Epilogue

Well that just about brings things up to date, although it wouldn't hurt to add that Mackenzie and I have discussed Codi, and the weird things she did, very often since she's been gone. Mackenzie has come to her own conclusions about why Codi behaved as she did and has tried to explain them to me many times.

It appears — or so Mackenzie has been trying to convince me — that Codi really did love me, but she had always had a sort of self-destructive streak. She'd been an extremely rebellious child who'd driven the poor old Judge almost to distraction on many occasions.

Eventually She (Mackenzie) came to the conclusion that Codi's little tryst with the Wanker actor had nothing to do with me at all; it had more to do with the Judge being happy with her choice of me to marry, or rather his enthusiasm for the marriage.

Let me try to explain it as Mackenzie tried to explain it to me. Apparently it all went back to when Codi's mother had passed away and the Judge had remarried.

Codi had been about six years old and she had not taken her mother's death well. She had been even more upset that the Judge had remarried quite quickly, apparently within the year. What's more his choice of new bride had been a woman who Codi knew that her mother disliked intensely.

Mackenzie seems to have come to the conclusion that there might have been something going on between the Judge and his second wife, whilst her grandmother was still alive and what's more she's convinced that Codi was aware of the relationship. Mackenzie even went so far as to suggest that Codi's mother's death might not have been from natural causes, that the Judge's second wife might possibly have had a hand in things.

When I asked why Mackenzie would think such a thing. She replied that the thoughts came from odd comments that Codi had made over the years. None of which you could call a definite accusation, more a sort of inference.

Anyway, Mackenzie thought that in retaliation for what she believed, as she'd got older, Codi had purposely set about becoming a real pain in the backside to the Judge and her stepmother. She was always getting into trouble at school, although she was a reasonably good student academically.

Codi just appears to have gone out of her way, to do anything that she could think of to upset her father and stepmother. I won't bother to go into the list of Codi's legal misdemeanours committed in her younger teenage years, that Mackenzie reeled off to me. But take my word for it, it was extensive.

Then Codi had taken up with this guy she met at college, and had suddenly pulled her socks up and began to behave herself. Apparently she was in love with the guy who, it turned out, was quite conservative. Now, the Judge had never been — lets say — particularly enamoured with any of Codi's previous boyfriends, consequently he had been in no hurry to meet the guy.

That was fine, until the guy started talking to Codi about marriage and the Judge finally did have meet him. Much to his surprise, the Judge found that he approved of the guy, and that's when things started going wrong.