She handed me the letter and said, “You were right about him.” Her lawyer had obtained records from the custody case that I had never seen. There were police reports, deleted messages, and statements from two former employees who had worked with her husband. One described an incident I’d warned her about months before. Another said he’d been instructed to keep certain things away from her because “she didn’t need to know.” The letter explained that the court had ordered an emergency review of the custody arrangement, and for the first time she understood why I’d testified. She said she had spent six months furious at me while he kept telling her I had exaggerated everything.
Then she showed me the rest of the paperwork. Her lawyer had found financial records showing that her husband had been moving money into an account she didn’t know existed. There were also messages between him and someone he’d been seeing, including one sent the week before our testimony. He had written that once the custody case was over, he expected her to “finally stop fighting.” My friend said she hadn’t believed any of it until her lawyer put the documents in front of her. She started crying and said, “I thought you were trying to destroy my marriage.” I told her I wasn’t. I was trying to keep her from losing her children to someone I believed could hurt them.
She looked down at the letter and said, “I came here because my lawyer asked me if you would testify again.” I told her I would. She hugged me before leaving, something she hadn’t done since the day she’d stopped speaking to me. But just as she reached the door, she turned around and said there was one more thing she hadn’t told me. Her lawyer had found a recording from the week before I testified — a recording of her husband talking about me, the custody case, and exactly what he planned to do if the judge believed my testimony. She pulled out her phone, pressed play, and said, “I think you need to hear what he said about you…”
