Part 3: A Pattern
In 2019, in Florida, she had married a 31-year-old man with an intellectual disability. He had a settlement from a car accident.
He drowned in Mexico. On their honeymoon. She came home alone and collected his life insurance.
Florida investigators had always had doubts. They had never had enough to charge her.
Now they had a pattern.
Rhiannon and her brother were arrested at the Atlanta airport that afternoon, at the gate for Cancún. She was still wearing the diamond earrings she had bought with my mother’s credit card.
They were charged with exploitation of a disabled adult, forgery, and attempted insurance fraud. Florida reopened the drowning case the following month.
The marriage was annulled within six weeks. A judge called it “void from the very first signature.”
My mother cried for days.
“I just wanted him to have what everyone else has,” she kept saying. “Somebody to love him.”
“He has that, Mom,” I said. “He’s always had that.”
Epilogue
The hardest part was Petey.
At first he didn’t understand. He kept asking when Rhiannon was coming back.
I sat with him on the porch and explained it as best I could. That some people pretend to love you because they want something. That it wasn’t his fault. That he hadn’t done anything wrong.
He thought about it for a long time.
“Like a fake friend,” he said.
“Exactly like that.”
He nodded slowly.
“Then I’m glad you came, Cal.”
I never went back to London.
I opened a small law practice in Savannah. I bought a house with a spare room.
Petey still calls me every Sunday at 4 p.m. sharp.
Even though now I’m sitting right next to him on the couch, watching the Braves.
THE END.
The people who love us most aren’t always the ones who say it loudest. Sometimes they’re the ones who show up uninvited and ask to see the ticket.
What would you have done if you were Callum? Tell us in the replies.
