"In reality, Uncle Fred killed him and buried him at the local cemetery."

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"That was when my grandmother told her that the day before the wedding, an envelope had arrived at my grandparents’ house informing my aunt that her grant application had been approved. Concerned that it would derail her future, my grandmother threw the envelope in the trash."

"I still carry mental scars from that conversation 35 years later. I didn’t fully understand what he was telling me at the time. Years later, when I mentioned it to my mom, she confirmed the story and explained it more gently. Apparently, my great-grandfather and his brother may also have been involved in multiple killings, supposedly targeting members of the Ku Klux Klan across Alabama, Georgia, and northern Florida, possibly as many as 25."

"My mom told me that when she was five, my grandmother tried to run her over with a car because she found out her affair partner was molesting my mother. She wanted to get rid of her. It didn't work because a neighbor saw it and intervened, so my mom ended up being sent overseas to her father's mother's home to be safe while everything was dealt with and my grandparents got divorced. Times being what they were, however, when my mom returned, her mother got custody of her. It ended up with my mother running away, being homeless, getting pregnant very young by a much older man, a secret sister I never knew about, and I was pretty floored. When she told me, I figured it made a little more sense why my grandmother had said that, so I finally shared it with my mother. She just said, "Well, she had a strange way of showing it," and that was that."

"Come to find out, our mother had two boys from two different men prior to marrying our father. One of the men was from her hometown; the other was from Japan. So much of her life before our dad suddenly became an enigma. Both of her sisters had Alzheimer’s, so no information was ever shared with us."

"When she told, he strangled her to death. He shared details of how he buried her under a sign next to the road. He described the dress she was wearing and how “mommy was never the same” and “daddy tried to kill me when they found her. He passed away a couple weeks later."

Text has been edited for length and clarity.