Love You Moore (13 page)

It took a few minutes for her parents to calm
her down. The doctor had come onto the room by this time.

“
How is our Sleeping Beauty doing? You
had us all quite concerned young lady” He had his pen light shining
in her eyes. “Good, good” he said when he was done and wrote
something on his chart.

“
It's good that she has come around,
the worst is over.” He addressed her parents. “I’d like to keep her
here for observation. Her charts look good, we’ll run another cat
scan, if we see that there isn’t going to be any long term
neurological damage, I don’t see why she can’t go home within the
week. Keep her off the leg, we’ll give her something for the pain
if she becomes uncomfortable. Sound good to you Abby?” He was
looking at her like she had a choice. Abby just nodded her head.
Abby winced at the constant throbbing. “I’ll have the nurse bring
you something for the headache, a side effect of a coma I’m
afraid.” He walked out of the room to get the nurse.

“
Coma?!” Abby asked in horror. “I was
in a coma? How long?

Her parents looked at each other her mother
crying again.

“
Dad, how long was I in a coma?” She
demanded to know

“
12 days Baby, 12 long days, but you’re
here now and that is all that matters.” He said trying to keep her
calm.

“
Do you remember what happened Honey?
Why were you in the car with your uncle?” Her mother asked with a
hint of distain in her voice.

Abby started to cry again, she did remember
what happened but she didn’t want her parents to hate her for what
she had done.

“
Please Baby, what happened?” her Dad
asked this time.

Abby relived that afternoon. Stopping
occasionally to let out a sob and wipe her eyes. When she was done
explaining that she had only done it to help her father and never
meant to cause this much trouble, Abby looked up at her father and
she was scared. She had never seen that level of anger on his face
before. She knew it was directed at her.

“
I’m so sorry Daddy.” she was only able
to get it out in a whisper.

“
I’m going to kill him.” Her father
said furiously. That son of a “

“
Tom, please.” Her mother interrupted.
“Not now.”

Abby just then remembered the van.

“
Oh my God, the people in the van, how
are they?” Abby asked franticly looking between her mother and
father. Neither one of them said anything.

“
How are they?” Abby asked again this
time with urgency.

Her mother took a seat next to the bed and
took Abby’s hand.

“
Sweetheart,” she started “The person
driving the van was a boy at your school, Mitchell Robinson, do you
know him?”

Abby thought for a minute, “Yes Mitchell,
he’s a junior, Honor Society I think, he plays basketball too. Is
he ok?”

Abby’s mother started to tear up again, “He
died Honey. When you crossed the center line you hit them head on
without braking. He died instantly.

“
Was he alone?” Abby was
sobbing

“
His mother was in the passenger seat.
She sustained a few injuries, some bumps and bruises, she was
released after a day or two.” Abby was having a hard time
breathing.

“
Oh my God! This is all my fault” Abby
was inconsolable by this point.

“
No it isn’t!” Abby’s father demanded.
“It’s his and he is going to pay the price for it.” He said
referring to her uncle.

“
They have done the preliminary
investigations of the crash scene. Due to the fact you both were
unbuckled and he was lying in the driver seat. It appears as though
he was driving. Since you both are about the same height they
couldn’t tell by the seat position who was driving. The detectives
wanted to talk to you but according to what Cliff Applebee has
heard, they are looking to arrest Roy for vehicular
manslaughter.”

“
But Dad.” Abby shrieked. “He didn’t do
it, I did. He can’t go to jail for something he isn’t responsible
for.”

“
He is responsible Abby, this is
entirely his fault. Something like this was bound to happen and now
he has to pay for it. Own up to all the mistakes he had made over
his lifetime. I’ll be dammed if he is going to take my daughter
down with him. When the police come to question you this is what
you will tell them. Yes, you made an unwise decision to drive
without a license but you were thinking of the safety of your Uncle
and wanted him to get home without incident. When you arrived at
the bar he took the keys from you and got in the driver seat. Not
knowing what to do you got in the car with him thinking you could
help him drive if you needed too. He became belligerent as he
always does, he tried to get physical with you and he lost control
of the vehicle and hit the oncoming van. That is what we are going
to tell the police had happened. Do I make myself
clear?”

“
Dad?”

“
Do I make myself clear!” he shouted
and pounded his fist on the tray table making Abby and her mother
jump.

“
Yes” Abby whispered thru her
tears.

The next few days went as her father said
they would. The detectives handling the case came and asked Abby
for her side of the story. Since Roy was drunk at the time of the
accident he didn’t remember anything that happened, so when Abby’s
father told him that he tried to rape his own niece, Roy could do
nothing but believe it. He agreed to a plea barging and plead
guilty to Vehicular Manslaughter, he received 20 years. However,
Roy could have faced as much as 60 years in jail for the offense of
aggravated vehicular homicide had he not accepted the plea and
taken his chances with a jury. Abby had not seen or heard from her
uncle since the accident, until today.

* * * * *

Chapter 12

Abby was sitting in the middle of the living
room floor, knees hugged tightly to her chest and rocking back and
forth when Holly arrived. Holly looked around and saw the house had
been ransacked.

“
Oh my God Abby are you ok? We’re you
robbed?” Holly hugged her friend. “I’m calling 911.” She reached
for her cell phone.

“
No, don’t!” Abby shouted and grabbed
the phone out of her hand.

Abby picked up the pile of blue envelopes and
letters and showed them to Holly.

She looked at the envelopes, Maine State
Prison, Holly only knew of one person Abby would know in there.

“
Abby?” Holly looked at her.

Abby said nothing. Holly looked at one of the
letters. It only had six words on it. She looked at the other
letters, the same six words were written on every single one. “It
should be you not me”

“
How do you think he found out?” Holly
asked

“
I don’t know, but he has been writing
me one of these every week for the last three years. There are over
150 letters here, all saying the same thing, it should be me and
not him.

Holly sat with her on the floor and started
picking up the papers.

“
What are you doing?” Abby asked in
surprise.

“
I’m picking these up and when your
parents get home we will talk to them about it.” Holly
replied.

“
But they don’t know that you know, you
know, because of your dad.” Abby had been encouraged by her parents
not to tell Holly the truth. Since her father was the Assistant
D.A. it was best she was kept in the dark about it.

Abby had told her one night after one of the
really bad nightmares she experienced after the accident. Holly had
woken her up from screaming and Abby blurted out, “it’s my fault
he’s dead, I killed him, I was driving.”

Holly was confused for a moment, but through
the sobs, Abby explained what had actually happened that day,

“
Are you going to tell your father?”
Abby asked not caring if she did.

“
I don’t see why he has to know. What’s
done is done. Sounds to me like the SOB deserved what he got, I’m
not saying anything.” Holly confirmed.

This had actually brought them closer
together. They each had a secret from their parents. Holly knew the
truth and Abby had told her.

“
Look Abbs, I have known about this for
three years, if your parents get nervous now, that’s their deal. I
promised you I wouldn’t tell my folks then and I don’t intend on
telling them now.” They reached to hug each other “I do however
want to pick up all this blue paper. It’s kinda creeping me
out.”

She and Abby picked up the papers and put
them all in pile on the kitchen table. She wanted that to be the
first thing her parents saw when they walked through the door. She
was angry at them for keeping this from her. Abby imagined it was
for her own good but she was still upset.

Abby and Holly heard the car doors slam. They
had just finished picking up the mess Abby had made looking for
more letters. She knew it couldn’t be a fluke that the one time she
checked the mail there just happened to be a letter in it from Roy.
She no longer referred to him as Uncle Roy, she no longer
considered him a relative of her. She found the papers in a locked
desk drawer in her dad’s office. She no longer cared about
respecting his space, she needed to find them. When she saw that
there were over 150 of them, she almost vomited in the desk
drawer.

“
Abby we’re ho……” her mom stopped
abruptly. Abby heard something fall to the floor and
crash.

“
Tom!” Abby’s mother screamed in a
panic.

Her dad rushed into the house to see what was
wrong. He looked at his wife, followed her gaze to the table. They
both looked up and saw Abby staring at them with accusing eyes and
next to her was Holly not accusing at all, it was more like
pity.

They came up with the excuses Abby thought
they would. “We only did it to protect you, we didn’t want to hurt
you, yadda yadda yadda.” Abby was having none of it.

“
How could you hide this from me?” She
screamed.

“
Abby please calm down.” her mother
pleaded, “we can talk about this rationally or we can scream all
night, your choice”

Abby felt like screaming but she knew she
would get more answers if she kept calm.

“
Ok, I am listening” Abby said calmly
and sat at the kitchen table, followed by Holly. She and Holly had
already explained that Holly was aware of the situation.

Her dad started. “We got the first letter
about six months after Roy was incarcerated. I guess once you stop
drinking and your head clears, you can remember things differently.
I went to see him, to confront him about the letter. He tried to
convince me to go to the DA and tell them he was innocent. You
can’t leave me in here for something I’m not guilty of he said, HA
not guilty he is totally the reason this whole mess happened. I
told him that he needed to take responsibility for once in his life
and stop blaming others for his actions.

“
How can my own brother be so
incredulous?” he asked all aghast. Incredulous indeed, I guess he
had time to look up new words in the dictionary too

He said he was going to have his lawyer
appeal his conviction. Since he had pleaded guilty and accepted the
sentence in court there was nothing he could do. I wasn’t 100% sure
of that, but he wouldn’t know any difference either and I thought
that could buy me some time if needed. He said that he was going to
continue to write letters to you until you owned up for the wrong
doing you did and set him free, can you believe that, he tried to
rape you, caused the accident, killed the poor boy driving the
other vehicle and he is claiming you need to own up. He is some
piece of work. Well after that your mother and I installed the
locked mail box so that if the letters continued to come we could
intercept them. We came up with the vandals excuse so you wouldn’t
question it. We never meant to lie to you Abby. We honestly didn’t
think it would go on this long. I don’t know why I kept them, I
guess I thought if Roy tried anything I could bring in all the
letters and show harassment and possibly get his sentence extended
or at least parole denied.

He tried to reach for Abby’s hand and she
pulled away, this hurt him she could tell. She didn’t care at this
very moment. If she had known this was going on she may have been
able to fix it, speak to Uncle Roy, make him understand or at least
be prepared if her world came crashing down.

“
I can never see Jimmy again” she
whispered. “This will make him hate me. I sent an innocent man to
prison so I wouldn’t have to go myself.

“
He is hardly innocent.” Holly
interjected. Everyone turned to look at her. “You said yourself
Abby, you were driving just fine until he started grabbing at you.
If he would have just kept to himself and done nothing, none of
this would have happened. It is his entire fault.”

Abby started to cry. “It doesn’t matter, when
Jimmy finds out he isn’t going to want to have anything to do with
me. He has to think of his career and image. Something like this
will end all he has worked for, for sure. I have to talk to your
dad Holly, tell him the truth face the consequences.”

“
They never have to know Abby.” Holly
stated. “You’ve had it hidden from you for the last three years and
you live here, how would Jimmy or my father ever know, unless you
told them?”

“
Yes but if Jimmy ever did find out and
knew that I hid the truth from him, then what, he hates me
forever.” Abby said turning to everyone at the table. “How can I
not say anything?