Mystery Solved!
Hi, moms!
First let me say that I hope you're sitting down. Comfortably. At your desks and kitchen tables. For those of you who need catching up, I'm linking this to the post about my friendship with Emily, and then to the series of posts about her disappearance and death. Or anyway, what we all thought was her death. But I'm getting ahead of my story. By the time you're done reading those posts, you'll be pretty much caught up.
Anyway, the latest installment blows everything out of the water.
Moms, are you ready for some big news? Some shocking news?
Emily is alive!!!
I'll skip a couple of steps. I'll leave out my vague suspicion that Emily really wasn't dead. Let's call it my mom intuition. That maternal sixth sense that once again turns out to be right.
When I wrote that post about the afterlife, that post which so many of you reposted, I was actually trying to get in touch with Emily in case she was alive somewhere and could somehow read it. I wanted her to know that I hadn't stopped thinking about her and praying for her.
Emily was the friend I was writing about when I wrote about the friend reaching for our help and about how we know whether or not it's real. (link)
Let me say it as plainly as I can: Her husband was abusive.
She was so afraid of him that she faked her own disappearance and death. It was worse than that. He'd come up with a fraudulent scam to collect a fortune in insurance money after she disappeared and supposedly died. It's the sort of thing you see on TV, but I guess it happens in real life.
In fact it was her twin sister who died, a desperate measure to which Emily's sister was pushed (to be fair, partly pushed) by her cruel, unsympathetic, abusive brother-in-law.
Sean Townsend.
If it seems surprising that the nice guy and responsible dad I praised on my blog should have turned out to be a terrible person, all I can say is it happens. Hustlers and even serial killers prey on loving women. Not that I am implying that my friend's husband is a killer. Not literally, I mean.
Sean is a very bad person. I don't know what the insurance laws are. But according to Emily, a Mr. Isaac Prager has been spearheading an investigation. He tracked down Emily and got in touch. He offered her a deal and agreed that she would not be implicated in the case if she told him the truth. And of course she referred Mr. Prager back to Sean. The last Emily heard from Mr. Prager, he and Sean had arranged a meeting about thirty miles from our town.
Emily and I are friends again. She was brave enough to reach out for help, and I was a good enough friend to be there for her. Once again, we're moms united in the same struggle. So here's to the moms and to good friendship.
Love,
Stephanie
