Nine Lives (3 page)

What they didn’t realize is that for kids—teens anyway—rules like the Ten Commandments are more like dares. At least that’s how I see it. I’d bet you ten bucks it’s how Faith and Sadie see it too. That’s why they’re my favorite sisters. Sure, we fight sometimes—mostly over guys—but at least they understand me and accept me for who I am. They also accept Tyler. They walk away when Mom starts with her “what would a thirty-year-old want with a sixteen-year-old? You’re barely a junior in high school, Laina,” rants.

I wish you could hear the way she says my name. It adds flavor to it and sounds, to me, like nails on a chalkboard. “Layyyyyy-na.” When I do change my name, it’s going to be Apryl. Why the weird spelling? Let’s just say I’m passive aggressive, or can be. I figure using a y instead of an i will give her what she needs to “Apryyyyyyyyl” me for the rest of my life. ’Cause I wouldn’t want too much to change, you know? Ha! Kidding.

Seriously, though, I’m changing my name for a really simple and fun reason. I’ll give you three guesses. Two don’t count…Wrong! I’m changing my name to Apryl because April is the month Tyler was born. And the real reason for the y is because it’s not Tiler. It’s Tyler. And someday, I’m going to be Mrs. Tyler Kingsley. I think Apryl Kingsley has a good ring to it, don’t you?

Does anyone else think it’s a tad hypocritical that my parents have a problem with me marrying Tyler? If Hope was born when Mom was seventeen, it means she and I’m-Jesus-2.0-Dad-And-Can-Do-No-Wrong were screwing when she was sixteen too. So, ’cause they were stupid enough to get knocked up, they got to get married? I just don’t get it. I mean, if it’s what I have to do, I’ll do it. Tyler would be a great father—will be—someday. All they had to do was sign a consent that I could marry Tyler and none of this would have happened.

Dad would still be home, dreaming up some new business venture sure to fail. Faith’s arms wouldn’t look like cutting boards. Sadie might have some chance of ever speaking to Mom again, and Mom wouldn’t be spending her weekends carting poor, innocent Mary to Rochester to see Dad in a visiting room chock full of rapists, murderers, and pedophiles.

I guess everyone makes their choices. For them? Well, I guess hypocrisy was worth it in the name of preserving the perfect public image. I just wonder how they feel about the family name and image now. You can’t get on the Internet without seeing his face—thin-lipped and worn—and the headline:

Local Business Owner Sentenced to Three Consecutive Terms for Nine Counts of Aggravated Felonious Sexual Assault on Minors.

Nope. I refuse to feel bad about it. Not today anyway. They made their choices, and me and Faith made ours. We had to get out of that cult, and that wasn’t going to happen with Dad in the picture. It just wasn’t. You’re gonna have to trust me on that.

Chapter Two

A House Divided

Hope

I can’t go home now. I’m a mother of five myself. I feel pulled in two directions. I want to be home, supporting Mom through Laina and Faith’s lies. I can’t imagine what Mom’s going through, trying to keep it together for Mary and Jeremiah. Imagine being stuck in a house with two teenagers who used every ploy they could think of to destroy a family? I don’t know how she’s holding it together. Well, besides the Church. Besides her faith.

I want to be there for the appeal hearing. To let Dad see that I know he’d never do anything to hurt any of us. I want them to know that I, their oldest child and daughter, honor them. I cannot understand what Laina and Faith are thinking, or why they did this.

There are so many reasons I can’t go back. For starters, there are the practical concerns. David, my husband, says we just can’t afford another trip to New York. I know he’s right, but it doesn’t mean I’m not tempted to book a flight anyway. We’ve spent so much traveling back and forth to testify. First, there was the adjudication hearing. We weren’t even allowed in the room for that. Imagine that? All those miles and thousands of dollars to be there to support our father and we were told we weren’t “a party to the case.” If family isn’t a party to the case, who is? The reporters who took pictures of my father walking in and out of the courthouse during his trial? The people who work for the state who believed my sisters and did everything in their power to make sure that Dad was locked up? I can’t even think about the criminal side. It makes me physically sick, and I’ve done enough vomiting this week.

Another reason I’m better off in Iowa is that I’m not sure how I’d face Laina and Faith, or even Sadie. The last time I was there, for the trial, David and I stayed at Grandma’s. There’s no way I could have looked either of them in the eye without screaming. And that’s not the right thing to do. I try to remind myself that even though they are liars, they are my sisters, and I do—did—love them. There has to be a reason for all of this. I just have no idea what it is, and I refuse to believe the reason is as simple as two boys named Tyler and Hunter.

If it isn’t unjust enough that my father was thrown in jail for a minimum of ten years for crimes he did not commit, try this on. My sisters? The ones who claim were his victims for a period of about ten years themselves? Well, they didn’t have to go to that trial. Nope. Instead, me—Hope—Jada, and Noelle had to take the stand and testify. Poor Noelle even had to go through a forensic interview because she’d been living in the house close to the time of the last allegation. We told them, over and over and over, that our father never touched us. That we couldn’t imagine him doing such a thing. That pedophiles don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere. That we would have known. That jury? They didn’t listen. They just fell for Faith’s fake tears on her Child Advocacy Center interview and decided that was enough for them. And the things she claimed he did? Unmentionable! I don’t know how my mother even sat through it all. And my father? Well, that just shows you the kind of man he is. I don’t think he’s even mad at my sisters. More worried than anything. He really is a lovely man, just like my David.

My parents and my family were never perfect. I am by no means trying to imply that they were. If you ask my mother, she’s happy to tell you she’s no Virgin Mary or Mother Theresa. She’s had her share of problems and sins. But she goes to confession regularly, on Wednesdays. Eleven in the morning. I used to go with her. Sometimes, I think Mom believes she’s paying for her sins. That this is some strange kind of payback for having had premarital sex and gotten pregnant with me. I’ve got a real problem with that. I can’t imagine how many times she’s confessed and been forgiven for that. She was only a kid, for goodness sake. And look what a great job she did! My parents are still together—even now—nine children later. They’ve been married, what, thirty-one years now? You can’t argue with that. Not even my grandfather can argue with that. And he, of course, wasn’t too fond of my father after Mom turned up pregnant.

I often wonder what Dad thinks drove them to do this. I know he thinks he was too strict. In our house, we weren’t allowed most electronic devices and had really strict rules around dating and curfews. We didn’t go to public schools because Mom and Dad didn’t want us being negatively influenced by peers. Instead, our social opportunities and connections came through kids involved with the church and church community. Is that really such a bad thing? I mean, I homeschool my kids. Does that mean that somehow my husband deserves to someday rot in jail because my daughters are pissed that they didn’t get to go to prom? I don’t think so!

I do worry a lot. I never did before. I know the kind of man David is. It’s scary to think your teenagers can get angry with you, march into a police station, and make any kind of allegation they want. It’s scarier to think that I could be out grocery shopping for a family cookout—like Mom was—and come home to find that my husband has been arrested and the state has taken legal supervision of all the minors left in the home. That an investigation has begun and that the best thing a mother can—and should—do is get a good divorce and family court lawyer. Talk about your life changing from out of nowhere. You start your day in the deli section, ordering cold cuts for your husband’s lunch. You end it in a bondsman’s office—somewhere you never thought you’d be. It’s just not right.

I’m currently expecting my sixth child. I know this sounds terrible, but I hope it’s a boy. Normally I wish for girls. But this time? I feel like a boy is safer. I can’t imagine Joseph or Jeremiah ever doing anything to hurt our family. Joseph is too much like my father and Jeremiah—well, he’s ten—so I guess you never know. I’m not due for another seven months, and I’m hoping my father’s defense attorney can put an end to all this nonsense well before then. I’m praying, every day and every night—even on my knees—that somehow, some way, people realize what Laina and Faith have done. I can’t imagine how it will feel for only Mom to show up to meet my new baby. With all the others, Dad’s been the first to hold them. The look of joy and pride in his eyes almost makes the pains of labor worth it. Dad’s always loved babies. He’s just that way. From the minute they are born, he’s busy setting up funds and investments for their future. They never last, the investments. It’s the thought that counts, and Dad’s heart is always in the right place. “I want to give them the world, Hope,” he says. “I want to be able to do more for my grandchildren than I could for you kids.” It’s silly. At my age, and after having all these kids, I shouldn’t need my parents there every time a new one comes out. But it does matter—to me, anyway.

David, an incurable optimist, says that this will all work out. He says God is testing the family, and he’s another one who isn’t even angry with Faith and Laina. Maybe it’s a man thing. Maybe they are afraid to be mad at them. I’m really not sure. David thinks there’s some lesson in this for us all to learn. When we pray together at night, he quotes Bible scripture. I’m trying to believe. I’m trying to keep my faith close. But the reality is that it’s slipping away every day. I can’t help but wonder how there’s even a God when this is happening. I question just how many fathers and grandfathers are sitting in prison as soon-to-be registered sex offenders with their businesses and lives ruined, when their biggest crime was love?

There’s something I bet Laina didn’t mention. Laina likes to leave out the details of just how much hurt she and Faith have caused the family. It’s convenient to only think of her side of things. In ninety days, Mom is going to lose the house. My grandparents are trying to help, but between attorney fees and Dad being locked up, Mom’s losing ground on the bills quickly. You can only sell so many squash before you have to make some pretty quick and very real changes economically. She’s still got four mouths to feed besides her own. I wonder how Laina and Faith will feel squished into a tiny subsidized housing unit? I’ll have to go to confession for this, but I hope they are miserable. And I wish Sadie could get squished right in there too. My sisters will still have more space in a tiny place like that than my father will in his cell.

I’ve asked Mom to move here, to the Midwest, for a new start. It would never happen. She wants to be near Dad, and I can’t blame her. Frankly, I’m glad she declined. We don’t have room for five more bodies and I can’t see myself sharing the same living space as the Nelson-bomb-detonators otherwise known as my sisters. Every time I think of them, my mind instantly jumps to the same question: Why?

I’ve ruled out drugs. I know they’ve experimented. I know Tyler has a long history of substance abuse. But aside from a few pain killers, Laina’s tested clean. Faith’s gotten into Xanax here and there, but nothing much either. She’s more interested in cutting her skin to pieces. I think she does it out of guilt. I know I’d want to hurt myself if I destroyed so many lives for no real reason. I’ll have to confess this later too, but so what? You know what I secretly hope? I hope those cuts she makes for attention leave big nasty scars. Because that’s what she’s doing to our hearts. She’s going to kill them. Both of them. Our parents are great people and they don’t deserve this. And the system? It’s as messed up as my sisters. It will support Faith and hold her hand through it all. Yeah, it’s a good thing David said no to another trip to New York right now. I don’t think I could trust myself around either one of them.

Chapter Three

Broken Hearts

Heather

I lie awake at night trying to figure out where Thomas and I went wrong. I know things got off to a rocky start. We were just kids. Young, in love. Is that really such a bad thing? Sure, we should have waited. I’m still paying for that, and I’m okay with that. But how could I ever think of Hope as a mistake? Now, she’s one of my best friends; the best decision I ever made. It all worked out in the end, right? We have—had—a happy family.

I tried to do things the right way. Every night, I made sure there was a healthy meal on the table. I cut up fresh vegetables and found new and exciting ways to cook them. Tom made sure we all sat at the table and ate together. We played little games. After prayer, we’d go around the table asking each kid about the best part and worst parts of their days. For a decade—more—we repeated this every night. We laughed and played games together. We coached the kids in recreational soccer, basketball, and even learned field hockey for Jada. We made sure they had friends—appropriate ones—and taught them right from wrong. We didn’t homeschool them to isolate them, the way Laina and Faith see it. We wanted to protect them and keep our family bond strong.

No one could believe it when they finally heard the news of Tom’s conviction. For months, before the story broke in the papers, neighbors and people at church asked questions. They wondered why we drove separate cars to church or why they hadn’t seen Tom around in the yard. I’m sure they wondered why the grass was up to Mary’s tummy, unless Joseph had been by, and why we never bothered to take down the Christmas lights on the roof. I guess the one blessing of living in a world where pretty much everyone gets divorced is that separations aren’t really all that rare. I’m sure they figured we were just having tough times and things would return to normal soon. I’m sure they prayed for us. We are very lucky to have our church community. I can’t express that enough. Even though they are beginning to doubt us—me—now.

Those were the hardest times, when Tom was out on bond and awaiting trial. He lived with a deacon from the church, court ordered to stay away from the home and life we built together. His only ability to see Mary and Jeremiah was through supervised visitations at a visitation center. It broke his heart. Jeremiah would ask when he was coming home and why they had to be inside for visits. I don’t know how he handled it. Back then, I wasn’t even able to talk about the case with the girls or Jeremiah. I could get charged with witness tampering if I asked my own daughters why they were doing this. And they knew it. DCYF had told them, insisted even. “If your mother mentions anything about the case, please let us know,” they’d said. I walked on tiptoes all those months. If they could make up lies about Tom, they could do the same to me and I would lose Jeremiah and Mary and any chance of helping Tom. Sometimes, I wonder why they didn’t do it to me. They’d have had their way, their escape. Both of us would have been locked up inside prisons. Instead, I’m their hostage on the outside.

When I visit, I’m allowed to purchase tokens. Little plastic chips like the kind they talk about using in Alcoholics Anonymous. Worth nothing. Worth everything. You cash chips in for an instant picture with “your inmate, ma’am.” I currently have four pictures with “my inmate” from the rare visits we’ve had together since his incarceration. They hang on the fridge as a constant reminder of where Tom is. The girls open the refrigerator without even noticing. At least Jeremiah notices.

“My inmate” is also my husband. I want to scream it at them but I know better. No one seems to remember that we are married when they tell us we can only touch for hellos and goodbyes.

More rules I want to break but don’t. The last time I broke a rule, I was Laina’s age. I’m tired of doing everything “the right way.” Look where it’s gotten me. But I can’t do anything to risk a visit. It kills me every time I have to take off my wedding band to get through the metal detector to see him. I’m forty-eight years old. If he does his full sentences consecutively, I’ll be seventy-eight when he is finally free. He will be eighty. There are murderers, guilty ones, who are out in less than ten. With the way he’s already aging in there, the truth is that he won’t get out at all. Not on his own two feet. And for what? Because our daughters hate us for having rules? Welcome to the club. Rules are for everyone. Grow up. Try following rules when you’re a grandma of a dozen. It never ends.

Lately, I try not to think about the future much. I spend my days homeschooling Jeremiah—not an easy task with a kid who is more like a Mexican jumping bean—and playing with Mary. She’s learning to read and is great with numbers. She can write her name and asks about her father daily. The evil side of me loves when she asks about him while Laina or Faith are in earshot. It somehow makes me feel better for them to know they’ve broken Mary’s heart too. I’m not a perfect person, not even close. Not a perfect mother either.

I don’t know what Tom thinks about when he’s alone at night. Does he think about the future? What future? For now, they have him segregated in a wing for “high risk” inmates. That’s code for high risk of being hurt, raped, beaten, or killed. Sex offenders—I hate that term when it comes to him because it’s simply not true!—are “high risk,” they say. The lawyers say they can’t keep him there forever. Eventually, he’ll have to move into general population twenty-four hours a day, but not until the appeal is complete. That’s when it will get even more dangerous. If it’s really true, I’ll pray the appeal takes twenty years, just to keep him safe. I can’t have him any more hurt than he is. Is that even possible?

He says prison is never quiet and that may be a good thing. It’s harder to think when your thoughts are constantly interrupted by banging and shouting. For every tear I cry, I can only imagine that his heart cries even more. But he won’t show it. He never has. He puts his energy into doing his best to listen to me. He gave everything to our family and this is what he gets in return.

Tom taught the kids that respect is earned. He earned my respect in 1984. I’ll never forget the fear I felt in telling him I was expecting our first child. I’m not sure what I thought he would do. I even offered to get an abortion, something I don’t even believe in. One of the biggest regrets of my life, that offer though. Something I still try to make peace with. I guess I should have known he wouldn’t want that. But I certainly didn’t expect a twenty-year-old kid to instantly jump into the role of a man. That’s what he did though. My parents like to think they somehow forced him to marry me. That’s something many people don’t know about Tom. Tom doesn’t do what Tom doesn’t want to do. Period.

At one point, I begged him to take a plea agreement. With that, he could have been out in five years. He said he would rather die in prison than admit to doing something he would never do. He said he had to look himself and God in the eye and lying at a time like this wasn’t going to help him do that. He said there was a lesson to learn in all of this, somewhere. He still believes that.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons, but I don’t think they are the kind he meant. I’ve learned that you can give someone the world, and for no reason other than selfishness, they can spit it right back in your face. I know that love won’t pay the bills. Neither will justice or innocence. I now know that family isn’t defined by blood; it’s defined by those who love, support, and defend you when you are at your weakest. I’ve come to understand that you can be on your knees begging, pleading, and even trying to bargain with God and he won’t necessarily answer your prayers. I’m trying to believe that there’s a bigger plan and that a miracle is about to happen, if only we can hold on. I’m failing. I haven’t even been to church for three days. Soon, people will start to talk. Or worse, they’ll visit, in the name of checking up on me.

Apparently, there’s still much more to learn. Caseworker after caseworker has come into my home trying to teach me lessons—a different type of check-up. They come armed with parenting assessments, skills sheets, and mediation agreements. They ask endless hypothetical questions about what I would do in various parenting situations. The average caseworker is younger than Hope and likely has never parented a child over the age of three. I can feel their judgments. Some will come right out and say it. “I think, Mrs. Nelson, you need to realize that your girls are very hurt. You are traumatizing them more by not believing them. Can’t you just pretend to believe your own daughters?” or “What would it be like for you if you went to your mother at age fifteen and told her something like this and she didn’t believe you? Can you imagine how you’d feel?” I fumble for answers, watching Laina and Faith out of the corner of my eye. Their lips are turned up, just slightly, in a way only a mother would notice.

A mother can’t notice everything, at least not this one. If I was a better mother, I would have noticed Laina and Faith slowly falling apart well before things ever got this bad. In the end, I do blame myself for all that’s happened. If I’d done something more, or something different when Sadie got involved with Slash, her sisters might be okay now.

It’s not that we didn’t try. Tom called the local police department dozens of times, asking why it’s okay for a thirty-year-old man to be sleeping with a minor. In New York, sixteen is the age of consent. Police told us there wasn’t anything they could do about it. These are the same police who later arrested Tom for a crime he didn’t commit. Criminal justice at its finest, ladies and gentlemen. My Tom wasn’t taking no for an answer. He tried to get Slash arrested for interfering with parental responsibilities, endangerment of a minor, and a variety of other things. He and Noelle spent hours looking up laws that might help us put an end to that relationship long before Sadie finally ran away to be with Slash. Nothing worked. Frustrated that we were legally responsible for Sadie but not given any legal leverage to stop her from doing pretty much anything she wanted, we lived with white knuckles and gray hair for a year. With our attention on her, Tom missed a lot of time at work and finances got tight. We stopped paying attention to Laina and Faith. We didn’t notice or realize that our younger daughters were watching every move Sadie made and learning lessons of their own.

When Laina first started acting up, it was just little things. Hiding pay-by-the-month, untraceable phones in her room. A secret Facebook page under the name of Apryl something or other. A cigarette here. A condom there. I knew something was up. But I never caught her sneaking out or with alcohol until Sadie finally left. Unwilling to lose another daughter in the same way, Tom and I came down hard—too hard—on Laina and Faith. If I could do things over again, that’s something I’d change. Had I allowed them to have Facebook accounts or go out together or in groups with boys their age, maybe this could have been prevented. I’ve learned that even when you think you’re protecting your children, you can actually be hurting them.

For all the mistakes we made, none were ever intentional or aimed at hurting the girls. I wish they could understand that. Maybe they will, someday. We wanted them to have bright futures. I spent hours customizing lesson plans geared at their interests. I had Laina in every theater and art group you could think of, driving sixty miles three days a week to get her to and from art, music, and voice lessons. With Faith, I worked out a deal with a neighbor to get her free riding lessons and barn time with her favorite mare. It should have been a red flag when Faith stopped asking to go to 4H club events and Laina sold her guitar. I still have no idea what she spent the money on. Probably drugs for Tyler.

Tonight, I’m working on lesson plans for Jeremiah. I find that keeping my focus on him helps a lot. He likes to burn energy. Last week, I bought him a trampoline. We’re going to make it a lesson on physics. I know it’s silly, really. I have bigger fish to fry when it comes to money. Tom says I should be saving and making sure the mortgage gets paid on time. But what Tom doesn’t know—because it would kill him—is that the house is already a lost cause. I figure it’s important that Jeremiah and Mary get as much quality time with a yard of their own in the next ninety days as possible. God knows if they will ever have it again. I don’t even like to think about where we will live next.

One of the social workers gave me an application for subsidized low-income apartments. I have a real problem with the idea of living off of the state. It’s bad enough how much money we’ve taken from my parents, trying to stay afloat. Lawyers cost us more than $80,000 and we still lost the case. This will sound horrible—God forgive me—but I also worry about the other kids that will be in those places. It makes me nervous who Jeremiah will hang around with. We’ve had enough outside influences for ten lifetimes.

I’ve looked into getting a nursing aide’s license. But the course costs $900. That’s about $672 more than I currently have in the checking account. I could throw it on a credit card, but I’m not sure maxing everything out is a smart idea either. Tom took care of all the finances for the last twenty years. I’m so lost it’s not even funny. My son-in-law David has offered to help. But with him all the way in Iowa, it’s not really convenient. Maybe I’ll ask Joseph. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. My issue with that is that when he sees what’s going on, he’ll worry. He’s always been a worrier, just like his father. When he was nine, he was the only kid in our crew afraid to ride the roller coaster. “What if it breaks, Mom?” he’d ask, begging his siblings not to get in line.