Mona Lisa My Love

Chapter Twenty-two

At that, I sat up and snorted, "Yeah, right, as if he would listen to me. I stopped at the airport when I drove in, and Deputy Chris (sarcasm added) and a man in a suit were there. The suit was FAA, I'm sure. He sure looked like a fed anyway. Deputy Chris wanted nothing to do with me. He told me he didn't want my help or any of my thoughts or ideas. He said I should go back and crawl into a bottle. So, I came here. He is such an asshole."

Doc got quiet and looked at the table. "That may not be a fair assessment. Would you like to hear a story about Chris?"

I nodded and said, "Okay, sure."

"Chris and his parents were a fine-looking family. We would see them often, around town or out to dinner. They always attended church on Sundays and appeared very happy. I am not sure if you knew about Chris's dad and his bike riding. He would put in about ten miles or so a day, every day. He aspired to compete in some of the local tournaments. Then his accident happened."

Doc continued in a soft voice. "He was run off the road by a car, and when he fell down the bank on the side of the road, he broke his hip. It was a bad break, too. All this was about a year before Chris graduated. His dad had surgery to fix his hip and upper leg, but he started taking drugs to ease the pain. When that didn't help any longer, his dad started drinking as well. Shortly after that, he started hitting both his wife and Chris. He was a mean drunk. We all saw the bruises but didn't know what was going on until Chris's broken arm."

Doc hesitated a moment, deep in thought. "You might remember that in Chris's senior year in high school, in the baseball playoffs, he struck out to end the game and they lost. Shortly after the game, Chris's parents brought him to me to look at his arm. I asked what happened, and they said he fell off his bike. I asked if a car had hit him, and Chris wouldn't say anything. The x-rays looked odd to me, for someone just falling off a bike. It looked more like the arm was twisted, but it was broken to be sure. That's when we started to suspect something awful was going on. When I started to ask more questions about what happened, Chris's father got belligerent and dragged Chris out of my office."

I must have looked bewildered because Doc asked, "Did you know any of this?"

"No. What happened next?"

"Patrick was home. It was right after boot camp before he set out for deployment. He was part of the conversation that I was having with my wife about what I could do. I had no proof, of course, and who could I report it to anyway? I remember now that Patrick didn't say much, but after dinner, he asked if he could borrow the car and left. He said something about seeing his buddies. Patrick came back three or four hours later and said he was tired and wanted to go to bed. At breakfast the next morning, I noticed his knuckles were raw like he had been in a fight. When I asked him about it, he just said he fell on the gravel parking lot last night, but he smiled. I thought that was odd, but I didn't ask any questions."

Doc continued softly, "He shipped out that afternoon, and I never saw him again. We learned a few days later Chris's dad also left that same day. No one saw or heard from him until about a year ago. He came back and told his wife how sorry he was and that he had been clean now for three years. He said he had a job upstate and if she wanted, he would like to start seeing her again. She moved up there about three months later. During this whole time, Chris refused to see him and said if he didn't leave town, he would arrest him.

"Chris changed a lot after his dad's accident. He became more and more withdrawn from his mother...and from everyone really. His grades fell. He often got in fights. And I would suspect that he was becoming a bully. That might be the Chris you know. He wasn't always that way. I feel bad I never stopped it. Chris's mother filled in some of the blanks after his dad left, but I didn't know Patrick's part in it until much later."