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“I don’t know. She said that he wants to talk to me about some things. Dawn assures me that it’s just that, a meeting to talk, but I don’t trust all the easily either.” Toby told him that she didn’t think that she would either. “But, I did agree to meet him at his next chemo treatment at the hospital. He usually does it at home, but he’s agreed to go to the hospital for more tests, or so he’s told his sons. Dawn is going to be there with him, and so will I, so that we can talk without his sons knowing it. Very clandestine.”
“So will I.” He told her that he’d have it no other way. “Good. Also, you should understand that I’m not going to go in there without backup. I know he only wants to talk, but I don’t trust any more than you do.”
“So you’ve told me, honey.” They were both laughing when the attorney returned. He told them just about everything that he’d told Toby, and he gave him the little information that he had, too, with the exception of the meeting. That, he figured, was best to keep quiet about. “So what will we do now about my family?”
“For now, they’re all in jail. I’m thinking that is the best place for them. Also, the house that your mother was getting from the government is being gone over with a fine tooth comb. They’re finding all kinds of things there that they didn’t know she was doing. They found prescription drug pads, and that is the biggest thing that is going to have her in prison for a long time. She would take them into different pharmacies around the state and pick up about a hundred of them a month to the tune of about fifty dollars because she was using the government insurance to get a deep discount on them. Then, she’d sell them online. There was a chart in one of the other bedrooms as to where and when she was to pick up the next prescription. For being as dumb as she seems, she was organized.”
“I wouldn’t have any idea. I never spent much time with her.” The attorney, he couldn’t remember his name off the top of his head, said that he was sorry. “Don’t be. I had a good life for a while. Grannie loved me, and she made me the man that I am today. While I don’t care what happens to any of them, however, I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”
“I’m working on that for you too. Also, Conner is causing trouble, the younger of the three of them, as I said. He keeps saying that he had nothing to do with the death of his father. However, evidence shows that not only did he have a large part in his death, but his, along with the other two’s fingerprints are all over the weapons used. Roger, he’s an ass of the highest order if you ask me. He’s claiming that he has money, so he should be able to buy himself out of what is going on. Bribery is what that’s called. Anyway, he’s set to have his attorney come and talk to me in the next couple of days to make out a deal. I have an idea what is going to happen, but for now, I’m going to just pretend that I don’t have all this other information. Your mother, she’s going to prison. Even if there wasn’t a trial being set up, she’d go. What she was doing to the government was way beyond any kind of way for her to make restitution. She’s made her bed and—money. I nearly forgot. There is money that she had, too. All of it filled up a queen-sized mattress that was in one of the rooms at the house. She just split the sucker open and stacked money in it. As far as I know, it’s not been counted as yet. But it’s going to be an ungodly sum of money.”
“I don’t want it.” The attorney, his name was Bill Fredick, he only just remembered, said he had also figured that too. “When we have an amount, we’ll, I don’t know, set it up for some kind of scholarship program or something. Not in her name. Just…we’ll talk about it.”
After finishing up with the other tasks they’d had going on, the two of them went home to get her grandda and son. It wasn’t really a cause for celebration, but that was fine too. Anything they could do as a family was great to him. He’d been without very many people in his life for a very long time.
Sebastian thought that things, for now, were going in the right direction, and he was ready to be finished up with both the issues. He was also helping out with the issue that was going on with Raven’s client, Mrs. Pastor, who had been killed along with the limo driver when the three of them decided to—well, he supposed it was just the older of the three of them decided that his way of getting money was much easier than being nice to his own mother when she was alive. Raven had gotten one of her sons an attorney, and tomorrow morning, they were going to find out what was going to happen to Donald. He had a feeling that the man was going to be all right, but then stranger things had happened of late.
“What do you say to helping me find some of the things in storage, Sebastian?” He asked Tucker what that might be. “Well, to be honest with you, it’s been so long, I’m not entirely sure what might be stored in some of the places that, as a family, we rented out. I believe that we own these places, but I guess I need to check with Toby to see.” He asked her what she knew about them.
“I know that the fees are paid monthly on the ones that we don’t own. It’s been on my list for a while to get into them to see what it is that we’re storing. I do know that one of them is entirely full of Halloween decorations for the yard. Remember that, Grandda? How all out they’d go on that holiday?” He laughed and told her that he did now. “There is one for Christmas as well, I think. Might even be two of those.” Toby had been holding Kelly, and she smiled. “We should make a trip out there before the next holiday. I think that the town would really enjoy seeing all the old decorations—if they still work and are usable—out in the yard again. He might be too young for them this year, but by next, Kelly would be ready to see them.”
“My grannie lived too far out for us to have treaters. But she’d go into town and sit on the porch of a friend of hers to hand out the big candy bars. There weren’t that many younger kids in our town, mostly high schooler and their parents. But the few kids they’d get would be happy with the treats.” He laughed. “Then the next day, Grannie and I would start cutting down the pumpkins that didn’t sell and making pumpkin everything. From cookies to pumpkin logs, my favorite.”
“Did you help her hand out candy, son?” He told Tucker that he’d gone out with the other kids to have fun. Then, the year he’d turned fourteen, he’d been hurt and couldn’t walk for a couple of years. “Your mother did that to you, didn’t she?”
“Yes. I won’t go into detail, but she took me from school on the pretense that her mother had died. Then she drugged me up so that I could live with her so she’d not be in trouble for not having the right amount of children in the house for her government card. Also, that’s when she kidnapped or just after, she took Daisy from the hospital parking lot just after killing her parents. Anyway, when it was obvious that she really didn’t need me, nor was I going to cooperate with her by lying, I was tossed from a moving car—going thirty miles per hour in front of the emergency room. If not for the fast-acting nurses who were out there on a smoke break, I might well have died. It was touch and go there for a while if I would make it.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. I am.” Tucker looked around the little restaurant and then back at him. “You just never know what someone has had done to them until you ask. I mean, look around here. I wonder how many of the people here have gone through, if not worse then about the same as our two families have. And come together stronger. Not many people can—and I would have been one of them that didn’t come back after a tragic event.”
“That’s what my commanding officer used to tell me. Until you walk in someone else’s shoes, you can’t begin to imagine what their life is like on the inside.” The mood was being squashed, and he changed the subject or brought it back to the good things. “I have to go and take care of a few things with Caleb in the morning, so how about in the afternoon, we go to the Halloween storage unit and see what we have for the yard. If that’s all right with you, Toby.”
“Of course. It’ll be a blast. And good memories, too. Even if we have to toss it all out, I’m all for going all out like my parents did for the holidays.” He realized in that second that he had, at some point, fallen in love with Toby. It rendered him speechless for several minutes. “Are you all right, Sebastian?”
“Never better, as a matter of fact.” He kissed her on the cheek and then took Kelly from her so that she could enjoy her meal. “You, little man, are going to be the best kid. And not at all spoiled.”
They were all laughing still when they left the restaurant. Kelly had only been with them for less than forty-eight hours, and he already had more toys than he could ever play with. Yes, he was going to be the best kid, but then, Sebastian thought that he had the best of everything. A wife, son, and a good Grandda to all three of them.
Chapter 4
Donald couldn’t sleep. He knew that in the morning, he was going to go to the courthouse again, but he was terrified. His brother and sisters were shouting threats at him. Mostly about him not being a team player. That he was a traitor to his country and family. While he didn’t understand the country part, he was terrified that they’d catch him unawares. That was how William loved to ambush people—and beat him so that he’d not be able to have his own trial like he wanted. Not even the threat of the other three being put in solitary confinement was keeping them from scaring the daylights out of him.
“Mr. Pastor?” He said that was him. Asking the man standing outside of his cell what time it was, he said it was just a little after six in the morning. “I’ve been asked by Mr. Palmer to come in early to talk to you. I’m going to go over some things with you for your court appearance. You’ll be going in alone, without your family, I mean to this one, as your other family members have their own time to be there.”
He couldn’t help it. He broke down. He had been doing that a great deal lately. His fear of them getting him in the courtroom or on the way there had been fixed so that he’d be safe. The officer that he’d only just noticed asked him to go back to the wall, and they’d go to an office to talk. Donald was never so glad that he’d been able to get away from his family as he was at that moment.
“Come on now, Donald. We have a lot to discuss, and while I feel happy for you to be away from them, we need to get this finished up. All right?” He told the man he was sorry. “No, don’t be sorry. I’ve been reading up on some of the accounts that sent you to the hospital when you were younger up until a week before you were involved in the accident.”
They were taken to a nice room, and he was given his breakfast. It was his next most favorite thing since his momma’s apple pie. Sausage gravy over biscuits with cheese sprinkled all over the top of it. Somebody must have told the man that because he’d never said a word to anyone else about how that was his momma’s breakfast for him on his birthday. He realized then, like he did a lot of things lately, that he never properly thanked her for going out of her way to make it for him. Instead of getting all sloppy again, he ate his breakfast and answered questions that were put to him.
“He thought killing off Raven would be a good thing. That we’d get all the money because she was the one that was keeping momma from us having it. I’ve been thinking on that, and I don’t know how he thought that was going to happen. When Momma had her mind set on something, there was no turning her around to your way of thinking.” The other man told him that he didn’t either. “She never raised her voice when she was making her point either. I think that’s what made her so scary. She’d just talk to you in that momma voice of hers, and you couldn’t help but obey her. I liked obeying her. But the others? Well, they would egg her on until she near slapped them into the following week.”
“Well, we get through this today. Mr. Palmer will be in the courtroom with you. I’m going to be with him to help with the questions that are asked. You just tell the judge like you have me, and you’ll be just fine.” He wasn’t entirely sure how that was to work since he knew he was a big dummy head. But he’d do what he was told.
The trip to the courthouse was nice. He’d not had to ride in the jail bus but in a real car. There were so many buttons on the thing that he had to sit on his hands, so he’d not push some of them. It sure was nice to be able to feel like a real person again. Donald thought that if he only had a little bit of jail time, he was going to use his time there to try and learn a skill. He needed a job, and he needed to know how to do it. His momma had wanted that for him, and he’d been too dumb to figure out a job when she’d wanted him to.
After rising and sitting, something that he thought was kind of funny, he was asked to stand again by the judge. Nervous as all get out, he glanced around the room and saw Raven and all her family. Waving at them, just to say ‘Hey,’ he was asked to pay attention.
“Mr. Pastor, I’ve been given a great deal of information on all the things that your family has been up to under the leadership of your brother and oldest sister. It’s small wonder to me that none of you have been in prison as much as you already have been.” He didn’t understand some of the stuff the judge said, but told him that they’d all been in jail at some point. “Yes, exactly. Now. I’ve talked with the Anderson family as well as Ms. Raven. She is willing to sponsor you after your sentencing so that you won’t have to go to jail. You’ll spend—”
