The Incident
Almost instantaneously, Jill flipped the metal hot dog pick she had been fiddling with up and into Stephanie’s upper arm, piercing the skin. The barbecue-style gathering immediately erupted into chaos, with everyone present beginning to scream and figure out what the heck was going on. Jill was restrained and ushered inside by Dave, who was apologizing profusely and begging Stephanie and Matt to refrain from calling the police. John was packed into the car, and Stephanie and John left while Matt stayed to confront his mother.
The gash on Stephanie’s arm wasn’t too bad, but the pick had been extremely dirty, so she was worried about infection. When Matt returned home, she was still deciding whether to seek medical attention and call the police, but Matt was on a different page. Stephanie’s sister came to take her away from the drama, and when Matt saw Stephanie packing, he lost it. After hours of emotional battling about how to deal with the situation, Matt asked Stephanie whether he would call the cops.
“Yes,” she said.
Matt said that he understood, but he needed her to talk to his mother one more time before calling. Perhaps Jill would apologize and recognize what was wrong with her actions. Maybe things didn’t have to end right there. But of course, the sitdown didn’t go as planned either.
~
Defending Stephanie
Stephanie’s meeting with Jill started out on poor footing. Jill was visibly angry, dismissive, and generally unrepentant. Her excuse for stabbing Stephanie was that she was riffing on Stephanie’s joke about “stabbing people for a living.” She said she had planned to tap her lightly and then say something like, “Well, now you know how it feels,” but she hadn’t known her own strength. Stephanie didn’t buy it.
After some discussion, Jill started to wax poetic a little bit about how Stephanie was “not the woman she imagined” for Matt, and generally just being very dismissive of Stephanie, attacking her personally. To Stephanie’s surprise, Matt responded with passionate anger, telling Jill not to call him anymore, and that he and Stephanie would be moving out and finding a new place. For that night, the family went to Stephanie’s sister’s house for the night. Stephanie and her sister left for the urgent care, where Stephanie received stitches for the wound and a few booster shots to stave off infection. Now she would have to decide whether to file a police report, but she had some doubts about where Matt’s loyalties would lie in the coming days.
~
Shocker
It turned out that Stephanie was right to doubt Matt. He called her first thing the next morning saying that he didn’t want to move, and trying to apologize on behalf of his mother, saying that her poor treatment of John was just a misunderstanding, and that her stabbing Stephanie was just an innocent mistake. She just didn’t know her own strength! Matt begged Stephanie to stay, but it was too late. Stephanie told him that she would be leaving and taking John with her, for now, she would be staying at her aunt’s house until she could find a place of her own. Matt asked if Jill would be able to see John, and naturally, Stephanie emphatically replied that no, she would not be able to see him. She was a terrible influence on him and had just stabbed her! Things got heated when Matt resorted to screaming and cursing that Jill was John’s grandmother after all, so he must absolutely be permitted to see her.
Of course, at this point it was pretty evident that the marriage was over, so Stephanie decided to file for divorce. She also filed for emergency custody. She was awarded it, so it seemed that things were starting to settle down. But then Matt lost control.
END OF PART 3
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