Chapter 9 - Vanessa enters
Ryan met Vanessa seven months after Emily’s crash.
Not at a nightclub.
At a charity event.
Vanessa worked in commercial real estate.
Thirty-three.
Recently divorced.
They started dating three months later.
That timeline made me furious.
It was also not automatically immoral.
Emily and Ryan’s marriage had already been strained before the accident.
I learned that only later.
Emily had been considering separation.
Not divorce yet.
She had told me two months before the crash:
“Ryan wants every disagreement resolved by everyone eventually doing what Ryan wants.”
I had laughed.
“Sounds healthy.”
She did not laugh.
After the accident, Ryan told Vanessa:
Emily would likely never recover meaningful capacity.
That statement was defensible at first.
Later, it became false.
Then he told Vanessa he was pursuing divorce through appropriate legal channels because the marriage had been functionally over before the crash.
Partly true.
The court did eventually grant a divorce after appointing counsel to represent Emily’s interests.
That process would later be reviewed because of problems in the information Ryan supplied.
But the decree existed.
Ryan was legally divorced before marrying Vanessa.
No secret bigamy.
May you like
Reality was complicated enough.
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