Chapter 5: Daddy Issues

The following morning, a Friday, the three of us enjoyed the breakfast Tillie prepared.

“Jeff, can you come back here after work tonight? My ex, Eric, will be returning Annie, and I will ask him to join us for dinner. I want to explain what happened last night with Filbert and thank him for the pistol and taser. And I want you to meet each other.”

“Alright. I’d better get going; I want to change clothes before I go to the office. I can be back here again at 5:30; OK?”

“Sure. Just kiss us before you go.”

When I returned later in the day to Diane’s house, Annie and Eric were already there. Annie rushed up and embraced me tightly. Eric smiled and shook my hand, and I felt a little relieved. Tillie brought out her office chair for her father. Diane and I kissed, and we all crowded around the little dinette table.

Conversation flowed through the meal. Eric talked about his time with Annie and revealed that she had nothing but praise for me. He asked Tillie, also; she was even more effusive. I only stopped grinning when I was shoveling in forkfuls of Diane’s amazing lasagna. Eric said something nice to Diane.

“Your cooking always makes me second-guess our divorce.”

“I thought you missed my tits?”

“Well, yeah,” Eric admitted. “But I wasn’t going to say that in front of your boyfriend.”

“They are spectacular,” I said. “I couldn’t fault you for saying that. This is the first time I’ve seen her eating here with a shirt on. It’s the only disappointing thing about this dinner.”

Diane elbowed me. “I could say the same about you, honey, except when you get food stuck in your chest hair. Ew!”

The girls laughed, but Eric looked thoughtful. We moved to the living room, and the girls bracketed me on the sofa, cuddling me closely. Diane gathered herself and faced her ex-husband.

“Eric, I need to thank you for supplying the revolver and taser for our security. Something terrible happened to Tillie last night, but I was able to keep it from becoming even worse. Annie, you should go sit with your father so he can hold you, because this is upsetting. Go on. Eric, put your arms around her.”

He was sitting in a big leather recliner, and Annie was able to park herself across his lap. I imagine it was furniture left over from when he was the “man of the house.” As Diane began to tell the story, Eric’s eyes shifted to Tillie, and he now noticed the damage to her lip and cheek (only partly hidden by makeup). Annie noticed the damage as well and started to sniffle.

“I have pictures I can show you or send to you later, Eric, but Annie doesn’t need to see them. So Tillie came home with a guy named Davis Filbert yesterday. He turned on Tillie the minute they got inside the house and hit her. Filbert brought some plastic ties, you know, zip ties, and he used them to handcuff her before tearing open her shirt. Although she was screaming and crying, he believed they were alone and he was getting close to raping her. Annie was with you, of course, at the time.

“But I came home early, and I heard Tillie crying before I walked in. So, I quietly went to my bedroom for the weapons and walked into her room with the revolver pointed at his head. Like all bullies, he folded, and I ordered him to the floor on his belly. I had the taser in my left hand; I put the gun in my right hand against his head so he’d lie still, and then I tased him. While he was helpless, I took some of those zip ties out of his back pocket and tied together his ankles and wrists. Then I called Jeff for help.”

“Instead of me?” asked Eric.

“I knew you had Annie with you, and I didn’t want her to see her sister in trouble. It turned out to be a good decision, because Jeff’s ideas resolved the situation in a way that benefited Tillie. Jeff, why don’t you explain?”

I told Annie and Eric that my first impulse was to stomp his lights out, but then I realized Tillie wasn’t his first victim. Judging by his ridiculous car, he had plenty of money, so I called the asshole’s father, told him what his son had done, and made him come here, to Diane’s house.

“When the father finally left with his son, we believed he would deal with his son properly; he’d give away the son’s fancy car, and he had directly transferred $50,000 to the women and families shelter and $100,000 to Tillie’s account. If we need further leverage, we have the father’s information, and we still have the photos.”

When I finished, Annie had her face buried in her father’s neck. He was patting her on the back, trying to soothe her.

“Tillie, does all of that match what you remember?” asked Eric.

“Dad, it all happened just like that. With the gun in her hand, Mom scared me, too! The father said something like, ‘On behalf of his mother, thank you for not killing him.’ Honestly, I looked at her in my doorway with her finger on the trigger and believed he was dead meat.”

“And Jeff?”

“When he saw the blood on my face, Dad, he was vibrating. So furious, I thought he was going to snatch the pistol and do away with the guy, then bury him in the backyard.”

“Tillie, if I were there, he’d be dead.” Eric continued, “I hate to say it, but your mother did the right thing by calling Jeff, and Jeff did the right thing by involving the asshole’s father. I owe you my thanks, Jeff. However, I can’t help feeling a little bit of jealousy that you got to be Tillie’s hero. I’m just boring old Dad.”

Tillie shrieked and flew off the sofa, crashing into her sister and father with such velocity that the heavy chair scraped backwards. After a bunch of hugs, Annie detached herself and threw her arms around me.