If You Tell

by Olsen, Gregg

  Tori retreated back to bed, cinched up her blankets, and put the pillow over her head. As she’d done hundreds of times before, she tried to block out everything. What her mother was doing was so wrong. So harsh.

  When she heard the slapping and yelling again, Tori summoned the courage to confront her mother.

  “Why are you making Ron do that, Mom?”

  Shelly seemed exasperated and let out a breath. It was as if her daughter’s question, not her own behavior, was beyond bizarre.

  “Can you see he’s been bad?” she asked. “He deserves it.”

  Tori was unconvinced. Even if Ron had been bad, he hadn’t been that bad. And Shelly’s demands were impossible to meet.

  I want this garden weed free by the morning!

  I don’t want you to use the bathroom in the house!

  Why are you shitting outside?

  Tori tried another approach. The obvious one, the one that she hoped would appeal to her mother’s sense of humanity.

  “But it’s hurting him,” she said.

  Shelly gave her a hard look. “Go upstairs and stay there. This has nothing to do with you.”

  Tori went up to her room. While she recognized that someone had to speak for Ron, she figured that pushing her mother further would only make things worse for him. Her mom had no sense of humanity. Trying that approach had been a dumb idea. What was she thinking anyway?

  Ron continued to make mistakes, continued to be “bad.” At least Shelly thought so. He was in a glue trap, and there was likely no way he couldn’t avoid her wrath. Tori witnessed another confrontation over bodily fluids.

  “What’s this, Ron?” Shelly asked him another time. She held up a cup of urine.

  Ron looked at the cup, and then cast his eyes downward. “I had to go to the bathroom and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Her rule! That’s what she wanted!

  “You are disgusting me, Ron,” she said. “I can’t have this kind of thing going on in my house. This is my house, Ron! Your nasty habits make me sick.”

  “I’m sorry, Shelly Dear.”

  She handed him the cup.

  “Drink it!”

  Ron didn’t hesitate. He put the cup to his lips and drank every drop.

  A couple of weeks later, Tori saw Ron dump a cup of urine out the window. His eyes caught hers.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell Mom.”

  And she didn’t.

  No one wanted to make Shelly angry.

  Tori didn’t say a word to Ron because she loved him. She didn’t want him to suffer because of her.

  One time Ron was out weed whacking, and her mother was in a foul mood over the slow speed at which he was working. It wasn’t his fault. The machine was acting up. The sound of the engine stopping and starting was making Shelly madder and madder. Tori could feel the energy and it was scary. She went out to the yard to show Ron how to keep the gas-powered garden tool running.

  To stop her mother from doing whatever it was that she would do.

  Tori nearly gasped when she reached him. Ron was hunched over the weed whacker, struggling mightily to make it run. He was nearly naked, his bald head and back badly sunburned. But that wasn’t the worst of it. His feet were bloody and the skin of his hands was shredded.

  “Uncle Ron,” Tori said in a voice so low her mother couldn’t hear. “I’m so sorry.”

  She wished he’d bolt. Never come back. Get as far away as he could. Far, far from her mother. It didn’t matter to Tori anymore that her mom’s abuse of her had softened in direct relationship with the escalating attacks on Ron. She was stronger. She’d be able to survive it.

  When her mom decided Ron needed to move into Mac’s house for much-needed around-the-clock care, Tori felt a surge of relief.

  He’ll be safer there, she thought. Things will get normal again. Whatever that is.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Normal is relative, and normal didn’t have much staying power at Monohon Landing Road.

  On February 9, 2002, Tori was getting ready to go to a football game at Willapa Valley High when her mother got ahold of her to tell her she was at the hospital.

  “Mac fell,” Shelly said, her voice a little shaky. “He’s hurt bad. I’m coming to get you right now.”

  Tori loved Mac. Just like she loved Ron. She was a girl who wanted more than anything to have a caring family around her. Her sisters were grown and her father was largely absent. Surrogate family members like Mac and Ron meant everything to her.

  Or at least as much as her mom would let them mean.

  When her mom picked her up, she seemed anxious, though not hysterical. She muttered something about an accident and that she didn’t think Mac was going to live.

  “It’s bad,” she repeated. “Ron was there when it happened.”

  Tori felt sorry for Ron. He was a gentle soul and he must be overcome with worry. By the time they arrived back at the hospital, nurses informed them that Mac had indeed died. Tori burst into tears and melted into her mother’s arms.

  Shelly didn’t seem broken up at all.

  Indeed, she was nearly giddy. She’d been left $5,000. There was the matter of his dog, Sissy, of course. But Sissy was old. She couldn’t live much longer, and then Shelly would inherit Mac’s house, worth more than $140,000.

  How Mac died was a bit of a mystery. At first, Shelly was vague about it. Ron had made the call to 911, saying Mac had fallen and hit his head. The authorities didn’t seem too concerned either. Tori later gathered that the examining doctor referred the case for further investigation by the coroner and the prosecuting attorney’s office when he confirmed Mac died as a result of acute subdural hematoma caused by a blunt impact to the head. It was possible that the impact had been caused by a fall. Ultimately nothing further was investigated.

  And then it was done. Mac was gone. Just like that, Shelly was flush with cash. Things were definitely looking up.

  Indeed, a few days after Mac died, on Valentine’s Day, Tori padded downstairs to find her mother wrapping up the greatest box of chocolates she’d ever seen.

  She wrote in her school journal a day later:

  “I was sure they were for me. I tiptoed upstairs like I never saw a thing and then about ten minutes later I came downstairs and sure enough they were for me!”

  Despite the inheritance—the money; the house in South Bend; the dog, Sissy, now chained up outside—before the last chocolate was devoured from the big box, Shelly had resumed her old ways. It was like she just took in her good fortune like a big gulp of air. Money, something she’d chased her entire life, was all right, of course.

  But her old games?

  Much, much more satisfying.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  What happened at Mac’s house in South Bend quickly morphed from a shared tragedy to a personal opportunity. Shelly used the episode as the catalyst for a new attack against Ron. It was cruel beyond measure and it came up all the time. Once, when Ron was back working in the yard at Monohon Landing, Tori overheard her mother screaming at him about it.

  “You killed Mac! You’re a murderer!”

  When Ron tried to defend himself, she pushed him into the dirt and then came back inside the house.

  “He murdered Mac,” she told Tori as she stomped around. “I can’t live with a murderer!” Tori didn’t know what to think. She’d thought Mac’s death was an accident of some kind. Besides, she couldn’t see Ron hurting anyone. Not ever.

  Another time, the three of them were seated in the kitchen. Tori was minding her own business, and Ron and her mother were in the middle of one of their disagreements.

  “How would you feel if a murderer was living in your house?” she asked him.

  Ron didn’t answer. He just kept his eyes turned downward.

  “It doesn’t feel good,” Shelly went on. “Not at all. You killed Mac, Ron. You are a goddamn murderer.”

  Again, no response.

  Tori never believe
d a word of it. Shelly might have sensed her reluctance to agree that Ron was a killer, so she kept employing new ways to bring up the subject.

  In time, however, the strangest thing happened. Ron started to agree with Shelly.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I killed him. Please don’t tell.”

  Shelly twisted the knife.

  “Don’t disappoint me, Ron. Don’t you ever. I don’t want to tell, but you need to know you disgust me. You’re a murderer.”

  Another time, her mom took a break from the TV to tell Tori her latest version of what had happened at Mac’s house the day he died.

  “He fell out of his wheelchair and bonked his head real hard. Ron just stood there and let it happen. Waited too long to call for help in time to save him. Ron’s a useless prick, Tori. I know you see some good things about him but think about it. He’s a murderer! He killed our Mac! Mac’s like your grandpa!”

  In yet another version of Mac’s demise, Shelly said the elderly war veteran had fallen into a coma and Ron left him to die.

  “He didn’t even call me until it was too late,” she said. “I call that murder, Tori. I really do. The sight of that fag makes me sick.”

  Don’t call Ron that, Tori thought, but all she said was, “I didn’t know about that, Mom.”

  While Shelly professed contempt for Ron and what she said he’d done to Mac, she also spewed vitriol over Mac’s will.

  “Lawyers really botched it up,” she explained to Tori. “I’m going to tell them that Sissy got hit by a car and died. You need to back me up. It’s no big deal, but I need you to understand that story is very important to our family.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Tori said. She thought it was a little strange but not so terrible. After all, her mom was going to get the house anyway. Her mom had done unthinkable things to her and Ron, but she wouldn’t really hurt the dog.

  “Once we fix up the house and sell it,” Shelly said, “we’ll have the money to move up to Oak Harbor and live as a family again.”

  For most kids, that might be a dream come true. All Tori could think about was how badly her parents fought when they were together.

  Living under the same roof every day would be a nightmare.

  The absolute worst.

  On March 19, 2002, a little over a month after Mac’s death and nine months after Lara and Nikki had first sounded the alarm about what had happened to Kathy Loreno, Lara Watson received a message to call Deputy Jim Bergstrom.

  Finally, she thought.

  Lara had already heard that the old man Shelly was caring for had died.

  “She killed him,” she told the deputy.

  “You don’t know that,” he replied.

  “She poisoned him, I bet.”

  “He was old. Sick for a long time.”

  “Who is taking care of the dog?” she asked.

  “Shelly is,” he said.

  “He left her the house,” she said.

  “Right. And she’s caring for his dog.”

  Lara pushed it. “The dog is probably being poisoned too.”

  “The dog is fine,” he said. “Patrol saw the dog.”

  Lara moved on. She figured Shelly had probably killed Mac. She was absolutely sure that Kathy had been murdered. Nikki was not a liar. Not by any measure.

  “I don’t know how you run things in Pacific County,” Lara finally said, “but this is not right at all. You need to do something. You need to find out what happened to Kathy Loreno. Have you talked to Sami?”

  He said he still hadn’t been able to reach her.

  Lara wasn’t buying any of that.

  “She’s in Raymond every weekend, deputy. She’s worried about her little sister. She goes there to make sure that Tori’s okay. Not being hurt. Does this compute at all?”

  Deputy Bergstrom insisted he understood, but what more could he do? Sami had refused to call him back.

  Lara hung up. She didn’t believe he’d tried at all.

  Sami continued her clandestine relationship with her older sister. She defended Nikki to Tori when Tori would parrot how disrespectful and rotten Nikki was, but only to a point. She didn’t want to call attention to the fact that they had remained close. Tori might tell. Like Sami herself had regrettably told on Nikki and Shane when they were growing up. Their mother had a way of weaseling out details and then blaming the messenger.

  In May 2002, a few weeks after Lara’s call to Deputy Bergstrom, Sami snuck down to Sandy, Oregon, and attended Nikki’s wedding at Lara’s wedding venue. Sami was happy for her sister. Actually, thrilled. Nikki had found a great man and was living a life that had been impossible to imagine when they were growing up.

  When she was forced to wallow.

  When she was told she’d never be anything.

  That no one would ever love her.

  Sami, who still wanted to love their mother more than anything, hated the fact that Shelly was excluded from the wedding. She understood the reasons behind it, of course. Why would Nikki’s tormenter be invited?

  Even so, Sami said later, “I felt bad that they were estranged.”

  Without telling anyone, she wore a special ring on her finger. It was a “mother’s ring” with Nikki’s, Tori’s, and her birthstones set in a gold band, a gift Sami planned to give Shelly the next day, Mother’s Day. The ring was another small secret in a family that had kept and buried countless secrets.

  By wearing the ring, Sami felt, “it was kind of like my mom was there at the wedding.”

  After Mac died, Dave Knotek wore out the rubber on his truck tires with more trips home. Their marriage had been in trouble in the past, but they were working together to try to find firmer footing. Dave couldn’t function without Shelly. Not really. Although he knew their relationship had been toxic, he couldn’t stop loving her.

  For her part, Shelly was telling him that she needed him too. That now, more than ever, was the best time to start over. Moving out of Pacific County for good and never looking back was the only way they’d be able to survive. She was under stress over the estate and Ron was giving her all kinds of trouble.

  After one of their weekend reunions in June 2002, Dave left Shelly a florid love letter. As he often did, he called her by her pet name, Bunny.

  “I hate leaving you here. It breaks my heart so very much. I want to be close to you all the time in my life.”

  He said he would check on rentals or a lease option up in Oak Harbor. They needed to get out of Raymond and make a fresh start.

  “Wherever I am I can always feel your touch and that goes right to my heart. I feel your love for me even though I don’t deserve it. I love you ever so much forever and ever.”

  He wouldn’t say it out loud, and never to his wife, but Dave knew deep down that their marriage couldn’t survive much longer, not without a big change.

  While her husband was firmly on her side, other forces were at work to make matters far more difficult than Shelly thought she deserved. In fact, she was baffled by how badly she and her husband were being treated after assuming possession of Mac’s house. Neighbors—led by a retired Pacific County sheriff—questioned whether the Knoteks even had a right to the deceased’s estate. The sheriff was suspicious about what had gone on there.

  Shelly had no idea why she was being treated so harshly. All she ever did was be kind to Mac and treat him like he was her father. She’d brought him soup. Enlisted Ron in caring for him. She’d even had Ron do Mac’s yard work. If there had been a kinder person than she, she couldn’t think of one.

  Shelly called her lawyer again on September 4, 2002. The lawyer made note of the call and notified another of Shelly’s lawyers that something needed to be done about the harassment.

  “The police in South Bend stopped by a number of times to check their identification and generally make life miserable for Michelle and her husband. One police officer even indicated to Dave that he should be careful tonight when he was driving.”

  Every bit of scrutiny seeme
d to fuel Shelly’s anger at everyone and everything, especially at Ron. Months after Mac died, she continued to hurl her accusations at Ron.

  “You killed Mac, Ron. You fucking killed him!”

  “I didn’t, Shelly. He fell. He fell out of his chair.”

  “Liar! I know what you did, and the police are going to come and get you. They will. I swear it!”

  The ongoing threat that he’d be arrested and sent to prison for Mac’s murder hung over Ron. He would slump down in the car if they drove past a police cruiser. Whenever there was a knock on the door, Shelly would insist that he hide.

  “Don’t make a sound! They’ll take you and put you away for good!”

  Tori knew what her mother was up to. Shelly had Ron live in fear because she was actually worried that, if the police picked him up, he might tell them all the things she’d done to him.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  The last time Sandra Broderick saw her old friend Ron Woodworth was over a meal at Slater’s Diner in Raymond in the summer of 2002. Ron looked weak and unwell. She was shocked by his transformation, both mentally and physically. Ron had been witty and sharp. He had a warm kind of personality that brought people in close. This Ron was far from that. He told her that he’d been given a trio of medications by Shelly for depression. Sandra watched warily as he took the medication with his food.

  “The pills are helping, but I still have headaches.” He took a green pill, then a brown pill, then a white capsule while they sat in a booth at the diner. “Seeing a doctor and a psychiatrist from the state too.”

  “He was dirty and unkempt,” Sandra remembered. “He used to care about his appearance. He was spaced out, irrational, and incoherent.”

  The more he talked, the more Ron’s old friend from the military felt her concern grow. She could plainly see that Ron was in serious trouble. And she told him so.

  Ron just looked at her blankly. Nothing she was saying seemed to be tracking. He was in a fog, completely clueless as to how thin and weak he’d become.