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“Like I care what you cut off.I have money on me now that I could survive whatever.Since I know I didn’t do a thing wrong.”He thought about what had been said to him.“You know, I only came in here to cash in my insurance policy.It’s you all that have been treating me like I’ve done something wrong.What is wrong with you guys?Can’t a man get his money coming to him to provide for his children?”
Mick particularly liked that part of his speech.Providing for his children.When he knew that it was his children that were going to be providing for him.Not that he was keen on them being sold off the way his father had imagined.
His mother had been sitting for the girls when they’d been about six weeks old.Going to pick them up when Mattie was in a particularly bad way after he’d had a bit of fun with her, he saw that they were bleeding when he went to change their diapers before leaving.Screaming at his mom, trying to find out what she’d done to them, he finally got an answer that, to this day, sent chills down his spine when he thought about it.
“Oh, your father did that.It’s no big deal, Micky.He was only having a bit of fun with them.Just like he did with you when you were that age.It’s all right.”But it wasn’t all right.Not even now did he think it was completely all right with him.But his father had told him he was going to do it, and he’d had no choice.Mick was terrified of his dad.Had always been.“You won’t be repeating this to anyone, Micky dear.If you do, you know your dad will bring a hell down on your head that you’ll never live with.He’ll kill you.”
“They’re babies,” Mick had told her.“Mom, they’re only babies.Why would he do something like that to his own granddaughters?”
She shrugged before answering him.“I don’t know why he does a lot of things he does, Micky.Just shut your mouth and take them home.Or not.If you leave them here for a bit, perhaps you can get on your father’s good side again.”
Mick didn’t take the girls over there for two months after that.He figured that, sadly, if they were older, then he’d be not interested in them anymore.But as it turned out, his father was happy with them no matter their age.Mick went home that night after dropping the girls off at his moms, sick to his stomach.Not only that, but he was tempted to go to the police, but what his father said to him as he was leaving was still ringing in his ears.
“You do anything stupider, Micky and I’ll make you pay for it.I’m not above killing you and that wife of yours for what I want.You understand that, don’t you?”He nodded and started to tell his dad that they were just babies.“You go on home now and keep that trap of yours shut.Otherwise, they’ll be finding you and Mattie dead in your beds, then who do you think will have them babies?All the time too.Go on home.”
He had.And since then, he’d not turned his father down once when he called for his granddaughters.Being afraid of his father was something he thought most people would be if they had to spend any time with him.Or, for that matter, talked to anyone that had had to deal with him on a one on one basis.Michael Cartwright was a man that all should be afraid of if they had half a brain.
Leaving the attorney’s office, not accomplishing a thing, he headed to his car.When he was seated inside of it, he watched as his father’s entourage pulled up in front of the bank across the street from him.Mick nearly got out of his car and waved at his father, but something held him back.When he looked in his direction, Mick even ducked down behind the dashboard to hide.Something that he’d never done in his life concerning his father.
Sitting there, without much in the way of thought as to what he was doing, Mick pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the pictures he had of Bethany and Sunny.Christ, they were beautiful little girls.Sliding through them one after another, he got to one of his mom holding them.Then the next one was of his father.Mick, sick to his stomach again, opened his car door and threw up the breakfast he’d had this morning.
Getting seated again, Mick made his way out of town.He had a second place that he could call home for a while, but he bypassed that place as well.Nearly to Columbus, about twenty minutes away, he pulled over to the side of the road and sat there.Reaching into the glove box, knowing he had no other choice than what was before him, Mick pulled out the revolver that he’d had for the last few months and held it in his hand as he sat there sobbing about how shitty his life had become.
~*~
Carrie got off the plane and stomped all the way to the luggage area.She was going to kill each of her brothers before they ever got to see Mr.Strong.Why they had insisted on coming here with her, she had no idea.And had told them that several times on the way here.When she saw the sign with her last name on it, the man holding it up was laughing.She didn’t care for that either.
“What the hell do you find so funny?Or are you addled?You’d have to be if you think that this is going to end in any way other than the one I told you it would.”He said he was laughing at her, who he assumed were her brothers trying to catch up with her.“Yeah.They’re idiots.I’ve been on my own for a long time, and they think that I need them to come here with me to protect me.”They’d caught up with her by then.
“Protect you?I would imagine you have absolutely no trouble protecting yourself.Them too if it came down to it.”Robert laughed as he agreed with him.“I’m Barkley Strong.My father is the attorney who is going to be helping the five of you.My parents and family are at their home working on the information that they’ve found so far.Also, my brother Jenson.He’s running for Congress right now, so he doesn’t have a great deal of time, but he is willing to help all of you.”
“Thank you all for that.We really did come to protect Carrie but not in the way you might think.We’ll be there to keep her out of trouble.”She told her older brother to fuck off.“Thank you, sweetheart.I love you too.This is all the luggage we brought with us.While we didn’t know how long this was going to take, we did bring things to go to court.”Robert smiled at Barkley and introduced the others to him.“We thought it would be a good show of force to come here and be there for the girls.While, as you’ve been told, we didn’t know our sister all that well, we will fight for her daughters.Have you heard any more from their father?”
“He is trying to cash in the policies he had on his wife and mother.”Carrie asked how many he had as they were loading into the stretch limo that seemed to perfectly time pulling up in front of the airport for them.Barkley told her they’d found seven so far.“Christ, what an idiot.You know that’s a red flag in my line of work.I’m assuming, too, that his father has done the same thing?”
“You’d be correct.”Barkley, a large man, sat across from her.“Michael, the older Cartwright, is a big name around town.Not in a particularly good way, either.He’s a bully, and from what we’ve been able to unearth about him, he gets what he wants no matter if he has to take out a couple of people to get it.Not that we have proof of him murdering anyone.But there have been a few missing people he’s had trouble with.”
“Where are the girls?”Barkley told her that they were at his brother’s home with twenty-four/seven care.“I’m assuming that that’s for a good reason too.”
“Yes.So nothing comes back on us about their condition when they were placed in his home.Bethany is having the hardest time adjusting to her new home.Not that she’s being bad or anything like that.But I believe that she’s still in a great deal of pain from the cuts and bruises on her little body.Sunny?Well, she’s just as her name implies she is.Happy.Smiling and cooing.My mother said that Bethany acts like she isn’t interested in what’s going on around her, but when she hears her sister laugh, she does look for her.”It was Andrew that asked how badly the girls had suffered.He was handed a thick file.“Both of them have been sexually abused, as we told you before you came out.Between them, they’ve had seven broken ribs and three broken arms as well as Bethany has had some stitches in her backside from being whipped with something.Jade, my sister-in-law, is a doctor, and she said it looked as if she’d been whipped with a leather strap.Those are healing well now that she has good care.”
Carrie shivered.To think that they’d gone through all that and still came out on top.Because she was going to make sure that her brother-in-law and his dad paid for what they’d done to them.She’d been telling her brothers that she hoped that Mattie is rotting in her grave if she was aware of what was going on with them.She said that to Barkley.
“There isn’t any way that she didn’t know.Or wasn’t aware of it.Twice she brought the girls to the emergency department for bleeding.We’re still looking for the full records for that.There is a video of her bringing them into the hospital, but there is no one noted as treating them.Then four hours later, there is a video of her taking them out of the hospital.Dad thinks that Michael had something, if not all, to do with that.Also, we’ve found out that Mick, he is abused as well, goes to the local vet when he’s been hurt.”
This was far worse than she thought it was going to be.She had two nieces that she’d never met that were hurt in ways that no one, not at any age less than eighteen years old, to be hurt.And by their own blood.It made her blind with rage when she thought of the things that had been done to them in the name of love.
While the others talked, she turned to look out the window.She needed to tune things out for a little bit.Carrie didn’t think she could take much more information today.For the last four days, since the first call about Mattie, it’s all she’d thought about, dreamed about and talked about with her family.She thought about the conversation that she’d had with CarolAnn, Andrew’s wife.
“Don’t hold the babies if you’re not going to be bringing them back with you.That’s all it will take.”Carrie told her that she wasn’t going to, no matter what she did with them.“You’ll need them in your life if you so much as smell them, Nat.I swear.They have some kind of chemical stuff going on when they’re born to make a person stupid when they touch them.I was like that too.”
“Are you telling me not to touch them or not to smell them?Because either one of those I do or not do is going to have them looking at me like a cold and heartless aunt.”CarolAnn just stared at her.“I’m not cold and heartless.”
“No.You’re not.But you remember when Jack was born?How you avoided coming over for months, so you’d not have to be around him?”Carrie said it wasn’t the same.“It most certainly is the same.The moment he reached for you from my arms, no less, you took him into your heart.And you love him as much, if not more, than I do.”
“He’s a special kid.”She told her that they were all special.“Not like Jack is.He’s a great kid and loves me no matter if I bring him gifts or not.”
“You forever bring him gifts.And if you’re not bringing them, you’re having them shipped to him.You’re a good aunt but a sap too.”Carrie told her that she wasn’t being fair.“I’m being realistic.If you get to see them, even from a distance, you’ll be sucked in like the rest of us will be.In fact, that’s the reason that none of the women of this family wanted to go.We’d be packing them off to our homes before the ink was dry on adoption papers.”
