Chapter 15
I left another message. “Tracey, it’s Rebecca, again. I know you’re mad at me, but I wish you would call me back. I miss you a lot.” I hung up and looked at her name on my screen. The shoe was on the other foot, now. I thought of all the times she had called me and I had been angry at something and avoided her, all the times she had sent messages and I had ignored them because of hurt feelings. Instead of dealing with my issues with her, I had run away, and now she was doing that to me. It felt horrible to be on this side of it. If she called me back and we got back to being friends again, I resolved not to treat her that way anymore.
Lorelei had gone ahead and sent a very polite, enthusiastic email to the office of admission at Lamb’s saying that of course they were still interested and hoped Joaquim still had a chance to matriculate. She got an almost immediate response that they were very glad that he wanted to remain on the waitlist and they were hopeful that things would work out. There was no more talk around the garage of throwing dog poo at houses or applying sledgehammers to engines.
I heard a noise in the basement and immediately tensed. It was the plumber, and I knew it, but I hadn’t gotten over the jumpy fears that had only intensified after my father had come down to Digger’s house. It had gotten bad enough that Digger had asked me a few times what was wrong.
“Nothing,” I had told him. “I’m fine!” Lies. Lying. I sighed.
A text came in and I eagerly grabbed the phone. It was Ian, letting me know that he was home from practice. He had asked, very nicely, if I could maybe not come to the gym as much. To make himself perfectly clear, he added, “I mean, you can come once a week, tops.” I understood that he didn’t want his sister hanging out, watching him all the time, but I still wanted to. I just had the urge to see him and make sure he was all right. Over the phone, sending me messages, I thought he could hide things from me, like if he was scared, or hurt. To my face, there was no way. I could read him like a book.
Books—like, the real ones—were something I had actually been working on. It turned out that without the pressure of someone telling me that I was doing it wrong or too slowly, I enjoyed reading. Digger had a few very interesting books that we read from together, read from and then acted out ourselves. I felt myself start to throb a little, remembering.
My phone rang again, and I recognized the number from somewhere way back in my memory—Tracey’s house, the landline. “Hello?” I asked. “Trace?”
“Rebecca? Oh, I’m so glad it’s you.”
“Mrs. Bicchieri? Yes, it’s Rebecca.” It was her mom, not Tracey, calling me.
“I saw this number come up on Tracey’s cell phone and I’ve been calling all the numbers I can get to…she’s not with you, Rebecca?”
I sank down onto a bucket. “No, she’s not with me. She’s not at home? She doesn’t have her phone with her?”
Mrs. Bicchieri told me the story, haltingly, cautiously. Tracey had left for work that morning in the rental car they had gotten for her. She wasn’t really supposed to be driving, due to her incident with the police when she had totaled her own car, but they had rented a car for her anyway. Tracey’s mom thought that anyone would understand that she still needed to be able to get to work, even if she didn’t technically have a license anymore. She herself was working from home that day, so she’d heard the cell phone ringing a lot, and had assumed that Tracey had left it at home by mistake (which itself would have been odd, because it had been practically sewn to her hand for at least the last 15 years). But then the home phone had started ringing, too, and it was Tracey’s school, where she worked. Did Mrs. Bicchieri know where Tracey was? Because she hadn’t arrived at school and hadn’t called in.
Then, when Mrs. Bicchieri went to look, she found a big mess in Tracey’s room. A bigger mess than usual. The housekeeper reported that some of Tracey’s clothes were missing, although how she could have told that from the mass of clothing that surely remained, I had no idea. Worst was that they found her cell phone on the table next to the front door with the house key on top of it.
Well, maybe that was the worst. There was more. Mrs. Bicchieri mentioned that it looked like Tracey’s jewelry box was gone, “and you know, she had some fairly decent pieces.” She had gone to check her own jewelry and everything was there. She hesitated. “But there are a few other things missing.”
I swallowed. “From your bathroom? From your medicine cabinet?”
Yes.
“She’s not with you, Rebecca? Do you have any idea where she’d be?”
I looked at the time. It was early to be at a bar, but it was a possibility. The problem was, which bar? It wasn’t like Tracey had ever played favorites. “I’ll go look for her,” I told her mom, and we hung up. I picked up my bag, grabbed my keys, and headed for the door. Then I stopped. Where, exactly, was I going? To every bar and club we’d ever been? I stopped with my hand reaching for the doorknob, irresolute.
The phone in my other hand vibrated, and I jumped. Thank goodness, this time it was Digger.
“Dig, Tracey’s missing!”
“Nah, I know right where she is.”
“What?”
“She’s sitting in the office with Lorelei. Came down here looking for you.”
“Oh…oh, I’m so glad. Try to keep her there.”
“I already took her keys. She’s fucking stoned. Don’t worry, we’ve got her under control until you can come.”
“Thanks, Digger. I lo—I’ll be right there.” I had almost said it again, that I loved him. One day, the words were just going to fall all the way out of my mouth. On my way, I called Mrs. Bicchieri and told her that her daughter was ok. I hoped. I told her I’d be in touch with more details.
Lorelei jumped up when I came in the front door of Brody’s Automotive. “Oh, thank God. I can’t deal with this anymore.” She practically ran out of the door, stopping only to hug me quickly. “Rebecca, you must have the patience of a saint to deal with that do-fuck-nut. Good luck.”
Digger was sitting in one chair, looking as annoyed as I’d ever seen him. Tracey was sitting in the other chair, crying, her eyes red and swollen, her nose running, her pretty auburn hair a tangled mess. A pile of tissues the size of the Uniroyal Tire on I-94 sat in front of her on the desk. She saw me and stood up, knocking over her chair, and flew across the room to me. Digger watched us for a moment while she cried on my shoulder, then he nodded at me and went into the garage, a very relieved expression on his face.
“Wreck,” Tracey sobbed. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Trace, calm down. You have to calm down and tell me what’s wrong. Why aren’t you at work?”
She picked up her head from my shoulder. A thin rope of snot ran from her nose to my shirt. Ick.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m leaving home for good. I left my phone, even.”
“You’re really leaving home? Where are you going to go? You didn’t even want to move into an apartment that your parents were going to pay for.”
Her face crumpled up again. “I got fired from my job,” she said in a hiccupping whisper. “This is my last week. Tomorrow’s supposed to be my last day.”
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry.” But really, who hadn’t seen this coming?
“They said I was totally unsuited to the position of a kindergarten aide. That I was unreliable. Can you believe that?”
“Well…”
“They said I had used inappropriate language with the children. Those little fuckers deserved it!”
“Tracey!”
“They said that they suspected that I had falsified illnesses.”
“Is that because you told them you were getting dialysis so you could go get your hair done?”
She nodded. “They also said that they suspected I was using illegal substances on school grounds. My private medical history is none of their business! Aren’t there laws or something?”
“Tracey, your ‘private medical history’ doesn’t include taking your mom’s prescriptions on campus. Are you on something now?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“Give me those pills, right now.”
Biting her lip, she opened her purse and handed me a brown pill bottle. Then another, and another.
I rattled the pills in my hand. “All of them.”
She handed me two more bottles. For crying out loud, how much did her mother keep around the house?
“Are you sure that’s it?” I asked.
“God damn it, Wreck! Don’t you trust me?” I just looked at her, and with an angry glare, she reached into her purse and pulled out one more bottle. “I didn’t take too much today,” she said defensively. “I just need to feel better!”
I pulled her back over to the chairs and made her sit. “As after-school-special as it sounds, drugs are not the answer.” I lined up all the bottles on the desk and sat next to her.
She turned one on its side and spun it around. “Remember when we used to play spin the bottle in Carla Hirshmeyer’s basement? It was so retro.”
“No, I wasn’t invited. You told me about it, though.”
“That group never wanted you there. You never got invited to anything they did.”
I flushed. “Fuck them.”
Tracey’s eyes widened. “What? Did you say to fuck them?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“They were mean, anyway,” she confided. “They said mean things about everyone, like when Carla went upstairs to steal pot out of her dad’s stash, everyone said she had a fat ass. I was afraid if I didn’t hang out with them that they would talk about me, too. I didn’t want them to say terrible things. That’s why I always left you to go with them.”
“They called you a slut,” I told her. “Even I knew that.”
“Wreck!” Two blazing spots of red flamed in her cheeks. “How dare you!”
“They said it, not me. They would walk up to me and wave their hands around and say it was sign language and laugh, and they called you a slut, and they said Carla was fat, and they made fun of the way Mila ran and said she was crippled. Crippled? They were mean, horrible people. No one was good enough. Fuck them.”
“You’ve gotten a really dirty mouth, Wreck,” Tracey said, wrinkling her nose.
“Well, I guess I’ve changed some, Tracey. For one thing, I don’t want you to call me Wreck anymore. I’m not a wreck, I’m Rebecca. It’s not nice when you call me that. You say a lot of things to me that aren’t nice.”
She stood, furious. “If you think I’m going to sit here and listen to this, you’re wrong!”
“You can’t leave,” I told her. “Digger has your car keys. And your license got suspended.”
She sat back down and started crying again. “Wreck, I mean, Rebecca, what am I going to do? I can’t tell my parents about the job. They’ll make me get another one!”
“You have to tell your parents about the job. I think they’re going to notice that you aren’t going anymore. You have to tell them about taking your mom’s prescriptions, and you have to ask them for help. You can’t keep doing what you’re doing, Trace, acting how you’ve been acting. You’ve said yourself that it’s not making you happy. Did it ever? You need to try something new.”
“I don’t know how to do anything else.” She stared at me and I realized how scared she was. She was terrified. That was something I could understand.
“I’ll go with you,” I told her. “I’ll go with you and help you explain.”
“You will?”
I shrugged. “Yes. But from now on, I need you to start thinking before you speak to me. No more mean stuff, even by accident. It’s not ok with me, not anymore.”
Tracey nodded slowly. “Hang on.” She went to the huge suitcase in the corner and pulled something out, a wadded-up ball of clothes. “I brought your sweater, the one I bought for you. You’ll look really pretty in it.” She ran her hand down my ponytail. “You look pretty without it, too.”
I shook out the blue sweater she had bought for me. “Thank you. I missed you a lot, Trace.” Tears clouded my vision and she was wiping her cheeks again.
“Me too,” she told me.
Hours and hours and boxes of Kleenex later, I lay in bed with Digger, both of us naked, my head on his chest. I drew with my fingertip around his nipple and watched it jump a little.
“You think they’re going to be able to work it out?” he asked me, taking my hand and holding it flat to his chest.
I considered. “Maybe. I think her parents took her seriously, maybe for the first time. They’ve always turned a blind eye to every bad thing she’s ever done. They’ve always just pulled her out of every problem, fixed everything she ever messed up, then hushed it up. Like the car accident—her mom was pretending it wasn’t Tracey’s fault, but she caused major property damage and her car got destroyed. She’s lucky that she didn’t hurt someone.”
“Spoiled,” he commented.
“Well, that’s part of it. I think the bigger part of it was that they never wanted to be the bad guys and come down on her. And if they acknowledged what she was doing wrong, they’d have to see what they were doing wrong, too. Like all the pills.”
Digger patted my back. “That’s true, baby girl. I always thought you were a smart cookie.”
“No.” I rubbed my cheek on his chest.
“Yes. You’re very smart.” Now Digger patted my butt and left his hand there. “Smart, and a cute ass. You’re two for two.”
I picked up my head and put my chin in my hand. “I hope they can work this out. She may need to go to rehab. I’m not sure, but at least they all listened to me when I said she had to grow up, and her parents had to let her.”
“Damn, Cinderella! You laid down the law. Well done.”
“You think?”
He flipped me over, so that I was lying on my back. “I think you did great. Lorelei and I couldn’t handle her. We both wanted to kill her with all that whining and crying. Her parents sound like idiots and you handled them, too.” He stroked my face with his fingers. “I’m proud of you.”
I ducked my chin, trying to avoid his eyes. “Well, anyway. I hope I made a little difference.” The old radiators, which were finally coming back to life, made a noise and I jumped. Digger was watching me intently. “It just startled me,” I told him.
“No, that’s not all that’s happening here. Are you ever going to tell me what’s been wrong? Ever since that day when we heard about Lamb’s Academy, something’s been off.”
“No, nothing.” But I couldn’t look at him when I said it.
“You’re not still thinking Lorelei is mad at you, are you?” he asked me.
“No. I know she’s not.”
“Are you worried about tomorrow?”
Tomorrow was the day that the process server was going to give my dad our paperwork. I had officially filed for guardianship of my brother. My father was going to go ballistic.
“Ok, baby girl, ok. I can feel your heart beating out of your chest. Listen, I have to tell you something. It has to do with the guardianship stuff. I did something you’re not going to like.” Digger glanced up, squinted, and returned to looking at me. “Do you remember my friend Ash? Came over here on our chili night, broke three dishes by mistake?”
“Yeah, the guy who knew all the rude running songs.”
“Cadences. So, after he was in the army, he joined the police.” He paused. “He’s a cop. I talked to him about you.”
“Why did you do that?” My voice rose. “I didn’t want to do that.”
“I know you didn’t, but baby, this is not just about guardianship of Ian. Your father’s a criminal. He should go to jail. Ash opened an investigation and he’s looking into what I told him. He wants to interview you and Ian.”
I struggled out from under Digger’s heavy body. “I’ll never be able to look Ash in the face.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
I was pulling on clothes. “I mean, it’s bad enough that you know that I allowed that to happen to me. Now your friend knows, too.” I stopped. “Did he know even before he met me that night he came over?”
Digger nodded slowly. “I called him when we moved you out for good, from the parking lot of your brother’s school.”
“He came over here, knowing that about me? Does everyone know? All your friends? Your mom and Ilsa?”
“No, but it’s not something for you to be ashamed of, Rebecca! It’s all going to come out in the guardianship fight, anyway!” Digger said angrily. “I’m sorry I went behind your back to talk to him, but I thought it was the right thing to do, and you weren’t thinking too clearly yourself, at that moment. They’re investigating…”
I left the room, slamming the door behind me. The one weapon I thought I had in our upcoming battle over Ian was my father’s fear of embarrassment, publicity. I had thought I could just wield the specter of talking about his abuse, and that maybe it wouldn’t all have to get out in the open. If I had to go public and humiliate myself for Ian, I would do it, but I didn’t want people to know.
My keys were in my hand when I realized that my old loaner car was still down at Digger’s shop. I had driven Tracey home in her rental and Digger had picked me up at her house. I was stranded, unless I took the Fairlane. I put down my keys and picked up his. Where was I going to go, anyway? I sat down on an orange bucket, defeated.
“Rebecca.” Digger moved aside the plastic sheets now hanging the doorway. He hadn’t bothered to put on clothes and in the faint moonlight he looked almost too beautiful to be real. I was still angry. More like, ashamed. “Baby girl, I’m sorry I did that without telling you. I’m very sorry.” He grimaced. “Really, I’m even more sorry that you feel like you should be embarrassed. You know that this isn’t your fault.”
I couldn’t speak at first. “No, it isn’t.” I cleared my throat. “No, I know. I know that it’s not my fault. But there are things I could have done. If I had given him Margot’s letter right away, if I hadn’t helped her lie—if I had caught up in reading faster and done better in school, he would have been happier with me.”
Digger knelt in front of me. “No. No buts.”
“I’m twenty-four, Digger. I could have left. I could have done something. I just took it…no wonder he hates me. He doesn’t respect me. I was crawling on the ground picking up the food while he watched me from his car!”
“What are you talking about, crawling on the ground?”
I lashed out, stupidly, thoughtlessly. “I’m talking about when my father came here and I was an idiot, again!”
“What?” His voice was low and angry.
I pressed my lips together. I had made giant mistake in telling him. “My dad was waiting outside when I came home, the day we found out about Lamb’s Academy and Joaquim,” I said after a moment.
Digger’s face had turned to stone. “Did he lay a hand on you?”
“N-n-no,” I stuttered. “He just talked. He told me not to embarrass him, that I was hurting my mom and Ian. I got scared and I fell, but it was my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Because I thought you would try to ki—” Digger stood up and headed for the door. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to fucking kill him.” He spun back to face me. “My keys aren’t here. Where are my keys?”
They were in my hand. I clutched them. “Where do you think you’re going? To my house? What would you do?”
“I’m going to beat him into a bloody fucking pulp with my bare hands. I’m doing this my way.” He yanked open the door. A few snowflakes drifted in.
“No!” I jumped up. “This is why I didn’t tell you! To protect you.”
Digger saw the keys in my hand. “Give them to me.”
I walked to him at the door. Then I drew my arm back, and threw the keys as hard as I could, out into the yard in the dark and snow. “No.” I backed up. “No. I won’t let you go to jail for me. I love you too much to let you get hurt for my benefit.”
Digger stared at me for a long moment, then slowly shut the door. He held out his hand and I took it, and I followed him back upstairs, where he pulled off the clothes I had hastily put on and we got back in bed.
“No more secrets from each other. No more,” he said, his voice gruff.
I had my face pressed into the curve of his neck. “No more. I won’t keep things from you, but you have to promise you won’t get yourself into trouble for me.”
“I can’t promise that, Cinderella.” He leaned back and looked into my eyes. “I would do just about anything for you. Do you know that?” He kissed me gently. “I love you.”
“Digger.” I leaned up and kissed him back. “I love you too.” The way he was looking at me, it made my heart expand until love filled every part of me. “That’s why I couldn’t let you leave.”
“Out of love, you threw my keys.”
“I’ll help you find them in the morning. I don’t think they went that far.”
He kind of huffed. “Would have been a little unusual, me showing up there naked, anyway.”
I started laughing softly, picturing it.
“D’Artagnan.”
“What?”
“That’s my real name,” Digger said, sighing. “As long as we’re telling secrets. My dad loved old movies. Ilsa got Ilsa, from the one with Humphrey Bogart, and I got that. D’Artagnan. The guy who joined up with the Three Musketeers. You’re one of the few people who knows. Please, please just call me Digger.”
“I think D’Artagnan is a nice name. Digger.”
He kissed me again, and again, with more urgency. I wanted him, no, I needed him. I reached down and took him in my hands, running my fingers up and down. “Come in me, right now,” I said. “Please, right now.” We both moaned when he was fully seated inside me. Digger held my face between his hands, watching me as he rocked in and out, watching me as we came, together. Afterwards I held him tightly, and I realized that it had happened. The words, telling him that I loved him, had finally come tumbling out, and it had been the best thing I could have said.
Digger and I both waited for Ian after school the next day, afraid that my father would go to see him at Lamb’s and do something crazy after getting served the guardianship papers. Everyone at the garage was on notice that he might come there, too. Digger had told the guys working at the house to call the police if they saw him and under no circumstances to let him in. From the description I gave them, they recognized my father as a guy who had poked around a few times, saying he was from the neighborhood watch group. I shivered, thinking about being there while he was outside, just one sheet of plywood away from me.
Digger looked over. “You ok, baby?”
I nodded. “I’m fine.” I would feel fine after seeing my brother, anyway. The whole day I had felt like I was waiting for an explosion and I didn’t want Ian to get hurt by it. So I had made Digger promise to follow Ian’s car over to his friend’s house, where my brother would spend the night. Our lawyer had advised us that it was better if Ian didn’t come to us right away. We were just going to watch him like hawks, every second of every day, if we had to.
Ian came out of the school, waved to us, and I hopped out of the Fairlane to get back in my own car. I was going back to the lawyer’s office for an appointment while Digger followed Ian, then he would meet me there.
“Don’t stop along the way, call me if you have any problems.” Digger looked worried.
“I’ll see you soon.” I leaned into the open window and kissed him, hard. I watched him pull behind Ian out of the parking lot and onto the street.
My phone rang just as I got onto Lone Pine Road. “Mom?”
“Oh, Rebecca! Oh, it’s just awful!”
I had given her my new phone number in case of emergency, or in case she decided to leave him. Maybe today was the day she was going to do it… “Mom, what’s going on? Is Dad there? What’s he doing to you?”
“No, I don’t know where he is! I’ve been calling and calling!”
“What’s going on?” I repeated.
“There were all these men here…oh, your father is going to be so upset!” She was crying.
“What men? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know, they handed me a warrant or an affidavit or something and they said they could come in.”
“Police?” Was this Digger’s friend, Ash?
“Agents, FBI or CIA, something. Maybe T-men. They went through the whole house. They took boxes and boxes of papers—and his computer—and they gave me some kind of receipt—”
I was totally confused. When the car behind me honked, I realized that I was driving about five miles per hour, and I pulled over into the library parking lot at Telegraph Road. “Mom, I don’t understand. Can you start from the beginning?”
She had been getting ready to go to meet her book club when someone pounded on the door. “We’re doing a special project for the children in the pediatric intensive care unit at Blackwell Hospital,” she explained. “It’s really wonderful…”
“I’m sure it is,” I said impatiently. “What happened when you opened the door?”
Well, whoever they were, they had given her the piece of paper that was the subpoena, or codicil, or whatever it was, and said they had the right to search the house and surrounding buildings and seize things as evidence.
“Evidence of what?” I asked, my voice high.
“I don’t know! I called your father’s cell phone, but he didn’t answer, so I called the auction house. His secretary quit and he has some terrible temp and she was hysterical, she said there were police or sheriffs or rangers or something, they were there going through everything in the offices and they were at the warehouse too, causing a huge mess, and everyone was upset and no one could find your father. She wasn’t any help at all,” my mom finished. “I don’t know what to do.” She started sobbing. “They think your father fled the country! Oh, I hear them coming in again…”
“I’m coming to help you,” I told her. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Him leaving the country would have been the best thing that ever happened to her, but she wouldn't feel that way.
My mom’s car was in front of the house, but it was the only one. I had expected to see police cars or rows of non-descript government vehicles. I ran up the steps and found that the front door was unlocked. “Mom?” I called to her. I stuck my head in the office, seeing the open drawers, the empty desk. I ran upstairs to her bedroom. It was a mess, with clothes everywhere, a shampoo bottle spilling on the carpet, my mom’s jewelry box upside down on the ground. I picked it up, and one gold earring fell out. It had been emptied.
The police or FBI, or whoever it was, they had done this? The scene in the bedroom looked more like a robbery. I went back downstairs, now very worried. “Mom?” She wasn’t in the living room, or the family room in her spot on the couch. “Mom? Are you here?”
“Rebecca.”
I skidded to a stop. My father was in the kitchen, not 10 feet away from me.
I saw the suitcase in his hand, half-zipped, clothes spilling out. “What did you do to her?” I whispered. My voice had deserted me. “Where is she?”
“Your mother is gone. She took my car to lead away anyone who might be looking for me.”
I stared at him. Stubble covered his cheeks and there were bags under his eyes. “What did you do? Why are there people after you?”
“Don’t you know? Didn’t you tell them, sniff it out when you were doing your analysis of our warehouse practices?” He considered me. “No, again, you’re much too stupid. Someone knew, someone found out about what we’ve been bringing over to Canada. Maybe Melina knew more than I thought, the stupid bitch. I should have fired her years ago.”
“What—”
“You and your ungrateful mother. Even your brother. Did you really think that our auctions could provide all this?” He swept his arm around the kitchen. “Take, take, take. That’s all you ever did. I provided for you all, and now I’m being punished for it.”
My mind was racing. What was talking about? Bringing things over to Canada? I couldn’t—I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just knew I had to get out of there. I started to back up, slowly and carefully.
“Do you know what else I got today?” He took a crumpled paper out of his back pocket. “Do you recognize this? I got your message, Rebecca. You’re trying to take your brother from me. It’s really been quite a day.” He stepped forward and I took another step back.
“I don’t know what you mean about Canada. It’s none of my business.” My voice was shaking so much it was hard to speak. “You can just go, and no one will know that you’ve been here. I won’t tell. I—” I started to run.
But he was on me before I made it to the door. “You promise? What would your words be worth, I wonder?” He had me by the arms and he threw me against the wall. I hit my head on the edge of a shelf then slid down in a heap, dazed. “How dare you come back here!” he said. “How dare you!” He studied me on the floor, then reached down and slapped me. I felt the blood start to trickle down from my nose. “Get up.”
I stayed down for another moment, trying to think, then I held on to the edge of the counter with my left hand and slowly pulled myself up.
“None of you deserve any of this,” he was seething. He yanked drawers out and turned them upside down. Finally he found the one he wanted, and pulled free a large envelope that had been taped to the underside. He opened it and fanned out the contents—it was full of cash and what looked like passports. “Your mother is a spineless bitch. She let them march in here, into my home.” He kept going, his voice rising until he was yelling, completely out of control. “And you, conspiring to take my son…”
He advanced on me again, and I stood my ground. When he got close enough, I swung my right arm. The old kitchen scale I had grabbed from the shelf connected with the side of his head with a terrible crunch, and the look on his face was pure shock as he crumpled to the floor.