(Edited Aug. 22, 2013 I forgot about the cruise)

(If you are new to this blog, you may want to read the posts “In a Nutshell” or go to July 2012 and read “Sending out a Letter.” Both of these posts give a brief description of what happened. As Emma’s mom, I am blogging my experiences with Emma and the things she did/does. This is a child who made up a story about rape, accused a priest of molesting her, and then as her attorney was about to file a lawsuit against the priest and the church, Emma accused her mother of physical abuse to stop the lawsuit because she knew her lies were about to be discovered. Emma is now living in Liberty Township, Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, attending Wright State University, and talking about getting married. Emma claims her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to Ohio to get away from her mother. She also claims her future mother-in-law, lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family.)

Phill got our Buck Trail, Hoschton home in the divorce. I couldn’t have afforded it by myself anyway. While Phill got the house, I still own half the items in the house. Phill has only let me have a few things out of the house. I have no idea if he still has my things or has gotten rid of them. When I tried to call him in Dec. of 2012, he had my phone number blocked. Before that, the last time I spoke to him on the phone was in Sept. of 2011. (Maybe I called him too much?)

The question I get asked quite frequently is if I thought there was something odd going on between Phill and Emma, and I’ve already answered that. No, I didn’t.

The other question I get asked is if there was another woman. Well, at first I didn’t think so. I loved and trusted my husband. What can I say? Maybe I was stupid. At times, I joked that Emma was the other woman, and in some ways she was. After Phill had me thrown out of my home, he and Emma did everything together: drinking beer with the neighbors (Emma didn’t drink, but it was odd for a 17 year old to be sitting over at the neighbors with 6 or 8 middle aged people who were sitting around drinking beer.) Occasionally, we went out to dinner with some of Phill’s coworkers from UPS, and Emma posted on her facebook about doing that. She was taking her mom’s place. Another time, Phill posted on his face book a picture of Emma at some bar/restaurant where they went to to hear a band. Phill took Emma to the Georgia Aquarium, something I’d talked about us doing as a family, and he took Emma white water rafting, something I’d asked him about doing with the church youth group. Phill took Emma out more that he took his wife out. Also, we’d been talking about some kind of big family trip after Emma graduated high school. Phill and I never took a trip on our 20th anniversary or our 25th anniversary, so I always knew we’d do something special on our 30th in 2014. We were planning on taking some kind of trip as a family after Emma graduated high school. Well, Phill and Emma took a cruise, but I wasn’t invited.

Was there another woman? I have no idea. Phill had always said if he wanted to have an affair, he was smart enough to cover his tracks. He was an over the road truck driver, a computer geek, and way smarter than I’ll ever be. I know this was true, but I always thought he was committed to the marriage and I didn’t have anything to worry about.

Before Phill and I were married, we agreed that if we ever had problems, we would go to marriage counseling before calling it quits. Phill went to marriage counseling one time, and he took Emma with him. We could not ride together because he wanted to take Emma. (During this time, Emma was staying at a neighbor’s.) Phill dropped Emma off at the mall, and we met at the counselor’s. I remember how odd it was that he wanted to hold my hand while we sat in the counselor’s waiting room, but when we were in her office, he told the counselor he believed Emma that I was a child abuser. When I tried to point out how some of the things Emma said could not be true, he wouldn’t hear it.

Things did not go well with the therapist, but Phill agreed to a second appointment. A few days later he refused to go back, and I had to cancel the appointment. After we left the therapist’s office, he picked up Emma and they went out to dinner while I went home alone. The only reason I found out that they went out to dinner was because later, Phill carelessly threw the receipt away in the bathroom trash basket, and I happened to notice it.

Later, after Phill had initiated the divorce, I turned over some of the lies I had uncovered about Emma to my attorney, and he in turn, turned over everything to Phill’s attorney. Of course, the biggest lie was that the supposed catalyst for Emma remembering being molested, the rape of her friend Lacey, never happened. I thought that Emma would have to back down on her story, and Phill would apologize and maybe there was hope for saving the family, but for whatever reason, Phill’s excuse was that all the lies I uncovered were because other people told them to Emma. Lacey told Emma she was raped and that she tried to commit suicide. The girl down the street told Emma she was pregnant and had an abortion…………….. Phill refused to believe Emma made up any of these stories. It was all someone else’s fault.

Was Phill that stupid that he was completely snowed by his daughter’s stories? I’ve been told I’m a fool not to believe there was another woman. The only thing I know is that right after the divorce was final, an old girlfriend of Phill’s showed up on his facebook. When I first met Phill, he was in love with Ruth Lindemann, of Danville Ill. She married a friend of his named Eric, and the only time I knew of Phill hearing from her was when she sent him a Christmas card the first year we were married. As a young wife, I was pretty insecure about my husband receiving a card from a former love, especially because to track down his address, I was pretty sure she would have known he was married, and yet my name was not included on the card. Also, she did not sign her husband’s name on the card, but simply, “Love Roo.” Perhaps she was already divorced at the time. Could it be a coincidence that 30 years later, just as his divorce is final, Ruth showed up on Phill’s facebook page? When Phill was home, he spent hours everyday out on the sun porch on the computer. I did not often know what he was doing, and did not try to look at what was on his computer.

Phill and I have now been divorced for over a year. I have no idea who he’s involved with or if he is remarried. It doesn’t really matter. You can live up to the vows you make, but that’s all you can do. You have no control over your spouse, and if he chooses to break the vows he made, you just have to move on.

I really want to get back to Emma’s story, but since I have been asked these two questions so many times, I wanted to take the time to address them.