FROM JANUARY THROUGH JUNE 2007 WE SHOT season three of Hogan Knows Best. It was the final season of our show, but we didn’t know it when we began production at the beginning of that year. While most shows get canceled by the network due to low ratings, we had a different ending. The ratings were there. The family unity was gone.
It was clear to me that Terry was living a double life. I just didn’t know with whom or how to know for sure. I was terrified of getting caught if I followed him or snooped through his stuff. So, I relied on the age old line “Time will tell!”
One of the episodes that we did toward the end of the season was a scene between Terry and me at a marriage counselor’s office. Here is a diary entry that gives some insight into how I was feeling before going to marriage counseling:
It’s been as stressful as I can ever remember! I am trying to hold it together, but I am so close to giving up on everything. We have no fun, no lifestyle or even a calm friendly conversation. We’re just going through the motions. We don’t even talk; it’s bitching, whining, complaining, tiredness, soreness, or arguing. I can’t wait to finish filming Season 3 and get through this last season, just to get away! I’m sick of all the BS. I want to move out of this monster Miami house, regain my composure, and move to Cali! Try to regain a life together again!
Terry and I had never been to a marriage counselor before even though friends and family members had suggested it to us over the years. I had even brought up the idea to Terry again. But he didn’t see how it could help our situation. He couldn’t wrap his head around the thought of somebody who was so removed from the entertainment business and wrestling giving us advice on how to fix our life. He felt strongly that if they didn’t understand that integral part of our lives, then they could never understand us or our problems. He also didn’t trust them not to run to the tabloids with our personal and private details. I just felt trapped. While we were shooting in Miami our relationship was always up and down. There was never any continuity. Terry and I would get along. Then we would fight. We would get along. Then we would fight. I thought it was because we had so much stuff going on in our life with cameras, kids, and stress. Not getting along seemed par for the course. I didn’t analyze it any deeper than that. He’d be sad, then happy. I never knew if it was genuine or not.
The producers of our reality show felt that all married couples who have been together this long fight, come back together, and then fight again. They felt it was common in most marriages, so maybe we should go to marriage counseling on the show.
Through the course of that week when we were shooting in the marriage counselor’s office, they basically wanted to peel back the skin of our relationship and ask some pretty personal questions. If we had been in a counseling session with no cameras rolling, I would have welcomed answering the tough questions. I wouldn’t have held back at all because who knows? It might have made things better between us. However, this was being done for national TV, and I wasn’t ready to rip the lid off our personal problems.
At the end of the week, Terry started getting serious with the sessions. He was shooting darts, but I wasn’t firing back. I was acting as though this was going in one ear and out the other, but underneath it all it was making me feel very uncomfortable. When the cameras were off, Terry and I began to fight about what was discussed in the therapy sessions. While I thought that going to a marriage counselor might actually help, he took what was discussed to heart and copped an attitude about it. It derailed us and didn’t help us get any closer. I was mad that he would try to embarrass me in front of the crew, in front of the world!
WE ENDED UP GOING TO THREE WEEKS OF MARRIAGE COUNSELING sessions. One of the exercises during the sessions was for us to write a poem to each other about how we felt. Looking back, and knowing what was really going on that whole year, how could Terry have meant the words of his poem in a genuine way? He didn’t. It was only something that made him look good on television. However, when Terry read the poem out loud to me, I was brought to tears. I thought that maybe we really had a tender moment. Maybe I had been misjudging him. It gave me a strand of hope. As always, he made me doubt my own feelings, my behavior, my attitude, and second-guess my thoughts and actions. That’s what control freaks do. They brainwash you. Here’s what he had written:
The first time I saw you, I saw your feet [I wear a size 11] and then I saw you.
Let’s have our first drink and then you might think, I am the one for you.
You lied about your car, you didn’t know I was a star.
So you left the bar and I had no idea you would go so far.
In the end we would turn out to be more than just friends.
So I did a knee bend, so we could stay together till the end.
I love you too, so whatcha gonna do?
After he read that poem, I began to think that maybe therapy could bring us together, be the jump start that we needed. Well, it turned out to be wishful thinking. Shortly after that episode, Terry went back to his old ways. This time, it was just blatant and more disrespectful than before. He was sleeping in another room every night. I begged him to sleep in our bed, but he told me that he liked the other bed better. He didn’t like the dogs being in bed with us. I even locked them in the laundry room, trying to make him happy. But he still didn’t sleep with me. So many excuses! And the baffling behavior didn’t end there. He made little or no eye contact with me. We barely had civilized conversations. When we would get ready in the morning to shoot the show, he would stare straight into the mirror and not even look at me. He even started using a separate bathroom, further separating us.
Back then, if we had any sexual relations, it was mainly oral sex from me to him. He would lie there on his back lifeless and I’d do all the work. Most of the time he didn’t even want sex, probably because he was getting sex elsewhere and he was wiped out by the time he came home to me. But when he wanted sex, he wanted to try new things with me that I had never done with him before. Where did he learn that new trick? I wondered. He’d turn the TV on at bedtime and go directly to a premium channel—porn! He went to it like radar!
It certainly wasn’t the first time we had watched porn together. He had put porn on every now and then in a hotel room. But this became a regular nightly thing. If I was tired and I wasn’t in the mood, Terry would get pissed off. He became angry if I wasn’t interested. And if it didn’t go his way, he would curse at me, stomp his feet, and go sleep in the other bedroom. The next morning, he would treat me badly if we didn’t have sex the night before. Is this all that our marriage has come to after so many years? I thought. What a heartless relationship this is becoming. Sure, sex is important in a marriage, but when we shut the last light off after a long day and got into bed, it would have been nice to have a little chitchat or at least go to bed together.
Terry’s fanny pack was back around his waist at all times. In fact, the producers did an episode on Hogan Knows Best where they wanted to know what was inside Terry’s infamous fanny pack. Of course, he cleaned it out before they filmed it. Inside he only had toothpicks, business cards, and his wallet. How cute. Normally, he had two or three cell phones, pills out the ass, and a lot of cash!
Toward that last part of filming we would go out to dinner or on the boat and Christiane was always with us. I thought she was there because she was Brooke’s friend, but it was really just convenient for Terry to hook up with her. I remember how he always manipulated me into thinking I was a crappy person! I drank too much, I cursed too much, I always left and drove to the other house or got on a plane and flew away. Honestly, I left because I was scared. We were in such abusive verbal fights. Sure, I would say, “Fuck off,” but I would never directly call him a dirty name. He called me a “dumb cunt!” This let me know that at this point he had no respect for me or our marriage.
I think Terry had Christiane at his beck and call and it was to his benefit to pick a fight with me. He knew what buttons to push and how to piss me off. He also knew that I was the one who would always walk away and often leave for the weekend after an argument. If it was Friday and we were done filming, instead of spending a nice weekend together, he would pick a juicy fight with me. I wanted to be left alone and preferred spending the weekend with my animals as company, so I’d get in my car and go back to our old house. He knew that if he did certain things, I would leave and it would give him a free weekend. How he lived with his conscience, I will never know.
Things were also taking a turn for the worse with Brooke’s music career and her relationship with her record label. It was clear that Terry wasn’t sticking up for Brooke, and he was more focused on his own deals with the label owner. An energy drink, online gaming, frozen food line, boxing promotions, a toy robot, a TV show, and more. Terry refused to speak to the label head about any glitches, because he didn’t want anything to upset that business rapport or any of his own deals. Terry was being such a jerk. I was puzzled by the changes that were going on with him.
The label continued to treat Brooke poorly, and it became evident that they weren’t putting any marketing or promotion behind her upcoming album. I didn’t have a platform to speak, and Terry had monopolized the label owner and taken over that business relationship for his own gain. Brooke was trying to handle a lot of the business on her own, but her father was undermining her by putting his own deals first. At that point, I think Terry thought Brooke was just a fly in the ointment.
As soon as Brooke and I confronted the label owner, and ruffled his feathers, Terry got angry with us. Now, it wasn’t just Terry and me at odds at home, but he and Brooke were arguing as well. Brooke came home one night, irate about the way the label was handling her business. She told Terry how upset she was and about all the horrible things being said behind the scenes. She even told the label that she was going to quit.
THE VERY NEXT NIGHT BROOKE WAS AT THE FORGE RESTAURANT eating and in walked Terry, the label owner, and Eric Bischoff. They were laughing and sat down to have drinks. She was amazed that her own father could be laughing and having drinks with her boss, when just the night before she broke down and told him about how hurt she was by what his label wasn’t doing to help her. Terry clearly wasn’t the least bit concerned that Brooke was at odds with this man. This behavior and his lack of loyalty to Brooke painted him in a different light to me, different than I had ever seen him before.
That night, Brooke came home and wrote “liar” on the front door of our home. She didn’t want to speak to her dad and wanted to quit the record label. Brooke was in a frenzy, upset like I had never seen her upset before. I couldn’t believe that Terry could do this to his own daughter. He was acting blind to it all. He couldn’t have cared less if she was upset, because his business deals came first now.
Brooke wanted to immediately jump on a plane and head to Los Angeles. She begged me to come with her. When I realized there was no calming her down, I went with her to the West Coast. During the plane ride to L.A., Brooke and I both wrote in our journals. I didn’t even tell Terry I left with her, but with all the events that led up to this point, I certainly had a lot on my mind to write about. We were both mad at Terry. We both felt betrayed. We both felt disappointed. We both had so many things to say. How could somebody act this way to his own family? I wrote all the things that came to my mind. My pen just flowed. I wrote down a list of words describing the kind of person I felt Terry had become.
• Abusive
• Controlling
• Selfish
• Demeaning
• Disrespectful
• Not trustworthy
• Unfaithful
• Liar
• Childish
• Noncommunicative
• User
• Dependent
• Depressive
• Manipulative
• Plotting
• Secretive
• Self-centered
• Conceited
• Gloating
• Calculating
• Insecure
• Sex addict
• Violent
• Sneaky
• Unhappy
• Cheater
• Back stabber
• Rude
• Delusional
• Victimizer
• Self-consumed
• Insensitive
• On edge
• Negative
• Fear of change
• Possessive
• Brainwasher
• Antagonistic
• No morals
• No sense of family
I reread the list while I was writing this book, I still feel that Terry seems to represent every single one of these characteristics. The words just filled my head. I couldn’t write fast enough! It was scary. When you go through the list, it’s clear that these are the signs of a pathological liar and a narcissist.
I had been victimized for two decades by a narcissist.
AS THE SHOW ENDED, I WAS IN SUCH TURMOIL WITH TERRY. THE arguing got so bad we could hardly keep a civil game face on for the cameras. When I landed in Los Angeles, I didn’t want to go back. I told him to forget about the show. I was done.
Terry called me and said that if I didn’t come back and do the reshoots that VH1 was threatening to sue: I just wanted to die. Honestly, I’d rather have drank bleach than gone back to face him again. I couldn’t pretend to be in a good mood and do an episode with him that was supposed to be happy when I really wanted to poke his eyes out! I decided not to do it. I realized it was another dangling of the carrot to get me to come back to Florida. But as he persisted about the possible lawsuit, I got scared. Very reluctantly I went back to Florida to finish the season.
In order to stay positive, I needed to stay numb emotionally—like nothing bothered me. Because when I thought about everything in my life that I was missing, it made me so sad. I missed the emotional support of my husband. The love. The friendship. I didn’t have any of that. It was gone. Everything in our life was falling apart, and I kept making excuses. I tried to figure out the problem. Why was Terry acting so cold and removed? Why was everything so difficult? I had always looked forward to the day when the kids were all grown up and Terry and I could get through the empty-nest stage together. I wasn’t sure if that would ever be. There seemed to be so many holes in our relationship, and so much suspicion on my end regarding his infidelity, and it was getting more and more difficult to keep it together. But I had no proof of anything, and I felt stuck; it wasn’t in me to leave yet, and I was paralyzed with fear and confusion. So I just went through the motions, doing whatever I had to do to stay positive, but I was so tired and drained.
After we completed the reshoots, I eventually spoke to one of the executives at VH1, to explain I just couldn’t do season four of Hogan Knows Best. I also asked if I hadn’t come back if they were, in fact, going to approach me legally. The executive had never intended anything like that. Terry had just lied to me to get me to come back to Florida, to control me. They expected me to finish the season. That was all.
Over the course of that year Terry wasn’t wrestling as much and spending a lot more time working on the show. Terry said that a lot of deals were going to come through, but nothing seemed to be clicking. I just kept seeing money going out and not coming in. If we didn’t cut back then, I foresaw problems down the road. We needed to make a change before the bottom fell out. It was too expensive to keep the house in Miami, so we put it up for sale.
When we sold the Miami house, I knew the kids and I were going right to L.A. The kids and I didn’t want to go back to Willadel. Even though we had a big beautiful house in Clearwater, we were burned out. Clearwater had nothing to offer, as far as the entertainment business. We needed to be in California, in L.A., the entertainment machine.
I wanted more than ever to have a place back in L.A. I dreamed of being closer to my family again, and the kids really wanted to move, too. I always felt it would have helped Terry’s floundering career. Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger lived there and they were his friends. I also believed it would have helped Brooke’s music career and Nick’s career in movies. It only made sense for all of us to get a small place on the West Coast now.
Terry knew I didn’t want to settle back in Clearwater, so he finally agreed to let us move. However, every single time I found something suitable in L.A., Terry told me that he wouldn’t rent without seeing it. But then he never made himself available to look. How convenient! Control, control, control! This move was like pulling teeth. I finally decided to rent a furnished house and put our belongings in storage when the time came.
I started packing up the house in Miami. I had fifteen moving guys and my regular housekeeper, and I hired four housekeepers from an agency. I had never met them before and had second thoughts about even letting them in my house, but I was behind schedule and forged ahead with them anyway.
The kids and Terry never helped me during the move. As usual, the kids never had to do chores—clean their rooms or take out the trash. Terry always excused them from that and made me seem like I was asking for the moon. It was just easier to let them go, and not start a fight with Terry. A lot of the burden of running the home fell on me. That morning, Terry woke up and, as usual, went to the gym for three hours and then was off to lunch at the Mexican restaurant he loved. Brooke was busy working at the music studio. Nick and his friend Danny Jacobs were playing in the pool. I spearheaded the entire move on an extremely hot August Miami afternoon with a moving crew of twenty that barely spoke English. Navigating all seventeen thousand square feet alone with strangers!
When the time came for me to pack up Terry’s closet, he didn’t want me to pack any of his stuff.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Don’t pack any of these clothes. Hang them back up.”
“Why? We’re moving,” I shot back.
“I’m going to pack my own stuff and send it on another truck,” he said.
I was confused because there was no valid excuse for why he didn’t want me to pack his belongings. “Terry, escrow closes in two more days, and we need to get this stuff out of here. The truck is leaving in two hours.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t want anybody touching my shit.”
He ended up letting me pack some of his long-sleeved sweaters and jackets for L.A. He basically pacified me with that. Later that night, I wanted to get my jewelry out of the safe. We had two tiny cubicle safes that basically someone could walk away with, especially a strong moving guy. When I asked Terry to open the safe, he paused for a minute.
“My jewelry’s in there, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he responded. “Give me a minute.” He acted as though he didn’t remember which safe my belongings were in.
“It’s in this one,” I said, pointing to the silver one and not the black one. “It’s always been in the silver one with the stickers on the front.”
I had forgotten the code to the safe. I only kept my jewelry in there, and when I wanted it, Terry would open it up for me. After he opened the safe, I reached in to grab my things and along with my stuff I pulled out a crinkly white CVS bag that was quite heavy. I opened it and all I saw were stacks of $100 bills. “Did you rob a bank?” I asked, shocked. “Where did you get all this money from?”
The most we ever had in the safe at one time was $5,000 cash. It turned out that there was $50,000 in the CVS bag. Terry explained that he took half of his recent salary for an autograph signing in cash because there wasn’t a good turnout at the event and he decided to let the promoter off the hook for the other half. I knew that it was a lie because Terry had a contract for $100,000 and he was all business when it came to money. There was no way he would opt to take half after traveling and doing the signing. I asked why he didn’t tell me about it, and he didn’t have a concrete answer. Not to mention the fact that he seemed very nervous I’d found it.
Once the trucks drove out, I spent the rest of that evening cleaning up, leaving fresh flowers I’d ordered and bottles of wine on the counter for the man who purchased our house. He was a Hollywood producer/director and I wanted to make sure the house looked like a model home. He bought some of the furniture, too, so I went through each room putting the finishing touches on each of the pieces. He was going to do a walk-through before the final signatures to close the deal the next day.
That evening when everything was done, I was absolutely exhausted, hot, sweaty, and dirty. I just wanted to take a shower, pack my travel bag, and go to bed! Instead of Terry hugging me or thanking me for all of my hard work and preparation, he picked a fight with me about which porch lights I had left on! I wanted to leave most of them on so the house looked pretty that night, in case the new owner drove by. Looking back, he probably didn’t want them all on so he could sneak out with Christiane. It was the final fucking straw! I said, “Whatever, fuck it!,” and went to bed crying and alone.
The next morning, I didn’t stay for the walk-through. I left before Terry woke up and hung out in the lobby of a hotel until the walk-through was completed, being responsible enough to wait in case they had questions or I needed to sign something. I waited four hours in the hot lobby. Once I left, I didn’t want one reason to have to return! I got the final okay from the broker that the papers were signed. The house closed and the buyer was very happy. I called myself a taxi and went to the Miami airport. I had to hurry to L.A. to find a warehouse to store the belongings from our Miami house because the trucks would be there in five days.
IN JULY 2007, I FINALLY SETTLED INTO THE HOME WE RENTED IN Westwood, California, near Beverly Hills. It was a cute Spanish-style home that wasn’t big, but a perfect transition home for our family. I asked Terry, who was staying at our Willadel home, when he was going to join us in Los Angeles. He told me that he was going to stay in Clearwater for his birthday and then fly out afterward. He’s not coming for another week? I thought. He’s spending his birthday without us? What an ass! Even with Terry being so rude and mean, I still reached out to him for his birthday. When I called him, it sounded like he was partying it up! Laughing and with friends over, he didn’t miss me at all.
I was in L.A. getting ready to put Brooke out on a tour and was exhausted from the move and traveling. I called Terry and asked if he and Nick would be coming to L.A. for my birthday on August 24, only a week away. He told me that they had decided to stay in Florida for a “boys’ week.” Nick also planned to hit a few towns with his friends John Graziano and Danny Jacobs for some drifting events (drifting is a precision driving technique). He was on the East Coast first, so he returned to Tampa a few days before Terry’s birthday and then left right after for the West Coast. The boys spent a few days with me in California, but couldn’t stay for my birthday, as a drift event was going on in Tampa and they had to get back.
I did think it was odd that Terry didn’t let me put his clothes on the truck. I just couldn’t imagine that he wasn’t going to come out with his family to California. I believed him when he said that he had stuff to do in Tampa but would be right behind us. I had no time to question it because Brooke was touring with her music and Nick was touring with his racing.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I received a phone call from one of Nick’s old girlfriends. “Linda, is Brooke in Clearwater?” she asked.
“No, she’s actually in Seattle performing this weekend. Why?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure,” I responded. “My brother, Joey, went there with her.”
“Well, I’m sitting here at Shephard’s on the beach and I just saw your husband go by on a Jet Ski with a blonde on the back that looked just like Brooke.”
“Well, it’s not Brooke. Brooke is in Seattle!”
“Then who was it?”
“That’s exactly my question.”
All I can tell you is that it was not Christiane; she was a brunette. Terry was probably done with Christiane and already on to his new girlfriend, Jennifer McDaniel. The sickening thing was that he was still married to me, and I was still trying to keep our marriage together. That was why he didn’t want to come to Los Angeles to spend my birthday with me; or why he didn’t want me to come back to Florida and interrupt his “boys’ week.” Terry probably told her he was already separated.
I spent my forty-eighth birthday completely alone. I did get a knock on the door from a flower delivery guy. He had two bunches of roses in his hands in tired, cheap little vases. The roses looked all raggedy with thorns, like he bought them from someone at a freeway off-ramp. One bunch was yellow and one was red—Hulkamania. There were also two cards that both read the same exact thing: “Happy Birthday. Love, Terry.” “Happy Birthday. Love, Terry.” Wow, that was creative, I thought. Terry usually sent me beautiful roses and flower bouquets for events. This time, he missed the mark sadly. His heart was not into it. I was just so pissed at him for not coming out for my birthday. And for him to think that two last-minute crappy arrangements would make up for it obviously proved that he didn’t even care!
The next morning I went to get my hair done. The stylist proceeded to dye my hair a horrible khaki green color, when attempting to add lowlights. I was so upset. Crappy flowers, no Terry or Nick, Brooke gone performing, and now green hair! Plus, I was so depressed—alone in a new house. Why was everything so hard? What happened to my family? Why am I alone on everything? I sat at the kitchen table trying to learn how to use my new computer. The phone rang at four thirty in the afternoon. It was Terry calling. Why is he calling me? I wondered. He had been picking fights on the phone with me all week long, being cocky and arrogant. I wasn’t going to answer, but I decided to because I thought maybe he was going to finally join me. I always tried to see the glass half full. I answered with an optimistic and happy, “Hello?”
“Linda, Nick has been in an accident.”
“What? Oh my God! Oh my God! Is he okay?”
“It’s really bad. He hit a tree.”
“Is he alive? Is he alive?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I dropped the phone and fell to my knees. I don’t know if I experienced temporary insanity or fainted and came to or what, but I was absolutely overwhelmed by the anxiety. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t breathe in or breathe out. I had never experienced this kind of fear in my life. My knees and legs were like jelly. I tried to call my mom for help, but of course I dialed the wrong number and couldn’t get through. I couldn’t see . . . couldn’t think. I was alone. Then Terry called back. “The ambulance is here,” he said. “They’re cutting Nick out of the car.”
“Oh my God,” I screamed to the Lord. “Please let Nick be alive!!”
“Who else was with him?” I asked, frantically.
“John was in the car.”
“Is John alive?” I asked. I couldn’t believe I was saying “alive.”
“I don’t know. The paramedics are taking him away in the helicopter.” I was in shock.
I was three thousand miles away in California. I needed to fly back home to see Nick and John immediately. Nick has a rare blood type—the same one I have—so if anything happened, I knew he would need my blood. I still didn’t know if my son or his friend were alive. I begged God to please not take my Nick!
I wasn’t thinking straight and drove to nearby Santa Monica airport and begged them for a private jet. They claimed they had one, but when ten P.M. came, they still didn’t know if they had a chartered jet available for sure. My phone was dying, and I was alone with my sixteen-year-old dog, Foxy. I still didn’t know Nick’s fate or John’s. I was sick about what I would find out when I got home to Florida. I called my wealthy neighbors in Miami and asked if they could find me a plane. They found me a private jet that I so desperately needed. I was on a seventeen-passenger jet with just me and my dog, and it was the longest flight and night of my life. At that point, I couldn’t care less how much it cost!
The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back
When I landed in Florida, the limo driver had word that they had released Nick from the hospital and that he was home. Thank you, God! I walked up the back stairs of our Willadel home and into Nick’s bedroom. He had cuts and bruises and was wearing a sling. His eyes looked like they were in shock, and they watered when he saw me. Terry was in the room along with a lawyer!
“Linda, I know you must be anxious to know what happened,” the attorney said, “but you can’t speak to Nick about the accident.”
I had no idea what the hell was going on. I didn’t know the facts behind the accident. I didn’t know why there was a lawyer in our house at seven A.M. I remember looking around at the bedroom and noticing that it looked like Nick had been entertaining his friends for a month straight. Empty Coke cans, potato chip wrappers, McDonald’s wrappers, wet bathing suits and towels all over the floor—it was a mess!
If Terry had been there all week long, did he even wander up the steps to check on the boys? I thought. Obviously, his attention was on something else, possibly with big boobs. It really pissed me off because I knew Terry wasn’t supervising them and that was probably the reason they got into the accident in the first place. Also, I never knew of Nick driving the yellow sports car before, and I later learned he had been driving the car the entire day before with Terry’s permission. Not to mention that Nick had a restricted driver’s license at the time of the accident. He had received three speeding tickets. And one of those tickets—the one where Nick was driving the fastest—he had gotten with his father in the passenger seat. Terry claims he was sleeping! I don’t know anyone who could sleep while going over 100 miles per hour in a car with a sixteen-year-old driving. Do you? I’d be freaking out! One of the stipulations on the restricted license was that Nick was not allowed to drive after dark.
“Terry, the accident happened at seven thirty P.M. your time and it gets dark at eight,” I said. “Why was Nick even on the road just leaving for the restaurant at that time? When they left the restaurant, he would have been driving on a restricted license after dark with your permission, Terry. Explain that to me!”
He couldn’t. He told me that he was advised by the lawyer not to speak about anything. I was his mother, for God’s sake. Well, that made things pretty convenient for Terry, not to have to explain anything to me.
There were many questions swirling around in my mind. But I did find out from one of the boys that they thought they had seen a blonde at the house earlier that week, and that might have been the same blonde on the Jet Ski a few days earlier.
We had to turn our focus to John and his well-being, so that afternoon our whole family went to the hospital to see how he was doing. He was in bad shape—much worse shape than we had anticipated. During the accident, he wasn’t wearing a seat belt and had popped up out of the front seat and hit his head, suffering a brain injury. He remained unconscious and we feared for his life. We didn’t know if we were going to lose him or not. It was surreal; we just couldn’t believe this was really happening.
I had just seen John with Nick a week before in California having fun in my pool at my house. I couldn’t believe he was now lying in a hospital fighting for his life. I tried to console his mom, sister, and the rest of his family.
Terry told me that we would probably end up having a humongous lawsuit over this and explained that I should meet with a lawyer he had hired to go over some things. With all of the negative events leading up to the accident, I really didn’t have any respect left for Terry. I was just going along with whatever I had to for Nick’s sake. I was meeting with these lawyers because I was worried about my son and his fate. I couldn’t believe Terry seemed primarily worried about being sued at a time like this! I hated Terry so much. I knew we had to have lawyers because it was an auto accident and Nick was driving. But I was worried about his fate, his life—not the damn lawsuit. They can have everything we owned; I just didn’t want to lose John to death, or my son to jail.
Also at this time, I met with a lawyer Terry hired for the whole family. This lawyer kept insisting that the documents were part of a financial planning strategy. Financial planning? I thought.
Two months went by and Terry asked me if I ever looked over the documents. I told him I didn’t understand why I needed my own attorney. If this was financial planning for us, why couldn’t we use the same lawyer? None of this made any sense to me. He told me that it was an estate plan and that signing this document would help protect our assets. It just seemed weird that none of our original financial people were involved, but a new lawyer was handling it.
August, September, and October 2007 were spent in pure grief over John at the hospital. Our family dropped everything in our lives to be there every day, all living together at Willadel. We tried to help John’s mother and her kids. I was overwhelmed worrying about John’s fate and Nick’s fate. I finally called a lawyer. After I read the paperwork, he said that this was basically a marital agreement and it had nothing to do with financial planning. The documents Terry had given me were a completely different thing. Once I signed these papers we would stay married, but divvy up the monies as though we were divorced. I hung up the phone and just sat there thinking, appalled that Terry could lie to me so badly.
I was shocked. The fact that he was this calculating—to present me with papers like these—at a time like this—was unconscionable. Clearly, Terry was more concerned about how he could survive this with the least damage. This gave him an excuse to take it a step further. I realized that I needed to start looking for a divorce lawyer. Through Terry’s actions and behavior, he gave me the answer I had needed, the final piece of the puzzle that confirmed just what kind of person he really was and that was it! He had been planning to leave me all along.