Page 18 of Falkner
“I told him that I’d be there when he woke up.”Doone had been crying and he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her.“He said that he didn’t want me to call his sister and let her know.Shewouldn’t come anyway she told me when I called her before.Bad blood between them and she wasn’t ready to forgive him just yet.It might well be too late to wait until later, but he won’t allow me to call her.”
“I just knew there was something wrong by the way he kept quiet all the time.He also kept telling me how tired he was.”They both decided to wait until the surgery was over before going home.There would be plenty of time, he figured as the surgeon had said that it would be at least three to four hours before they knew anything.So they were going to wait on the results to make sure that he was going to be all right.
They were in the cafeteria when the surgeon was ready to talk to them.Drake had a brain bleed and they were going to see if they could drain it rather than to let it go down on its own.As soon as, as his doctor, he gave permission for it to happen, the surgeon told them that he stood a better chance of living if they were to take care of it while they still had him open.Now it was going to be a waiting game to see what results he had after it was taken care of.Falkner didn’t want anything to happen to the elderly man.And neither did Doone.
The surgery lasted for six hours.When he was taken to recovery, he was holding his own and doing well, they’d been told.As soon as he could have visitors, they took turns going to see him, and it was nearly midnight when they were told to go home and rest.Neither of them left the hospital for fear that he’d wake and they weren’t there to see him.
Finally after two more days of him being in intensive care, they decided to run home and get cleaned up.Neither of them had been sleeping all that well and it wouldn’t do him any good if they were down too.So Doone went home first and when she returned, Falkner did the same thing.Drake had gone through a great deal in the last seventy-two hours and they wanted to be there when he woke up to make sure that he was going to be his cranky old self.
It was another two days before he started waking up.It would only be for a few minutes at a time and then he was so groggy that he didn’t know what was going on.But they stuck with him throughout it all and were glad to see that he was making progress.On the fifth day after surgery, Falkner got a call from the police department.
“It’s Ms.McFarlen.She’s putting up a big fuss about not being able to get to her place.Something about the people that live around her stealing her things.I tried to tell her that all her things had been moved out of the house that she’d been in but she’s not taking no for an answer.I hate to ask this of you, Falkner, but could you…I don’t know, come down and have a word or two with her?She’s driving every one of my men insane with her wanting this and that.”He told him that he’d not be able to be there until later today.“That’s fine.Your daddy was in to see her too and he told her that she was going to prison.As you can well imagine that didn’t go over well.But she seems to think that her daughter is going to get her out.Something about her owing her.I don’t know none about that.”
“Neither would my wife.”He had told most of the town that he had been married a few days ago.It occurred to him that they’d been married for just over a week when he made his way to the doctors’ lounge later that afternoon.With everything that was going on, it was hard for him to even believe that it had been that long.“I’ll go and see her, but I’m sure it’s only going to make it worse.She doesn’t care for me overly much because of the relationship I have with her daughter.I’ll see if I can get Robert, her husband, to go down and see her, too.He might have better luck than I would have.”
“I know that we’re not to contact Doone.She said that the only way she wanted to be notified was if she were dead.I didn’t understand that until I spent some time with her.She’s not a very nice person, is she?”He told him he didn’t know that half of it.“Well, I do know that she’s not getting out of here and will go straight to prison after the trial.They take fraud seriously when it comes to government facilities and lying on the forms that get you help.”
Now, it was nearly four o’clock, and he was headed to the jail to talk to Meggie.He didn’t want to talk to her about anything; it would be all the things that she wanted to happen to her, and none of it would be reality.
He did wonder if she was getting what she felt she deserved and had to laugh a little.He hopedthat she’d get everything she deserved, and that would be the end of it.But she’d never see it that way and would be put out with thinking that she wasn’t sitting in the lap of luxury while sitting in the local jail.His dad was there waiting for him when he got to the jail.
“I have a total of what she’s going to owe the government.With penalties and taxes, she’s going to be working the rest of her life to pay it back.The rental on her home is the most expensive, but not the only thing that she’s being charged with.There is the car and then the money that they gave her each month on her electric bill and her cable bill so that she could have those.”His dad told him how much it was going to be.“They could put even more money on that sizable bill, too.I think they’re digging deep to find everything that they can charge her with.That’s what I would do if I were them.”
“I’m supposed to go in and talk to her about getting things squared away with her not getting special treatment.She’s been complaining that people are getting into her things—she calls them welfare people, like she wasn’t one of them—stealing her things from her house.No matter what they tell her about her things being moved out, she won’t believe it.”Dad said she was stubborn like that.He’d noticed too.“I would imagine that you have noticed.They said you and an attorney from the other side have been in to question her daily.I don’t envy you that job.Is she still asking for things that she deserves?”
“Yes, that’s her favorite word, I think.Or some derivative of it.Just yesterday, she told the other attorney that she was going to get out soon, that Doone owed her.”Falkner said that he’d been told the same thing.“Yes, I can well imagine her telling any and all who pass through her day have heard about her woes.I’m going to need a vacation when this is over, just so I can feel better about myself.I don’t know how that pretty little wife of yours has done it all these years.She must have the stamina of a saint.”He said that she won’t see her or talk to her.“Good for her.She’s made of stern stuff that Doone.Must be the Irish in her.”
Dad laughed, and he joined him.He was headed back when he handed him an accounting of all that Meggie was going to owe, and that she wasn’t getting out unless she had that much money just lying around.Doubtful that he’d have that much just to give away.He could do it, but it would hurt him for years to come to be without that much money out all at one time.
She was waiting for him to show up, and when he sat down across from her, she reached out to claw at his hand.Lucky for him, or her, he was able to snatch his hand back before she could cut him too deeply.Leaning back in his chair, he asked her what he could tell her no about and be out of jail.
“I want out of here.Today.I have my things to look after, and this place is keeping me from finding out what shit head I’m going to have to kill because they really did move me out of my home.”He told her that it was a done deal, then told her how much she had to pay back to be able to get out of jail.“I’m not going to pay that money to anyone.I deserved that home, and I’m going to continue living there because I say so.People don’t want to mess with me when I get mad.”
“No one wants to mess with you at all, but here we are.And it’s going to suck to be you since you have to pay all that back while working in the prison.They’ll take every penny you make and put it towards your bill.”She said that they would not, and she’s not going to prison; she doesn’t deserve that.“You, more than anyone I know, deserve to be in prison, Meggie.You’ve done a lot of things wrong in the name of getting what you deserve.And believe it or not, you are going to get what you deserve, just not what you want.”He laughed, and she glared at him.“Oh, come on.How long did you expect to get away with lying to the government?”
“Doone turned me in, didn’t she?”He saw no reason to lie to her and told her that she had with the help of Robert.“I’ll kill them both the next time I see them.They had no right to do that to me.I deserved those things, and I’m not going to rest until I get them back.Since they were so helpful in getting me into trouble, you tell them to pay the money back and for them to continue to do so until I no longer want to live in that housing.It’s my right to live there.”
“It’s not really.”She tried to lunge at him, then she reached out to scratch at his face.Again, he missed her touching him by a mere inch.He was going to have to be more careful, or he was going to be hurt by her.As soon as he pushed his chair back, well out of her reach, she snarled at him like a wildanimal.It was then that he saw the insanity in her eyes.
~*~
Meggie was going to kill the man in front of her if he didn’t get up off his ass and help her out of this situation.She was sick of being in the cell by herself and didn’t care for the fact that no one was catering to her needs.Since she was a little girl, she wanted what she deserved and got pissed off when things didn’t go her way.It was why she’d left home when she’d been sixteen; her parents never gave her what she wanted.
Of course, she’d burnt down their home when she was living in a box for a week.They wouldn’t allow her to come back home for any reason and had changed the locks on the house.She sure got them.The one time when they went out for a week, she snuck around and set fire to the garage.
She’d not meant the house to burn up.It made it so that they didn’t have a place to live, nor did she.Once they were moved out of the house because of the fire, they didn’t tell her where they were going, and she never saw them again.And she looked for them too.Still was to be honest with herself.
But the man in front of her was going to pay for his actions against her.He’d turned her daughter against her, and she wasn’t going to stand for it.Then Doone was going to pay as well for contacting her father.What right did he have in her life after he left them high and dry?Well, not really, but she didn’t have to put up with him any longer and still was able to have all the things that she deserved to.He’d never taken away her access to his money, the fool.
Doone too had to go.While she was her only child, she still had to mess with her home situation and made it so that she didn’t have a place to live where she wanted any longer.And she had liked living in the house that the government had given her.She thought that they should give everyone who wanted one a nice home with all the bills paid.It would set everyone up nicely.She looked at the man across from her again.
“You took my daughter away from me, and you’re going to pay for that.”He said that Doone was his wife.“No.I won’t believe that.She’s my daughter and knows her place in my life.There is no way that she’d marry someone without my saying it was all right.And I’d never give her permission to marry because that would take her time away from me.I deserve all her attention and time.”
“You keep saying that she owes you.Just exactly what do you think she owes you that you didn’t already take from her?You even set boundaries when her home caught fire.I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that, did you?”She said that she wished she had, but then she’d have had to live with her.“Yes, because of your demands all the time, she didn’t have a savings account to fall back on when her place was gone.Well, she has that and more now with living with me.I give her everything.”
“Give it to me.I deserve it more than she does.Give me all your money, and I might let you live.You’ve done nothing but cause me heartache since you got into my daughter’s life.”He told her because she’d thrown her out of her home.“She was too much living with me.I was never able to get to do the things that I wanted to with her there all the time.I deserved to live on my own without her around messing things up for me.”
“You mean like your being able to go out to dinner when it suited you?Get your nails done and your hair fixed up?Were those the things that she was keeping you from getting?Did you deserve to steal from your daughter when you had access to hundreds of thousands of dollars through your husband?”She lifted her chin and dared him to reproach her about her way of life.“You’re a piece of work, aren’t you, Meggie?It’s all about you and what you want, and damn everyone else that thinks they can have a life outside of taking care of you.”
