Chapter 9 #2
“She’s not right now. My understanding is that she’s on leave while this is being investigated.” And he added, “To a certain extent it’s in your hands.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, if you decide to press charges, I assume she would stay on administrative leave until everything is cleared one way or another. But the attack isn’t in question, as I reviewed the footage myself.”
“At least you did that much of your job.”
“She can’t argue and win once that video is shared,” he admitted. He shifted a bit in his car seat.
Chelsea pointed out, “So this is an informal meeting, since you didn’t ask me to come to the station, right?
So this isn’t part of the official record, is it?
Well, I’ll make sure that it is. You thought you could just do this off the books, right?
How we could talk about this, like friends, but we are far from friends.
Now I have no respect for you whatsoever as a police officer either. ”
“Detective,” he corrected, then winced.
“You shouldn’t be a detective or a cop, not with your flagrant favoritism and nepotism.
Plus, you are seated, and I’m the one standing here on concrete, with both knees bandaged from your aunt’s attack.
You couldn’t care less.” She looked down at her legs and saw her knees were bleeding through the bandages and onto her pants again.
She pointed that out to Richard as well.
“The least you could have done was ask me to sit in my car, while you stood outside, sharing this pathetic story about your aunt. If you expected me to suffer all this verbal abuse at Gladys’s hand for months and then to feel a morsel of mercy for her, you are barking up the wrong tree.
Her latest attack, the physical one, was just yesterday, in case you forgot.
” Richard finally showed shame in his expression. Still, it wasn’t enough for Chelsea.
He bowed his head, then faced her. “Yes, I should have been more thoughtful here where you are concerned. I’ll say this and let you get off your feet.
I’ve already put myself out quite a bit, between Gladys and a couple other family members.
I never thought that coming home would cause me this much trouble, but it certainly has. ”
“Of course it has,” Chelsea snapped, “because you let your family interfere with your oath of office. In my opinion, you’re not qualified to do this job. You and Gladys should both resign.”
He winced. “Yeah. I understand. I do. Yet I want to regain that trust from the townsfolk—”
“And your bosses,” she interjected.
“My bosses too and it won’t be easy. But it will happen because I didn’t do anything out of malice—only out of care.”
“Misplaced care,” she pointed out. “When it’s care that singles out some choice few but negatively impacts other people—not related to you—then it’s not something anybody else will be willing to go along with. Good luck with that.”
Richard sighed. “As far as Gladys is concerned,” he muttered, “she’s caused me enough trouble.
I’ve told her that the old days are gone.
” He added, “You do whatever you feel you need to do. But I am sorry for all the injustices my family has put you through, and I promise to do better.” And, with that, he drove away.
Normally Chelsea would just let things go.
Minor things, even if they kept happening all day long.
The trouble was, this was major, was not to be swept under the rug.
Not by her. Surely not by Joel or Timber.
Not by the hospital admin. That attack had to be criminal, whether Chelsea pressed charges or the hospital did it or not, right?
Regardless, she would figure it out by asking someone she trusted to give her the legally correct and unbiased answer.
Groaning, she got into her vehicle and just sat here for a long moment, letting the throbbing in her knees subside. When her phone rang, she answered it, not recognizing the number.
And damn if it wasn’t Gladys.
With tears in her voice, Gladys apologized and shared that she didn’t know what came over her. She had reacted in anger, such a sharp agonizing anger that had gotten the best of her, and she was really sorry.
“Wow. You can only apologize now because having Richard do your dirty work didn’t succeed with me?
Between my complaints and Joel’s and Timber’s, you and Richard will both pay a price for what you did and didn’t do.
So, while you might be somewhat sorry for getting caught in the act of knocking me down from behind—a real cowardly move, by the way,” she noted, “you not only hurt me physically but you have also been bullying and verbally threatening me since I started this rotation with you. That’s an abuse of power that I refuse to sweep under the rug, especially after you attacked me from behind.
I no longer feel safe at a damn hospital.
I have already reported your myriad abuses to the administrator.
By now I’m sure the security guards have shared your attack video with Scott as well.
Rest assured that I have a copy in case you try to destroy the original, which I’ve shared with Joel and Timber, just to cover all my bases. ”
Silence came for a few moments on the other end. Then sounding genuinely scared, Gladys whispered, “I understand.” Pausing, she took a deep breath, then continued. “Once I realized who you were, it was really hard to not hold everything against you.”
“And I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Chelsea snapped, “but your nephew Richard, who has been covering your sorry ass, mentioned it was something about your husband.”
“Your mother and my husband had a fling,” she whispered, tears choking her words.
“She led him on, and Grant believed her. He left me to move in with her, at least thought he was moving in with her on the farm, but she laughed instead, called him an old fool. However, he’d already walked out on me and had no place to go. ”
Chelsea listened in silence, not doubting for a moment that it was all true.
“And then he, … he ended up driving his vehicle off the road,” she shared. “I don’t know whether I would have calmed down enough to let him come back home again or not, but I still loved him, and it was brutal having to go through that.”
Chelsea swore. “Just so you know, I remember Grant. I told her to leave him alone and that she had no business destroying people’s lives with her alcohol-induced dalliances with married men.”
“Well, your mother didn’t listen, did she?” Gladys snapped.
“She didn’t listen to anybody,” Chelsea snapped right back, her tone bitter. “She sure as hell didn’t listen to me.”
“So, you can understand why I did what I did.”
“Hell no. I don’t understand it at all,” she declared. “I can understand why you might hate my mother, but the way you treated me is what I’m struggling with. I’m not my mother, and yet you’re blaming me for something that I had nothing to do with.”
“I know,” Gladys muttered, “and I get that. What I did was wrong, no doubt about that. I was just hoping that it might help if you had some understanding as to why.”
“I understand why you may want to attack my mother, hell yes. I have wanted to lash out at her for decades, yet I didn’t.
So no way in hell do my mother’s affairs with married men have anything to do with me.
You need to first look deep within yourself, not at other people—especially innocent other people. ”
Gladys added, “I’ve been put on leave from my job.”