Chapter 3
Demi was having a blast with the kids. They were good boys, never getting out of line as he kept an eye on them. Today, they were working in his yard picking up sticks that had fallen from the trees in the last storm they’d had. The pile was getting pretty large when he decided that he should have a bonfire with it and cook out some hot dogs with the two of them.
“Aunt Mandy said that we can only have hot dogs once a week. She doesn’t like them at all.” Demi asked Martin what was wrong that she didn’t like them. “She said she saw a show where they showed how they were made, or something like that. She won’t eat them, and she doesn’t like to cook them for us. It’s all right, you know, Mr. Demi. We like all kinds of other food she cooks for us.”
“Is she a good cook?” Teddy told him that she was really good when she had a recipe to follow. “I can cook anything with or without a cookbook, but I’ve had practice on cooking. I love it. She’ll get better at it, I’m sure.”
“She made us a roast the other day. Used the crock pot and everything. The house smelled so good. But she had to work late, and we ate at Locke’s house that night. I think she put it in the freezer for another night.” Teddy got closer to him and whispered the last part. “I think we hurt her feelings about it. She’d worked really hard making it, and we had hamburgers instead that night.”
“Yeah, Aunt Mandy cries a lot.” Demi asked Martin why they thought she was crying. “I don’t know, but she tries really hard in not doing it where we can hear her, like in her room and in the bathroom. We can hear her, though, and it hurts my heart to hear her. Somebody on the phone keeps calling, and she sometimes doesn’t answer the phone no more.”
He’d been picking up the boys every night while Mandy worked. They were either at Locke’s home or one of the other married brothers through the week, and he thought that it was working out great for all of them, especially for Mandy. He’d take them back to his house, give them a snack, or they’d go to the Crockery with him and hang out. But he only called her when he had them, telling her where they were. It couldn’t be him making her cry, could it? He needed to look into things for her.
After cleaning up the rest of the yard, the three of them decided that it was nearly time for them to get going. They’d been working in his yard so much that it was beginning to look like someone cared that lived there. Putting the bags of leaves at the end of the road for trash pick-up, he was ready for them to go home. He only had a few days left on his ‘vacation’ from work, and he’d been making every second of it count.
He’d been sleeping better since that first night. And now that he was getting out of the house early enough in the morning to get things done, he felt better about himself and what he was doing. Yesterday, he’d spent the entire day sorting through his clothing to get rid of the things that were worn out, he no longer wore, or simply didn’t like. He had purged two large trash bags full of things that were out at the curb, too. Demi was going to have to pay extra if he kept this up with tossing things out.
Also, he’d been ordering things to fill out his home. There were now bunk beds in one of the extra bedrooms for the boys should they want to spend the night. He had purchased a kitchen table over what he’d had before. It had been a large wire spool that he’d been using, and he was sort of ashamed of himself for thinking that it would be all right to use. Then there were his linens.
The towels that he was currently using had been a housewarming gift from Martha. Ten years ago. They were so worn in places that he could see through them. Some of them were tattered so badly they couldn’t even be used for rags, they were in such horrible shape. While he didn’t know a great deal about towels, he knew that he wanted them large and cotton. Getting someplace to order them had been his next obstacle he had to jump through. Where did you go to find towels that he liked? Not online. He wanted to be able to touch them before buying them.
It was nearly six when he was on his way to taking the boys home. Since they never knocked, it was their home, Demi would walk into the house behind them and then leave soon after. For the most part, he and Mandy rarely spoke. Which he supposed was all right. They weren’t dating or anything, so it was fine by him.
“She’s crying. In the kitchen.” He asked the boys to go to their room and he’d see what the problem was. “Okay, but don’t hurt her, Mr. Demi. She seems like she’s going to break to me.”
Going to the kitchen, she was wiping her face with a paper towel. He could tell she’d been crying as her nose was red and her cheeks were too. When she noticed him, she smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Asking her what was wrong, she acted like there was nothing and told him she’d only just got home from work.
“You’ve been crying. And the boys told me that you cry when you think they can’t hear you.” She told him that she’d talk to them about gossiping. “It’s not gossip when it’s true. What’s going on? Who’s been calling you?”
“I guess it’s right for me to assume that they also told you that I don’t always answer the phone, too.” He nodded. “I’m fine. Really. I’ve just been working some overtime at the office and it’s catching—” her cell phone rang and she nearly jumped. Instead of answering it, she put it on the counter, telling him she’d get it later. Demi picked it up on the third ring and answered without saying anything.
“Bitch. You’ll be turning them kids over to me when I get there. It don’t matter to me if you want to or not. I’m not fucking with you.” He looked at Mandy when she said his name. “I don’t want you to get too comfy with their money either. Don’t think that I don’t know you’re getting a check every month to care for them. I’m going to be taking them home and getting me some of that government money, too.”
“Who is this?” She didn’t answer him. “Why are you calling this woman who has devoted her love and time to those little boys?”
“She ain’t got nothing on me. I should have had them. It’s my brother that sired them.” Demi told her that Mandy’s sister carried them and gave birth to them. “This ain’t no contest, dumbass. I should have had them when I was told about their mother being dead. Sammy wants me to have them.”
“I remember now why you didn’t get them. You couldn’t pass the background test. Something about you having a long record of arrests. Yes, I remember that now. You have committed fraud, breaking and entering…to many things for me to—”
“That’s got nothing to do with me raising them boys. And the fact that they get a check every month goes a long way for me to want them. How much does she get?” He told her that it wasn’t any of her business. “We’ll just see about that, won’t we? I’m almost there, and when I get there, I expect them to be ready to go back home with me.” Then she hung up.
Demi had already broken one phone, so he gently put hers back on the counter. Having her sit down, he got her a glass of water and set it in front of her. Sitting in the other chair, he waited for her to explain, but all she did was stare off into the room.
“How long has she been calling here?” She told him since they’d moved in. “We’ll get your phone number changed in the morning. Do you know how she got your number? I’m assuming that Samuel gave it to her when she called him. Isn’t she his sister or something?”
“Yes, sister. And I never thought of Samuel giving it to her. She never said, and since he’s in jail, it just never occurred to me that he’d ever had it.” She looked at him now. “Why are you here?”
“I was dropping off the boys when they told me that you were crying. I came to see what was going on.” She nodded and got up to go to the sink. Dumping out the water he’d given her, she poured them both a glass of tea, then put some ice in the glass. “Why didn’t you tell one of us you were being threatened?” She put the tea away and handed him one of the glasses before sitting down again.
“Why would I think that you’d care about me and Georgie? She’s not related to you. I’m not either. You care for the boys, however, but I want you to know that I’m going to make sure that she can’t get them. I’ve been reading how to go about that on the internet.” He snorted at her and he could see that pissed her off. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know that I have to put out a restraining order against her. I’m not sure how to go about it, but I’m learning.”
“In the meantime, what will you do if she comes here with a gun? Then demands you hand them over?” Mandy told him she didn’t know yet but was working on it. “I’m going to help you. I don’t want anything to happen to you or those boys. You’ve done a good job of keeping them safe, but this might well be over my head as well.”
“She said that if she has to, she’s going to kill me to get them. For the money, Demi. Not because she wants them around. Why would someone take children out of a good environment and put them into a dangerous situation? Because we both know that’s what it’s going to be.” Demi pulled her into his arms and held her while she cried. It tore at him in ways that it never had before, to have a woman crying about something. “I’ll be just fine. You and your family have done enough for me and the boys. I’ll take care of it.”
“Bull shit.” He heard a sharp intake of breath and turned to find the boys in the room with them. “How about you guys get cleaned up, and we’ll head to my brother’s house. We need to figure out what’s going on here.”
“Is Aunt Mandy going to be all right? She looks all pinched up again.” Demi looked down at the beautiful woman in his arms. “You didn’t make her pinched, did you, Mr. Demi?”
“Not this time. Come on. We’ll head to my brother’s house when you’re finished getting cleaned up, and I’ll order us some pizza or something.” The kids sounded like that was a good idea. He didn’t know if it was the drive to his brothers or pizza yet, but he was willing to bet it was the food. What kid didn’t like pizza? He turned to Mandy again. “Come on. We’ll put our heads together and figure this out. There is no point in you taking this on without help. Between the dozen or so of us, we should be able to figure out a way to keep you guys safe. Because I don’t trust her any more than I do her brother.”
After calling his brothers and telling them what was going on, they decided that meeting at a pizza place would be faster. Taking the kids to Adornetto’s was going to be fun, but the conversation was going to be hard. But he felt like they should know, too, as they had to keep an eye on for themselves. This Georgie person barked up the wrong tree when she messed with his family.
They were the first to arrive and asked to be seated in the middle of the place. It was the biggest table they had, and it just so happened to be close to the kitchens. He ordered ten pizzas, hoping that would be enough to start with, and he also ordered enough salads for the table. He’d take home what they didn’t eat tonight.
Bringing out large pitchers of soda and teas when everyone arrived in groups made it so that they could get their drinks poured without having to wait. He was glad when the boys asked for milk with their pizza, and the two of them shared a salad again. He loved these kids.
After Mandy told them everything that had been going on, he put in his two cents about how she had threatened Mandy too. His brothers looked angry, but it was the women that he was the most afraid of. They looked like they could have called on the U.S. Army to get this woman taken care of, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure that they might not try that. Especially Shipley.
“Do you know where she lives? Or if she really is coming here?” She said that she thought that she lived in Kentucky, but she didn’t know if she was really coming or not. But she couldn’t discount the fact that she knew just where she lived. “Did she say she did? Or maybe suggested that she knew where you lived?”
“She gave me my address and how long I’ve been living there. I’m fearful that somehow Samuel is telling her things that will cause me more trouble. I just don’t know what to do. I know that I can’t do this on my own, whatever she has planned, but I also know that you guys have no reason whatsoever to keep me safe.”
“You’re our friend. And you work for us. Of course, we’re going to help you.” Demi thought that sounded lame, but he didn’t tell Shipley that. “Besides, it’s been a good long time since we’ve had to kick some ass.”
It was suggested by Locke that she stay with him for the next few days. But he said that he had more room and said that he’d be able to keep an eye on them at his house. Besides, he told them that he had a gated driveway as well as a fenced-in yard. It would be more difficult for anyone to get past those barriers since they were already in place.
“I do have a place to stay, you know. And a back yard.” Demi didn’t want to piss her off so he asked her if she’d seen his home. “No. Why would I have? No, we’ll stay at home and keep a better eye out for her.”
“I would rather you didn’t, Mandy.” Shipley laid her gun on the table after looking around. “I’m armed all the time, as is Locke and Jack. Even being in this small town can be dangerous. What would you do if she were to come into your home with her own weapon? I’m sorry to say that it would be over before it started. She’s already said that she’s not above killing you for them. Yes, I know you don’t know if that’s true or not, but think of how Samuel killed his wife. She’d been used to his beatings, and it got her killed. Please stay with Demi. We’ll all feel better about you being safe.”
She looked pinched again. Demi thought that was a good word for someone who looked not quite angry but upset all the same. When she asked the boys what they wanted to do, he was both surprised and impressed. They put their heads together and spoke to each other. When they turned to him after a few minutes, Demi felt proud of them.
“You won’t hurt her. You’ve never hurt us, but we don’t know about our aunt.” He told them that he’d rather die than to hurt any of them. “All right, then we’ll stay, but we want you to make sure that Aunt Mandy gets to work and stuff with you. We don’t want her hurt either.”
“Deal.” They shook on it, and he was glad to see the gun was no longer on the table. Ordering another round of pizzas, he was happy to see that everyone was enjoying themselves, including Mandy.
~*~
Mandy didn’t want to stay at Demi’s house. She knew that it was the best possible place for her to stay without living with one of the others. Besides, the boys loved the man, and she thought that he was all right. Taking in a deep breath, she let it out slowly before correcting herself. She was in love with Demi.
It had happened so slowly that she didn’t know really when it had happened. He didn’t really have a great deal to do with her when he came to her house. But he did love the boys. And through them, she’d been able to see a part of him that others hadn’t. Demi was a good man.
He never treated her with anything but respect. When he’d been to the house, he was polite and kind. Staying for dinner when invited and even cleaning up after they were finished. The boys would tell her some of the things that he’d teach them. Like how to be nice to someone when they were mean to you. How to open the door to a place and allow older people and women to go in first. Apparently, this had been a fun lesson for them as they got their cheeks pinched on occasion and told what wonderful little men they were. They were learning lessons that their own father should have been teaching them, but didn’t get, not from Samuel.
The man was a monster. She had night terrors where she would wake up nearly screaming, seeing him beating poor Besty to death. Threatening her and his own children with the next beating. The way he stood over his own wife, her sister, and had beaten her with the ball bat that only that afternoon they’d been playing with in the yard. Who knew that something so innocent, like a child’s toy, could be used for such violence.
Shivering, she put the last of her clothing in the closet before closing the doors. She was putting her things in the dresser when Teddy came to see her. He got up on her bed and watched her for several minutes before speaking.
“Mr. Demi told us to call him just plain Demi. Is that all right?” She said it was all right with her so long as he was fine by it. “Okay. Also, he said not to tell anyone that we’ve moved into his house. He said that he’d make sure that everyone in town knew it too. Do you think that my dad is the one that got that woman to say she was going to kill you? I don’t want you to die, Aunt Mandy. You’re all me and Martin got in the world.”
“I don’t want to die either.” Getting on the bed with him, she wrapped her arms around him and told him everything that they’d been doing to keep them safe. “So you see, we’re taking this very seriously, and you should too. I don’t know Georgie, do you?”
“She came around a few times when momma was alive. She locked us up in the closet and beat on momma, too. Something about welfare money. Momma didn’t have it on account of Dad taking it already. He was forever making it so that we didn’t have any food at the end of the month. She’d have fixings and stuff, she said to us, but nothing like milk and eggs. I tried not to eat so much of them, but momma told me that she’d get us what we needed, some way. I don’t know how she did it, but we’d have milk and eggs then. Do you suppose she was stealing them?”
“She’d call me, and I’d send her some money. She might well have stolen them for you boys had I not been able to send her something.” She thought of how many times she’d had to help her sister get through the month. “Your mom could stretch a dollar out until it screamed is what our daddy said about her. She was a good mom.”
“She was the best.” She held him for a bit longer before Martin came into the room, too. He, too, got up on the bed and snuggled with them. It had become a habit, the three of them snuggling nightly. Mandy thought it was to have a good night’s sleep, but she needed it as much as they did. Oh, how she loved these little boys.
They’d been living with Demi for the past two days now. It was quiet here, and there were no neighboring kids in the yard. Teddy and Martin would play in the back, but she knew they were nervous about it. After having her number changed on her cell phone, she didn’t get any more calls either. The peace and quiet of the phone was the best. After getting the boys up and going, she went to the kitchen to figure out what to have for dinner. She was almost too nervous to cook in Demi’s kitchen as he’d gone back to work today in his own restaurant.
“He’s going to bring stuff home.” She asked Martin how he knew that. “He left you and us a note. Here you go.” The note was crumbled and faded, like it had gotten wet at some point.
“Next time, just leave it on the table for me to read, all right?” The grin they gave her made her heart swell up. “What else do you know about our eating arrangements? Is he going to bring home enough for us all to eat, or just him?”
“All of us. He said he’s going to make it so that our taste buds have a good education. I don’t know about all that. I think my buds are just fine.” Teddy laughed with his brother. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you too that Ms. Jack is going to come by and see you sometime tomorrow. She came to see us when we were in the back yard. We didn’t do anything wrong, she just wants to see you for a little bit. Jack’s not a girl’s name, is it, Aunt Mandy?”
“Her name is Jacklynn. Someone at some point shortened it for her. Shipley, in the event you were going to ask, is Candance. But since she’s been in the service, the army for so long, that’s what she goes by.” She was distracted trying to understand what parts of the note said. Something about wine and nuts, but she didn’t get it. Thinking about calling him to figure it out, she picked up the phone and hoped she wasn’t calling at a terrible time. “You guys play in the living room so that I can call Demi to find out what this says. All right?”
They went into the living room. Really, it wasn’t much more than a room with sleeping bags and a big television. But they knew how to use the remotes and get to whatever they wanted to watch. She could get it to turn on, but nothing more. Whatever was on, that’s what she watched. Someone answered on the first ring.
“May I speak to Mr. Erickson? This is Mandy—” That was as far as she got before she was told to hold on. The next time it was picked up, it was Demi. He wanted to know if she and the boys were all right. “Yes, I just…you left a note, and since it got wet from the boys, I didn’t want to mess up something that you said to me. This isn’t a bad time, is it?”
“Not at all. I wondered if you were allergic to nuts or any kind of wine. I’m bringing dinner home with me, and thought that I’d ask first if there were any allergies that you three had.” She told him none that she was aware of, but she’d ask the kids. After getting an all-clear from them, she told Demi. “All right. I’m training a cook today. I find that after having that week off, I don’t want to be here as much as I used to be. I enjoyed hanging out with the three of you.”
She didn’t know what to think about that, so she didn’t say anything. Mandy knew he could well afford not having to work. However, what would that do for them staying with him? After getting off the phone with him, it rang again. While not sure she should answer it, she left it to go to voicemail. He was the only person she knew who had a landline that wasn’t business-related. She was surprised to hear Locke’s voice telling her to pick up.
“I’m glad that I caught you. Samuel wants to see you. I have a feeling that they’ve figured out that the phone number you have is no longer working. Also, no one in town or at the jail is going to be giving him any more information. That’s how he got your phone number, by the way, not to mention your home address.” She asked if she could count on that happening again. “No. The officers have all been told that if they tell him anything at all, they’ll be fired. And put in jail. I guess this man who had leaked the information was a friend of Samuels and didn’t think it was doing any harm in him telling him tidbits while he was giving him his meals.”
“That’s good to know, I guess. I’d rather they not have anything to do with him at all, but I don’t know what will happen with him.” She sat down at the table. “You said Samuel wants to see me. Should I go? I mean, do I trust him enough to go there and be in the same place with him? I’m terrified of him if you want the truth.”
“Shipley is going with you, if you don’t mind. She’s going to keep an eye on you and help you with questions he might have. Sometimes it’s better to have a second person there when you get overwhelmed. I know that I’ve been taking my wife places with me so that I can ask her questions about what was said. She’ll be there as your support.” Mandy asked when Shipley was ready to go. “I believe she’s on her way to see you now. Just get it over with is my motto. That way, you’re not worrying needlessly about what’s going to happen once you get there.”
“You’re right, I would worry.” She wanted to ask if Demi could take her, but arrangements had been made, and she’d go with the flow. Besides, he might not want to go with her, so it would be embarrassing for her to ask him. “The doorbell is going off now, so that’s more than likely her. One of us will get back to you once I leave. I’m nervous, but I think this is a good thing.”
Shipley and Dusty were at the front door, and she was dressed in much the same manner as she was. Jeans and a T-shirt. Pulling on her shoes, some old boots that she’d forgotten about, Dusty was going to stay with the boys. These people were making sure that she was well taken care of, even when she didn’t understand that she needed it. Going out of the front of the house, she slipped into her car just as the boys waved at her from the front porch. A good omen, she thought in ways of sending her off to see their father. Christ, she must be insane to do this, but with Shipley around, she did feel marginally better.