Chapter 10 - The Social Media Smear
A month into my beautiful new life, I received a frantic phone call from my cousin, Helen.
"Margaret, you need to look at Facebook right now," Helen said, her voice shaking with anxiety.
"I don't use Facebook anymore, Helen, what is going on?" I asked, completely unbothered.
"Clara has posted a massive, highly public video accusing you of elderly dementia and financial abuse," Helen explained.
I sighed deeply, pulling up a fake account I used strictly to monitor the neighborhood watch page.
I searched for Clara's public profile and immediately saw a twenty-minute video pinned to the top of her page.
She was sitting in a dimly lit room, crying without any actual tears, looking incredibly disheveled.
She claimed that I had suffered a mental breakdown, sold the family home out of spite, and left her completely destitute.
She accused me of abandoning her during a difficult time and begged her followers to help her raise money for a lawyer to "save" me.
The comment section was filled with strangers calling me a monster and an unfit mother.
She was trying to use public humiliation to completely destroy my reputation and extort me for cash.
She thought that because I was a retired, quiet woman, I would simply roll over and hide in shame.
She had absolutely no idea that she had just handed me the exact weapon I needed to destroy her completely.
I did not reply to the video or leave a single angry comment on her page.
Instead, I called my high-powered estate attorney, Richard Harrison, and asked for a referral to the best defamation lawyer in the state.
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"It is time to take off the gloves completely," I told the new lawyer over a Zoom consultation.
"I want to sue her into absolute, inescapable bankruptcy."
