“She is.Marly and Denise have been beaten up, too.She likes to use a sock full of apples on us.”He wondered if there were more bruises on her body than he’d been allowed to see, but didn’t push it.“I don’t want to go to the police, Doc.If I do, then I’ll go to prison for sure.”
“I can promise you on my mother’s heart that you will not go to prison for telling on her.She’s a mean bully and deserves what she gets.”Shelly told him that was a good promise.“It’s the best one that I know.You don’t deserve to be treated this way, and it’s all on her, not on you.She’ll be the one going to jail.And for a long time, if I have anything to say about it.”
She sat there for several minutes staring at him before she spoke again.“I like your momma.She’s one of the best people around.If I tell her that you lied to me, what will she do to you?”
“It will break her heart, and that would break mine as well.But nothing is going to happen to you.If you can get Marly and the other girl, Denise, to work with the police as well, she’ll be going to jail tonight.”She didn’t ask if he promised this time, but nodded her head slowly.“I will protect you like I would my wife.”
“All right, but I’m going to tell your momma if you have lied to me.She’ll be so upset with…Doc, I hurt all over my body when I go there.I think she enjoys hurting me.And when she tells me I’m going to prison, she laughs like it’s a done deal, and that’s where I’m going to end up.I don’t want to go there.”He said that she wouldn’t, and he had his nurse call the police.But to come in the back door so no one would be the wiser.“Yeah, she might be watching me.It’s about time for me to go back to her house.She usually finds me about Thursday.I can sometimes hide away until Friday, but she’s good at catching me.”
She keeps tabs on the girls that she has in her house, he’d bet anything.As soon as Officer Pauly walked into the little office, he knew things were going to be all right.Pauly had three kids about the same age as Shelly, and he’d bet anything he knew how to talk to little girls to get information from them.As soon as he left them to their business, he had to sit down in his office and breathe.If his mom found out that he’d lied to the young girl, she’d be so disappointed in him that his own heart would break.Then it would break when Debra told him how disappointed in him she was as well.
When Pauly came to find him, he was just finishing up with another patient.As soon as he saw his face, he had a feeling that Shelly had told him everything.Even more than she’d told him.After going to his office with the older man, he was asked to sit down.His heart was in his throat when he found out just how badly the young girls were being beaten.
“She uses a sock with apples and quarter rolls in it to beat them with it.Shelly showed me her back, and I’d kill someone who did that to my kid.And this ain’t no boy that she’s been avoiding either.This is a grown assed woman knocking around a bunch of kids on account of her being their teacher.I’m going to go and arrest her even as we speak here, and you can bet that she’s not going to be getting out of jail anytime soon.Judge Merkel will have her behind bars for months.His little girl killed herself when she was being bullied by a teacher, and he’s vowed to keep them out of the system so that they can’t hurt anyone else’s little girls.”
“I’ll send her to the hospital now.So with a thorough exam, you’ll have evidence for this.”He said he was going to talk to the other girls as well.“Send them here, and I’ll make sure you have all the evidence you need.I promised her that she’d not go to jail.You didn’t suggest that she did, did you?”
“No.Why would you think she’d need to hear that?”He told him of the things that Jacobsonwas telling the girls.“She did mention that she didn’t want to go to prison, but I didn’t think about why she’d say that.No, I didn’t suggest she go to jail.She’s not the bully in this, but the victim.No, she’ll be all right once we have Jacobson in jail.I’m betting there are a lot of kids who are being used by that woman.I heard rumors about her when I was a kid in middle school.You think she’s been doing this so long that I’d remember her?Christ, that’s just terrible that no one came forward before this.You did a good thing there, Kahana.Thanks for your help in getting this taken care of.”
“I was just doing my job in keeping her safe.”He nodded and left with Shelly.He was going to run her to the hospital in town to make sure that she had a good examination.Kahana had to be worried about how much he’d not been able to see because she fought him.And he wondered for all the little girls in town when they might have been a part of her housecleaning crew.
~*~
Reading over the form three times, Debra was satisfied that everything was spelled right and that everything else was in order.She hated to get paperwork back from someone, and there were misspelled words and loopholes bigger than her head.She liked clean paperwork that said what it was supposed to say and not get all mixed up with having to try to figure out what the hell it was talking about.
Lying the paperwork to the side, she started on the next form that she had to read over.She didn’t mind this kind of work.It made her feel good when a contract went out as perfectly as she could make it.When there was a knock at her door, she looked up and smiled at Axel.He had his hands full of files.
“I’m running to the courthouse to file these.Also, to the notary to have things notarized for tomorrow’s summons.Did you need anything while I’m out?I was going to grab lunch for the two of us.”She said that she would have things to go to the courthouse in the morning, but nothing today.“Good.I have to say, it’s nice having an extra person around.I never realized how little I was getting done until you showed up.”
“How did I have anything to do with your workload?”He laughed and said that he was keeping up with her.“Oh well, I’ve not been working very long this week, and I had a lot to catch up on.Did you hear that the partners are ready to buy?I’ll be so happy to have that taken care of.”
“I bet you will.Well, I’m off.I’ll be back in about an hour, depending on how busy the courthouse is when I get there.”He turned away, then back.“By the way, my service is on, so you don’t have to worry about catching my phone.I don’t know why I don’t use it more often.It’s sometimes a godsend to have it around.”
After he left, she got back to work.She had missed a great deal in not working for a month and was glad that she was getting things taken care of.Not only did she have the ten cases that her grandda had left for her, but there were the things that she was taking care of for the family as well, especially for Millie and Charlie.
Her mom was still in jail and looked to be in there for a while now.The judge wouldn’t be coming through for another two weeks, and that was plenty of time to get a case filed against her for trying to kidnap her grandchildren.There were other charges pending as well, but that was the one that was going to get her the most jail time.That and breaking poor Charles’ arm like she did.The kid was milking it too, she thought with a smile.
After getting the forms taken care of and read over, she worked on the rest of the things she had on her desk.There were the things that her grandda had left in addition to things that needed her attention about the money she’d inherited.And that in and of itself was a lot of headache.
Billions of dollars were hers to do with what she wanted.She had houses that she could visit, as well as whole plots of land that were just sitting and ready for her to do something with them.That was going to be the hardest, she thought.Trying to figure out what she was to do with five thousand acres of land out west.Or the two hundred that were along the eastern border.There were things that she’d not looked too deeply into because she’d been so busy.There were jewels that were hers to wear as well.Mines of not just diamonds but also other gems and gold as well.Taking a deep breath, she started to feel overwhelmed again and had to lean back in her chair and breathe deeply.
She wasn’t as worried about having another heart attack as she had been.It would still catch her off guard that, for as young as she was, she’d had one.Lucky for her, there had been people around her who knew what to do when she was having it, or there would be no telling how she would have survived, if at all.Debra was taking care of herself and eating right.She took her medications when she was supposed to and put her feet up when that was necessary as well.There was no way she was going to have another one if she could be doing something about it.As she was feeling less overwhelmed again, Axel came into her office.
“I got you the veggie sub without mayo.I thought that was the one you liked.”She said it was and was glad that it was made with whole wheat bread instead of white.Taking a bite of it, she could taste all the freshness in it and moaned.“I have a turkey sub without mayo.I’m cutting back as well.You might be good for me to have around if you keep eating healthy like this.”
“That’s what Kahana said about eating at home.He wanted steak last night, but since I have to eat it in moderation, I wanted salmon.He ended up eating the salmon with me and said he didn’t feel as bloated afterwards.He’s not what I’d call a romantic sometimes.”They both laughed at her joke.“I noticed, too, that you go running with him in the morning.I’d like to go, but I’m not up to the speed that he is yet.I don’t want him to have to change his routine just because I can only go about two miles so far.He goes ten.That’s quite a workout for me.”
“I love running in the morning.Everything is fresh.Plus, I get to hang out with my brother, so that makes it doubly nice.”She took another bite of her sandwich and grinned at Axel when he ate part of his sub.She enjoyed sharing lunch with her brother-in-law.He was funny and just nice to be around.“Mac has a doctor’s appointment in the morning.I did tell you that I was going to be late, correct?”
“You did.But you said you’d have your service on, so I’m not to worry about your calls.”He nodded that was right.“How are things going with her doctor visits?I know she’s only going once a month right now.You two must be excited to be having a baby.”
“Excitement is an understatement.And I love going to the doctor with her.I want to be at every one.I’ve even moved my courthouse appearances around her appointments.I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do that, but I can do it now, and that’s what matters.Next month, she gets another scan to make sure that the baby is growing the way that he should.”She asked him if it was a boy.“I don’t know.I just call it a him sometimes or a her the other.I don’t want to call him and it.That just sounds like I don’t care when I do.”
“Well, I’m having fun watching the two of you.As he told you, we’re not using any kind of birth control, so when it happens, it happens for us.You’ll have to be able to tell us what you think of your doctor.All the stuff you’re going through right now, I want to know so that I can be prepared for it when our time comes.”
After lunch, she went back to work on her cases and followed up on the things that she had on her list.She’d always been good at having a list for things.She thought that was why she was able to get so much done in a day that she followed her list every day.She wasn’t good at taking one to the grocery store and usually regretted it when she got home.She would spend all kinds of money and forget what she went in there for in the first place.Kahana was good at making a list for the store.He usually had things like measurements, too, when he had to go to the hardware store.Which was why she had three containers of cocoa, and he had no extra wood lying around.
At five o’clock, she was ready for home.They’d been cooking out a lot lately, and she was looking forward to grilled chicken with a nice salad.So far, she’d not been cheating that much on her diet.She stopped eating chips and dips.There were no more cookies in the house, and she was having a good time reading the labels with Kahana’s help.She’d found out just by accident that just because it said low sodium on the label, it might still have a lot of it in the vegetables.That’s what reading the labels had gotten her.A good understanding of what was on the can versus the ingredients on the can.
