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November 21, 2024 39 mins

One Christmas, Nancy finds herself wondering if her 15-year marriage was all a charade. 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a freaking lifetime movie. An next say he
deserves an Oscar. He really deserves an Oscar. I'm like,
am I lose? In my mind? I could believe it
was happening to me.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, A show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Nancy grew up in Boston in the seventies.
She was the youngest of three girls. From birth, she
was deemed a medical miracle.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
When I was born, they told my mother that I'm
going to die in three days because i have a
pin hole in my heart and it's twisted. Now She's like,
I don't think so she took me home. They toltally, well, she's.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Gonna have to have open hot surgery.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
By the time she's sighed. Didn't, well, she's gonna have to.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Have at least by eighteen, and she's gonna die. Didn't
I'm fifty five.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I've never had open hot surgery.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Because of her heart condition, her mother kept a close
eye on her. Her activities were restricted. She wasn't even
allowed to go to gym class in school. Family and
teachers babied her, mostly because she was so small.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
I'm only four eleven, and when I was five years well,
I think I actually have a picture. I looked like
him too, so everybody treated me like I was the
baby all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
As a kid, Nancy went to the cardiologist every week
for her heart condition. She wasn't scared about it, but
she knew her mom was.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I even remember being over her friend's house. We'd be
playing with their children, and they'd be in the kitchen talking,
drinking or whatever, and I would hear her crying and
telling her friend, I'm so afraid that she's just gonna
die on me one day.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
I never told her I heard that never.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
She surpassed medical expectations and grew up to be healthy,
but doctors told her she wouldn't be able to have
kids of her own. The entire experience made Nancy and
her mom really close.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I didn't hang out with friends on Saturday night. I
hang out with my mother because she's just my best friend.
Everybody who loved her because she was just down to earth.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Early on in her life, Nancy saw that her father
was treated differently than her mother.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Back in the day, my mother and my father used
to get pulled over a lot and the cost would
ask my mother, is he hurting you?

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Because she's white?

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Her father was black, and other kids tease Nancy about
having interracial parents.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
It's like, what's wrong with your mother? There's nothing wrong
with my mother. What are you talking about? My mother
never paid attention to it. She said, if you pay attention,
that's given them more energy to do what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
When Nancy was a teenager, she met a boy in
her neighborhood named Devon. He was always trying to catch
her eye, so.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
I'm like, who is this person? And he was extremely handsome.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
One day, Devon brought her a present.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
So he heard that I love saft served and ELASTI
with colored Jimmys. From that day on, we were together.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
She and Devon became high school sweethearts.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
We were a class couple, of course we were. We
were together all the time. It was like nothing could
come between us.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Their plan was to be together forever, and to this day,
Nancy still wishes they could have been, but tragedy derailed
their future.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
I had heard that there was this extremely bad car accident,
and I was in a school that sat up on
a hill, so you could see, like the police cause
and the ambulances all that.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
That looks like a really bad accident up there.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Everybody knew but me. Nobody wanted to tell me because
they were afraid to tell me. He was in that
car accident.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
He was a passenger in the collision and they needed
the jaws of life to pull him out of the car.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
And I found out the person who told me said
he was in a car accident and he died. I
passed out, woke up in the Narses office and I'm like,
I didn't just hear what she said. The nurse said
he wasn't a carson, but he's not dead. He was

(05:08):
at a coma for three days. I went every day,
waited in the room. Every day, wait in the room,
talked to him.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
She was by his side when he woke up from
the coma.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
But when he woke up, it was a different person,
you know. They asked things like when's your birthday, what's
your name? Who's the president? Things like that. He said
his name was Robert.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Something and he was born in nineteen twenty one.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
DeVaughn was never the same.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
After that. He started smoking cigarettes, never spoke, he was
like completely against it. He started drinking, swearing and he
was like mean sometimes and I'm like, who is this person.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
I'm just like, Okay, it's gonna get better. It's going
to get better.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
That better.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
After his traumatic brain injury, it wasn't the same relationship.
It was a lot for a seventeen year old to
manage emotionally.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
I felt like he died in that. To me, he
died in that accident.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Nancy made the tough decision to leave Devon and focus
on herself. She started her own life in Boston, working
in the office of a stock brokerage. By her early twenties,
she was living on her own and fully supporting herself.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
And a beautiful condo in my house was fully furnished.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Every day, on her lunch break, Nancy chatted with a
guy who worked outside her building.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
I worked in the financial district.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
It was always constructing going on at the Liberty Mutual building,
and you know, the construction guys would do the cat
calling when the girls walked by.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
But there was this one guy. He was just when
he's having lunch. I'm going to lunch, he's at his lunch.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
His name was Marvin, and Marvin became a fixture in
her day life, a friendly face that she felt comfortable with.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
And then he invited me to this club that he
belonged to.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
It was like a dance club.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
It was like the Caribbean Cultural Club.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
He was Jamaican and Nancy's dad was from Cuba, so
she was interested in Boston's Caribbean community.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
And I was like, guy and my friends have come
part of this weekend. It's all right.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
That weekend, as promised, she and her friends stop by.
It was a lively scene with music and dancing.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
So when I went into the club, I was expecting
to see Marvin. I'm going to let him know that
I did come for his invitation. And I never saw
him that night at all.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
But she hardly noticed because she got distracted by a
guy her age named Seth, and.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
He asked me to dance. I've danced to me, it's
just the dance. I went to sit back down with
my friends that continue were hanging out, and he asked
me to dance again.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Dance again.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Seth wasn't exactly her type.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Well then four eleven it is, because everybody's gonna be
solid it.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, he's six ' three.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Nancy and her friends decided to leave the party before
it got too.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Late by that time, and the night was ending and
he comes running out the club.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I'm like, oh, Seth, what did Nancy's number?

Speaker 1 (08:33):
It was the nineties, so he had to go to
his car to get pen and paper.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Nancy found it endearing. She thought she was meeting up
with a friend from work and instead ended up meeting
this nice guy. It felt like fate. The next day,
Seth called.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
I'll not forget. It was a Sunday.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
It was two o'clock in the afternoon and he called.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
He said he was working.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
He was a butcher. Oh, I want to come seeing
you after I got work?

Speaker 1 (09:03):
All right, where you live?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
I said, I live on?

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Really? I work on Wow.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
He worked just a few blocks down from her apartment,
So they agreed to meet up for lunch. Seth recently
moved to Boston from Jamaica, so you.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Told me about, you know, living in Jamaica, and that
he was here on a visa.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
She loved his Jamaican accent, especially the way he said
her name. She also liked his easygoing personality, so she
said yes to a second date. That's where he really
impressed her.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
He cooked for me. He actually cooked it at his
house and brought it to my house. That was like,
so it's Jamaican wood. It was a red snapper. Delicious,
absolutely delicious. He's an excellent cook.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
She hadn't had a serious boyfriend since DeVaughn in high school,
and Seth reminded her a bit of him. He went
out of his way to make her feel special, just
like DeVaughn had.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
I always tell people you sweetly off my feet.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
I'll say.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
The biggest attraction was.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
He was pleasant and calm and respectful. She cheeked me
like a lady. It was good to me, and everything
just seemed like it clicked.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
After they'd been dating for a few months, Seth took
Nancy to meet his uncle. He was one of a
few people in Seth's family who also immigrated to Boston.
When Nancy walked through the door, she was shocked.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
And I was like, I know you.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
It was Marvin, Nancy's lunch break buddy.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
And I was like, you do the construction that Liberty
needs to him right. He's like, yeah, yeah, I see
you when you're going to lunch that. Yeah, Well, I said, wow,
what a small world.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Years later, Nancy would find out it wasn't much of
a coincidence at all. That summer, she and Seth took
their first vacation together.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
We went to New Hampshire, ham to Beach. I went
every year with friends or whatever, and I stated, they
view hotel every year right across from the beach, and I.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Know that's where I could see my child. I know
that for a fact.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Nancy had lived her whole life believing she'd never have kids.
She told Seth she couldn't get pregnant. When she found
out that she was expecting, it felt like another medical miracle.
Her first call was to her mom.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
She was like, yeah, you'll have to get married now.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
I said, right now, right now.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
It seemed old fashioned, but she trusted her mom to
guide her in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
We went to city Hall to register for the marriage certificate.
I'm four months pregnant and the lady gives you the paper.
It's split in the middle and your information is here
and his information is here.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
And I was like, oh, they have your birthdate wrong.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
He's like, no, that's right. I said, no, it's not.
He's like, it is, Well, you can't be twenty six
with this day of birth. He was nineteen.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
He lied about his age. He was in twenty six,
like he said he was nineteen. Nancy was twenty three
at the time. Seth gave her a simple explanation.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
He had to make up that age for me to
be interested because he told me he was nineteen.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
I was definitely not dated him, he said, I.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Said, you're right, so he.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Lied to be able to date me.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I just stood there for a minute. The place that
you get the marriage certific k was at the bottom
floor in the building where there is an echo because
there is a big square of balconies, and I screamed
out what and it echoes all of the place. All
you saw was people coming over and looking down.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Seth insisted that it wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
He didn't comprehend that it was wrong, like telling a
child that it's wrong to play in the dirt. And
they looked at you, like why not like that? You know,
like what's the problem.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
I'm like, you know, what what do I do?

Speaker 1 (13:34):
At this point, I got an imagine to get in
one hand and a baby in the belly.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
She decided she was gonna let it go. She couldn't
change his age, so she signed the papers.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
I think I was more in love with my baby
than any situation. I wanted her to have a married
mom and dad, and I want to everything for her,
So that was in my head.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
A few weeks later, Nancy and Seth had a small wedding.
The couple set their sights on parenthood. They got an
adorable apartment on the top floor of a converted Boston mansion,
complete with a castle like turret.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
It was like a cute, little quaint hogmoon beginning of
life apart.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Nancy wanted the sex of the baby to be a surprise.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
When she came out, there was a girl. He actually
had a frown on his face. I said, I don't
care if it was a frog. All that I went throre,
you better be happy.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Set's disappointment quickly faded. They both fell in love with
their daughter.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
I was just in the awe of her every day.
She was a wonderful, wonderful little girl.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Those first few years of their daughter's life were magical.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
He was a sor father. He always took care of.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
My daughter, always like he died for her, not to pampers,
diapered like washing material diapers. He made her baby food.
He's the one I got up in a milan ni
I didn't change poopy diapers because he did that all
of it.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
He was also excellent to Nancy.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
He did all the cooking, he did all the cleaning.
I could tell him until time. Coming home from work,
he'd have a.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Bath ready for me.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
He'd have a buss wine for me. He always cooked dinner.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
And this wasn't a phase for him. Year after year,
Seth showed up for their family and their marriage. She
and Seth were a team.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
We worked together in the house without effort, not like Okay,
you're going to do this and I'm gonna We just
did it like you and my mother used to say,
you can'ts just do things effortlessly.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Years into their marriage, they were still very much in love.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
The romance was still there. As as I'm concerned, that
didn't change at all.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Even a neighbor commented on how physically close they seemed.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
She was like, every time I see you guys, just
so close. She was like, he's mowing the lawn and
you're right next to him. I'm like picking weeds. But
we were. We were always close together like that. Always.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
At the time, Nancy worked at a bank.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
I had a computer to take home just in case
it was implement weather.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Nancy was the only one in their house who used
the computer.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
And I had told them this is just my work
computer only I can go on all right. Everybody knew
that I was good. One day I went on the
computer and a dating website popped up. It was called
adultfinder dot com. I'll never forget it now. The username

(17:06):
was there, but the password was there.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
The username was Peter Parker. Five years into their marriage,
Nancy found a strange dating website on her work computer

(17:32):
with a username she didn't recognize.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
I'm like Peter Pocca. So I'm like, somebody got my
computer and put their name on them. I'm thinking Peter
Parker's a person, and I'm like, Seth, what is did
you see that? He was like, oh, those things like
pop ups? And I'm like, oh my god. Let me
call my company and let them know. I did not
go on that website, and they took it out of

(17:56):
space value. They didn't dig into it or nothing like that.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Nancy didn't either, Besides, her focus was on their daughter,
who just started school.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
I went to every at the school program and every play,
and I was always by myself because he was working.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
He'd taken a demanding job at the Metro rail. He
often worked overtime hours to make extra money. They were
only in their thirties, but they were already planning for
an early retirement.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
And we always talked about retiring in Jamaica. Have a
house there up in the hills. We finally had a house.
It's beautiful up there. The air and everything is different.
We had a book and everything that we wrote in
What we Want, What We're going to.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Do, a book where they wrote down their dreams for
the future. In order to make those dreams happen. Nancy
and Seth worked long hours. The only day they both
had off was Sunday. That day was reserved for family.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
When she got older, like ten, we would go to
the mall. I would go one way and they would
go another because they'd go into the video game store
and I'm in Macy's or jaz or something and we
had wacky talkies. We had lacky talkies. It was cute.
They had a lot of fun with her.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
One Sunday, Nancy was looking forward to their family time,
but Seth took an overtime shift.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Well called him at work for something. I can't remember
what it was, and he said he's not here. I'm like, Oh,
did he go to the bathroom? You know, No, he's
not today's say, oh, but he's not doing overtime today. No.
So when he got home at midnight, when he normally

(19:44):
gets home, he comes in the door. I didn't mention
to him that I knew he wasn't at work. I said, oh,
ya home a little bit later then, No, I was like,
I know they at traffic at the summon. You okay?

Speaker 2 (19:56):
He said he stayed late to talk to a coworker
who was having a releaseationship problem.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
He was like, we would talking a long time because
he was telling me that he cheated on his girlfriend
and she found out, and that's why we was talking.
He needed somebody to talk to. I was like, wow,
a woman always finds out when you're doing A dog
comes to Mike, don't forget.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
She knew she'd caught Seth in a lie. He hadn't
been at work that day at all, and he certainly
hadn't been comforting a coworker, So where was he? Instead
of asking him directly, she decided to wait and see
what else you can find out. Plus, she wasn't ready
to accuse him of anything.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Once you put it out there that you don't trust them,
your full relationship changes. You can't really ruin even like
a friendship. Say you and I, if we're friends. In
my pocketbook is missing. I put it in the wrong place.
But now I'm like, did you take my pocketbook? Our
friendship is over. It's over. You just have to be

(20:58):
careful with stuff like that, you know. So I was
kind of stuck until I could get something tangible.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
And soon she would get something tangible or maybe metaphysical.
Nancy was in bed late one night and out of
their bedroom window, she could see Seth standing outside their house.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
And I saw a figure next to him. And I
was half asleep and halfway can I stop back to see?
And I talked to him the next day and I said,
were you okay last night? Did anything different happen? He goes,
she had almost got into a car accident. We were
the only two cars in a road. I almost got
a car accident. And I was like, I thigured something

(21:41):
was wrong. He said why? And I told him the
story how I saw the figure. I said, that was
a guardian angel. That safe.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
After that, Seth was spooked. He knew she'd seen something,
and Nancy knew that the figure next to him was
no guardian angel.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
After that, you can tell he was so nervous to
do anything.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
She wasn't about to start spying on him, so she waited,
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Checking your pockets and your cell phone records and finding
a way going and following you leave. I'm not doing that.
I'm not checking o man like that. I'm got time
for that.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
But she kept setting traps in their conversations just to
see how he would react.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
And I told him I kept having a reoccurring dream
of him being with somebody else.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Christmas was coming up, and that year Seth went all out.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
Every year we always said we would buy each other
just one gift and we'd e splourge everything else on
our daughter. And we did that for the longest time. Well,
this Christmas I got it was an iPod at the time,
does anyone and he got it engraved him back with
a whole paragraph I love you, I love you today
I die. I'm like, oh wow, I got the Nikes

(23:03):
with the predominan that was inside the shoe. I mean,
he gave me so many and it was expensive gifts,
and I'm like, why'd you bind me so much. He's like,
I just wanted to I'm like okay.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
As Christmas Day went on, she noticed that Seth was
acting strange.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
He was so quiet, like he's a quiet person anyway,
but I mean nothing. After we did the gifts with
one in my mother's house in Boston, not a word
driving there, not a word during dinner, not a word
coming back home. And I was like, what's wrong with you?
Are you are? You're sick? What's wrong? He's like nothing.

(23:44):
I was like, something's wrong, what's the matter? Nothing? Okay.
We went to bed to a point I got if.
I said I can't take it anymore. Something is wrong.
What is wrong with you? He jumps out of the
bed and he gets on his knees like he's going
to pray, and closes his eyes and said, I got

(24:06):
another woman pregnant.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
There it was the confession she'd been waiting for, but
it was much bigger than she could have imagined. The
revelation was so overwhelming she passed out.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
It was like somebody like boom right in my chest.
I finally came to and I just said, well, I
guess you just have to go. He said, just like that.
I said, yeah, just like that, because you're not even
gonna try to fight for me. I said, how can
I fight for something I already lost? I said, you

(24:46):
can come get your stuff later. For now, you have
to go, like right now, because if you don't, I
really don't think you're worth going to jail for. So
I really think you should leave.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Right after he left, Nancy called her mom. It was
three am, but of course her mom still picked up, and.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
She's like, I can't. I really can't believe this because
you would have never known that. And she loved him
to death. She said she deserves an oscar. He really
deserves an oscar.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
The next morning, Seth was at their front door. He
needed to pack a bag.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
And that's when I asked, how long have you been
seeing her? He admitted to four years. He goes, I
know you knew. I was like, how when you told
me about that Guardian angel? I knew you knew.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Then Nancy figured that the dating website she'd seen years
earlier was connected to this affair, and.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
I said, and who the hell is Peter Walker? He said,
it's nine of me, and like I was supposed to know?
I was like, what he said, that's its real name.
I said, so, what does that have to do with you?
Because you're not on the inside of man. He said,
that's my favorite Charita okay Si.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Seth had been weaving a web of lies for their
entire marriage, and Nancy was just starting to unravel it.
She told him to expect divorce papers on Monday.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
You said, you're divorcing me. I said, dude, you're not
getting it. I told you got to go. Would you
think I just wanted to go, spend a night somewhere
and just come back home. No.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Done with that conversation, their marriage was over. They'd been
together for fifteen years. Nancy thought she'd heard the worst
of it, but she'd soon realize his deception was far
bigger than an affair.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Ki, you eventually told me the whole story, and I said,
why me? He said, as my uncle was saying, why
not you.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Nancy's fifteen year marriage was blown apart when her husband
confessed to getting another woman pregnant. But that wasn't the
whole story. The real story started before Seth and Nancy
even met. Here's what Seth confessed.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
He goes, well, I came to America with a visa.
I was only supposed to stay for six months. I
started a job and I decided I wanted to stay.
And he said, Marvin told him that you have to
get your green card, and to get that he would
have to get married. And I said, oh okay, he goes,

(27:54):
well it was you. I said, it was me, like
I was chosen. He said yeah, So our relationship was
set up from the beginning, and I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
The night Nancy first met Seth at the Caribbean Club,
that wasn't fate. It was orchestrated. She'd been singled out
by Seth's uncle, Marvin, you know, the guy from work,
and he invited Nancy there for a purpose.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
His uncle had his eye on me and invited me
to the club. When I came to Buddy made sure
his nephew was there, made sure his nephew danced me.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
She felt lucky meeting Seth at the club, But it
turns out it was all planned for one goal.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
He told me his uncle was like, she looks like
she has money. He's the one I put us together
with this crappy green cot.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
When Nancy got pregnant, she knew Seth was still on
his visa.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Because I have to go back, and I'm like, oh, no,
I need to have the baby. So I said we
can't get married thing because I didn't know it goes yeah,
we can, but that changes everything. I just have to
go and make it right at the immigration office with
the certificate called a green.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Car, she was having a baby. I was scared to
lose set so back then, Nancy had jumped into action
and I.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Was like, okay, so what do we need to do.
He was like, well, it's easier and faster if we
have a lawyer, and I said okay. So I spent
ten thousand dollars of my own money to get the lawyer.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Nancy saw the green card as another piece of paperwork
they needed to get married. She had no idea. She
was part of an elaborate scheme.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
I definitely feel like I was singled out. Fortunately for them,
it worked out and Seth got his green car. Marvin
was the mastermind of the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
And to add insult to injury, Seth had another reason
why he chose Nancy, because.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Well, you told me you couldn't have any children that
fit into the plan, that I wouldn't have to have
any connection with you. I said, wow, you guys are evil.
That is evil.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
This revelation made her feel as if her whole relationship
was manufactured, that she had been used.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
I was just a pawn in the little game.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Every day of their marriage, he welcomed her home with
a glass of wine and a home cooked meal. Nobody
had ever shown her love like this before. If Nancy
was just a means to an end, why did Zeth
father staying with her for fifteen years? Well, Nancy asked

(30:50):
him that directly.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
And I said, okay, Well, we were married for fifteen years,
so I don't understand. He said, well, I know, I'm
going to hell because I had to stay married to
you a little bit longer because my girlfriend in Jamaica

(31:13):
wanted to come here, and for me to be able
to bring her here, I had to show that I
was economically fit to be able to bring her here.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Nancy had assumed the affair was from Seth's online dalliances
as Peter Parker, but it turns out he'd been with
the other woman for their entire marriage.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
He knew her in Jamaica. I don't know if it
was since they were kids or all their life. I'm
not sure, but he brought her here from Jamaica.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Seth finally confessed his double life to Nancy because he
was just in too deep. It turns out the pregnancy
he told Nancy about wasn't the first one. I had
a whole other family, he.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Told me that day, because she was pregnant again, so
there were four. She was pregnant with the fifth. At
that point, he couldn't take it anymore, like do what
he was doing financially with me and our daughter. He
said he had come to a point where it was
just becoming too much.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
All those years set claimed to be working over time,
he was actually going over to his other house to
his other children. It shattered Nancy's reality.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
I felt like I was living the life of the
Truman Show. And I still feel that way. I don't
know what was real or not. I feel like, oh,
cry because I feel so stupid. Everything was fake. Who
was I living with? Are the walls real? Am I

(32:56):
going to push them down? And we're in a television program?
What is this?

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Their daughter was fourteen at the time, and Nancy wanted
to protect her from the reality of her father's dishonesty.
She tried to maintain a sense of stability for her
and her daughter. She moved to a new place while
they figured out the divorce, divided their assets, and split
up shared lives.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
I had moved to a smaller townhouse. I was going
back and forth to the home that we owned together,
except that I because I had to figure out what
I was bringing to my new home.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
They were waiting to put the house on the market
until the divorce was final. In the meantime, clearing out
the old house was a constant chore.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
And one day I went during the day and I
went to open the door with my key, but someone
on the other side of the door opened it for me.
Someone's in my house. Skid the living cross out of me.

(34:06):
I'm like, who are you? He's like, who are you?
I'm like, this is my house.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Seth Short sold their house without telling Nancy. The person
who'd opened the door was the new owner.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
I was only on the ded and of the mortgage,
so I guess I didn't need to be there for
the sale of the home.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Since it was a short sale. There wasn't even a
profit to divide in their divorce, even though she'd paid
half the mortgage for a decade. It felt like a
slap in the face. She couldn't move out on her
own terms. But to make matters worse, some of her
most prized possessions were still sold with the house and

(34:46):
she would never see them again.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
My diaries in my ledgers that I been writing in
since I was twelve thirteen. Up until that point, I
had like a memory box that I got my daught
his baby shoes in it. It had hairbows of her something,
little things that like memory stuff, ornaments that meant some
you know, babies, first Christmas, things like that. All of

(35:11):
that was gone, and it was just devastating.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
After they separated, Seth wasted no time stepping into his
new life. After all, he'd been building it for some time.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
He has this whole other new family to go to,
as if he didn't have to skip a beat while
I'm scratching and scrounging to try to move and find
out where I can live best for me and my daughter,
and it just didn't seem fair.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Nancy was left to pick up the pieces. It all
took an intense toll.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
I don't remember three years of that. After the doors,
I was like in a bog. I don't know any
other way to explain it, and I told my mother,
I lost like two or three years of my life.
I wouldn't even know what happened in between that because
I was just going.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Her daughter got her through those difficult ears.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
And she was always my priority. Always. You kind of
feel ashamed because I started thinking to myself, how stupid
could I be?

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Nancy is a survivor.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Even though I was considered ill with the twisted vow
haunt Murmur. I was born a warrior.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
It took years to recover emotionally and feel like herself again,
and now, fifteen years post divorce, she's proud of how
far she's come.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
And after time went on, I can talk about this
without crying, without being upset like he doesn't deserve my teams.
That's not my fault. I did survive, and I feel
stronger now than I did before. The resilience in me.

(37:13):
Nobody can take that from me.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
We end all of our episodes with the same question,
why do you want to tell your story?

Speaker 1 (37:25):
It is my story and I want to tell it.
Maybe somebody's in it right now, And then I'm thinking
about it because this happens too much and it's somebody's life,
you know, I have a lot to give from that
party that can turn into a good thing.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
On the next episode of Betrayal. And I said to
him on those last few days as I was holding
his hand in the hospital, I was just like, Man,
you've got to go up there. You've got to talk
to mom. You've got to find the answers. If you
would like to reach out to the Betrayal team or

(38:15):
want to tell us your Betrayal story, email us at
Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod at
gmail dot com. We're grateful for your support. One way
to show support is by subscribing to our show on
Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.
Five star reviews go a long way. A big thank

(38:36):
you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production
of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group and
partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by
Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by me
Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Monique Leboard, also produced
by Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercuriy and Caitlin Golden.

(38:59):
Or iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinchech. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing support
from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Baines. Music
library provided by Mob Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

(39:20):
your podcasts
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Host

Andrea Gunning

Andrea Gunning

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