Mrs. Brown grabbed the divorce paperwork for another look, feeling the pain every time she read the line on the payout to Liberty. “I thought the estate was split evenly. The amount doesn’t seem right.”
“Liberty’s relinquishing her rights to the house and car, so I need to make it up to her monetarily. Altogether, that’s the total payout.”
Mrs. Brown replied after a pause, “What about the renovation cost for the house?”
Hank answered, “It’s not included. I’ve said it before. I won’t compensate her for that.”
Although feeling a little better, Mrs. Brown said, “The renovation was tens of thousands of dollars. I guess we benefited a little since she didn’t ask you for the renovation cost.”
It did not hurt as bad anymore for the money they were losing.
“Hank, how did Liberty collect these photos?” Mr. Brown believed his daughter-in-law did not have such means. “Did someone help her?”
“I asked her, but she wouldn’t say, nor did she know who helped her. The person’s pretty good at gathering information. To me, that’s a walking timebomb. Dad, I’m scared, so I gave in to her demands.”
Having gotten the whole picture, Mrs. Brown uttered, “Could Serenity and her husband be behind this?”
“Liberty didn’t show the evidence when something happened to Sonny, so it can only mean that she didn’t have it then. However, she managed to gather the evidence in a short time since she somehow produced the documents a few days later. Although Liberty has a lot of relatives, none of them are capable of pulling it off.
“Don’t worry too much about it, Mom. Everything will be fine so long as we meet Liberty’s requests. She made it clear on the divorce papers that she will not act out in retaliation after the divorce.”
Mr. and Mrs. Brown fell silent once more.
Hank looked at the time and said to his parents, “Mom, Dad, I need to get back. I have work tomorrow. I’ll take leave in the afternoon to go through the paperwork.”
His parents were without a word.
Hank sat for a bit before getting up to leave.
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