The Village

Seth’s Perspective

I left Karen’s apartment and went over to Zach’s office to trade vehicles so I could pick the kids up from school that afternoon. It was around noon so Zach and I decided to have lunch together, something we rarely got the chance to do. We sat down at a table for two in a nice little place near his office. “So, how’d it go with Karen?” He asked.

“Awkward, but good, She’s getting settled in. I took her to open a bank account and get her phone reactivated… oh and I introduced her to Ray Ray… she starts on Monday.”

“Wow, that was a fuck of a first day outta prison” Zach laughed.

The waiter came and took our order, when he left, I said, “Oh, and Jason and Abby came by to welcome her home” then I let out a little chuckle, “Jason told her not to screw it up.”

“Well, she’s heard it from Pop, and now Jason, I hope she listens” Zach said. “I’ll pick her up after work and bring her to the house for dinner.”

I was still uneasy about her reentry into the kid’s lives, but I wasn’t about to keep them away from her either. “I’ll pick up the kids and make dinner” I took a deep breath, “I just hope this isn’t a big frigging mistake” I said. I knew helping her was the right thing to do, but I also feared the possible consequences. Then again, things could turn out happily ever after.

“It’ll be fine” Zach said. “Listen, she’s damn lucky to get a second chance, and I think she knows that. She won’t screw it up.” I felt better after we talked through it, we also talked about Frankie’s situation, Zach had one of the researchers in his office looking into it, but he told me it wasn’t the top priority (pro bono rarely way) so it may be a while before they learn anything. I understood, Zach’s firm had done so much pro bono work for us and The Villagers, but the paying clients came first.

After lunch, we parted ways and went back to work. When I got back to the office there was a message for me to call Officer Booth. “Andy said he has some info on Frankie” BA said.

I went into my office, shut the door, and gave him a call, he answered on the first ring, “Hi Seth, thanks for calling me back so quickly.”

“Of course, thanks so much for your help on this.”

“I’ve got some information on Samuel Willis” Officer Booth said, then he paused and asked, “he’s not one of the guys you’re helping, is he?” I hadn’t given him much information when I called asking for his help.

“You remember the homeless kid you and Che met on your ride along the other night, Frankie?” I asked. He had no clue who I was talking about, I’m sure he dealt with kids like him all the time. “Francis Morris?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, the homeless kid hanging out in the alley downtown.” He said as if a lightbulb went off in his head. “What about him?” I explained that Che introduced us so that The Village could help, and then told him Frankie’s story, I left my opinions and hypothesis’ out of it and just gave him the facts as I knew them. “Holy shit, Frankie Morris is Samuel Willis?! Are you sure?! That kid disappeared around thirteen years ago and had the whole damn state looking for him.”

“Well, that’s what he told me. What else do you know about it?”

“Well, I got the file here” he said as he read through the facts in front of him. “His father came home from work to find their trailer burned to the ground; his wife’s car was burned along with it. They lived kind of out there in the middle of nowhere and the fire wasn’t reported until the flames had pretty much destroyed the place. At first, they thought the wife and kid were burned up in the fire, but they never found the bodies.”

“Holy shit” I involuntarily said under my breath as I listened to the drama unfold.

“Let’s see” he said as he continued to scroll the information in front of him. “It looks like the father was convinced the mother tried to fake their deaths and blew town with the kid… they were apparently having some marital problems, and he claimed the mother was unstable.” He continued to peruse through the file. “Damn, looks like they put out Amber Alerts from Virginia to Georgia but never found them.”

“So, they closed the case?” I asked.

“They never really close missing children cases until they’re found, so the case is considered cold, but technically still open.”

“Where’s his father?”

“There’s a phone number here, but it’s from over ten years ago and there’s no new address” he said with a sigh, “I need to turn this over to the detectives, maybe they can track him down if he’s even still alive. Seth, if Frankie is Samuel Willis, this aint just gonna be a shit storm… it’s gonna be a got dang shit hurricane. They’re definitely gonna want to talk to Frankie asap.”

“Shit, the kid’s got enough issues to deal with” I said as I exhaled.

“He’ll be fine, legally I mean. There might be some emotional hell to deal with, but he didn’t do anything wrong. His mother on the other hand, there aint no statute of limitations on child abduction or arson. The DA’s Office will want to press charges.” He was like a bloodhound on the trail of his prey. “Where is Frankie now?”

“We moved him into an apartment upstairs and he’s working across the street at the BroMax Candle Company” I replied.

“Well, you need to go talk to him and let him know what we learned while I talk to the detectives. Tell him we need to talk to him and have him call me today” Officer Booth mandated.

“Okay, I ‘ll go see him now” We ended the call discussing details and next steps, this was going to get messy. I hung up the phone and immediately called Zach, he listened intently.

“Holy shit, this is serious” he said in disbelief, I could hear him scratching down some notes. “He’s gonna need a lawyer, I’ll meet you at The candle plant and we can talk to him together, I need about twenty minutes to finish some things here.” Zach said going into action, I was glad he was jumping in, I was in over my head on this one.

This could put The Village in the middle of a shit storm, so, I decided to loop Max in and then called an emergency board meeting for late afternoon. I included Chip, he was in St Louis and handled all the PR for The Village. I feared a media shit storm was about to hit and wanted the Village to be prepared, and insulated from the fallout as much as possible. Before I left for Bromax Candle Company, I updated Rodney and BA so they were prepared if the shit hit the fan.

“I remember that story” BA said as I told her about Samuel Willis. “That place aint far from me and Daddy, it was just a pile of ashes, and for the first couple of days it was like a memorial with people comin’ around to pray for the mother and son that supposedly died in the fire. The firemen said somebody torched the place with gasoline, and at first all eyes were on the father. But then when there weren’t no bodies, people started flappin’ their gums about the mother havin’ an affair or some such gossip and takin’ the kid and fleein’. They even put out an Amber Alert all over the south. Nobody knew what to believe, but hail, it sounds like the rumors were true.” The whole thing sounded so… so sensational. Before I left to go over to BroMax, BA and Rodney promised to organize the emergency board meeting for 3:00. That gave me an hour with Frankie.

I headed over to the candle plant, by the time I said all my hellos, Zach had arrived. I told Ricky I needed to talk to Frankie and he pulled him off the line. Che wanted to know what was going on, but I wasn’t about to share anything until we knew more, I finally got him to back off. He was very protective of Frankie.

The three of us went into Max’s office to talk. “Frankie, this is my husband, Zach. He’s a lawyer and is here to help us through this.

Frankie looked at me in total confusion mixed with a little fear, “am… um… am I in trouble? Did I do something wrong?”

“Not at all, but I followed up on your story to try to find your dad” I said. “And we found out some things about your mother.”

He was in total shock as I filled him in, all he said was, “I knew it. I knew my dad didn’t hate me” then the scrawny little guy broke down in tears, all I could do was comfort him.

“You had no clue about any of this?” Zach asked.

It took a minute or two before he spoke again. “None of it ever made sense to me, but my mom just shut me down whenever I brought it up. I didn’t have any real internet access except for the school library until I got my smartphone when I went to college. I saw something about the fire and stuff, but the woman’s name was April Willis, I just assumed it was someone else, I just knew her as Mom when I was a kid, then she was Marnie. And I mean it’s crazy… right? It’s all too crazy to be real. Right? Why would I think it was us?” He asked trying to make sense of it. “She’s always been a little crazy, but what the fuck? She burned the place down and tried to fake our deaths? My poor dad must’ve been devastated.” Then his eyes popped open, “do they know where my dad is?!!”

“Not yet. They have an old phone number; the detectives are following up” Zach responded. “I’d like to represent you, and go with you to talk to the police, is that okay?”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Not you, but your mother will be and you’re going to be in the middle of it all. There’s no statute of limitations on child abduction or arson. If your story pans out, I’m guessing the DA will file charges and have here extradited from Florida… I’m not going to lie to you, you’re going to find yourself in the eye of the storm pretty damn quick.”

“We’ll have your back” I assured. “We’ll make sure you’re safe at Harrington House.”

It was clear that he was having trouble processing all this, Frankie reluctantly agreed to let Zach represent him and signed the representation agreement. We were all behind him. Frankie called Officer Booth from Max’s office with Zach and I at his side, they assigned a detective to the case and wanted Frankie to come to the station ASAP. We cleared it with Ricky, then Zach and Frankie headed to the precinct and I headed to the board meeting (Sans Zach) to ready The Village for the storm.

Frankie’s Perspective

They said I wasn’t in any trouble, but it didn’t feel that way. I was riding with some lawyer, on my way to the police station to talk to a detective… okay, the lawyer was gay and hot, but still. The guy tried to talk to me on the ride over, but I was quiet, I was still in shock over what they told me. The story wasn’t new to me, but accepting it as my own was.  I mean I had seen the story online when I was searching for my dad, but I would just pass it by as irrelevant, there was no way that could be us… right? I mean c’mon, my mom was a little crazy, and could be mean as hell, but burn down her own home, fake our death’s and then kidnap me? No way in hell. Right? It’s not like my dad was mean to her, or beat her, or anything like that, in fact I remembered it being the other way around. He was a thoughtful guy, always good to her, but it was never enough… in her mind he couldn’t do anything right. I was young and didn’t remember too much, but I did remember her always yelling at him for something, I even remembered her hitting him a few times, but he would never hit her back.

There was this one time we were at a pool party at someone’s house, I think it was my dad’s sister…my aunt.  I was so young; I don’t really remember. I know my dad had a lot of family around, but I don’t really remember any of them anymore. Anyway, my dad brought my mom a plate of food (he was always doing stuff for), he brought her something she didn’t like and she went off on him in front of everybody. She smacked the plate out of his hands and the food went all over the place, then she started yelling at him… something like ‘you should know I don’t like potato salad, you pussy’(she always called him that word). It was something minor and stupid, and he was just trying to be nice. Then she slapped his face and walked away. I remember him kneeling and cleaning up the mess, I was only four, but I helped him.

My dad used to take me on errands and stuff in his old pickup truck, now that I look back, he was probably just trying to keep me away from her. She hated when me and dad did stuff together. My dad loved me, my mom hated us both… it always felt like that. Well, one day she picked me up from kindergarten in a strange car and told me my dad didn’t want to see me anymore and we were moving to Florida. I begged her to let me say goodbye to my dad, she just kept telling me he didn’t want to see me. I was only four but knew it was a lie. Anyway, we moved in with her new boyfriend, she changed her name to Marnie and started calling me Frankie, then she married her boyfriend and we took his last name. We moved around a lot at first, then settled in the swamplands of Florida. I hated it! There were no other kids around, no internet, nothing to do. I would sit in the back yard and read, but I was always on gator alert… they were everywhere (as I thought through all this, it occurred to me that I had lived in fear of some kind ever since we left my dad). By the time I was ten I had read every book in the little run down house. I remember my stepbrother Parker would come down for a few weeks during the summer when he was younger, I loved Parker! No, no, that’s not right, I idolized Parker. He was the only other kid around, and he was way smarter than Gary or my mom. He brought books with him and left them for me when he went home. He was athletic, cute, and everybody like him, Gary was much more bearable when he was around, nice even. He would even take us to do stuff like fishing, or mini golf like a real dad. Parker called me ‘Champ’, and made me feel like one. He looked out for me when he was there and kept me away from Mom and Gary, he was only a couple of years older than me but he seemed way older. He was supposed to come see us the summer he turned sixteen, he was going to drive his own car down and I couldn’t wait! I imagined all the places we could go in his car… and just get away. But he never came, he decided he didn’t want to spend time with his dad. Gary was pissed and took it out on me. Parker called me that summer to apologize, that made me feel important, but it still sucked. That was the last time I heard from him.

Anyway, Parker was an awesome guy and Gary loved to rub that in my face and remind me what a loser I was. Once Gary called me a piece of shit, and said I should be more like Parker, because ‘he’s a great kid.’ I barked back, “Of course he is. That’s because his mother raised him and kept him away from you!” Well… when I gained consciousness, my face was covered in dried blood and I had a concussion from hitting my head on the floor when I fell. All my mom said about it was ‘you know better than to flap your gums… you got what you deserved.’ From that day forward I just avoided them both as much as I could. One of my guidance counselors at school helped me get accepted into FSU and get financial aid… they even help me get a partial scholarship. She knew my parents and did her best to help me get away from them; a couple of my teachers and the Principal all helped me too. They helped me fill out college applications, apply for aid, they even bought me breakfast or lunch some days. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know if I would’ve survived high school much less got into college. They made sure I had a chance… and then I blew it. I was so happy to be free and kinda lost control, I guess. I was making friends, partying, I was even hooking up with guys and finally being me (I never came out to Mom and Gary, not that they’d give a shit. I could probably fuck a guy right in front of them and they wouldn’t have even notice I was there. They just ignored me). Anyway, when my grades started to drop, I started to feel lonely and hopeless, and just stopped going to classes all together, Seth (the guy at The Village who has been helping me) said I was dealing with depression… I don’t know much about it, but he was probably right. He was a smart guy. Speaking of Seth, the hot lawyer driving me to the police station was his husband Zach, he snapped me out of my head.

“So, what are you thinkin’ over there?” He asked. I just shrugged. “C’mon, talk to me… if you don’t talk, I’m gonna blast my daughters Frozen Soundtrack for the rest of the ride. I chuckled a little, he smiled back at me… damn that smile. He really was hot, I thought about him and Seth together for a spit second… damn. I shook my head a little to get rid of the dirty thoughts.

“What’s gonna happen at the police station?” I asked.

“Well, they’re going to ask you to tell your story, then they’ll probably ask you about a million questions” Zach answered, then he looked my way and said, “this is a huge deal. Do you understand that?”

I just stared at him. No. No I didn’t really understand that. Shit, I was accusing my mother and stepfather of kidnapping… and arson too. ‘Oh shit! Should I really do this?’ I asked myself. ‘Or is it going to happen whether I like it or not?’ I thought to myself. “Can I stop this if I want to?” I asked out loud.

Zach sighed, “not really. The genie is out of the bottle, the cops and the DA’s office are looking into it and will probably pursue this whether you cooperate or not.”

“You’re my lawyer, that’s what the I signed said, right?” I asked, he responded with a yes. “I need lawyer advice. Should I talk to the police? What should I do? Can I go back to the apartment? Do I have to do this?” I was panicking.

“It’s okay, Frankie. Take a deep breath” Zach said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But my mom did. She’s gonna go to jail and it’s all my fault” I was freaking out, then I had a terrifying thought, “what if they arrest her and she gets off?! Her and Gary will come after me!”

Zach pulled into the parking lot of the police station and parked. He turned to me, took my hand, and said. “It is not your fault that your mother burned down your home and kidnapped you. That’s all on her, sooner or later it was bound to catch up with her. This is not your fault.” He paused, then said, “Hey, are you listening to me? This is not your fault. You asked for ‘lawyer advice,’ I advise you to tell your story, answer their questions honestly. We will all protect you.” He could see I was still freaking out. “Hopefully you’ll be reunited with your dad. Would that be worth it?”

That was a huge question: ‘is reuniting with my father worth turning against my mother and sending her to prison?’Maybe I’m a bad person for thinking this way… but yeah. Yeah, it was. I loved my dad and if what they say is true, sheripped us apart. Neither of us had a say in any of it. She was wrong. She did this, not me.

“You don’t have to talk to the detective, but that won’t change things. If she did it, they’ll go after her regardless” Zach said.

I took a deep breath, “I’m ready. Let’s go in.” We walked through the parking lot and into the police station. I took a seat on a bench against the wall in the lobby while Zach talked to somebody standing at a reception desk behind glass (it was probably bulletproof). An Officer came out of the back and talked to Zach, I recognized him, he was the cop that found me in the alley with Che the other night. The two men walked over to me.

The officer put his hand on my shoulder and said, “you clean up nice, son. You look good. I hear Seth and his crew are giving you a helping hand.”

“Yes sir” I said.

“Thank you for coming down to talk to us. You seem nervous, there’s no need to be, son. We’re here for you. We’re on the same team.”  Officer Andy said, then he led us down a long hallway and into a small gray room with no windows, his hand on my shoulder the whole time. There were two detectives in the room sitting at the table waiting for us, they stood and introduced themselves, then Zach and I sat across the table from them while Officer Booth paced around the room and I told my story.

I started with my oldest memories, then I told them about my mom picking me up from school that day, etc. My lawyer was right, they asked me a million questions and tried to poke holes in everything, they weren’t against me, they were just trying to get their facts straight and build a solid case. After about an hour of questioning they let me go, thanked me for my help, and told me they’d be in touch, they both gave me their cards so I could call if I had questions or remembered anything else. They also promised that they would try to track down my dad. For the first time in well over a decade I was hopeful that I would see him again.

When we got in the car and shut the doors, Zach praised me, “You did good in there. How do you feel?”

“I feel like I did something wrong. She’s going to jail, isn’t she?”

“Probably” Zach answered.

“What about Gary?”

“It depends on whether the DA decides he’s an accomplice or not… but based on your story, probably” Zach was very calm and straight forward with me. I trusted him, I guess I trusted Seth too.

“Frankie, she’s going to jail because she burned down your home and kidnapped you… she did that. Not you. He was right.

To be continued…