Broken Home

8 | Lean On Me

The neighbors watch as Hal Cooper gets rolled out by a pair of paramedics. Inside the house, Alice and Charles are trying to talk Sheriff Keller out of arresting FP for what he has done.

"Tom, he's not the monster here. You can't take him too." Alice stands in between him and FP.

"He nearly beat a man to death, Alice. I'm sorry." Tom sincerely apologizes. "Hal pressed charges. I have to take him down to the station."

"Please don't arrest my dad," Charles pleads with the man. "It's my fault for saying anything."

"The right thing to do was tell somebody what happened to you. You did good, kid, but the way your father handled it wasn't." Tom says to the boy. "Things will be alright. I'll have a deputy take your statement."

Tom escorts FP out to the cruiser. Fred watches the scene from his porch. He then looks over at Alice and Charles coming out of the house. Alice looks over at Fred from the corner of her eye. He watches her confused.

"Is dad going to go to jail?" Charles asks worried.

"No," She hopes she's right. She pulls him into a comforting hug. "We'll get this cleared up. Don't worry."

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Alice bails FP out as soon as she can. He can sense the awkward tension in the car.

"I'm not that kind of man," He tells her.

"Hmm?" She keeps her eyes on the road but listens.

"I saw the way you looked at me. You've never looked at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you were afraid of me."

Alice pulls over on the side of the road. She turns her head to face him. "I have no reason to be scared of you."

"That's what we believed about Hal."

"You would never lay a hand on anyone, let alone our own son." Alice says. "I don't necessarily agree with what you did, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't have thought of wanting to do the same for what he did to our baby boy."

"We failed to protect him. It's all we ever tried to do."

"We didn't know." Alice frowns. "If anything, I'm sorry we failed you. You did what no one ever did for you."

"How long have we not known?"

"Charles said a couple of months. I should have been the one to know. I was the one who failed him, not you. It was happening under my own roof." Alice croaks. "How did I not figure it out?"

"Hey, you noticed he was acting a bit strange. I didn't pick up on any of that."

"That's because it was happening when he was with me. He was happy with you. He felt safe with you."

"What are we doing to ourselves?" FP shakes his head. "How about this? If I can't blame myself, you can't blame yourself. Does that sound fair to you?"

"I think that's fair." Alice agrees. "Let's go home to him."

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