What Dark Family Secret have you Uncovered?

What Dark Family Secret have you Uncovered?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What dark family secret have you uncovered? Story one. I
found out that one of my aunts had an arranged marriage.
She wasn't originally supposed to be in it, her sister was.
But her sister was completely against marrying the guy, and
I guess my grandma decided to persuade my aunt to
take her place instead. My aunt and the man got married,
moved away, and had kids. They lived far from us,

(00:22):
so I barely saw them. It wasn't until I got
older that I learned he had been abusive to her.
Even years after his death, she still suffered from intense
mental breakdowns because of everything he had put her through.
Story two. My dad tried to run out on my
mom while she was pregnant with me. He had been
embezzling money from a photography club at his workplace, which
was a government institution at the time, since he was

(00:44):
the treasurer. It was all about to come out when
the club needed the funds, so he decided to cut
and run. By pure accident, my mom's brother and father
caught him as he was leaving the house. My grandfather,
a burly Scottish coal miner, grabbed him by the throat
and told him that if he ever pulled a stunt
like that again, he wouldn't live to regret it. According
to the story, my dad was so terrified that he

(01:06):
wet himself right then and there. To prevent further trouble,
my grandfather paid the money back to the club so
no one would find out. If the truth had come
to light, my dad wouldn't just have lost his job,
he likely would have ended up in jail. My mom, however,
never trusted him with money again. Although they had a
joint bank account, she had the bank limit his access

(01:27):
and set up a separate account to manage the bills.
She also went back to work so she could always
support herself, which was incredibly rare for women in that
part of rural Scotland at the time. Most women were
stay at home moms and there was no child care
for children under four. Since my mom was a primary
school teacher, she brought me to work with her for
the first few years of my life. I slept in

(01:48):
a basket in the stationary cupboard of her classroom. At
her funeral, some of her former colleagues still recognized me
and said, oh, it's the baby in the cupboard. Story three.
It wasn't nearly as bad as some stories, but I
never met my grandfather, even though he lived only an
hour away and didn't pass away until I was around ten.
He and my dad didn't get along. Turns out, drunkenly

(02:10):
beating up your own kid can lead to being cut off.
But what really set him off was the fact that
my sister and I existed. He was furious that there
was no one to carry on the family name since
my dad was his only son, so he refused to
acknowledge us at all. That changed when my youngest brother
was born. After ten years of complete silence, my grandfather

(02:32):
suddenly reached out to my dad just to congratulate him.
He had also disowned my two aunts because they dared
to move out and go to college. My younger aunt
once told me how much she had dreaded telling him
she'd been accepted, knowing she would be kicked out immediately,
just like her sister had been. Years later, though, he
reconciled with her, but only because she had two sons

(02:52):
and no daughters. Anyway, jokes on him. My sister and
I ended up far healthier and more successful than the
male cousins, ered worthy of his love and attention. Story four.
I was the family secret. My biological parents started having
kids when they were teenagers. By the time my biological
mom found out she was pregnant with me, she was
twenty one and I was their fourth child, they quickly

(03:14):
realized they needed to get their act together. They were
already struggling financially, battling drug issues, and barely keeping things together,
so they made the difficult decision to put me up
for adoption. I was adopted by a loving family fairly quickly,
just about an hour away from the city where I
was born. By pure coincidence, I ended up returning to

(03:34):
that same city for college. During my sophomore year, I
decided to seek out my biological family. That's when I
learned that my biological parents had separated right after I
was born. My biological mom is still in and out
of jail to this day. But my biological dad turned
his life around. He got clean and sober, remarried, started
going to church, and built a stable career for himself.

(03:57):
He told his new wife about ME when they first met,
but he never told his other children. My siblings had
no idea I even existed. Thanks to the Internet, I
tracked down his work number and gave him a call. Later,
he told me that as soon as I said Hi,
this might be really weird, but he knew it was me. Apparently,
ever since I turned eighteen, he and his wife had

(04:18):
been waiting anxiously for me to resurface. They knew the
day would come eventually. That evening, they sat my siblings
down and told them about me. It was difficult at first,
but now I'm twenty five and my dad and I
have a pretty solid relationship. Story five. A couple of
years ago, I found out my uncle on my father's
side as a pedophile. He and his wife had been

(04:38):
staying at my grandmother's house, taking care of her while
she was going in and out of hospitals and rehab
My family and I stayed at that house with them
for a year, completely unaware of who he really was.
That house used to be the main spot for family gatherings,
but when my uncle moved in, fewer and fewer relatives
showed up. Eventually we moved our get togethers to my

(04:59):
aunt's house. My uncle rarely came to those either. We
already knew he wasn't allowed to keep custody of his granddaughter.
He had guardianship over her at one point, but he
lost it due to his alcoholism violent tendencies in multiple DUIs,
so we just assumed that was the reason he was
estranged from the family. Then, the year my grandmother died,

(05:19):
our father finally told my sister and me the real
reason our uncle couldn't see his granddaughter. She had filed
against him for molestation. It was a complete shock. We
had lived with this man for years. We had actually
liked him, but after learning the truth, it became nearly
impossible to even want to be around him. Thankfully, we
don't visit Arizona much anymore, so it's not really an issue.

(05:42):
Story six, my great aunt and great uncle had a
baby while they were still dating. They were in love
and marriage was inevitable, but coming from a very conservative
society in the Middle East back in the nineteen fifties,
they had no choice but to give the child up
for adoption. Once that was done, they got married and
eventually had four more children. That child grew up knowing

(06:02):
the truth about his origins, but chose to keep only
minimal contact with the family. To this day, he isn't
invited to family events and has built a separate life
with a family of his own. When my great uncle
passed away, I was told he was among the strangers
who showed up at the cemetery to pay respects. None
of my cousins, including myself, know what he looks like,
but my dad, his siblings, and their cousins all do.

(06:25):
Story seven. My cool uncle, the one who showed up
at our house every Christmas and Thanksgiving, Always friendly, always
great to be around. He had a bunch of cats
and dogs at his place and had been married to
my aunt since just before I was born. One day,
my mom and I went to visit him and my
aunt at their house, and there was this girl there
around fifteen, just a year older than me. My mom

(06:49):
and I were confused and asked, who's this. My uncle
just shrugged and said, well, I just found out a
few days ago that I have a daughter, so I
guess this is your cousin. It turns out before he
and my aunt got married, my uncle had a pretty
wild bachelor party, which included a hired prostitute. One thing
led to another, and fifteen years later my cousin showed

(07:09):
up looking for her father. She was incredibly sweet, and
my uncle actually handled it really well. He even started
paying child support to her mother, completely his idea. My aunt,
surprisingly was very forgiving about the whole thing. I've never
met my cousin's mom, but at least my uncle stepped up.
Story eight. Does it count as a family secret if

(07:30):
it was a secret about me that everyone was keeping
from me. I recently found out that for the last
thirteen years, my entire extended family believed I had been
raped in my early teens. The only problem, I was
never raped. It was all a figment of my mother's imagination.
She took a single comment I made, twisted it in
her head, and then told everyone that I had been assaulted,

(07:52):
but that they shouldn't ask me about it because I
was too traumatized to talk about it. Fast forward thirteen years.
I was drinking with my sisters and casually mentioned a
gynecological study I had participated in during my early teens.
They both immediately sighed in relief and said, oh, thank god,
you finally said something. We've been tiptoeing around this whole

(08:13):
rape thing for over a decade. Imagine my face in
that moment, realizing that my entire family had thought I
was a victim of something horrific, but never once asked
me about it, never did anything to support or protect me.
I had to gently tell my sisters that I had
never been assaulted and that they had spent over a
decade walking on eggshells around me for absolutely no reason.

(08:35):
Story nine. My uncle got his high school girlfriend pregnant,
and my grandmother took her to a clinic for an abortion.
She agreed to pay for it, but only if the
girlfriend never told my uncle that she was terminating his child.
When he eventually found out, it destroyed him, but that
hardly excuses what he did next. Around the same time,
my mother got pregnant by my father, my grandmother just

(08:57):
as discreetly offered her the same deal, an abortion fully
covered if she just let it go. My mother refused,
and let's just say she didn't hold back in telling
my grandmother exactly what she thought about the offer. My uncle,
still furious over what had happened to his own unborn child,
found out my mother had refused. He tracked her down

(09:17):
and punched her in the stomach for daring to take
what was ripped away from him. She miscarried. I should
have had an older brother, but my uncle took that
from me, and yet my mother, the saint she is
forgave him. She even tried to help him get therapy.
He rejected her efforts and joined the army instead. I
didn't learn any of this until I was an adult,

(09:38):
and it seriously messed with my head. My uncle and
I had always been close until I came out. That's
when he cut me off completely. It turns out he
somehow saw me as the daughter his mother had forced
his girlfriend to aboard. Story ten, My family could have
been worth millions. My great grandfather built a company from
the ground up called Johnson Corrugated. We made corrugated cardboard

(10:02):
for shipping boxes. He was, by all accounts of major asshole,
but he built the family empire, so we still talk
about him with a certain level of respect. My grandfather
was supposed to inherit the company about thirty years ago,
but then Uncle Randy happened. At the time, my great
grandmother was still alive and technically the owner of the company,
but she was also blind and deaf. Uncle Randy swooped in,

(10:27):
impersonated my grandfather and had her unknowingly signed the entire
company over to him. He then took fifteen million dollars,
gave half to his son, who immediately fled to Europe
after receiving death threats, and within a month of screwing
over the entire family, Randy died of cancer. Nobody went
to his funeral, and to this day we piss on

(10:47):
his grave. Meanwhile, my grandfather, now eighty, still can't retire
because he's been fighting this in court for twenty years.
He's buried in three hundred thousand dollars of legal fees
screw Randy. I found out about all of this after
stumbling across a massive stack of legal documents in my
grandpa's attic. As for Randy's son, we still don't know

(11:08):
where he is. Story eleven. My grandmother had a sister
who died in the nineteen sixties. She never married. She
had served in the army during World War Two. When
my grandmother turned one hundred, we spend time looking through
old photo albums together. She told me all kinds of
stories about her life. At one point, I climbed onto
a chair to grab another album for her. That's when

(11:28):
I noticed a small book tucked away at the back
of the closet. Inside there were photos of my great
aunt in an army aircraft what looked like a fighter plane,
and a few pictures of her with other people. On
one page, written in simple, delicate handwriting, were just a
few words, Yours for all eternity. My grandmother panicked the
moment she saw me holding the book. She told me

(11:50):
that nobody had ever seen it before, and that she
had promised to take it to her grave. Then, for
the first time, she told me what she believed to
be the truth. Her sister had met someone during the war,
man or woman she never knew, and that person had
been killed. After that, my great aunt had decided to
never love again. I never told anyone about the book

(12:11):
until a few weeks ago my father asked if there
was anything from my grandmother's house that I had wanted.
The book was gone when the house was cleared out.
Nobody had realized its importance. Honestly, I think my grandmother
would have been happy about that. She died at one
hundred and two, having lived through two World Wars. She's
my hero. Story twelve. I was always told that my

(12:33):
dad left me when I was born. Technically that was true,
but I later found out that everything else I had
been told about him was a lie. I first got
suspicious when my cousin, who apparently didn't know the cover story,
casually mentioned that my dad had blonde hair, my mom
had black hair, and that was supposedly where I got
my black hair from. But everyone else had always told

(12:54):
me that my dad had black hair too. Something didn't
add up. I kept that thought in the back of
my mind. But what really confirmed my suspicions was when
I had to get my birth certificate to join the military.
Listed under father's name was Alexander Smith, a name I
had never heard before. My last name is also Smith,
but my family had always told me it was just

(13:15):
a random choice from a baby name book, which was
why it was different from the rest of my families.
That didn't sit right with me, so I started doing
some digging. I spent the next few days researching Alexander Smith,
and everything added up. He was born in Russia, had
changed his name when he immigrated, and my DNA results
showed I was seventy percent Russian, which made way more

(13:35):
sense now. What really sold it, though, was when I
found that his mother's name was Natasha Kelevich, the same
name as my grandmother. I confronted my family about it
and that's when they finally told me the truth. Yes,
he was my father, and here's what happened. After I
was born. He made it clear that he didn't want kids.
One night, when I was just a baby, he tried

(13:57):
to smother me in my sleep. My brother and uncle
caught him in the act and stopped him. He left
after that, and they immediately called the police, but it
didn't end there. Not long after he came back. In
the middle of the night, he set our house on fire.
He killed our family dog in the process, and the
fire spread to another house, killing an elderly woman. He
was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. He

(14:20):
later died behind bars. My family said they kept it
a secret because they didn't want me to know that
my biological father was a murderer or that he had
tried to kill me. They were planning to tell me
through a letter once I joined the military, but I
figured it out first story thirteen. My mother probably went
abroad to have an abortion. When I was three, She
and my grandmother took a month long vacation together. It

(14:41):
was the only trip the two of them ever took alone.
It was also the only time my grandmother traveled without
her husband. While they were gone, my dad's parents took
care of me. The day my mom returned, she handed
me a pair of moroccas. She and my grandmother told
everyone they had been to Spain, but something was off.
They never brought back any pictures. They never told any

(15:03):
stories about their trip. My grandmother had tons of photos
and anecdotes from her other travels, but for some reason,
she had nothing to say about Spain. When I was
around eight, I asked my mom about it. Her response
a quote from my fair Lady. The rain in Spain
falls mainly on the plane. That was it. She never
showed me a passport stamp. For all I know, she

(15:25):
never even had a passport. Years later, in college, my
mom claimed she had never traveled overseas. I reminded her
about the trip to Spain. She just went silent, like
she had been hoping I'd forgotten. Looking back, there were
other hints that something wasn't right. She tried to donate
the moroccas a couple of times, but I insisted on

(15:45):
keeping them. They mysteriously disappeared when I was about ten
or eleven. Shortly before that, I had been playing with
them and she suddenly blurted out, those aren't really moroccas.
I asked what they actually were then, and why she
had always called them moroccas before. She gave a couple
of evasive responses before shutting down Entirely. None of it

(16:05):
added up until decades later I realized that her trip
to Spain had taken place just before abortion was legalized
where we lived, around thirty percent of women in the
US have had an abortion. Given the timing and the secrecy,
my best guess is that she and my grandmother either
drove to Canada or flew to the UK and spent
that month shuttling between clinics in a hotel room. At

(16:27):
the time, my parents and I were living in a
one bedroom apartment. They probably decided they couldn't afford a
second child. My dad never suspected a thing. What makes
it even more interesting is that my mother has been
a lifelong Republican, but she is adamantly pro choice. She
has never been the type to take an abstract stand
on an issue unless she has personally experienced it, and

(16:48):
she never let anyone question her about that trip. Honestly,
I think I finally understand why story fourteen my uncle
had a child out of wedlock. When that child grew up,
they discovered our grand and started calling him multiple times
a month. Each time was some sob story asking for money.
Being the kind hearted but unbelievably gullible man he was,

(17:10):
my grandfather almost always gave in. Then one year, my
uncle dropped off the map. No calls, no word, No
one knew where he was. His family genuinely feared the worst.
Then the child called. They claimed my uncle was dead
and demanded their inheritance, plus whatever share he would have
received from my grandparents' will. This infuriated the family. They

(17:31):
were already grieving and now had to deal with someone
demanding money. The situation escalated to the point where the
child even threatened to get a lawyer to secure what
they believed they were owed. And then my uncle just
showed up one day. Turns out he had run out
of money, gotten into trouble with some banks, and had
been townhopping to escape his debts. The lawsuit disappeared, but

(17:54):
the damage was done. No one in my family let
their kids talk to that cousin. The only time I
ever met them was at my grandfather's funeral. Story fifteen
on my other side of the family, things were just
as chaotic. When my family immigrated from the Old Country,
prohibition had just started. Luckily for them, they already knew
how to make moonshine. That's how my great aunt became

(18:16):
very involved in bootlegging and made a ton of money.
We still have photos of her from back then, dressed
in furs and fabulous clothes, looking nothing like the rest
of our struggling family. She never had kids, but my
grandmother had eight. To help, my great aunt set up
a significant trust fund for my mother and her siblings,
meant to pay out when my grandmother passed. The problem

(18:37):
the oldest sibling, my uncle, was a lawyer. He was
put in charge of the trust and a whole lot
of other family money. Everything seemed fine. He had nice cars,
took ski trips, sent his kids to expensive boarding schools.
He appeared successful. Then his drinking got out of control.
By the time the family started asking questions, the trust
should have been worth about one point five million dollars

(18:58):
with five siblings left to split it. That was serious money.
But at my grandmother's funeral, tensions boiled over. A conversation
about the trust fund nearly turned into a fistfight between
my uncles. That's when the truth came out. My uncle
hadn't been a successful lawyer. The vacations, the private schools,
the luxury lifestyle, all of it had been paid for

(19:19):
with family money. The trust fund was gone. Story sixteen.
During World War Two, my great grandmother had an affair
with the mailman. While her husband was away at war,
she got pregnant. To save her marriage, she decided to
give the baby up for adoption before her husband returned.
Somehow she managed to keep it a secret for decades.
No one found out until she was on her deathbed.

(19:42):
That's when she finally told her two daughters, who had
been born after the baby was given up, that they
had an older brother out there somewhere. In the early
nineteen nineties, those two daughters hired a private investigator to
track him down. When they finally found him, they waited
in the parking lot outside his workplace, then approached him
as he was and told him, we're your sisters. That

(20:03):
was the first time he ever learned about them. My
dad remembers going to a Christmas party with them when
he was a child, but that's about it. They lost
contact over time. I've never met them, but the whole
story still fascinates me. Story seventeen. When my dad was
a teenager, his best friend committed suish right in front
of him. I never understood why my dad was so

(20:23):
against toy guns. When I was a kid. One day,
my neighbor gave me a cap gun he didn't want anymore,
and we started playing with it outside on the porch.
My dad lost it. He ran outside, grabbed the gun
out of my hand, smashed it on the porch, and
told me to go inside. I was scared, but more
than anything, I was confused. I had no idea why
he was so upset. Years later I found out the truth.

(20:45):
When my dad was a teenager, he had been hanging
out at a friend's house with a group of people.
At some point, his friend left the room, went upstairs,
and came back down with his dad's gun. Without warning,
he put the gun to his head and pulled the
trigger right in front of everyone. When I found that out,
I finally understood my dad's reaction that day. Seeing me
and my friend playing with toy guns must have triggered

(21:07):
memories of the real thing. Was his reaction excessive, maybe,
but knowing what he had witnessed, I don't blame him
story eighteen. Aside from all the abuse on my mom's side,
I don't know much about my dad's side, so I
can't accurately comment on them. As for the secret, my
mom refused to tell me anything about my dad while
I was growing up. All the pictures of him vanished

(21:28):
when I was very little, and she would only mention
him if I did something she didn't like, using him
as a comparison. If I asked anything, she'd get so angry.
She was a volatile person, so I had to be
extremely careful around her. Once I was old enough to
start asking whose names were on his grave alongside his
we never went back. I knew my dad worked for

(21:49):
an electric company, that he had been in the army
at some point, and that he was scared of flying.
That was it. Mom told me they had been married
for ten years and that he was ten years older
than her. Eventually I found out I had an older
half brother. She only told me to mess with me
right before important exams, hoping I wouldn't pass and move
away from home. Luckily it didn't work, and I escaped.

(22:12):
Last year. An awesome redditor helped me out with some
information I needed. I had to find out how old
my dad was when he died. The only person I
could find was a man born in nineteen twenty seven,
way too old to be my dad. Nope, that was
my dad. He died a few months before I was born,
and it was now confirmed he passed away just a
few days before my mom's birthday, at sixty one years old.

(22:35):
He and my mom had married three years before I
was born, a year after his first wife died. I
also found out my brother is twenty nine years older
than me, and then I discovered I have an older
sister who is thirty six years older than me. She's
the same age as my mom. So freaking wrong. My
dad was older than my mom's parents. I'd like to
give this story a happy ending, but I've been too

(22:56):
scared to contact my relatives. I remember my brother him
screaming at my mom, beating her up, vandalizing her car.
He never hurt me, as far as I remember. I
also recall me and his son hiding outside a room,
asking each other why our parents couldn't just get along.
I don't blame my brother for hating her. I don't
like her much either, As for my sister, I heard

(23:17):
she wanted to be in my life. MOM used to
call her my aunt, but she was deeply religious and
MOM cut her off. I know where my brother lives.
I found his son online. I even found my sister's church,
but I've been too much of a coward to reach out.
Mom always told me they didn't want me, and I'm
inclined to believe her. Her relatives made sure I knew

(23:38):
I wasn't wanted, and she made sure I knew she
didn't want me either. I don't expect them to be
any different. Story nineteen, I found out that my family
was involved in some really bad stuff connected to Mexican gangs,
things like distribution and even some deaths. I discovered this
when my brother's dad was found dead the day he
got out of prison. My mom was talking to my

(23:58):
aunt about it. They were speaking in Spanish, thinking I
wouldn't understand, but they didn't know. I had been learning
the language growing up. My siblings and I never learned Spanish,
so whenever the adults didn't want us to pick up
on something, they would switch to it. But that time
I understood them. After that, my uncle went to where
the incident took place. About a month or so later,

(24:20):
a couple of people our family knew either went missing
or were found dead. Later, I asked my mom about it,
and she admitted that our family had been involved in
this shady stuff long before my grandmother even migrated from Mexico.
It finally made sense why we moved every three to
six months, why my uncle and grandma commanded so much
respect from strangers I'd never seen before, Why we got

(24:42):
so many freebies from people people knew me before I
had ever even heard of them. Me and my siblings
aren't involved, but four of my cousins are. Story twenty.
My grandfather was actually my great uncle, and my great
uncle was my real grandfather. To make this less confusing,
let's say there were two brothers, John and Harry. John
had a good job in America and was back visiting

(25:04):
the old country. Both brothers attended a football match and
met my grandmother Rose. Rose was really into Harry, but
John was the one with the stable job in America,
so when John asked her to marry him and move
to Boston, she agreed. John and my grandmother got married,
and she had three of his children. Their marriage turned
out to be less than great go figure, and after

(25:25):
ten years of no children, Harry moved to America and
started living with them. Then suddenly, my grandmother was pregnant
with my father. Fast forward many years later, and during
a drunken confession, Rose admitted to someone that she really
loved my father's real dad, John always treated my father poorly,
and eventually we put the pieces together. By that point,

(25:46):
it was pretty clear that John and Rose weren't sleeping
together anymore, so he definitely knew my father wasn't his,
but being a good Catholic, he just put up with it.
So there's my family's Jerry Springer level secret story twenty one.
I was always told my dad was a mild mannered
internet entrepreneur and that my grandfather was a happy, go lucky,
retired used car salesman. I had never in my entire

(26:08):
life seen my dad even raise his voice, and to
this day, my grandfather is the nicest, sweetest, most thoughtful
man I've ever met. I was in my early twenties
when I found out the truth. My dad got arrested
two states away trying to complete a six figure drug deal.
I met my grandpa for lunch to try to make
sense of it all, and that's when he told me. Everything.

(26:30):
Turns out my dad was a big time drug dealer
with clients in five or six major cities, and he
got into it using my grandfather's connections, because, as it
turns out, my grandpa used to break people's legs and
rob stores for the Detroit mafia in the sixties and seventies.
To this day, we don't talk about it much. When
my dad got out of prison, we all just pretended

(26:50):
like nothing had happened. I only brought it up for
the first time a few days before Christmas. I had
just watched The Irishman and started thinking about how my
grandpa had run with the Detroit mind at the exact
same time Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. I casually mentioned the movie.
My grandfather said he hadn't seen it yet. I prodded
a little more. He just waved his hand dismissively and said,

(27:12):
I heard the same rumors everyone else heard. I guarantee
the only people who know what happened are the ones
who were there. And that was the end of that conversation.
Story twenty two. My uncle was always smart, fun and kind.
I haven't seen him since I was a kid, and
I always wondered why. A few years ago he killed
a woman and fled. He's missing now. According to the police,

(27:34):
he was high and sitting in his car when it happened.
The window was rolled down, and a woman, most likely
a prostitute and also high, tried to get into his
car through the window. For some reason, he tried to
drive off, but she clung to the car. I don't
know exactly how she died, but I assume her hanging
on to a moving car had something to do with it. It's

(27:54):
really sad. He was a genius, a great artist, and
an all around good guy, at least from what I remember.
He used to do magic tricks for me, and once
gave me a small statue of a ferry and a
dragon for my birthday because I had told him I
like dragons. I miss him. I hope he's okay. Story
twenty three. I'm going to be as vague as possible

(28:15):
due to how recent this is. One morning, a family
member's house burned down and they went missing. Immediately after.
We didn't know if they were dead or alive. There
was no sign of them, their vehicle, or their pet.
The pet was assumed to have died in the fire,
but the fire department told us they can usually smell
when an animal burns, and they hadn't picked up that scent.

(28:36):
A couple of days passed and we were in full
missing person mode. Family friends and police combed through back roads, trails,
and all the usual places. Then we got a report
someone matching their description had shown up at a charity
in a nearby town with a vehicle and pet that
matched the description. The person claimed they had been kicked
out by a spouse and left with nothing but a

(28:57):
bathrobe and slippers. This person had been around my entire life,
and I had never seen them wear a bathrobe, not once.
I didn't even know they owned one. We took a
bunch of photos to the charity and they confirmed beyond
a doubt that this was the person who had been there.
They also reiterated the bathrobe and spouse story. One problem,
this family member was never married. Then the most damning

(29:19):
evidence surfaced. Footage from two different gas station surveillance cameras
showed that at seven am on the morning of the fire,
they had purchased fifteen dollars worth of gas in a
jerry can and a lighter. By eleven am, they were
seen filling their vehicle's gas tank. The fire had been
reported at ten am. The last confirmed sighting of them
was at eleven am. We had no leads until we

(29:39):
got the biggest one of all. A motel in a
town a couple of one hundred kilometers away, contacted my
mother after finding a note left by a guest. This
person had been staying there for four nights with their pet,
but because road conditions were bad and they had run
out of money, they were heading back home. They had
left their pet behind with instructions to either call my
mom or find it a good home. My friend and

(30:02):
I floored it to the town, picked up a very
confused critter, and hadn't even made it home yet when
I got a call. I was driving, so my friend
answered it was the police. They told her to give
me the phone. When my friend explained that I was driving,
the officer simply said give him the phone anyway. That
was when I knew this was serious. My missing family

(30:22):
member had been pulled over by police on the route home.
We turned around and floored again. When we caught up
with them in a small town an hour from home.
They were different, jumpy shifty. Something was off. When we
finally got home, things started to settle. They claimed that
someone had shown up at their house drunkenly demanded money

(30:44):
while calling them by the wrong name, and threatened to
return later. This supposedly scared them into grabbing their pet
and fleeing. They even implied that whoever this was might
have had something to do with the fire. That would
have been almost believable, except later they had admitted to
the investigating officer that the entire story was fabricated. The
fire marshal ruled the fire accidental. A lamp, one that

(31:07):
had been in place for about thirty years, had somehow
fallen onto the bed, shattered and ignited the mattress. The
fire destroyed the bed in most of the room. A
month after the fire, this family member crashed their vehicle
into a large tree and was hospitalized. Then about a
month after that, they came extremely close to taking their
own life. The only reason they survived was that my

(31:27):
mom heard their strangled breathing in time to get them help.
They were rushed to a local hospital and then transferred
to a larger one in the next major city, where
they were stabilized. It was ruled and attempted suis in
the end. We don't say it outright, but we all
seemed to have come to the same subconscious conclusion. They
started the fire. They likely used the jerry can and lighter,

(31:50):
set the bed on fire, and fled with their pet,
leaving behind the bathrobe and spouse story while the house burned.
We have no idea why. Between the made up story,
the evidence, the conveniently saved pet, and their desperate attempt
to run from everything, were left with a lot of
questions and not a single answer. Story twenty four My

(32:11):
grandmother shot and killed my grandfather. He was very abusive.
The first time she saw me after I was born
was in prison. She pleaded no contest and was sentenced
to five years. No one really talks about it, for
obvious reasons, but I have a lot of questions. I've
heard conflicting stories about the type of guns she used
and how many shots were fired. The only thing everyone

(32:32):
agrees on is that the last thing he said was
come off it woman. Immediately after the shooting, she was
hospitalized for a mental breakdown. Her brothers were all in
the military, and at their funerals they received the twenty
one gun salute every time. She shakes like a leaf
with each shot. Then there's my dad's third wife. She
committed suec a few years ago. They had gotten into

(32:53):
yet another fight and he went to sleep at his
shop at work. She kept texting him saying she was
going to kill herself, according to him. He didn't respond.
We live in a small town, and words spread that
my dad had killed her. At first, I defended him.
My dad is an alcoholic and their relationship was mutually abusive,
filled with mental health issues. But I never thought he

(33:14):
would kill her. Then about a year ago, he was
talking to my sister about how good life with his
fourth wife is, and then he said, if I had
known how good life could be, I would have killed
that bitch sooner. I don't know what to think anymore.
Story twenty five. One night, someone dropped a photo album
off at my house. When I looked inside, I saw
wedding photos of my mom. But she wasn't marrying my dad.

(33:38):
She had never told me she had been married before.
I didn't want to bring it up in case it
was a sensitive topic, but my curiosity got the best
of me, so I asked my dad. They're divorced. Hoping
for an answer, he told me I needed to talk
to my mom about it, and then he told her
I had asked. That's when I found out the truth.
My mom had married a man who was a severe alcoholic.

(33:59):
One night, while he caused a fatal accident and fled
the scene, he was caught, sent to prison, and their
marriage was annulled. She never talked about him again. Then,
while researching my family tree, I found something else. My
grandparents on my mother's side had a third child, one
I had never heard about. He was born with severe
birth defects. Back then, people didn't know how to care

(34:21):
for babies with special needs, and in many cases it
was seen as shameful. Instead of raising him, my grandparents
put him in a group home and never visited him again.
He died there alone. It's heartbreaking story. Twenty six. One night,
while my dad was tipsy, I started asking questions about
my mom. My brother and I were adopted as babies

(34:42):
from different families, so our adoptive parents are the only
ones we've ever known. Later, my mom left my dad
for someone else. I wanted to know why. Turns out
it had to do with drugs and money. My dad
used drugs recreationally, but my mom needed them. The man
she left him for was also a user, and apparently
the two men were in some kind of twisted competition

(35:03):
for her. Imagine adopting two kids with someone, only to
leave them for another attic. Then my dad told me
something even crazier. My mom had embezzled a ton of
money from different places and had never been caught. She
was the kind of person who could pass as a
nice gal. No one ever suspected her. He also told
me that she destroyed a lot of families with her manipulation.

(35:25):
When I asked for details, he refused. He said he
didn't want me to think too negatively of her. My
dad is a good guy. He just got the worst
possible hand. In life story twenty seven. When I was
about two years old, my dad found out that my
mother was cheating on him. They decided to divorce, but
during the process they still lived together because of me
until I was nineteen. That was all I knew. By then,

(35:48):
I had moved in with my grandparents because of my
dad's alcoholism. One day, my grandmother and aunt showed me
a letter that had arrived a couple of weeks earlier.
That's how I learned I had a half brother. I
had never known about. My brother and his adoptive mother
had been looking for my mother, but unfortunately she had
taken her own life when I was eleven, so they
found me instead. I was elated. My brother is two

(36:10):
years and seven months younger than me. That meant he
must have been conceived right around the time my dad
found out about the affair. The real kicker, my mom
had been pregnant with my brother the whole time she
was living with my dad and me, and he never knew.
Then one day she just told him straight up, I'm
going into labor. Talking to my dad about it was
tough because it completely broke his heart. But my brother's

(36:32):
adoptive mom ended up buying me plane tickets so I
could meet their family. It was one of the best
things that has ever happened to me. And he looks
so much like my mom. Story twenty eight. This goes
back a while back. In grade school. There was this
one girl from Great Britain. She was very proud of
her British heritage and openly supported the British Crown. I

(36:52):
remember that while we were learning about the Revolutionary War,
she actually criticized the Americans. One day during science class,
we were talking about her British background. Jokingly, I said
that since her ancestors were British, they probably came to India,
where I'm from and did something bad to my family.
For me, it was just a joke. For her, it

(37:12):
turned out to be a little more personal. She casually
mentioned that her great uncle had been a leading general
in the British Army. As we kept talking, she revealed
that he had actually worked in the same district of
India that my family is from. In India, a district
is like an American county. And then came the real shock.
She admitted that her great uncle may have murdered people

(37:32):
back in the early nineteen hundreds. She had taken an
ancestry DNA test earlier that year and found a list
of last names belonging to people her grandfather could have killed.
My last name was on that list. Later that day,
I went home and asked my dad if any of
our family members had gone missing in the early nineteen hundreds.
He had a faint memory of something his own father,

(37:53):
who was born in the nineteen thirties, had told him.
His uncle, my dad's great uncle and my great great
uncle had once traveled to the main city in our
district for business and never came back. Our family had
always been very hush hush about the incident. They never
talked much about it. I don't know what really happened
to my great great uncle, but whenever I see that girl,

(38:14):
I wonder, do we share a connection that goes back generations?
Story twenty nine. I suppose the secret is me. I'm adopted.
Not a big deal. My biological mom was a middle
school kid. My biological father wasn't. Catholics don't tend to
go for abortion. They also don't tend to put kids
up for adoption. Guess this was a special case for both.

(38:36):
My bio mom was a child who was raped. If
it were somehow possible to rewrite time, I wouldn't have
blamed her for aborting me. But I'm glad i'm here.
A lot of adopted people eventually go looking for their
biological parents. I promised myself I would never do that.
I figured it was the least I could do for her.
I don't know who I look like him or her,

(38:57):
but I don't want to risk making her stare into
the face of a horse from her past. It never
really occurred to me until college that I probably have
half siblings out there. One day, I was in one
of the buildings on campus when I saw a girl
walking toward me. She was tall, lean, and had olive skin,
black hair, and a distinct nose. I felt something off
about her. She looked so familiar it actually unnerved me.

(39:21):
She was pretty, but there was something unsettling about that observation,
something I had never felt before and have never felt since.
Hours later, while I was in my apartment's bathroom, it
hit me. The nose, though hers was mercifully unbroken. The
height the build she looked like my sister. Now I
doubt she actually was my sister, but she could have

(39:43):
easily been a relative, a cousin. Maybe. My university was
close to the city I was born in, and that's
when it struck me, like a ton of bricks, I
have blood relatives out there, lots of them. I was
adopted by amazing parents and have had a good life.
I'm satisfied with that, but when I think about how
I got well. Story thirty. My great grandfather was involved

(40:04):
with a mafia group. At first, he was a terrible man.
According to stories from my grandmother and great aunt, he
hurt them in ways no one should ever experience. Three
years after marrying my great grandmother, he abandoned the family.
They told me that he took his own life. Six
years later, one day, while exploring my great grandmother's house,
I went up to the attic. There was a strange

(40:25):
spot on the wall that looked like a cupboard, but
it had been painted over and had no handle. I
had never noticed it before, and it intrigued me. I
found a crowbar in my step great grandfather's workroom and
decided to pry it open. Inside was a dusty old book.
When I opened it, I realized it was my great
grandfather's journal. What shocked me most was discovering that he

(40:46):
had actually returned four days before his supposed suice. As
I read further, I learned the truth. The mafia had
killed him for causing their leader's death during a drug
trafficking incident. They had staged everything to make it look
like he took his own life. I never told my
grandmother about what I found. After reading the rest of
the journal, I placed it back inside the hidden compartment,

(41:09):
sealed it, and left it as it was Story thirty one.
I found out that my mom was adopted and that
her entire side of the family had kept it a
secret for sixty years. It all started when I planned
to surprise her with a vacation. I needed to send
off her birth certificate in photos for a new passport.
Then she got a phone call. Something was off about

(41:29):
her birth certificate. Numbers had been scribbled out and rewritten,
making it look suspicious. They even suspected we were trying
to commit fraud. Confused, I called one of my mom's
cousins and asked, is there something the family isn't telling
us about my mom because her birth certificate looks altered.
The response was a firm no. So I called my

(41:51):
grandmother and asked the same question, same denial. Then I
just set it out right. She was illegally adopted, wasn't
she You bought her? Didn't you? Silence? At first, she
denied it over and over. I wasn't being rude or confrontational.
I just wanted the truth. Finally, after a long pause,
she admitted it, Yeah, it's true. I asked who knew,

(42:13):
and she said everyone on your mom's side of the family.
It broke my mom, but we reassured her with a
simple truth. She has been your mom for sixty years.
She chose you, she wanted you. Life went on. My
grandmother later fell ill and we took care of her
in our home for the next seven years. Nothing changed
between us. Then my mom found her biological family, and

(42:36):
that's when things got really strange. She had four brothers
and a twin sister. They had grown up on the
same street, attended the same school, and had even been
in the same class for eleven years. They were childhood
friends who had simply lost touch over time. My mom
always said that people would comment on how she and
her best friend looked identical, but no one ever suspected

(42:57):
the truth because my mom's adoptive family was Jewish Bush
and her biological siblings were Christian. Story thirty two. I
wasn't my father's biological daughter. Turns out, everyone in the
family knew except me until just before my eighteenth birthday,
and the way I found out was far from pleasant.
My mom had finally had enough of my father's emotional

(43:17):
and physical abuse and asked for a divorce a few
weeks prior. Then a week before my birthday. What a
way to enter adulthood right. My father ambushed me with
the truth. He told me I was actually the result
of a mistake between my mom and another man. He
said he had stepped in to be my father because
he was really into my mom at the time and
didn't think he could have children of his own. But

(43:39):
he was wrong. He wasn't as into my mom as
he thought, and once she had children that were biologically his,
he couldn't love me the same way. Deep down, I
had always suspected that he wasn't my real father, but
his family adored me, and I loved them too. That
was the part that hurt the most, not losing him,
but realizing I wasn't truly my grandparents grand I cried

(44:01):
for months over it. Eventually I met my biological father. Unfortunately,
he and the man who raised me had far too
much in common for my liking. I resented him for
abandoning my mom as a teenager, leaving her pregnant and alone.
Now I'm pretty open about it. The hardest part was
telling my cousins and siblings, but these days I can
even joke about it with my younger siblings. Life moves on.

(44:24):
Story thirty three I actually shared this story on another
post earlier today, but it fits this question perfectly. When
I was eighteen, the police showed up at my door
late one night and took me to the station for questioning.
I had no idea why. Once there, they kept asking
me about my dad. He worked across the country and
wasn't supposed to be home for a few weeks, so

(44:45):
I guess they were trying to get whatever information they
could from me in the meantime. Eventually they told me
the reason. A family member had come forward accusing my
dad of harming her when she was only five years
old whenever she would sleep over at our house. At first,
I thought, there's no way that's true. I had known
in my whole life we had always been incredibly close.

(45:05):
But in the weeks leading up to his return, the
more I thought about my childhood and my dad, the
more unsettled I became. Something deep down told me it
was true, but I didn't want to believe it. Even
my husband was frustrated with me. He couldn't understand how
I could ever think my dad was capable of something
like that. My dad had always seemed like the nicest

(45:25):
person in the world. He had done so much for us.
Then my dad finally came home. The police were involved,
and to everyone's shock, he proudly admitted to everything. Worse,
he laughed about it. He even joked that the people
he worked with knew what he had done, that it
had been an open secret, just another thing to laugh about.
His reasoning, it is what it is. He actually believed

(45:48):
that children weren't capable of feeling negative emotions, something he
had told me many times in my life. To say
it broke me as an understatement. It destroyed my ability
to trust anyone. You can know someone her entire life
and never truly see the monster hiding underneath. And then
came the biggest insult of all, the so called justice system.

(46:08):
He was sentenced to just nine months in jail, but
for some reason, he was allowed to keep his job.
He worked three weeks at a time, then came home
and spent weekends in jail. During his sentence. They gave
him a private room so he wouldn't have to interact
with other inmates. No one could touch him. In the end,
he barely served a month before they let him go
completely free. Story thirty four. I believe this happened in

(46:31):
my great or great great grandmother's family. There was a
family with young twin girls around five years old. One night,
as punishment, one of them was sent down to the
barn for a sort of time out. Later that evening,
the parents saw the other twin in the house at
different times and assumed they had seen both of their daughters.
Believing they were both inside, they went to bed. The

(46:52):
next morning, they made a horrifying discovery. They had never
brought the other twin back in from the barn. She
had frozen to death overnight. The father took responsibility and
was sent to prison. I didn't learn about this until
a year or two ago, when it was casually brought
up in conversation. The rest of my family had just
assumed I already knew. It's heartbreaking, but it also makes

(47:15):
me wonder what kind of environment were these girls growing
up in. That one of them would rather freeze to
death than disobey her parents, That the parents didn't make
sure to tuck in their five year old children before bed,
and that the twin inside never spoke up about her
sisters still being outside. Story thirty five. My mom's side
of the family is pretty big. I have one uncle

(47:36):
and four aunts. When I was between fourteen and sixteen,
One of my aunts, I'll call her B and my
two cousins distanced themselves from the rest of the family.
Anytime they did interact, there were massive arguments. They especially
avoided my grandfather. When I was sixteen, my grandfather passed
away from bowel cancer along with other complications. When his

(47:59):
funeral came around, I was upset that Bee and her kids,
both of whom were out of school by then, didn't attend.
When I asked my mom why, she just said that
Be had an argument with my grandfather and was being dramatic.
My dad simply said he preferred to stay out of
my mom's family drama. A couple of months later, I
arranged to meet up with my cousins at a park.
It was great to see them again after so long,

(48:20):
but I had to ask why had they distanced themselves
and why didn't they come to the funeral. My oldest
cousin immediately tensed up. It looked like she wanted to
be anywhere else. She just said, I'll tell you another time.
About half a year later, she invited me to dinner
and to see her new place. I was excited and
promised myself I wouldn't bring up my grandfather or any

(48:42):
family drama. But something felt off the whole dinner. She
looked like she was in pain or afraid of me.
I couldn't tell which, but it was unsettling. Afterward, as
we walked back to her place, we laughed about how
much our younger siblings were alike. It felt like old times.
When we got to her apartment, we sat in her
room drinking tea. Then out of nowhere, she started crying.

(49:05):
I had no idea what was going on. After a while,
after I hugged her and helped her calm down, she
finally told me the truth. When she was seventeen and
in her final year of school, she often stayed at
my grandfather's apartment since it was close to her school,
and one night he tried to touch her. She ran
be picked her up. A few days later, my grandfather

(49:26):
actually showed up at Bee's house. He knocked on the
door and apparently tried to apologize. Bee didn't say a
word to him. Eventually he left. My cousin told me
she had managed to move past it after a year
or two, but the worst part the entire family still
defended my grandfather. Even now after his passing, my mom
has never told me because she assumes I hold my

(49:47):
grandfather in high regard for everything he had done for
the family. Hearing this shattered my trust in my parents
and in most of my family. At the same time,
I'm glad she told me. She said it was the
first time she had spoken to anyone about her other
than her sister and parents, and that just talking to
me helped her a lot. Since then, she has told
a few of our older cousins. I haven't told my

(50:08):
younger sister yet. She's only fourteen and she doesn't need
to carry this right now. I did confront my dad
and he had the exact response my cousin said he would.
He dismissed it as my cousin looking for attention and
told me to talk to my mom about it. That
was over a year ago. I still don't know what
to do, so here I am sharing it here. It's

(50:28):
good to talk to someone. Story thirty six. When my
older sister was seventeen, she attempted to harm my grandmother
on my father's side in her sleep. Admittedly, my grandmother
wasn't the best person, but she had never done anything
to my sister that would justify such an extreme act.
A little background. My sister already had a history of

(50:48):
criminal behavior. She stole frequently and was quick to get
violent with other students. The incident happened after she ran
away from home, which consisted of my mom, my maternal grandmother,
and me. She started living with my dad, my paternal grandparents,
and my grandfather. One night, she sneaked into their bedroom.
She grabbed a pillow and pressed it over my grandmother's face. Fortunately,

(51:10):
my grandfather woke up in time to stop her. He
restrained her, making sure she couldn't move, while my grandmother
called the police. Because she was only seventeen, the police
couldn't do much, but she was taken to court for
underage offenders similar to the Yugen dumpt in Germany, and
they ruled that she could no longer live in their household.
So she moved back home, and that's when the real

(51:32):
nightmare began. She started abusing me. Ever since, we've made
sure to lock our bedroom doors every night. Story thirty seven.
I really hope my family never finds this. I've pieced
this together from bits of information I've gathered over the years.
It all started when my sister got into her first
serious relationship after high school. Her boyfriend started a business, then,

(51:54):
out of nowhere, they broke up. He immediately left the country,
fleeing to Germany as if some one was chasing him.
Years later, she broke up with her second boyfriend under
equally strange circumstances. At first, I didn't think much of it,
but the more I looked into the odd things surrounding
my sister, the more disturbing the truth became. Here's the timeline.

(52:14):
When her first boyfriend started his business, my sister bought
us a Wi Fi router and an Internet connection. That
wouldn't have been suspicious except that her boyfriend had no
idea that his name had been used on the contract.
The bill was outrageously expensive. When he discovered the debt,
he had two choices, pay it off, which he couldn't afford,
or disappear. He chose the second option. He showed up

(52:37):
at our apartment one last time, took a secondary monitor
he had left there, broke up with my sister, and vanished.
He deleted his social media and cut off all contact.
I think he eventually managed to pay off the debt
with the money he made in Germany, but it forced
him to close his original business. Then our second cousin
came to town and stayed with us for a few days.

(52:58):
During that time, my sisters slept with him multiple times.
I even suspect she and her best friend had a
three way with him. The problem he caught feelings for
my sister. It was just a fling for him. It
was something more. Later, my sister cut all ties with
her best friend, apparently out of jealousy because she had
started dating a neighbor. Shortly after, my sister made a

(53:19):
Facebook post that looked like her account had been hacked.
She announced that she was breaking up with her boyfriend
due to undisclosed reasons. Here's what really happened. Our second
cousin had started making trouble. He wanted to marry her.
When she refused, he threatened to expose everything to the
entire family. He claimed that she had made him drunk
and taken advantage of him while he was unconscious. Terrified,

(53:42):
my sister confessed everything to her boyfriend. He in turn
threatened to call the cops on our cousin, accusing him
of assault if he didn't back off. Our cousin panicked.
He cut all contact and left the country, moving to
England for work. Later, when my sister and her boyfriend
went to college, they broke up. Officially, it was due
to limited time constraints. This is the one secret that

(54:04):
could completely destroy our family. If the truth ever got out,
my sister would be completely alienated. Her second acts and
our cousin have both forgiven her, but I doubt her
first ax ever has Story thirty eight. On my grandfather's deathbed,
my oldest aunt revealed a secret that only she had
known the truth about his name. See, my grandfather's name

(54:25):
was DJ. His parents had always told him that it
didn't stand for anything, that they had just liked the initials.
But that was a lie. At some point my grandfather
found out the truth. His mother, my great grandmother, had
cheated on her husband while he was away on a
business trip. The man she had the affair with, a
traveling Cherokee salesman named David Johnson. As a way of

(54:47):
permanently reminding his wife of her betrayal, my great grandfather
named the baby after the man she had cheated with.
DJ was really David Johnson Junior. It made so much sense.
My grandfather had jet black hair, while while all of
his siblings were blonde or brown haired. Whenever someone pointed out,
the family would make excuses, Oh, he just plays outside

(55:07):
a lot, or it's a birthmark. After my aunt told
my mom the story, she decided to ask my grandfather directly.
He confirmed it the irony. My great grandfather still raised
him as his own. He never treated him differently. He
loved him. A stand up guy, though I still don't
know how to feel about him naming the child after
his wife's affair partner Story thirty nine. I once read

(55:30):
my sister in law's diary. She had written about how
devastated she was when my brother cheated on her, how
broken she felt when he forced her to lie to
their friends and family about what had happened. She wrote
about how she just wanted to disappear because he had
manipulated her into allowing his mistress and their child to
move into their home while she and my brother were
still raising their own two kids together. Eventually they got divorced.

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They told everyone that the affair had happened during a
mutual break in college, that their marriage ended because of
differences in finances and her struggles with medical issues while
running their shared business, but in her diary she had
written the truth that she couldn't live with a man
who would sleep with another woman in their house then
come share a bed with her like nothing had happened.

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I've never revealed all the details outright, but when people
ask why my relationship with my brother has become strained
in recent years, I've let certain things slip just enough
for people to start questioning the narrative. It's hard to accept.
I used to look up to him, but he destroyed
that woman's life just to satisfy his own selfish desires.

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She's struggling now, and worst of all, they both neglect
the kids they had together. That's the part that makes
it truly heartbreaking. Story forty. My grandfather was born in
Lebanon and didn't move to the US until the nineteen
thirties when he was in his twenties. He had two
older brothers and an older sister. They were Christian. When
my grandfather was around ten years old, maybe younger, maybe older.

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I was never able to get the exact date, his
sister secretly started seeing a Muslim man. Given the time
and place, this was considered a major scandal. Somehow the
secret got out. I don't know exactly how the family reacted,
but it was definitely not good. In the end, she
ran away to be with him. Her two oldest brothers,
my grandfather's brothers, were furious more than anyone else in

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the family. Even their parents, while upset, didn't react as
severely as they did, determined to bring their sister home.
The brothers tracked her down. It took time, but eventually
they found her. By then, she had a newborn son.
What happened next is horrific. The brothers stormed into the
house armed. They dragged the man outside, and in a

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fit of rage, one of them took the baby from
their sister and killed him instantly. Then they beat the
man nearly to death. As he lay on the ground,
barely conscious, he cursed them, cursed their entire bloodline until
the end of time. They shot him in the head.
After that, I don't know what happened. My grandfather told
me this story only once. He got very emotional, so

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I didn't press him for more details. I was only
ten or twelve at the time, and to be honest,
I was terrified. Years later, my grandfather left Lebanon and
moved to the US, he built a life for himself,
met a woman of Lebanese descent, and settled into a
very normal existence. This was the only time he ever
mentioned having brothers. Before that, all I knew about his

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sister was that she was beautiful, that he had loved
her deeply, and that he never forgave himself for not
being able to take her with him when he left
Story forty one. My grandfather on my mother's side of
the family was always portrayed as this godlike figure, someone
deserving of deep reverence. My mother, grandmother, and brother idolized him.

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He passed away when I was about three, and for
most of my life I noticed one thing. My father
hated him. And I don't mean simple dislike if cancer
hadn't taken my grandfather, my father might have at some point.
That's the life level of hatred he had for him.
I always knew something wasn't right. My family rarely talked
about their pass The only thing they consistently discussed was

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my grandfather, and even then, a lot of the stories
didn't add up, some contradicted each other, and there was
no sign of the money or belongings we should have
inherited when he passed. The truth came out when my
parents were planning a particularly ugly divorce. That's when my
father finally told me who my grandfather really was. He
had abandoned his first wife and fifteen year old daughter

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so he could pursue my grandmother, who was also fifteen
at the time. He pretended she was his daughter until
she was legally old enough to marry him. He never worked,
forcing my grandmother and their kids to live in abandoned
movie theaters and run down homes, all while convincing them
they were living in luxury. It only got worse he
spread vicious rumors about one of his own children, falsely

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claiming they had HIV AIDS in the early eighties, when
stigma around the disease was at its peak.