Hello.
I didn't keep you waiting as long as I have in the past.
This section is a bit longer, but I hope you'll think it's worth the read. Thanks so much for hanging in there. We're still a long way from the end, but we'll get there.
Take care.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Part 24)
“You’re…pregnant.” Alex reacted as if the word pregnant was as harsh as a cup of lemon juice in his mouth. “You’d better be lying. Because if you’re…”
“No.” Dee Dee stared him straight in the eyes. “No, I’m not lying.”
He hesitated for a sign to prove she was bluffing, be he didn’t get one. “But…” His eyes roamed to her mid-section. “I sent you to Nina Cameron.” By the look on Dee Dee’s face, along with her confession, it was clear that his plan had failed. “So, I guess that explains why you stopped changing clothes in front of me a few weeks ago. I don’t believe this. Hmm. I guess it was a lucky break for you that we weren’t having sex, because I would have seen that…that you’re…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. When his initial shock wore off, his rage began. “Damn it! Why’d you have to screw things up, Dee Dee?! That…baby shouldn’t be here! I trusted you to get rid of it when I sent you to Cameron! That was the sole purpose of seeing her! You lied to me! You said you weren’t pregnant and now here you are with that damned thing inside you!” He pounded the wall with his fist and Dee Dee jumped. “I don’t want it! I said I was willing to work on saving this marriage, but this…no! I can’t believe you did this to me!” For a split second he focused his anger on someone else while Dee Dee could only watch. “That son of a bitch, so-called doctor…Westwood, lied to me about my tests! He said I was infertile! I’ll kill him!” Alex quickly turned his attention back to his wife. “And, you…you betrayed me!! You should have gotten rid of it, Dee Dee! You should have gotten rid of it from the start! Why the hell didn’t you!”
“I couldn’t. I…”
“Why the hell not?! You knew that it had to be done!”
“This is my baby, Alex. I’m going to keep it, and you don’t have any say-so about it.”
“What?! The hell I don’t!” Alex’s anger grew with every second. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are to tell me what I have authority over! If I fathered it, then I can decide what happens to it!”
(If I fathered it, then I can decide what happens to it.) That sentence echoed painfully through Dee Dee’s soul. Obviously, if Alex had been the father, he couldn’t even refer to his child as anything other than “it”, and it wasn’t because he didn’t know the gender. For this reason, she was even more thankful that it wasn’t his baby.
“Why, Dee Dee?! Just give me one good reason why you didn’t do as I said?!”
“Because…”
“Come on! Because, what?!” Alex screamed; cutting her off. “Go ahead and tell me, why!”
“I’m trying to tell you. It’s because…it’s…” She struggled to find the right words because no matter how she told him; it wouldn’t lessen the chance of a raging reaction. How does one tell her husband she’s pregnant by another man? She could only blurt out the truth. “It’s not your baby!”
Shocked, Alex stepped back; staggering like a drunkard. “What the hell do you mean…it’s not my baby?!”
Dee Dee saw the increasing fury in Alex’s face, but continued to speak.
“Alex, I was already…” Before she could finish, Dee Dee felt a powerful blow to the right side of her face. Alex had backhanded her; throwing her so far off balance that she fell to the floor.
“You bitch! You’ve been cheating on me…fucking some other guy! You must be out of your damned mind to do something like that! Whose is it…Ryan Jacobs’?! You’ve been screwing him since you started volunteering at the center, haven’t you?!”
Dee Dee lay stunned on the floor for a few seconds. When she cleared her head, she pulled herself to her feet. “That’s not true, Alex! I’ve never cheated on you! You’re the one who….” She stopped short; thinking of the consequences for what she almost said.
“What?! What were you gonna say…that I was the cheater?! Don’t you dare bring up what happened with Monica!” Alex tried to make his wife feel apologetic. “You agreed that we were never to speak of her again! It was a mistake and I’m paying for it, too!
Don’t try and bring up my past issues! This is about you and that son of a bitch, Ryan Jacobs!”
“Ryan isn’t the father.” Dee Dee said tearfully, as she thought of Rick. “I swear it’s not him.”
“Liar!” Alex pushed Dee Dee’s back against the wall; pinning her shoulders with a sturdy grip. “Did he come here to my house?! Were you two lying in my bed when you conceived the little bastard?! All those shopping trips and visits with Celise...lies! You were with him, weren’t you?!”
“No! It’s not like that at all!” Dee Dee tried to free herself without success. “Listen to me, and I’ll explain!”
“Explain?! Explain what?!” Alex released his grip and took three steps back. “Oh, let me guess. You’ve been with more than one guy and don’t know who the father is!” He scoffed. “You surprise me, Dee Dee! I never took you for the whorish kind!”
The words stung sharply, but Dee Dee continued with her explanation. “I was pregnant before we got married…before you even came back to LA. And not that it should make any difference to you; I know who the father is.”
“Are you sure you know? I bet if you went through a list of your former male co-workers you’d have a very vague idea of who it is. I know that Hunter was the most recent partner, but I’m still curious as to how many of the cops you’ve given it up to. How many were there? Can you answer that?” Alex asked in a malicious tone, and he didn’t ease up. “You spent a lot of time with those guys on stake-out, didn’t you? Where’d you do it…the car, a dark alley; when you were undercover as a hooker? I’m sure that was a turn on for most of them. Or maybe you actually did turn a trick or two while playing the part of a hooker.” Alex snickered at the notion while his wife was sickened by his questions and accusations. “Now let’s get back to those cops. Was it in a surveillance van? Or maybe you went too with the husband and wife bit with some of them.” Dee Dee didn’t say anything as her stomach churned from Alex’s disgusting ideas of how her child was conceived. She knew the life growing inside her came from love and not some appalling moment like her he suggested, but the allegations still hurt deeply as she wondered how Alex could be so cruel. After a few moments, the answer Alex was so curious about came to light. “It’s Rick’s. Rick Hunter is the father, isn’t he?” Dee Dee slightly nodded ‘yes’.
“Answer me, damn it!” Dee Dee jumped after the booming voice startled her.
“I want to hear you say it!”
“Yes. Rick is the father.”
“Of course he is!” Alex feigned a moment of “Eureka!” by slapping his palm against his forehead. “He’s the one you spent the majority of your time with! I should have known! So, was it during work…screwing on a stake-out, like I figured?!” He turned away from her and sat on the top step.
“It wasn’t like that!” The horrid words, along with her anger brought her to tears. “Why, do you have to make it sound dirty, when it wasn’t?!”
Without looking back, Alex added more cruel remarks. “Oh, so you two were into each other off the clock, huh? You finally let the good Sergeant have it, didn’t you? Well, I guess it was bound to happen. All work and no play can make for two very horny police partners.”
“We loved each other, Alex!” Dee Dee was quick with the defense. “Rick told me that he’s never loved anyone the way he loved me! And I felt the same way about him!”
“If that’s so true, then why the hell did you leave him?! Maybe he left you, huh?! I asked you to marry me, but you never said a word about being involved with Rick. No wonder he was so pissed off when he came to see me at the hotel. He told me then that he loved you, and I should have known then, that you two were screwing.” Alex got up from the step and stood beside Dee Dee at the wall. “I know I’m not stupid, but I can’t figure out why you two split up. I guess in the meantime, you saw me as a substitute that offered the life you thought you wanted. So, doesn’t that mean you used me too? That proves even more, that you’re no better than I am in this game we call a marriage.” He chuckled proudly at the thought of making Dee Dee ashamed. He thought for a second, and then proceeded with his putting pieces of the puzzle together. “Let me get this straight. You thought you were pregnant by me, right? Then you realized that it was Rick’s, so it obviously means that you were with him about three…maybe, four weeks before our wedding.” He displayed much surprise. “Damn! You move fast, don’t you?!” Suddenly he had a look of curiosity. “Have you told him about it…that he’s going to be a father?”
“No.”
“I see. You planned for me to raise the little asshole as my own, didn’t you?!”
“No, I didn’t! And don’t call my baby that!” Her eyes sparked with anger. “I never planned for you to have anything to do with my baby…ever!”
“Yes you did!” Alex’s fist pounded the wall only inches from his wife’s head; causing her to flinch. “You figured I’d change, work on the marriage, and decide to play daddy to that…thing, whether it’s mine or not!”
“I didn’t plan that at all.” Dee Dee stated through her tears. “All I want is to get out of here and take care of myself and my baby. I don’t want anything from you, except for you to let me go.”
Alex ignored her request and made a shocking statement. “I wonder how Rick would feel when you tell him you almost gave him a child.”
“Almost?” Dee Dee asked with fear.
Alex lifted his wife’s top. “So, this is it, huh?” Feeling more vulnerable with her stomach exposed, Dee Dee grabbed at her top to pull it down, but Alex’s grip won against hers. “This is what’s so precious to you right now, isn’t it?”
While feeling more fragile through most of the argument, at this moment Dee Dee replied sternly and with pride. “Yes, it is. This baby means everything to me.”
“Oh, really? Do you think Rick feels the same way?” Before she could answer, Alex questioned her again. “How would you tell him, Dee Dee? What exactly would you say to him; when you um…?” When he hesitated, a look of absolute malice came over his face. “You know, when you tell him you lost his little bastard?”
Dee Dee shuddered at the thought and then quickly snatched her top from Alex and pulled it down over her stomach. “How dare you say such a thing! That’s horrible!”
Alexander Turnan continued to torture his wife with words. “I told you never to cross me, but you did. You may have gotten pregnant before our marriage, and by Rick, but nevertheless, you screwed things up for me. You’ve ruined everything! Everything!” He was becoming so distraught that he looked as if he might cry Dee had never seen him react as such. “There’s no way we can hide it, or get rid of it now! It’s too late! Things were going to be so much better if you’d have obeyed me! The plan I had would have worked! I hate you for doing this to me!”
The demented look he expressed raised fear within Dee Dee.
Alex stepped back, ran his hands through his hair and sighed with great distress. Suddenly he stepped toward his wife and grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Come here!” He growled, as he pulled her toward the stairs. He was about to treat her with an extreme form of cruelty. “You know, pregnant women often miscarry after a tumble down the stairs.”
“Alex, don’t!”
Alex ignored his wife’s plea as he pulled her closer to the stairs. “Remember, I wondered how Rick would react when he found out you lost his little bastard? Maybe I’ll get to find out.”
“No! Please!” Dee Dee grappled at the railing. “Please, Alex! Don’t do this!” She could picture herself in a heap at the bottom of the stairs while her life and possibly her baby’s life drained from her body. Tears streamed down her face, guided by absolute fear. “Alex! No! You have a problem with me…not the baby! No matter how you feel about me or Rick, you can’t take it out on our baby!”
Alex turned his wife to face him with her back toward the descending stairs. His grip on her arms was strong as her heels dangled at the edge of the first step. She dug her toes deeply into the insides of her sneakers in an effort to hang on to the step. She tried to get away, but also feared she’d fall in doing so, and Alex reminded her of that. “Uh –uh…don’t struggle. You’ll cause yourself to fall, and who can you blame then? Only yourself.” Alex toyed with Dee Dee; loosening and tightening his grip, allowing her to teeter on the step. “All I have to do is let your arms go, and you’re gone. And so is your precious little bastard.”
*****
(The Grey Home)
“Celise, come sit down and try to calm down.” Michael gently instructed. “Going back and forth to the window and staring at the phone isn’t going to make Dee Dee get here any faster. We can only wait and hope.” Michael sighed at the idea as he tried to calm his own nerves. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”
“But what if Alex has hurt her and she can’t get here?”
Michael reached up for his wife’s hand and gently pulled her to the sofa. “Listen. If she isn’t here in a half hour, we’ll go over to the house and see what’s happening. Just try to relax.”
“Okay, I’ll try.” Celise sighed. “Maybe watching a movie will keep my mind off her.”
Michael agreed and chose a favorite comedy movie from the collection in their den. Once Celise made herself comfortable on the sofa, Michael stretched out and lay his head in her lap. Within only ten minutes of watching the movie and absentmindedly curling her husband’s hair around her fingers, Celise realized she needed a new distraction.
“This isn’t working. I think I should start the laundry.”
Michael had much sympathy for his wife as he sat up and kissed her forehead as he tried to reassure her that Dee Dee would come to their house. Once Celise went into the laundry room, Michael lay back down on the sofa. He didn’t let on to Celise, but he was couldn’t be easily distracted from worrying about Dee Dee either. As his focus drew more from the television and more toward Dee Dee, he also couldn’t help but want to strangle Alex for what he’d done to her. He told himself that he’d stay put for fifteen more minutes, and if they hadn’t heard from Dee Dee he’d get Celise and they’d go see if she’s okay.
*****
(The Turnan Home)
“You said you’d never kill me, because I wasn’t worth going to prison for.” Dee Dee quickly and fearfully glanced down the staircase “Think about it. If I fall down the stairs, you could be charged with attempted murder or murder if I die.” As hard as it was for her to think of surviving, but losing her baby, she had to inform Alex of possible consequences. “You might even go to prison for killing my baby. And think about your reputation. That’s the whole reason we were married, isn’t it? How can doing this to me and being punished for be a positive for you?”
“How would anyone know I did it? You just accidentally fell down the stairs.” Alex replied nonchalantly.
Dee Dee hoped that her next confession would aid in her plan. “The recent bruises on my arms and back, they’re evidence; Celise and Michael know what’s been going on. They’d tell the police. I told them that if anything happened to me, it was because of you.”
“You told them?!” Alex shouted with fire.
“Yes. Dr. Cameron knows too. You wouldn’t let me leave, and I was just that afraid of you…for my life, and especially for my baby’s life. I had to tell.”
A look of great uncertainty came across Alex’s face.
Dee Dee could see that he might actually be reconsidering his actions, and she worked with it. “You told me that you do love me, but you can’t commit to me wholly. If you still have an inkling of any love for me, you’d let me go. You wouldn’t do anything to hurt my child. Just remember those horrible nightmares you had, and those babies you wish you could have saved in Africa.”
With Dee Dee’s words, along with other disturbing images from his life, Alex’s head began to spin. Echoes of Monica’s voice, as well as those women in his dreams rang through his head. He stepped back, bringing his wife away from the staircase with her arms still in his clutches. “I’ve done wrong in the past, Dee Dee, but I told you I could make amends. I just need time. There’s just so much I have to deal with, but I still need you to help me. So, that means I can’t let you go.”
Regardless of what Alex’s plan was, Dee Dee had one of her own. During the entire time she was teetering on the step, she was psyching herself up. Once she was safely away from the edge of the steps she went into action.
“I don’t care what you told Celise or…” Suddenly, Alex was taken by great surprise. He staggered backward; his hands over his face in great pain. “Arrgghh!” He yelled when the pain intensified.
The pain and surprise were due to Dee Dee using great force and driving the bottom part of her open hand straight up into Alex’s nose.
“You little bitch! You may have broken my…” Once more he was interrupted by a great pain. “Ungh!” He groaned hoarsely. This time the pain was between his lower abdomen and genitals. Dee Dee had given him a knee to the area with all the strength she had.
Alex; with the wind knocked out of him, doubled over in pain, eventually dropping to the floor.
Dee Dee watched her husband writhe in agony as he cursed her between moans. But she didn’t care because she felt a great triumph growing within. “If you ever think of coming near me again, Alex, I swear to you I’ll do so much more damage that you’ll be the one begging to be set free.” A little bit of the McCall spark was kicking in. “It took me a long time to get to this point; to actually stand up to you, and I’ll be damned if I let my fear take over if you ever come near me again. I will fight you with everything I have! I mean that with every fiber of my being! Do you understand me?!”
“Fuck you!” Alex snapped. He struggled to sit up and took in a gasp of air. “Get the hell out of my house! I don’t…need you…anymore! I don’t need anyone!”
Dee Dee scoffed. “Sure you don’t. And I want you to be very clear of the fact that I’m leaving this house on my own. You’re not throwing me out, so don’t even dare to believe it.” She grabbed her suitcase, bounded down the stairs and gathered her keys, jacket and purse. “You’re a sick bastard, Alex! I wish a million times that I’d never met you, and I hope to God that you’ll never hurt anyone else like you’ve hurt me!”
She slammed the front door and hurried to the safety of her car. Although Alex was down when she closed the door, there was always the possibility that he would reach the car before she drove off. As her shaky hand guided the key to the ignition, she glanced quickly at the front door of the house. She knew that any minute Alex could rush out, and there’s no telling what he would do.
******
Michael Grey was silently counting down to the moment he’d go to the Turnan home, when he was suddenly distracted by a familiar noise outside. He got up and walked over to the window and was relieved at what he saw; Dee Dee Turnan stepping out from her car. He called to Celise in the laundry room; she didn’t answer, so he went inside. When he didn’t see her he figured she went upstairs for more laundry, so he called to her again and went to the front door.
Before Dee Dee could ring the doorbell, Michael gladly opened the front door.
“Michael. Celise said that I could…that I…” Dee Dee choked up and struggled to hold back her tears.
“I know.” Michael gently placed his arm around her shoulder and guided her inside to the living room sofa. “She told me all about it and you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
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