Chapter 16
Digger checked me over again, from head to toe. I was sitting on his lap in the kitchen of our house. I was so glad to be there, I thought I might never leave this particular bucket.
“Tell me if this hurts, any of it,” he said, running his hands over my body.
“Digger, no! I promise, I’m fine.”
He reached around me and adjusted the ice pack on my cheek. “No. No, you’re not. He hit you.”
“And now he’s in jail.” Based on the passports the police found next to my father’s unconscious body, he wasn’t going to be out on bail anytime soon. He was facing multiple federal charges for smuggling guns over to Canada, and now local charges too, over the assault of his daughter. Someone at Lindhart Auctions had tipped off the feds, as Digger’s friend Ash called them. One of Ash's friends who had ties to the operation suggested that it was someone in the Lindhart accounting department who had noticed unusual reimbursements for gas purchases in Canada. So he had looked into it further. It had started just from that, something small and pretty insignificant, and grew into a multi-national smuggling investigation involving several government agencies. Arthur from Accounts had tried to warn me several times but I hadn’t understood. They had been watching my father for months and tightening the noose, and now they had him dead to rights. He was going away for a long, long time.
Ian carried over a cup of tea. “Here, Rebecca. Try this.” His hands were shaking as he gave it to me. After I tied my father up, very, very tightly, and may or may not have kicked him in the ribs, I had called Digger, and also called the police. Digger and Ian had broken the sound barrier when they drove to get me and my brother had practically glued himself to my side ever since. Reassuring Ian that I was all right, and that this was going to work out, was going to take longer than just one night.
After a brief police search, they had located my mom on her way Louisville, to my grandma’s house. She had left me and Ian and tried to drive to safety with her mom—the irony didn’t escape me or my brother. Maybe I would be able to forgive her for letting me go over to my parents’ house to help her, and not warning me when she knew that my dad was there, too. It wasn’t her fault that he acted the way he did, but she had left me to go to Louisville, and let me go to the house to be alone with him. Maybe some day I would forgive her, but today wasn’t that day.
I held the mug of tea but my hands were shaking, too. Digger put his fingers over mine. “It’s ok. It’s ok now,” he said, but I thought he was reassuring himself. He had apologized repeatedly, as if any of it was his fault. I was the one who had gone to my parents’ house instead of directly to the lawyer’s office as I had promised to do, after I had made Digger promise to follow my brother, and my dad was the one who…anyway, I felt like there was plenty of blame to go around, but none of it should have fallen on Digger’s shoulders. He disagreed.
“I let this happen,” he kept saying.
It was his own mom, much later, who got him to stop. “Digger, knock it off. You’re not the savior of the universe. Rebecca did a good job of saving herself.” Then she smiled at me, and I swallowed hard, and smiled back.
Everyone was at our house. Besides Digger’s mom and Ian, there were his sister, Lorelei and Joaquim, Maryam, Digger’s police friend Ash, guys from the garage, guys from the work crew for the house, people in uniforms and agents with badges, everyone. Oddly enough, it was Tracey who took charge, setting up a coffee station in the dining room, making everyone wipe the mud off their shoes from the dirt path leading to our door, later ordering multiple pizzas for dinner, designating some officers to go back to our old house with Ian to pack up his stuff and then going with him so she could help. Somehow she was in her element, for the first time in her life. She and Ian had both kissed me goodbye when they left.
On the other hand, Lorelei had fallen apart, crying in the corner with Ilsa. “I wish you had told me,” she kept saying to me. “I wish you had told me about your family. Other people have been there, you know? I could have helped you more.” I reassured her as much as I could. There was enough guilt going around.
After a while, Digger stood up and took me with him, clinging to his neck. “We’re going upstairs. Any more questions for Rebecca can wait until tomorrow. Lori, take Joaquim home, we’re all fine. Mom, you’re in charge of everyone down here. Clear everyone out and come let us know when Tracey and Ian get back here and we’ll set him up in his new bedroom.” We had been working on Ian’s room. Not only did it have a secure ceiling and electricity, but it also had heat and furniture. Windows, not so much, but there was definitely forward progress.
As we always did, Digger and I lay on the bed together, intertwined. “Baby girl, I can’t tell you enough—”
I put my hand over his mouth. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it! Digger, you got me out of that house. You’re giving me and my brother a place to live. You stopped everything in your life to help us. Don’t you dare apologize to me again.” I removed my hand and he opened his mouth, so I held up my finger. “Don’t!”
“I was going to tell you something else. I was going to tell you how proud I am of you. You kicked the shit out of your dad.”
“He had it coming.”
“That, and more.”
“He’ll get his. When Ian and I and even my mom are living how we want to live, doing what we want to do, and he can’t touch us or control us. It will be worse than any physical injury anyone could give him.”
“Sure,” Digger said. “But I would have loved, just once…”
“He’s an old man,” I said. “A worthless, stupid old man. And I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“I have to tell you, Cinderella, you shook me up.”
I could see that. I kissed his cheek. “I’m fine now. I swear it. I’m here with you, and I love you.”
He cleared his throat. “Now that this is all behind us, you know what’s next.”
“Behind us? I think we’re kind of in the middle—”
“You and I, we’re getting hitched,” he continued. “We’re getting married. We’ll finish fixing up the house, and you and I will live here, happily ever after. With all our babies.”
I started crying. “I think you better ask me,” I told him. “Go ahead.”
“Cinderella, will you marry me?” But he kissed me before I could even say yes, a million, billion times, yes. Yes!