What is Deb's background and experience?
That poor wife and those two sons that he walked away from in this barn fire in the middle of the night, What horror, what pain, what trauma that they must have endured thinking that they were watching him burn up in front of their eyes.
Why he'd faked his death, Deb wouldn't find out until much later. In that moment, she just knew she couldn't go home, not to the house she shared with him. He was a criminal, a fraud, a total stranger. So the Cherokee Marshals helped her come up with an immediate plan.
Go to an attorney, go to the bank, and get protection. So that's what I did.
She made an appointment with a divorce attorney for the following day, and a friend offered to let Deb stay at her place while she figured out her next move.
I just was in a state of robot, just trying to put one foot in front of the other. and then formulate a plan on how to tell the family.
She met with her sons to break the news. And with all of their support, she called Jeff's son, the one he'd had in America, after he went on the run. After all, he was the only child Deb knew about.
I loved that boy. He was my son, too, you know. He was a third son. So my heart hurt for him, just like it did for my boys, to tell him. Everyone in the family called him Little Jeff.
He was named after his father, or rather, his father's alias.
And his response was, you know, silent initially, as you could imagine, and then just struggling. We both needed some time to just deal. The one person she didn't want to speak with was Jeff. I really did not have any communication with him whatsoever. I just had nothing to say.
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