Chapter Fifty-Five #2
In my case, the longest con. Because this morning, I took Mom’s Social Security card and went straight to Shelton Savings and Loan, accessing the accounts tied to the GoFundMe she set up decades ago.
No surprise, she’s been skimming from the start.
Started small, testing the waters. Got bolder as she got comfy.
Then greedy. The statements showed it all: regular withdrawals masked as medical expenses.
Payments to bullshit companies with names like Hope4Cancer.
Money rerouted right back to her personal account, naturally.
MamaBearSharon’s been helping herself to donations from strangers and basically using every grimy trick in the book to keep the cash flowing.
When I closed the account, I vowed to track down every single person who donated, every well-meaning soul who fell for Mom’s lies.
I’ll start by paying them back. Every cent. One by one. Even if it takes me the rest of my life.
“All these years,” I continue, my voice shaking with something between anger and disbelief. “All those illnesses. You made them up, didn’t you? Cancer, fake. Asthma, fake. Jesus, Mom. If you’d wanted attention and friends, you could have just joined a Pilates cult like a normal person.”
My laugh is empty. My bravado is faltering.
My mother’s voice shifts, becomes cold. Flat. Reptilian.
“You were sick, and I took care of you. Everything I did was for you. Do you remember all those nights you spent puking? How you couldn’t even stand up in the shower? I thought my baby was going to die!”
She bursts into tears now, shaking her head, clutching her chest. I have to fight every single instinct to comfort her. Because that’s what I’ve been doing my whole damn life.
“If I was sick,” I say, my voice steady, lethal, “it was because you made me sick. The doctors said I was fine and you—”
“What do doctors know? I had a mother’s intuition! I could see you were so ill.”
“Tell me about my special insulin from Germany, Mom. Because I haven’t touched it since Nonna died, and I’m totally fine.
Feeling great, actually. Allergies? Are you fucking kidding me?
How did you do it? How did you make me blow up from that bee sting?
Did Dr. Don give you something that he knew would make me sick? ”
“Josie, stop it! Don’t talk to me that way. You’re scaring me. Maybe you need a psych eval. I bet Dr. Don can give us a referral—”
I laugh again; I do sound crazy. But I know I’ve never been saner.
“I feel like such a fucking idiot. But then again, why would I not trust my own mother? The one person who has always told me she would protect me?”
The shoes keep dropping.
“Have you been poisoning me? Your gross tea! That’s why I had the stomach flu. And then, when I blacked out in the car, I had just been to your house! Holy shit, it was you all along.”
“What about me, Josie? Your father’s heart attack was so sudden.
So tragic. He was much too young. All our plans, our life together—up in smoke.
I was in shock. People kept telling me to stay strong for the baby—how could I?
I couldn’t eat or sleep, I could barely exist. You needed so much—I couldn’t handle it.
I started to unravel. But that place…” She shivers.
“Your grandmother never should have sent me to Ravenswood. The doctors and nurses all saw me as a failure. The pathetic widow who couldn’t keep it together for her baby.
I was a problem to be managed and medicated.
They drugged me into a stupor. Mocked and neglected me and didn’t give a shit how miserable I was.
When I finally got out and back to you, no thanks to them, I made a vow to myself that my daughter would get the care and attention I’d needed, one way or another.
I would find a path to truly heal.” She raises her chin defiantly. “And I did.”
I feel my stomach twist into a knot as her words sink in.
“So…what?” I manage. I think of how many times I slept on the bathroom floor, my cheek pressed to the cold toilet seat. Praying to die because the pain was intolerable. Praying to live because I was told I wouldn’t make it beyond the next six months.
“You poisoned your own daughter…You made me sick with illnesses I didn’t have…I got chemotherapy treatments I didn’t need so people would feel sorry for you? So that people would see you as a martyr instead of a failure, and give you money?”
But I see it now. How she kept me sick, kept me dependent.
She had to make sure I stayed her perfect little cash cow, fragile and helpless.
Every doctor’s visit, every panic over my health, they were only ways to keep the donations rolling in, to keep herself in the lifestyle she wanted while making me her meal ticket.
I was never her daughter. I was just her goddamn moneymaker.
And yet now her eyes flash with something like pride.
“I did what I had to do, Josie. No one understood my pain. I was invisible. So I made them see me. And I made them see you, too. My special baby. Everyone loved you. You were so cute with that bald head.”
I swallow back bile. “Listen to you! You made me think I was on death’s doorstep. So many procedures. I was in agony. You…you stole my entire life!”
“You should be thanking me. You were always so ungrateful.”
I stare at her, the impact of everything she’s done crashing over me in a thousand splintering shards. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. “You’re sick,” I whisper, shaking my head. “You’re sicker than I ever was. You never loved me.”
“Love?” she echoes, her head tilting to the side like she’s genuinely puzzled by the accusation.
Her eyes glint dangerously. “I gave you love. I gave you everything, Josie.” Her voice takes on a strange, almost giddy tone.
“We had people—so many people—taking care of us. Raising money. Fighting for your future! Lifting us up like we were their saviors! We were even on the cover of Parade.” Her eyes gleam with a terrifying mania.
“That wasn’t love!” I’m sobbing now, the tears streaming hot down my face.
Everything is just too much. “That was betrayal. The only real cancer I ever had”—I choke on my words, half gasping, half laughing—“was MamaBearSharon. Jesus Christ…how does that even happen? How does a mother become worse than chemo?!”
My voice cracks, and the sobs take over again, leaving me hiccupping. I can’t listen to whatever this woman has to say next. The mother I thought I knew, thought I loved, is gone, if she ever really existed at all. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m about to slam the door when one last shoe drops.
Nonna.
No, not Nonna, too. Her mysterious stomach flu the last week of her life. The pillow on the floor—I wondered why it wasn’t under her head, but that day was such chaos, I figured a doctor tossed it on the floor to use the paddles.
Suddenly I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.
“You killed Nonna,” I say, my voice sharp with fury, and my mother doesn’t even bother to deny it. “You knew I was closing in on the truth. Once I got my hands on some of those files, it was only a matter of time. So you silenced the one person who could confirm everything.”
“Nonna was old, Josie,” she says, her voice calm, no-nonsense; it makes my skin crawl. “She was in pain. I just…helped.”
Helped. What a perfectly grotesque word in her mouth. “Helped…like you helped me?” I ask. “Like you’re helping yourself to this fancy spa day?”
“Josie, don’t you see?” she hisses. “Everything I did, I did for us! We were a team—MamaBearSharon and JosieFightsOn!”
“We were not a team. We were an act,” I spit out. “A sick, twisted, disgusting double act! That’s all we ever were because of you.”
“People loved us,” she says.
“That wasn’t love,” I say sadly. “That was pity.”
I pick up her cell phone, which is resting on top of her clothes on a chair. “Give me your passwords,” I tell her, my voice firm.
“What?” Color drains from her face.
“You heard me. Give me your passwords, or I’ll call 911 right now and report a murder.”
“Josie, don’t be silly!”
“Silly is pretty much the last thing I’m feeling right now.”
My mother knows me better than to risk it. In a low, furious whisper, she spits out her passwords. I click through to her socials folder and delete MamaBearSharon’s accounts on all platforms.
Her entire empire, gone in an instant.
As I step out of the room, I pull out my phone and punch in 911. “I’d like to report a murder,” I say as soon as the dispatcher answers. “And I’ve got all the evidence you’ll need.”
“Josie!” screeches my mother. “You said—”
“I lied,” I interrupt. “Kind of the way you did for my entire life.”