Telling on Myself by Betty Broderick

Author:Betty Broderick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, trial, domestic violence, divorce, adultery, abuse, second wife, betty broderick
Publisher: Taylor Street Books

Chapter 17

EQUITY

We had money by 1982. We could do the things we had wanted to do for a long time. I bought a baby grand piano for Kim and we joined Warner Springs Ranch so the kids could ride on the weekends. We had the money to pay for both but Dan financed them to the hilt anyway.

It’s all about equity.

These two items were included in the calculation of the divorce settlement and Dan charged me for their full value, but they weren’t paid for.

Over time I’ve called Dan lots of things, but stupid has never been one of them. Some adjectives that come readily to mind are 'cunning' and 'calculating' and … well, let’s leave it here with me simply stating that he was a very smart man.

The first time I heard of Linda was at a birthday party during the '82-'83 holiday season when I overheard Dan say, “Isn’t she beautiful?”

That caught my attention because I had never heard Dan say that about anyone.

I asked him later who he was talking about and he said, “This girl who works in the lobby of my building.”

In 1983 the money was pretty much rolling in. I could buy clothes and take the kids to lunch and do all kinds of things. Hallelujah!

I had given him more time as he had asked, and as he had said he had delivered the money, and now I knew he could spend what I really wanted from him – more time with us – and we would do things as a family because we had the money finally. So what possible reason could there be for not enjoying each other and the fruits of all those years of labor?

We started by going out for Chinese food as a family, and the kids and I loved it. Dan would meet us there on the way home from work. It seemed like the horrible pressures of the past were gone and that we had finally, finally made it.

I got him a water-ski boat for Father’s Day that year so that he could spend more family time with us. Besides downhill skiing, water skiing was the other sport he really enjoyed, and San Diego is a great place to do it.

But we’d no sooner made it to a safer shore, financially speaking, than Dan wanted to move. It was 1983, he had money, and our tract house was no longer suitable to his new image, and so I began the full-time search to find a real custom home in one of the older, more gracious neighborhoods of San Diego.

I searched in La Jolla, Mission Hills and Coronado, and I found several homes that were gorgeous and would have worked.

Dan didn’t like any of them.

He also laid down a new edict: no more parties in our present home. He said he was embarrassed to “be living in a tract house.”

The children and I were very happy there, but of course we were willing to move to an even nicer home.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.