Chapter 6 - DAVID DESERVES THE REAL TRUTH
Everything after became paperwork, interviews, lawyers, DNA tests, therapists, police reports.
The test confirmed it. Gerald Voss was my biological father. Gerald Voss was Simone's biological father. Simone and I shared roughly twenty-five percent of our DNA. Half-siblings.
When Simone found out, she vomited, then barely spoke for a full day. Whatever anger I felt toward her tangled with something else entirely — horror, pity, disgust, grief. She had stolen from my mother. Treated her cruelly. Those were her choices.
But the nightmare of our marriage wasn't. Neither of us had known.
Simone pleaded guilty to financial exploitation and identity-related offenses. Because she fully cooperated against Gerald, returned what money remained, and helped recover several hidden accounts, her sentence was reduced.
Gerald wasn't as fortunate. Investigators tied him to decades of fraud under multiple identities. He'll likely die in prison.
Mom withdrew the false trust amendment and admitted what she'd done. Because she'd fabricated a legal document to trigger an investigation, she faced consequences too — but prosecutors weighed her age, health, cooperation, and the extraordinary circumstances.
For me, the legal fallout wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part was realizing how many people had lied because they truly believed they were protecting me. Dad lied. Mom lied. Bernard kept secrets. Gerald built his entire life on deception. Simone hid theft.
Everyone had a reason. And every reason became another brick in the wall that trapped us all.
Six months later, Simone and I sat across from each other in a lawyer's office. Our marriage had been legally dissolved. Not just divorced. Dissolved.
She looked different. No designer purse. No perfect hair. No armor. She slid an envelope toward me.
"What's this?"
"My share of the recovered money."
"I don't want it."
"It belongs to Eleanor."
I looked at her. Her eyes filled. "I know saying sorry is useless."
I said nothing.
"I was horrible to her before Dad ever came back." She caught herself. "Gerald." She looked down. "I was horrible because I was jealous."
"Of my mother?"
"Of what you had with her." She wiped her eyes. "My mother spent my whole childhood telling me I was a burden. Eleanor treated you like you mattered every second you were in the room." Her voice broke. "I hated seeing it because I wanted it."
It excused nothing. But for the first time, I understood something about Simone I should have understood years earlier. People can envy love they've never once experienced safely.
She pushed the envelope closer. "I can't undo what I did."
"No."
"I know."
She stood. At the door, she stopped. "David?"
I looked up.
"I'm glad Eleanor's treatment worked."
That was all. She left.
Final: Not My Problem, Revisited
Mom moved in with me the following spring — not because she needed full-time care, but because after everything, neither of us wanted to waste whatever time was left pretending independence mattered more than family.
One Sunday morning I came downstairs and found her baking banana bread. I stopped in the doorway.
She looked over. "What?"
I laughed. "Nothing."
"You want the end piece?"
"You know I do."
She cut it for me. For a while neither of us spoke. Then, quietly: "I'm sorry I lied to you."
I watched steam rise off my coffee. "I know."
"I thought the truth would destroy your life."
"It did," I said.
She flinched. I reached across the table and covered her hand.
"But lying almost destroyed more."
Her eyes filled. "Dad was still my father," I said.
"Yes."
"And Gerald isn't."
"But biologically—"
"I don't care." I shook my head. "Being somebody's father is more than DNA."
Mom squeezed my hand. Sunlight moved slowly across the yard outside. For the first time in a year, my life felt quiet. Not repaired. Not normal.
Honest.
Maybe that was better.
Then the doorbell rang. Mom frowned. "Expecting someone?"
"No."
I walked toward the door, and for one absurd second I remembered that morning — Mom with her hospital bag, Simone with her iced coffee, the sentence that started all of it.
Not my problem.
I opened the door.
A young woman stood on the porch. Maybe twenty-six. Dark hair. Nervous eyes. An old photograph clutched in one hand.
"David Bennett?"
"Yes?"
She swallowed. "My name is Naomi."
"Okay."
She glanced past me down the hallway, then back. "I'm sorry to show up like this."
"Do I know you?"
"No." She held out the photograph. It showed a younger Gerald Voss standing beside a woman I'd never seen.
Her next words raised every hair on my arms.
"Gerald Voss was my father too."
I stared at her.
"And before he was arrested, he mailed me something." She reached into her bag and pulled out a sealed envelope, handing it to me.
Five words, written across the front:
DAVID DESERVES THE REAL TRUTH.
Mom appeared behind me. She saw the handwriting. Her coffee mug slipped out of her hand and shattered across the floor.
I turned. She'd gone completely white.
"Mom?"
She stared at the envelope like it was something loaded, something live.
May you like
Then she whispered the sentence I know I'll never forget.
"David... Gerald wasn't the one who started this."
