Left for Garbage

loved and working as a cop, a job I also thought I loved. Then I got lucky and broke my leg for the first time. That incident was while I was chasing a perp. To make a long story short, I ended up in the hospital in traction and a young nurse came in, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and she changed my life completely. It was like I was in a movie.
    I believed her when she told me I was unsatisfied working at a dangerous job that had ended me up in tractio n. Certainly I’d thought I was happy there but Margaret made me understand it differently, same with my marriage to Beth-ann. Within six months I was divorced and no longer working for the County Sheriff’s department as a deputy. I had listened when she said I needed to make more money.
    Of course at first it didn’t go so well , in fact it ended up with me breaking my father’s arm after I went to work for him. We had an argument that got physical and I threw him through the plate glass window at his office and he fell badly and hit the sidewalk and broke his arm, and even pressed assault charges, which Margaret, thankfully, talked him into dropping later, but I’ve been sick over it since. Well, all of this happened over twenty years ago.
    Our move to Florida came about a year later , after I lost the garage I’d started and we were evicted from our house. My dad forgave me, as he and my mother moved here a few years later to retire, and we exchange Christmas cards and stuff regularly.
    I guess , looking back, what Margaret must’ve seen in me was that I was the kind of fellow she could easily influence, maybe even bully, because as she is the first to point out, I’ve been a bigger financial failure than she could have ever imagined.
    I ended up doing some stupid things, but I always loved my family and would take a bullet for any one of them, any day, any time, and maybe because they know that about me, I’ve been their target when it comes down to individual self-survival.
    Margaret won’t admit or recognize, even to this day in the midst of our greatest family tragedy, that she raised Denise to be a bully, too. I love my daughter but her mood swings and her sense of privilege without having worked as hard as Margaret, or really having accomplished anything at all, have to be learned traits when you come down to it.
    Now , I’m upfront about my somewhat failed career choices but I’ve always held down a job, except for the times I’ve been in traction, as I tend to be fairly unlucky in the leg department. But I’ve never been too proud or too lazy to work, and work hard, for minimum wage. On the other hand, Denise’s longest career success is that she managed to fake having a job for close to two years. In fact, during the time she wasn’t working at Universal, she told us she was working a second job at Sports Authority. You’ve got to hand it to her, she was getting all this admiration from Margaret for working not one but two jobs. In fact Margaret used to hold up Denise’s career accomplishments to me as an example I should follow. In my own defense, at least I actually had the one job I claimed to have, though maybe I should have said I was the President instead, because it seems to me Margaret appreciates big lies more than small victories. Small is not good.
    Anyway , during the time we thought she was out working and becoming successful, she was out partying and shopping on our dime. Dare I say this next thought? If blame were to be issued for Deeley’s death, then I don’t think it’s totally Denise’s fault. Death … there, I’ve said it, and its out and now I’ve gotten that word out of the way.
    Nearly four months after what would have been Deeley’s third birthday , and just weeks before Christmas, we learned of Deeley’s death. What was left of her was found in the woods down the street from us. It’s all a blur but I do recall when they came and issued all the new search warrants, and how the police once again invaded our home to tear apart everything inside and out that we’d just repaired or cleaned up from the last time. This time, they even had a warrant for Deeley’s hairbrush.
    Margaret, in one of her fits of denial , or maybe I’m kidding myself, maybe it was just a straight cover-up attempt, had given them Denise’s hairbrush instead of Deeley’s when the police had asked for it months prior in the first round of warrants.
    Margaret was accused of withholding and destroying evidence in the news,