raged at her for several minutes while she sat there crying, accepting every word because she knew, finally knew, that there was no excuse, no justification, no way to make this anything other than what it was.

Our marriage was scorched earth. She had destroyed two families—hers and mine. And for what? For a few hours of physical pleasure with men whose names she couldn’t even remember?

Through her sobs, she admitted to using dating apps, to meeting men specifically for sex, to using her “girls’ nights” with Rebecca as cover for these encounters. She claimed she never meant to hurt me.

And God help me, I actually believed her on that one point. I didn’t think she’d set out to deliberately cause pain. She’d just been so focused on what she wanted, so consumed by her own desires and resentments, that she hadn’t thought about the consequences at all.

I asked her why she didn’t just divorce me if she was so unhappy, if she wanted to sleep around so badly.

Her answer was brutally honest: “Because I didn’t want to lose the security you provided. The house, the stability, being able to stay home with the kids. I wanted that and the freedom too.”

The person sitting across from me was a complete stranger. I owned everything—the house, the cars, the investment accounts. My assets had been inherited from my grandparents long before our marriage, kept carefully separate in accounts she had no access to. She knew that in a divorce, I would dominate the proceedings. She would get child support and probably some alimony, but nothing like the comfortable life she’d enjoyed as my wife.

So she’d tried to have it all. And in the process, she’d destroyed everything.

But I was no longer just dealing with infidelity. I now had to figure out who Carrie’s biological father was. For medical reasons alone, we needed to know. For Carrie’s own sense of identity. For a thousand practical and emotional reasons.

The private investigator’s evidence didn’t stretch back far enough to identify potential fathers from the time period when Carrie was conceived. And Mari claimed she couldn’t remember any of the men’s names from back then. Didn’t have phone numbers. Didn’t know how to contact them even if she wanted to.

My name had to come off Carrie’s birth certificate. Legally, she was not mine. But I was determined to continue supporting her financially, on my own terms, long after she turned eighteen. Before the paternity test, I had been planning to pursue a 90/10 custody arrangement, with Mari getting the kids every other weekend.

Now I didn’t feel right pursuing custody of a child who wasn’t biologically mine, even though she was Michael’s half-sister. I didn’t want to take her from Michael, didn’t want to break up their sibling bond. But the legal and ethical questions were overwhelming.

God knows how much therapy this is going to cost all of us. But I will pay for it. For Michael, for Carrie, and probably for myself too.