Chapter 20
Two weeks later, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, Cole slowed down to pull into the driveway where he shared a house with Lois, and slammed on his brakes.
“What in the world?” Lois asked in shock as she reached out and put her hand on the front dash when Cole slammed on the brakes. She looked up and sat back in shock.
“I wonder what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Cole said as he parked beside Lorissa’s truck, since he couldn’t get past the police cars parked in the rest of the driveway. He exited, went around and helped Lois out, and decided to get the bags later, once they were parked by their house.
They walked up and saw Duane come toward them.
“What’s going on?” Cole asked the other man.
“No clue, they’ve only been here for about two minutes. I do know they are asking for the two of you.” He leaned in with a grin. “What did the two of you do?”
“Nothing,” Lois said in shock, then laughed at his expression. She held up her hand. “I swear, we didn’t do anything illegal.”
“It’s Officer Gerard,” Cole said as he took her hand in his. Tim took that minute to start squirming, and Lois automatically strapped on his leash and let him down. She looked at Duane with a smile when he took the leash from her and walked a few feet away, still well within hearing distance.
“Officer Gerard,” Cole said as he saw the other man and waited for the police officer to approach. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, at least I think it is. I wanted to give you an update, and there’s someone here that wants to talk to you.”
“It’s not Miss Mallory is it?”
“No.” He reassured him and looked over and nodded to the other officer. He opened the door to his squad car and helped a woman out. They slowly approached and Cole could tell she was nervous.
“Are you Cole Mercury?”
“I am. May I ask who you are?”
“Ellie Mallory. I’m Susan’s mother. First, I want to apologize for what my daughter did to you, along with everyone else.
” She sighed heavily, and Cole could tell the toll everything was having on her.
“I’m here to take my daughter home, and to get her admitted to a mental facility.
I know it’s not an excuse, but after she went off her medication, she assaulted that other man with a knife, thankfully she didn’t do too much damage, and though he’s still pressing charges, I’m glad because maybe this will give her the wake-up call she needs. ”
She rubbed her forehead and opened the bottle of water she carried. “I don’t know if you want to hear this, but Susan was diagnosed with bi-polar about a decade ago. We didn’t realize until about two years ago that it was wrong.”
“What is the correct diagnosis?”
“Schizophrenia.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, you can bet my lawyer will be hearing about this. Anyway, if you don’t mind my asking, could you please tell me what Susan said to you?”
“She accused me of getting her mother pregnant and leaving her at the altar when I found out her mother was pregnant. That he, me, didn’t want to be baby trapped. She said I owed her, and I guess you, since you’re her mother, child support.”
“I asked questions and her claims didn’t add up,” Lois spoke for the first time.
“Yeah, they wouldn’t.” Ellie shook her head.
“When I leave here, the police are taking me to the airport and I am taking Susan back home. Her regular psychiatrist is with her now, and she’ll fly back with us.
” She shook her head and gave them a small smile.
“Not the one that got it all wrong. This is the new one. Susan will be heavily medicated on the flight home.”
“Got it,” Lois answered. “May I ask a question?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Is there really a Murray Coleman?”
“There was.” Ellie shook her head again, drained the bottle of water, and paced in a circle.
She looked at them with anguish in her eyes.
“I call Susan my daughter, but in reality, she’s my niece.
She’s my sister’s daughter. My sister experienced SA when she was young.
Like twelve, our parents didn’t believe in abortion, so they forced her to carry the baby to term, and they refused to allow her to put the baby up for adoption. ”
“Wait, what’s SA?” Cole asked in confusion.
“Sexual assault.” Officer Gerard answered.
“She was raped, forced to carry the baby, then keep it?”
“Yes. The person that assaulted her was named Murray Coleman. When Susan was about nine months old, my sister woke up one morning, dressed, walked out the front door, and no one has ever seen her since. We’ve looked, but it’s been almost thirty years.
The idea of her walking in the back door again are nil.
My parents forced me to raise Susan as my own.
I was only sixteen at the time of her birth.
” She shook her head sadly. “I’m not making excuses, but my father ruled his home with a heavy hand, and a belt.
If you defied him, you literally wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month.
I remember how he beat Sara, my sister, when they found out she was pregnant.
They didn’t believe she had been assaulted.
It wasn’t until Dad was in the bar one night that he overheard Coleman bragging about it. ”
“What happened?” Cole asked when she remained silent for several minutes.
“Let’s just say that Coleman will never hurt anyone else, and my father’s doing life in a Virginia State Penitentiary for murder.
My mother shut down after that, and with Sara gone someplace, my father locked up, it was just the three of us.
Mom would babysit while I was at school or work.
However, as Susan grew, she filled Susan’s head with lies. ”
“What type of lies?”
“Lies that my mother told in order to get on with her life. Lies that made it seem like the man that raped my sister wasn’t as bad as he actually was.
Lies that tried to paint her husband in the role of the avenging angel.
By the time I realized what she was doing, Susan was so entrenched in the lies, there was no talking to her. ”
“I don’t understand,” Duane said. “Why type of lies?”
“She told Susan that her mother and father were in love, and that they were at the church about to get married when he found out she was pregnant and left her. I’m referring to Coleman.
Mom then told Susan that I, she never said that I was her aunt, and not her mother, but Mom told Susan that I was devastated that I cried myself to sleep my entire pregnancy that her grandpa couldn’t handle my sadness and he went looking for her father.
She said that grandpa, my father, died in an accident while he was looking for her father.
The way she told the entire story was like a fairytale come to life. ”
“Making your abusive father and your sister’s rapist out to be the good guys? The prince of the tale?”
“Yes, I know this isn’t nice of me, and I’ll probably go to hell for even thinking this, let alone saying it out loud, but when my mother passed away silently in her sleep when Susan was just fifteen.
I felt like it was the best thing that happened to us.
Or I thought so at the time. No more lies, no more half-truths, no more fairy tales.
I started to slowly introduce the truth to the situation. ”
“How?” Officer Gerard asked.
“I’d had copies of Dad’s trial, the rape, the police reports, all the sordid details, and I’d leave them lying out on the table for her to see.
It took a couple of years, but she came to me once, just before she turned eighteen, and asked me if the stories Mom told her were true.
I told her no, and with those papers I had, I laid it all out, the entire timeline and the story.
For a couple of years, she was angry at Mom, she believed me, but then it all went to hell. ”
“What happened?” Lois asked quietly.
“I was at work, and we still had a landline with an answering machine. This was roughly seven years ago.”
“So, recently.”
“Yes, the prison called and left a message. Dad was sick, and he was requesting to see his family. He refused to allow us to come and see him before then. Susan heard the message, picked up the phone to talk, and after she hung up, she erased the message and went to the prison to talk to Dad.”
“He lied, didn’t he?” Cole asked.
“Yes, the first thing is that the prison failed to notify us that he had dementia. When Susan arrived, in his diminished state, he thought it was Sara. She is the spitting image of her. If you look at the baby pictures, the only thing that sets them apart is that Sara’s photos are all in black and white, while Susan’s are in color.
That’s another thing my mother always did.
She’s pose Susan in photos the exact same way Sara had been. ”
“No offense,” Lorissa said after she’d joined them a few minutes ago. “But that’s messed up.”
“It was, and that meeting was the beginning of the end, or the beginning of the nightmare, depending on how you looked at things.”
“How so?” Cole asked.
“Because Dad was literally at death’s door, the priest was there issuing last rites, they allowed Susan to stay until the end. It was six hours of him talking about Sara’s life, thinking it was her. He kept saying ‘you’ instead of ‘your mother’.”
“Shit, and in her precarious mental state, she sucked it all up.”
“Correct. Susan stayed until Dad passed, and I never found out about it until two days later when they called and told me I could pick up his ashes. Susan didn’t live with me then, she was out on her own, living her life, working a job, and she had her own apartment.
She was a functioning normal person. She was only over at my place when the message came in to do her laundry.
Within a month after Dad’s death, she went downhill.
Mentally. It took another two years for the first diagnosis.
The meds helped, but not all the way. She went off them, and disappeared.
I’d get calls from local police, but by the time I arrived, she’d been released and in the wind again.
The gentleman that she assaulted with a knife was the lead I needed.
I talked with the arresting officer, and he was able to put a flag on her file that she was to be kept in custody until I could arrive.
From his assault to you, Mr. Mercury, it was eight months. ”
“Damn, but everything’s okay now?”
“It will be. We’ll take her home, she’ll be admitted to the mental ward at the local hospital. Her doctor will work with her, and out of all the attacks she did, only one person is pressing charges. I might be going to hell for this too, but I told him to not back off.”
“Why?” Lorissa asked again.
“Because,” Duane answered. “If she’s found guilty, then she can be sentenced to the mental institute and can’t leave after seventy-two hours.
She’ll have to stay, and hopefully get the help she needs.
Don’t quote me on this, but after a certain amount of time, depending on how much time she’s sentenced to, she might be able to be transferred to a regular prison, and not a mental one.
It would all depend on the severity of her mental capabilities, and the charges. ”
“Correct, and as much as that guy wanted to drop the charges, we, the arresting officer, the department shrink, her lawyer, and myself were able to convince him that his charges were the best thing that could happen for Susan.”
“Well, damn,” Lorissa said with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry you had to go through this, but I’m glad that Papa won’t have to keep looking over his shoulder.”
Her statement finished the meeting and the police left with Ellie, and Cole, with a smirk on his lips turned to Lorissa. “Papa?”
“Yeah, I figured you were with Nana, and I called my other grandpa, Gramps, so I figured I’d call you Papa. Unless you want me to call you Cole?”
“You can call me anything but late for supper.” His statement caused everyone to burst out laughing, and they quickly went their own way, and while Cole drove the truck to their house, Laurie walked her mother there.
“You okay?” Laurie asked.
“Yes.” Lois answered and paused as she looked at her daughter. “Are you okay with me and Cole?”
“Absolutely, it’s nice to see you happy again. Just make sure you use protection. I don’t want you coming to me and telling me you’re pregnant.” Laurie’s voice was serious as she repeated to her mother, what she had told her decades ago when she’d first met her ex-husband.
Lois looked at her in shock, then threw her head back and laughed.
That was how Cole found them. He reached up and rubbed the center of his chest at the sudden pain, but knew it was from being in love, and not anything else.
He waited until Laurie gave him a wink, and turned to walk away.
He noted she still wore the brace, but didn’t use the cane.
He stepped up behind Lois, wrapped his arms around her, and bent down to put his mouth next to her ear. “Have I ever told you that I love you?”
“Nope,” Lois said as she turned in his arms. “Not until now, and the feeling is mutual. I love you too.”
“Let’s go inside and celebrate our love.”
“It’s about damn time!” Lois gave a whoop, as they went into the house and after taking the leash off Tim, they went directly down the hall to their bedroom to commence the love celebration.