A.
Lies: Who attempted reconciliation and how
Coward lies again in the 3rd paragraph, beginning
with the first sentence:
After no communication for many months Writer of this blog
contacted me asking for a peaceful friendship. I accepted this offer and even
helped her with some things such as paying some of her bills and giving her
money. I did this from a position of compassion and mercy.
I had been avoiding Coward completely. Unfortunately, he
showed up at a bar at a local resort in October 1996, four months after I kicked him out. I was
with my date, Bruce To make me feel better, Bruce put on a show for Coward
designed to make Coward uncomfortable, showering me with attention. It worked; Coward
and his 19 or 20-year-old girlfriend, Stacey , who should not have been
allowed in the bar, left.
I had taken a job working the front desk at the Shiloh Inn. In November 1996, Coward and Stacey appeared in the lobby and
approached the desk. Seeing him jarred me; I was caught off guard. I asked my
boss to check him out because I did not want to face him, and hid in her office
while she did it. About an hour later, I was still at the desk when he walked
up to me and claimed that Stacey had left something in the room. Unfortunately,
I could not avoid him that time. He told me that he missed me and wanted to
talk, but he couldn’t because Stacey was waiting outside in his truck. After he
got whatever he came for out of the room, he left.
A couple of weeks later, my home phone rang. It startled me,
because I could not afford the phone bill and my service had been cancelled for
non-payment. I answered, and it was Coward. I asked how he got my number,
because he cancelled the account we shared after I kicked him out, and I had
not shared my new unlisted number with him.
I knew he had worked at local small town Telephone Co. for several
years before, and was very, very friendly with all of the women working as
operators there. It wasn’t hard to figure out how he managed to call me on a
disconnected line. Immediately after the call, I called an operator, and asked her
how Coward had called me when my phone service was disconnected. She claimed
ignorance, and I demanded that they turn my phone back off. I did not want any
contact from Coward at the time, whatsoever, even if that meant going without
telephone service at all.
I started making better money, got a roommate, and
reconnected my telephone. And I let my guard down a little.
In December, I ran into him in Oakhurst. He inquired as to
my welfare. I told him I was struggling to pay my bills. He offered to take me
out to dinner, even though he admitted he was still with Stacey and that she
didn’t know. I accepted, because I thought I might still have feelings for him.
He made it clear that he still had strong feelings for me. He apologized
profusely for his behavior. I missed the comfortableness of the relationship
and was weak.
We drove back to my house so I could get
clothes to stay the night with him at the hotel. I was ashamed to be seen with
him, because I knew that if my parents and friends found, out they would be
angry and disappointed in me, so I ducked down in his pickup to avoid being
seen.
We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and
stayed at the Best Western. I slept with him, and consequently decided that I
did not want to restart a relationship with him after all. I had missed
companionship, but didn’t really miss him. I was happy, dating other people,
for the first time.
The next morning, he had me follow him to the ATM, where he
withdrew the maximum amount possible, about $400, and gave it to me to pay my
bills, saying he hoped it would make up for all the bad things he did. I took
it and we exchanged phone numbers.
For Christmas, Coward gave me a bottle of Escape perfume, a
scent that I knew he adored on me. I didn’t give him a gift, nor did I expect
one from him.
We began talking on the phone, off and on, but the majority
of the calls were from Coward to me. Phone calls to Coward were too expensive
for me. It was long distance from Small town to California City, and I couldn’t
afford that. I rarely wanted to call Coward, as my social life was going very
well without him. Coward has never had many friends, fewer still who would
listen to him talk about his troubles with girls. I thought I was doing what
mature adults do, letting bygones be bygones, so I would take his calls.
In February 1997, I met my ex-husband, and in 1998 we got
married, and I had a son. Even throughout this time, Coward would call me,
sometimes quite late at night. Ex-husband would begrudgingly put up with it. Coward called
to get advice about his relationships or to get things off his chest. I even
took a call from some other girl he was seeing about how she should deal with Coward
and his infidelity to her. I advised her to leave him.
Sometime in late 1998 or 1999, he brought a girl to ex-husband's
and my house on his way through Mid Size city to Small town, and I fed them lunch. I
remember feeling sorry for her because Coward kept comparing her to me—telling
her how much he liked my cooking, cleaning, the way I handled myself, etc.
I did send him a birthday card for his 35th
birthday in 1999. I had forgotten about doing that until he brought it out as
evidence in court. I was surprised he kept it, as I have thrown
out or sold anything he ever gave me, save for some pictures we are both in.
I casually invited him to my 30th birthday party
in October 1999. I didn’t think he would come; it’s almost a two-hour drive. He
eagerly accepted, and brought a present: Escape perfume.
My marriage to my ex-husband didn’t last long at all. In early 2000,
we were separated, and I met the man who would become my present husband on the
dating website Match.com.
Coward
was in town January or February of 2000, and stopped by unannounced. I told him
that I was getting divorced from my ex-husband. Coward invited me to dinner, and I
brought my son. We went to On The Border. We went back to my house afterwards, and he
asked if he could stay the night. I agreed to let him sleep on the
couch, alone.
I put my son, to bed. Coward said he wanted to talk
to me, and I consented. He said he had been thinking about us, and wanted to
know if I wanted to try to restart our relationship. I told him no, because I’d
already met someone I was interested in. He said he missed me, and that he
would make a good stepfather to my son. I said I was flattered, but, again, no,
because I cared about the person I’d met. I also told Coward that I though he
would not make a good stepparent—he was not parent material. The thought of him
being around my son full time scared me. He dropped the subject. He slept alone
on the couch and left the next morning. I remember distinctly feeling no
attraction to him at that point, and felt very unsettled by his suggestion.
He continued to call me, including when his brother,
hanged himself, asking me to attend his funeral with him. I detested his brother, and
I refused.
I had told Coward that I’d had success on the website
Match.com. He asked for my help setting up an account on a different dating
site for him. Rather than struggle through it on his own, he gave me the
password to his email account and the dating site password, and asked me to
help set it up, proofread, improve it for him. I agreed to do this.
I did tell the man I was with everything about this—that I
was helping Coward, and he expressed only a little concern. I hadn’t revealed
to him the depth to which I’d been injured and abused by Coward, because I
hadn’t come to terms with it, myself, at that point.
In 2001, he called me to talk as he sometimes did. He told
me about a girl that he saw at the apartment complex he had just moved to and
was extremely attracted to. I asked how old she was, and he said he thought she
was 16 or 17. I was dumbfounded. I castigated him severely, reminding him that
it was immoral and illegal, and that he should leave her alone. I remember
feeling very bothered because I was about to become a stepmother to a girl just
about that same age – a girl the same age as our daughter Heather would have been had she
lived.
About two weeks later, he called again. He told me he had
changed his mind, but then he said that the girl wasn’t interested in him (he
was 36 years old, after all – twice her age). Instead, he met the girl’s mother,
who was single. I told him that was incredibly creepy, and that he must not
date the mother of the girl that he was sexually attracted to. He laughed it
off. That mother turned out to be Hooker Shoes, Coward’s present wife.
Over the next few weeks and months, Coward would call me to
talk, often complaining about Hooker Shoes’s hardness, or about Hooker Shoes’s
youngest daughter, being an out-of-control brat. He told me how Hooker
Shoes’s ex-husband divorced her because he felt she was using him for a green
card. He wondered how her family from Russia could visit the U.S. so often, and
whether they were on the take. He shared how she was very much into money and cared too much about how she looked at the time. He voluntarily divulged vast amounts of personal
information to me about his life with Hooker Shoes and her family.
Coward’s claim that I sought his friendship or companionship
is risible; he sought mine. I wouldn’t characterize my part as “coming from
compassion or mercy.” I sincerely believed I was simply “being mature,” before
I realized that I was expending energy on a relationship with a person who was
not good for me. I am generally a kind of person who tries to be friends with
everyone, so it was natural for me to continue talking to Coward for a while.
I’m older and wiser now. Coward and Hooker Shoes have crossed a line with me; I
won’t be friends with either one of them, now or ever.
Corroboration
Coward
appears in pictures I have of my 30th birthday party.
My
ex-husband, will affirm Coward’s phone calls to me, including
late night calls. He will also confirm that Coward would visit our house.
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