My mom wanted me to take the blame for a hit-and-run she committed when I was 17 (repost)
My mom wanted me to take the blame for a hit-and-run she committed when I was 17
I (23F) used to live with my mom (45f) until May of last year. For the most part, it's been just the two of us. My dad left after our RV (aka our home) burned down after he put heaters from walmart underneath the RV since our heat system was broken. He recovered from the burns, then left us.
Since then, it’s been me, my mom, and some questionable boyfriends. When I was 11, she married a truly awful guy. Racist, narcissistic, and mean. I lost friends because of how uncomfortable he made everybody. He eventually died from an overdose, and since then, my mom had been drinking heavily, though she refused to admit it. I've even picked her up from a DUI at 2:00am when I was 16 going on 17.
For my 16th birthday, she gave me a used 2013 Chevy Spark that I was beyond grateful for. I loved that car and took great care of it.
Then one night when I was 17 around 11:00 PM, there's a knock on the door. My mom was passed out drunk, so I decided to answer the door. It's two cops asking me if I own a white sedan. I tell them I drive one, but it's registered in my moms name. They ask to speak with her, so I go upstairs to her room and try waking her. She's incoherent and won't get up, so I tell the cops that. At this point I still have no idea what's going on.
The cops inform me the car was involved in a hit-and-run at a nearby McDonald's and ask where I was between 10:00-10:30. I tell them the truth. I was home, on facetime with my boyfriend. My mom finally comes downstairs and, slurring, asks me in front of the cops, "Did you take the car to McDonald's?"
She knows I didn't. She knows I was home. She knows I don't even like McDonald's.
But she keeps asking me over and over again. The cops begin pressing me, saying they have video evidence of someone who looks like me in the car at McDonald's around that time. That's when i started to sob. The female cop keeps interrogating me while my mom pretended she was clueless. Then the male cop asked me to sit in the driver's seat of the car. The seat is pushed all the way back. I am 5'3". My mom is 6'0". He immediately believes me and says there is no way I could have been driving that car.
They talk to my mom privately outside. I don't know what was said, but the cops eventually leave.
The next day, my mom was crying on the couch. She tells me the person who was hit is suing her for $50k. I asked her what really happened the night before. She claimed two strangers that she met that night stole the car and did the hit-and-run. I call BS. She gave no names of those strangers, never reported the car stolen, was asking me if I took the car the night before, and honestly, who the hell steals a car, gets in a minor accident then returns the car?
Later that day she was on the phone (police or insurance maybe), then mutes the call and asks me: "Can you just tell the people on the phone that you did it? You won't get in trouble because you're not a legal adult."
I was floored. I said no.
She got upset. Crying, angry, saying I'm making it harder on us and if I just took the blame, the person will drop the lawsuit and that nobody would get in trouble. I did (still do) feel awful for her as she was and still is in an awfully dark place. But I still think about this moment so often and how it affected me so greatly. I never told anyone about it and honestly needed to get this off my shoulders.
Reposting because I am pregnant now. I’ve been thinking of this incident and a lot of other things that happened to me growing up. I’m thinking of not letting my family be involved in my child’s life whatsoever, but not letting my mom is a very hard decision considering I do still love my mom and she still helps me out if I call her. I guess I need the reminder of what I’ve been put through.