Utopian Day

by C. L. Wells

  Nick’s affection for Sasha had grown, as well. He began to accompany Mia and Sasha on some of their shopping trips and they would all eat lunch together. Once, on the spur of the moment, Nick suggested they all go out to the horse farm where Nick and Mia kept their horses, and go for a ride. Sasha’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning. They had a blast and Sasha was continually asking if they could go back. Nick and Mia enjoyed these outings so much that, after three months, they had asked Katrina if they could up the ante and watch Sasha once a week. Katrina had obliged, glad to be able to rely on them for more help without feeling like she was imposing.

  They had all known the possibility existed that Katrina wouldn’t get a transplant in time, but no one had seriously considered it. Mia put her coffee cup down on the table in front of her.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” Mia asked.

  “Actually, there is something Katrina asked us to do. She asked us to adopt Sasha,” Nick replied.

  Mia inhaled slowly, looking away from Nick at a painting of a lone ship in the ocean that was hanging on the wall. She held the breath in as she allowed the words Nick had just spoken to roll around in her head. Then she looked back at Nick.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I want one of my best accountants and a good friend not to die,” Nick replied seriously. Then he added, “I’m almost fifty years old, Mia. I’ve never brought up having kids with you because I thought I was too old. These past few months spending time with Sasha have been good. She was like the daughter I never thought I would have. And the three of us together have such a good time….” He looked Mia in the eyes. “Look, I don’t want to pressure you into anything, but if you want to do this, I’m willing to jump off the ledge with you. You know I like a good rush.”

  He smiled as he waited for Mia to respond to what he had just said.

  Mia looked back at the painting on the wall. The painting reminded her of her own life’s journey in many ways. In it, a single ship was out in the ocean with no land in sight. The seas were rough and the crew was struggling to keep the ship afloat. They were struggling for their very lives with somber determination. She continued looking at the painting as she spoke.

  “I know what it is like to be on your own, without your parents for support, without anyone you can count on except yourself. It is a hard life with no guarantees that you will make it. We could give Sasha a good life. We could love her and give her all of the things that I never had when I was growing up. I want to protect her. I want to help. Yes,” she said, turning back to look at Nick, “I want to do this.”

  Nick reached over and placed his hand on Mia’s, squeezing it gently.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Nick and Mia called Katrina immediately and let her know that they would be happy to adopt Sasha. They visited Katrina later that same day in the hospital. Sasha was at her mother’s side when they arrived and was very upset. When Nick and Mia entered the room, she walked over to Mia and hugged her, tears streaming down her face. Nick could tell by the look on Katrina’s face that she was in a bad way.

  Katrina spoke to Sasha and explained that she would be staying with Nick and Mia while Mommy was in the hospital. After they had visited for a little while, Nick asked Mia if she would take Sasha down to the car, saying that he would be there in a few minutes. Sasha didn’t want to go, but Katrina told her that she could come back and see her tomorrow, but that her mother needed the rest right now. Reluctantly, Sasha kissed and hugged her mother goodbye before she left with Mia.

  “Have you told her yet that you don’t have long?” Nick said when they were alone.

  “Not in so many words, but she’s a smart kid. She knows,” Katrina replied.

  “You should tell her yourself. It would be best if she hears it from you, to help her let go and all,” Nick continued.

  Katrina looked up at Nick with tired eyes. “Thank you.”

  Nick nodded his head.

  Later that day, Katrina’s lawyer came by and she changed her will to indicate that she wanted Nick and Mia to be Sasha’s legal guardians. She decided not to discuss the matter with Sasha. It would be enough for her to deal with Katrina’s impending death. Katrina reasoned that Mia and Nick could tell her when the time was right, after she had some time to grieve. They had decided that Nick and Mia would adopt Sasha as soon as possible after Katrina passed. Katrina dictated a letter to her lawyer to be given to Sasha upon her death, explaining that this was her wish so that Sasha would hear it straight from her.

  Once the whole legal process was completed, Katrina felt relieved. Over the next few days, Sasha came by every morning and they spent many hours together. They talked, played cards when Katrina felt able, and Sasha would read the latest novel she had been reading out loud to her mother. Nick and/or Mia would drop Sasha off, then pick her up for lunch and bring her back by in the evening. These precious days went by so fast for Katrina. She was relishing the time with her daughter, but she was grieving for herself at having to leave Sasha when she was so young.

  On the fourth day, Mia had dropped Sasha off and was saying goodbye to Katrina as she prepared to leave, but Katrina asked her to stay. Katrina looked much weaker than she had the day before. She could barely talk and Sasha had to bend her ear down close to her mother’s mouth to hear what she had to say. Katrina whispered in her daughter’s ear, “I love you, Sasha. I will always love you….”

  “I love you, Mommy,” Sasha said with tears beginning to flow down her face.

  The alarm on Katrina’s heart monitor went off and soon the medical staff was rushing in with the crash cart to try and revive Katrina. Mia pulled Sasha back as the doctors and nurses worked, but it was soon clear that Katrina was not coming back. Sasha turned to Mia, who pulled her close while Sasha cried.

  The funeral was brief and attended only by a small circle of Katrina’s friends, and her younger sister. Her own mother was dead, and her father was in a nursing home and unable to attend. After the service, Nick and Mia took Sasha by her house to pick up some of her things before returning to their house. They simply said that Sasha would be staying with them for a while and Sasha didn’t ask why, too overcome by grief to ask any questions of them at the moment.

  The hours turned in to days and weeks, and eventually years. Sasha began to move on with her life and acclimate to life in her new family. Nick and Mia officially adopted her on her eleventh birthday.

  There were many changes that took place in the Bartonovich household over the next several years. Nick moved his office to the second floor so that Sasha could have a bedroom upstairs next to Nick and Mia’s bedroom. They bought Sasha her own horse, which she named Katrina’s Pride in honor of her mother. She became quite an accomplished rider and even won some riding competitions. Nick and Mia had to develop new work schedules. Mia began farming out some of her more dangerous activities to other members of their company. Nick even began shifting some of his business activities towards more legitimate enterprises, not wanting Sasha to associate with some of his former colleagues who had frequented the house prior to her arrival. Overall, the addition of Sasha to the Bartonovich household was resulting in a kinder, gentler family atmosphere.

  Nick was amazed at how much better his life had become since getting married and adopting Sasha. He now had a purpose beyond himself and he was finding genuine fulfillment in his role as a family man like he had never had before when business was his primary focus. Mia, too, was blossoming into her role as mother and wife. While both Nick and Mia still pursued the business side of their lives, they made the adjustments necessary to make home life a big priority. Life for the Bartonovich family was good.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Laura sat beside Valerie in the crisis center and held her hand as she cried. She had a busted lip and her left eye was almost completely swollen shut. She listened to the story patiently, a variation on a similar theme she had heard a hundred times.

  “He saw me
in the supermarket and followed me outside. He grabbed me and drug me down an alleyway. He tried to get me to tell him where I’m staying. When I refused, he did this to me.”

  Valerie paused in telling her story and sobbed before continuing.

  “He wants our daughter. He said that he will find out where she goes to school and take her from me.” She turned and looked at Laura with a look of desperation in her eyes. “Ms. Laura, I can’t let him take my daughter! He was abusing her sexually, and that is why I left him! I can’t let him take my daughter!”

  “It’s going to be o.k., Valerie. We’re going to help you, just calm down,” Laura replied.

  But even as the words came out of her mouth, she wasn’t sure how much she believed the words herself. If Valerie’s ex had found her in the supermarket, then he was too close to finding out that Valerie was staying here at the crisis center, which was only a few blocks away. Assuming Valerie hadn’t been followed back to the center today, it was likely only a matter of time until she was. Laura could feel her blood begin to boil as she thought about her own past experience with sexual abuse, how powerless she had felt, and now to hear that this woman’s young daughter had been sexually abused by her ex. It was too much.

  She tried to remain calm as she continued. “Valerie, do you have a picture of your ex?”

  “Yes, yes I do.”

  “Good, I want you to go and get it. Then I want you to write down his address where he lives and works. I’m going to call the police and we’ll report him.”

  “O.k., Ms. Laura,” Valerie replied, getting up and walking off to her room to get the picture.

  Laura called the police and asked them to send someone down so they could report the attack; then she went out back behind the crisis center, and once the door was shut, she let out a scream. “Ahhh!” She turned around and saw a metal trash can and kicked it with the side of her foot. She paced up and down the alleyway for several minutes before finally feeling calm enough to step back inside.

  She found Valerie sitting down at a table in the common area, writing down the information Laura had requested on a piece of paper. Laura took it from her and went into the office, making a photocopy of the information and the photograph. She folded the copies and put them in her back pocket before she went back out to where Valerie was sitting. She handed the originals back to Valerie.

  “Valerie, hold on to these for when the police get here. You just tell them exactly what you told me. I have to go right now, but I’ll be back to check on you later. Just grab one of the other volunteers when the police get here and they will help you with everything. O.k.?”

  Valerie nodded her head up and down.

  Laura took out her cell phone and punched in the home address of Valerie’s ex. It was about five miles from here. If she went on her bicycle, it would take her about twenty minutes. She unlocked the bicycle lock, removed her bike from the bike rack, and began pedaling.

  The address was for a second floor apartment. It was a small duplex unit, with one apartment on the bottom floor and the other on the second floor. A stairway led up the exterior of the unit to the second floor apartment door. Laura positioned herself across the street where she would be hidden from view by some shrubbery. She parked her bike out of view and stood behind the plants, watching.

  It took about an hour before the police finally came by. They walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. A medium-sized man answered the door. After he had talked with the police for a few minutes, they escorted him down the stairs and put him in the police cruiser.

  Laura waited until they were gone before crossing the street and going up the steps to the apartment. She knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer, but no one did. She tried the door and found it locked, so she went back down to her bicycle and rode home.

  It was a few days before she found out from Valerie that her ex had been released on bail. Valerie was scared out of her mind that he was going to take her daughter away and hurt her again. Laura tried to comfort her, but she was beside herself. She was still crying when Laura left for the day.

  Laura wasn’t scheduled to volunteer at the crisis center for a few more days. She went to her apartment, packed a few things in a backpack, and rode her bike back to the apartment where Valerie’s ex lived. It was around 6:00 p.m. when she arrived. She hid her bike in the foliage and positioned herself in the same location as before so that she wouldn’t be seen.

  At about 7:00 p.m., the ex left the apartment. It was a Friday night, and from the way he was dressed, he was going out to party. She waited until he was out of sight before crossing the street and going up the stairs. She knocked on the door just to be sure no one else was home. No one came to the door. She looked around to be certain she wasn’t being watched by some nosy neighbor. When she was certain she wasn’t being watched, she slipped on some latex gloves and tried the door. It was locked, as expected. She retrieved some lock picking tools from her bag and picked the lock – a handy skill she had picked up in her drug dealing days.

  Once inside, she shut the door behind her and locked it. A quick look around the house revealed that this door was the only entrance to the apartment and that no one else was around. She retrieved a black ski mask from the bag and a junior sized baseball bat. She positioned the mask on top of her head so that she could pull it down in a moment’s notice, and then she looked for a place to sit where she would not be seen from the outside. Once she was positioned, she waited.

  There were some down sides to this plan. If someone else came back with the ex, Laura could be in trouble. In that case, she might need the gun she had brought along that was tucked in the back of her pants. From the looks of this place, though, he wasn’t going to bring a girl back here. She supposed he was the type of guy who would convince the girl to go back to her place. That way, if it got rough, he could leave after he smacked her around a bit and she wouldn’t know where to find him. Scum. She could hardly wait until he got back.

  There were a few false alarms from neighbors coming home or leaving, but Laura’s mark finally returned at 1:00 a.m. He was whistling as his foot hit the bottom stair. She pulled down the mask over her face so that he wouldn’t be able to identify her later. The door was solid wood and he hadn’t left a light on inside when he left, so he wouldn’t see Laura until it was too late to do anything about it.

  He had just opened the door and reached over to turn on the light when Laura sprang into action. She slammed the big end of the bat hard into his solar plexus, and then she kicked him between the legs. He dropped to his knees and she easily tipped him back out the door and onto the landing with her foot. He lay there in a fetal position on his back, gasping for breath. She stepped across the threshold and took a small can of pepper spray out of her pocket. She aimed it at his face and sprayed it in his eyes. While he was screaming and trying to wipe the pepper spray out of his eyes, she reached down with both hands and rolled him down the stairs as hard as she could. She was pleased to see that he made it all the way to the bottom before he stopped. She quickly gathered her things and walked down the stairs. Laura bent down beside him as he lay there moaning, pointed her phone at him, and hit he ‘play’ button on the pre-recorded message she had created using an internet app that disguised her voice.

  “If you touch Valerie or her daughter again, it will be the last thing you ever do,” said the creepy-sounding automated voice.

  She quickly crossed the street into the alleyway where her bicycle was hidden, and turned around to make certain she wasn’t followed. The whole episode had taken about thirty seconds. As she turned around, she just saw the door begin to open on the bottom apartment as someone came out to see what all the noise was about.

  A few days later, she read about the attack in the local paper. The man had apparently sustained a concussion, broken a leg, dislocated his shoulder, and required ten stitches to close a gash in his cheek caused by an exposed nail on the wooden staircase.

  “Those da
rned nails,” Laura thought to herself as she smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Silas looked down at the document that had just arrived in the mail. He knew what it was, but forced himself to open it anyway. He had to read it for himself. There was something about reading it in print that seemed to hit him like a ton of bricks. Maggie and Silas were now officially divorced.

  Resigning from the force had been a hard blow to Silas. He started drinking heavily. He told Maggie why he had quit – the truth, and she was mad as hell. He swore to get help. He even attended Gambler’s Anonymous for a while, but the itch just wouldn’t go away. He kept thinking that all he needed was one big score to set things right.

  He was making ends meet with private detective and security work, but kept skimming money off of his paycheck to gamble with on the side so that Maggie wouldn’t know. They began to have more and more fights over money. There were many times that Maggie would borrow money from her sister to cover the mortgage payment when they couldn’t come up with the funds because of his gambling losses. Their marriage continued to disintegrate. Finally, Maggie gave him an ultimatum. Either stop gambling for good, or their marriage was over.

  One weekend, Maggie and their son Tommy had gone to visit her sister. An old friend invited Silas over to watch the football game. Once the game was over, the guys wanted to play some cards. Silas knew he should say no, but he stayed. He told himself he would just spend twenty dollars on the game and then bow out for the night if he lost it. He ended up losing one hundred and fifty dollars before the night was over. It was money they had needed for groceries.

  Maggie and Tommy returned from their trip and Maggie eventually asked Silas for some money to go to the store and buy the groceries. When he confessed that he had lost the money, she went ballistic. It had been the last straw for Maggie. She took Tommy with her and moved in with her sister that same day.