Rachael
Chapter 1: Susan

Copyright© 1997-2009. Extar International, Ltd. All rights reserved

The huge, old house was a Victorian monstrosity - but it was home.

Only a month after my divorce, my parents had been killed in one of those stupid, freaky things that shouldn't happen, but do. They'd been crossing the highway, at a light, in the crosswalk, when the air failed on a semi, which proceeded to flatten them both. The driver was a nice guy and wasn't sleepy or using any controlled substances. His equipment had failed. He was as sorry as I was.

Since I was the only family they had, I inherited the house, some insurance policies and dad's business.

My suburban ranch house had a big mortgage on it and Susan wanted cash anyway, so I sold it, gave Susan half the proceeds and moved the kids to 'grandpa's house'. The three of us rattled around in the place. We loved it.

My folks had moved there when I was about eight. It was always the place we called 'home'. Mom and dad never even thought about moving again. Dad did extensive work on the place, modernizing it. After he retired, he'd really fixed it up. It retained all its ugly, Victorian charm, but had good insulation, top quality thermal windows, excellent plumbing and the best central heating he could fit into it. In spite of its size and strange shapes, it cost less to heat than my conventional ranch house. He even installed a sauna in the basement and a big hot tub on a deck he'd built off the master bedroom.

It was on a hillside, just north of Portland, Oregon, with a great view over farms, river, port, and mountains in the distance. (Twenty-some years ago, when Mt. St. Helens erupted, we sat in the parlor and watched the awesome spectacle in comfort.)

After 18 years of—I'd thought—a mostly contented marriage, Susan decided she could do better and announced one evening, to my complete shock and deep hurt, that she was moving out. She'd decide if she wanted a divorce and her lawyer would let me know.

She didn't take the twins with her—and I'd have fought her if she'd tried.

When I recovered from my shock and talked it over with the twins, Sara and Sam, I decided, 'Why wait?' So I filed for divorce and custody. Susan, surprisingly, fought it. She wanted me to continue to support her, while she lived on her own, 'doing her own thing.' We had a nasty and expensive court battle, which I eventually won. Susan ended up with her car, clothes, all the cash we had at the time and half the equity in the house. I got what I wanted—freedom and my children.

So when I inherited dad's house, there wasn't much discussion. We decided, without dissent, to move.

Settled in, I looked into dad's business. He'd hired a competent General Manager when he decided to retire, but he'd retained control and had made the strategic decisions. The manager was OK for routine stuff, but to make the business grow to its potential, I knew I could do a lot better. Quitting my job, I worked out an arrangement where the GM continued pretty much like he had with dad, except I took a more active role and explored ways to expand and improve.

After two years, the business was doing better than ever. The twins would soon finish their sophomore year in high school and were starting to think about college and leaving the nest. We'd established a routine that worked for us and were a happy family.

Then Susan struck.

Somehow, in her warped way, she decided I hadn't 'shared' properly with her and she should have a portion of dad's business too. The fact that I didn't have any of it, myself, until after we were divorced didn't make any difference.

She felt the best way to get what she wanted was through the kids. Her family—especially her mother, who had gone through at least four different husbands—encouraged her in this, with constant references to how much better I was living than she was and how 'little Sara' really needed her mother's influence and guidance during these 'crucial years' of her life.

That attitude amazed me.

Susan never paid much attention to the kids; especially Sara, whom we'd adopted when her mother, a very close friend, had died soon after Sara's first birthday. We called the kids 'the twins' because their birthdays are only a day apart, because they look an awful lot alike, and most of all because they are always together. We'd raised them as brother and sister. Sara is the daughter of my heart, if not my body.

When I went to Vancouver, where Susan was living, to pick up the kids after a visit, I found the twins weren't there. But a process server slapped me with a summons to 'show cause' why their mother shouldn't have custody and why I shouldn't pay $1250 per week in child support. I was not told where they were, or when I'd see them again.

First thing in the morning, I called my lawyer, who shared my indignation and got a kidnapping complaint issued. He went into court to successfully squash the motion my wife had filed, using the kidnapping as the primary reason. I was custodial parent, after all. I suppose she thought that by suing in a Washington court, she could overturn the Oregon decree.

Tuesday's mail brought a really bizarre letter. Susan wrote that, unless I turned over half of dad's business to her—like she 'deserved'—it would be a cold day in hell before I'd see the twins again, no matter what some court said.

With her letter as evidence, we went to the U.S. Attorney, and asked that Susan be arrested for kidnapping, and that she be held until she told us where the twins were, and helped us arrange their safe return home. The F.B.I. arrested Susan that day.

Susan wasn't prepared to spend time in jail. Nor was she prepared for the additional jail time and fines the judge levied on her when she refused to tell us where the children were. The judge was coldly contemptuous. "Mrs. Jenkins, this is one of the most callous uses of one's own children I've seen in 30 years on the bench. It's not even as if you were afraid for their safety—like protecting them from an abusive father. Rather, this is extortion, pure and simple. You have no legal claim against your former husband's business, so you are trying to extort it from him using your own children as the lever to do so.

"I don't know, Mrs. Jenkins, just how many years you are prepared to spend in the federal penitentiary on the kidnapping charge. You'd better hope the children are returned safely. Because if they are not, you also face state criminal charges for anything that happens to them—including assault, rape, or even murder, should they be harmed. Are you now prepared to tell us where your children are?" Susan was not. "Very well. Thirty days for contempt. This will be extended if the children are not returned before the sentence expires. Bailiff, take this... person ... out of my court. She turns my stomach! And counselor, before you ask, there will be no discussion of bail until the children are safely returned to their father!"

In the middle of the day on Friday, Sam called me at work. One of Susan's cousins had the twins in a cabin near Lake Merwin, in Washington. Sam and Sara had been complete brats, Sam said, and the cousin had finally given in to the whining and wheedling and let him go down to the store to get some sodas and magazines—which allowed him to call me.

Getting the best directions to the place he could give me, I called my lawyer with this news. He arranged for the local sheriff to collect the kids and arrest the cousin on the kidnapping charge. I drove up north of Vancouver and met the deputy at a pre-arranged rendezvous. The kids happily jumped into my car and proceeded to tell me all about their ordeal.

They were definitely taken against their will. Though they hadn't been molested, both had been slapped around fairly severely and had become very concerned about how much longer it would be before Susan's cousin raped Sara—he was giving off strong signals and hitting on her constantly.

Mostly, they were mad as hell. They hadn't been all that thrilled about having to visit their mother, anyway, but went because I encouraged them to go. That had ended.

When we got home and settled down, I arranged to visit the lawyer the following day, though it was a Saturday. He told us it was best if we not go back to Washington for a while.

Since I had the kids, Susan and her cousin were allowed to post bail. When they came to trial, they pleaded guilty under a plea bargain that allowed them to get by with community service and probation in lieu of additional jail time. We weren't upset by that, but felt we needed some levers to keep Susan off our backs permanently. We did get permanent restraining orders against Susan and her cousin, keeping them away from all of us, as part of the deal.

We discussed it with the lawyer and decided to file a civil lawsuit against Susan and her cousin for kidnapping and assault, asking $25,000 damages and $250,000 punitive damages—from each of them. We were awarded what we asked. That should, we felt, show them there was no way they could fleece us, while we could take all they had. (Only $7,000 of that amount was ever collected. The cousin went bankrupt and Susan never had anything. What I got was the remainder of her portion of the equity in the house.)

That was our 'legal' position. Then we worked on practical defenses against another attempt of that kind. I had both kids memorize my telephone credit card number. If they were taken anywhere, they could get in touch, given access to a phone.

I made sure to praise Sam for his good thinking in calling me. Given the circumstances, they'd done it exactly right!

We knew that Susan and her clan weren't done with us. We hoped that our counterattack would keep them at bay until the twins were through high school and could no longer be used as levers to try to extort money from me.

The twins and I held a family conference.

We'd done that a lot since the divorce because I felt that they were old enough to have mature opinions about what they wanted. (One more area where Susan and I disagreed.)

We agreed that money for college was our first concern. But we all wanted a boat and felt that if we could swing it, we should get one while they were still living at home to enjoy it. We started our search that evening, when I told them I thought we could do it, if they didn't have to have cars right away—they could use my old pickup whenever they needed wheels.

We grabbed the classifieds and looked through them, frequently interrupting each other's reading, when one of us found something that sounded interesting. We soon discovered that we'd better decide what kind of boat we wanted, since we were looking at everything from dingys and runabouts to 50-foot plus yachts.

What did we want? Well, we wanted a comfortable small yacht. We didn't want the hassle of sails in Oregon's climate. We wanted to be able to 'overnight' in comfort, if not luxury. So it had to have enough good bunks and some privacy for mixed sexes. We wanted to be able to go into the ocean safely, though not for long cruises. (Salmon fishing!) If we could put it on a trailer, that would be nice, but not essential.

The next three weekends, we haunted marinas and devoured dealers' brochures. And we took rides on at least 30 different boats. But, although we saw some very nice yachts, none was quite what we wanted.

We finally found exactly what we wanted at the marina near our home. (Isn't that always the way? We'd been all over the countryside and what we were looking for was in our front yard.) The boat was 39 feet long and 12 feet in the beam. And a trailer came with it! The fact that the trailer was a custom job that would cost over $5,000 to replace didn't matter. Nor did it matter that we'd have to have a 'pilot car' if we took it down the road. We could move it if we wanted to. (Our thinking was that we wanted to be able to cruise Puget Sound occasionally, without having to motor up the ocean from the Columbia to the Straits of Juan de Fuca.) The trailer also gave us our own 'dry dock' for the necessary bottom maintenance every yacht needs periodically.

The boat had a very nice master's cabin, with a private head, in the stern below the cockpit. There was another nice cabin in the bow, with a queen sized berth and the main head.

The surprisingly roomy salon contained a well laid-out galley, a sofa that made into a double berth and a comfortable 'U'-shaped dinette that made into another double bed. The main helm station and a couple of chairs completed the salon furnishings.

The electronics were up to date, including radar, marine and CB radios, and Loran equipment. There was a large fly bridge, on the 'hardtop' that extended the length of the salon, with another complete helm and a collapsible awning for sun and rain protection. The cockpit had a complete awning enclosure, too.

An elderly couple had owned the boat, having bought it new. They'd cruised throughout Puget Sound and up the inland passage to Ketchikan, as well as all up and down the Columbia. But he'd recently had a couple of strokes and was confined to a nursing home—so the boat was on the market. The twins were thrilled, the price was right, and the old owners were happy that a family would be able to enjoy her.

We bought her.

We named her Daddy's Toy. She was our pride and joy, and we all became proficient in her handling and upkeep. Most weekends we were on the water, that spring and summer. Our vacation would be a two-week cruise near the end of summer, as far up the Columbia as we could get.

To read this story you need a Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In or Register (Why register?)

Close
 

WARNING! ADULT CONTENT...

Storiesonline is for adult entertainment only. By accessing this site you declare that you are of legal age and that you agree with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.