…

D is for — “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.  Between the devil and the deep blue sea

…

There is always that one person.

Always there.  Nothing is too much trouble.  Always happy to help even when they know it will not be acknowledged.  Always the ones overlooked because they are, basically, invisible.

That one person had a name.

Deanna Wilkinson.

I met her on the first day at my new school, having moved from another state.  It was my fourth school in three years, and with different education systems, I was finding it harder to catch up and keep up.

Deanna Wilkinson made that easier because having lived in Dantonville all her life and more interested in learning than boys, she made a very good tutor.

And that being the case…

Over the years, from the last two of grade school and through middle school, we became friends while keeping me on track scholastically.

However, being a boy and easily distracted, especially after the try-out for the football team, and later the role I played in bringing success to a team that always fell short, I found myself popular in ways I never imagined.

The most improbable in that last year of school was being brought into the orbit of Sandra Oliphant.

Before I arrived in town, the Dantons and the Oliphants were two of the main families who had been in the district since before God, or so Archie said, and they all owned everything between them.  Why else, he said, would the town be named after them?

Nearly everything.  My father had seen a parcel of land up for sale and bought it.  A property that had been given to one of the other Dantons, who wanted to quit town because of the old man, and put it up for sale.

The recipient knew if he sold it back to old man Danton, he’d get nothing for it, hence the sale to my father.  When Danton heard about it, he offered to buy it back, cheaply, but my father refused.

Thus began hostilities.

The land belonged to the Dantons, Sandra Oliphant belonged to the Dantons, and everything else belonged to the Dantons, apparently.

Including the football team, the Dantonville Raiders.  A team that never won a championship.  Before I realised that no one with any talent joined the team. I made the mistake of trying out.

The coach then asked me to play, and that first game, we won.  Then another, and another.  Then I realised why no one joined the team.  It was all about Archie.  And his father.

I tried to quit.  My father said I couldn’t.  The coach said I couldn’t, and old man Danton made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He’d stop giving us grief over that piece of land.

He was right, I couldn’t refuse.

Then Sandra Oliphant decided I’d make a better boyfriend than Archie.  I told her I wouldn’t, then told Archie that I was not making a play for his girlfriend. After telling her I was flattered but I was not interested.

What worried me was that she was too easily convinced.  Something else was in play, and I was going to end up in the middle of it.

I learned some very valuable lessons that year.

One.  Never volunteer for anything, whether you might be good at it or not.

Two.  Men like Archie’s father and boys like Archie and his friends used wealth and power to manipulate and bully those around them simply because they are allowed to.

Three.  Men like Dalton and my father never liked to lose and would do anything it took to win

Four.  I would never understand girls or women, and that any expectation or level of understanding I might have or thought I had could be undone or changed unexpectedly at any time.

When everything became too difficult, I would saddle up Joey, the placid horse Deanna had loaned me, and ride up to the hilltop cabin.  It was a halfway point when moving cattle from the hills to the Plains.

I planned to stay there for a day or two before the last game of the season, the championship.  That would be followed by graduation, the Prom (though I wasn’t going), and then I would be leaving to go to college.

My father said football scouts would be at the game and had frequently told anyone who would listen that I was big city team material.

Archie Danton might be, but I certainly wasn’t.  Anyone could catch a ball and run with it.

But as many times I said I didn’t care that my chances of being seen, let alone drafted into the major football league, it was as remote as my chances of being Prom King and going out with Sandra, something my mother held great stock in.

She, like my father and my sister, just didn’t listen.

I just hoped my father wasn’t the one who called the scouts, knowing that it was exactly the sort of thing he would do to bug me.  But then, that was Archie’s father, too, and there was a rivalry going on between them.

And the subject of yet another argument before I left in a huff.

I could see another horse and rider in the distance, and it wasn’t hard to tell who it was.

Deanna.

I sat on the swing seat on the front veranda and waited.  Like always, she was in no hurry.  Olivia, my pugnacious sister, must have told her where I was despite the fact I had told her not to tell anyone.

It was just like her, presuming that after all this time, Deanna and I had known each other and having spent so much time in each other’s company, we would get together.  It wasn’t as simple as that, but Olivia was not up to the stage of complicated relationships.

Deanna tied up her horse, came up the slight incline leading to the steps, gave me her usual cursory glance, and then negotiated the stairs before sitting at the other end of the seat.

As I watched her get off the horse, hitch the reins to the post, then walk the short distance to the stairs, it wasn’t hard to notice the changes from the precocious seven-year-old I first met all those years ago to the beautiful eighteen-year-old grown-up woman she had become.

I wished I could say I had grown up, too.

“Olivia said you were hiding up here.”

“If I were, you wouldn’t find me.”

“Things that bad?”

“You once said I was the master of my destiny.  You were right.  I should not have turned up to the tryouts.  You said not to.”

“When did you ever listen to me?”

“When you tutored me enough to pass my exams.  Never thanked you, but then, I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“No need.  It was a pleasant way to spend my spare time.”

“You could have done something more important than waste it on me.”

She gave me one of her annoyed looks and then shook her head.  “I’m not going to dignify that with a retort.”

I took a moment to give her a sidelong glance. She could ride a horse better than any cowboy I’d seen; I’d worked with her chasing strays, and she had participated in several girls’ events at rodeos.  She had even taught me to ride a horse.

If I ever became a rancher…

“What are you going to do come graduation?”  We had talked around the edges of what the end of the year might bring.

“College, maybe, but more likely look after Mom.  The fall she had a few months back; she is not getting any better.”

I was there when it happened.  We both knew her mom should not have been on that horse in the first place, but it was difficult to tell someone who’d been doing it all their life.

“And college?”

“It’ll have to wait.  Besides, you’re going to become this big-time footballer.  You’ll be far too busy settling in.”

“I’m not that good, and a lot of people are going to be disappointed.”

“Your father thinks you are.  So does the coach.”

“The coach wouldn’t dare say that in front of old man Dalton.  There is only one player on the team worthy of selection for the big time, and that’s Archie.  For once, I actually agree with them.”

“You have to admit, until you joined the team, they never looked like winning.”

“Coincidence.  I’m not going to accept if it’s offered.  I want to be a journalist and report the games, not play in them.  Or get mixed up with those cheerleaders. Archie and the rest of the team can have them.  My five minutes with Sandra was a nightmare.  Please tell me he’s been elected Prom King.”

“I can tell you Sandra is the Prom Queen, and your mother has been pleading your case.  She seems to think Archie has got everything else, someone else should be selected.”

I shook my head.  My mother was trying to curry favour with the heavyweights, both Mrs Dalston and Mrs Oliphant, and I wished her luck.  There was no room in that group for another.

“Those two have been together since they were born, would be perfect together at the Prom, which I might add I’m not going to if I can avoid it, and they will be the perfect couple when they get married.”

“If only.”

“And Archie?  Are they going to make him the king?  I mean, really, he is the only choice, given his parents’ standing in this town.”

She shrugged. “Everyone is talking about the new hometown hero.  You’d better play badly so he can shine.”

“That’s ridiculous.  I had nothing to do with winning that last game.”

“Didn’t you?  Drawing the defence left Harry open.  It was brilliant.”

“I was trying to minimise my involvement.  Get them to win without me.”

She smiled.  “Not how the coach saw it.  But, if you’re so adamant you don’t want the king, just tell the organisers to take your name off the list.  I’m sure Archie will be on it already for you.”

If I knew anything about Archie, he would have found a way to make sure I didn’t win.  In a sense, it should have annoyed me, but in another, it was a certain relief.  Having to put up with Sandra would be simply too much.

“So,” she said with just a hint of a wistful smile, “by the way, just who are you interested in?”

Good segway.  She looked at me with those piercing blue eyes, the eyes that could see into your soul.

I took her hand in mine.  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”  I looked into those eyes, and that was my first mistake.

“Emily?”

I shook my head.

“Andrea?”

I shook my head and squeezed her hand gently.

She was going to say another name, then didn’t.  Instead, I could see her eyes moisten.

“It could never work.”

“I know.”

“We are friends.”

“Very good friends.”

“Special friends.  When did you come to this conclusion?”

“About a year ago, maybe a bit less.  You were so angry with me; I was sure you were going to punch my lights out.  I wanted to hug you.”

“I wanted to kiss you.”

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

“You only had to ask.”

“May I….”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

…

C is for — “Can you please just listen?”.  Someone who doesn’t like to be told

…

There were four of us in the room, aside from the technical team, who were monitoring all the phones in the house.

Josephine, my daughter, the headstrong, ‘I can handle anything, Dad’, type, two members of the FBI, a man and a woman team who specialised in kidnapped children, and myself.

How did we get here?

It was a combination of things, not just one element.  It was never going to be as simple as that.

Josephine would say that had I told her before the event what I thought, it would not have happened.

That, of course, discounted the fact I tried, on several occasions, culminating in the last time she spoke to me when I said, as my last parting shot, ‘Can you please just listen to what I have to say.’

She would not.  No one was going to tell her how to live her life or how to bring up her daughter.

No one.

Fair enough.

Again, with the benefit of hindsight, I could have done more, but her parting shot that it was a bit rich for someone who hadn’t spent any time with his children to be telling them what to do, I figured she was, perhaps, right.

But, for all intents and purposes, it was now water under the bridge.  An elegant and apt expression that was not going to assuage the pain.

I looked at the phone that brought in the first message, the message that arrived at 6 pm precisely on a Monday evening.

Distorted to try and hide the caller’s identity, but I knew who it was.

Danny Trevino.  Smooth, handsome, beguiling, sophisticated, and too good to be true.  He had swept Angelica off her feet.

I met him once and saw right through him.  I didn’t like him and he knew it.  That amiable smile turned into something else, and I knew then we were in trouble.

I tried to warn Angelina.  She was not interested.  There was too much of her mother’s obstinance in her, and sadly, we had never bonded.  Again, there was too little contact when it mattered.

I tried to warn Josephine.  Well, you know how that went.  When she called, and I came, the best she could say was, ‘I’m sure you’re going to say I told you so, so get it over with’.

And, now we were here.

Waiting.

The great thing about being me is that people would look at me and then keep going.

I was the sort of person who other people didn’t give a second look.  Ordinary, unassuming, invisible.

I learned that when I was younger, I was treated as if I were invisible.  Then, I met a man who taught me that invisibility was an asset.

Just think, no matter where you go, no one will ever notice, and he was right.  No matter where I went, anywhere on the world, no one bothered.

Except Monique, who, for a French woman, defied all the tropes and was equally invisible.  We met in a Parisian bar, both trying to get a drink, and the bartenders simply ignored us.

It was the perfect match.  We travelled together, here, there and everywhere, until one night after telling me she had a friend to see, girls turf, she said, she came back with a rather nasty bullet hole.

Three years we’d been together before I discovered she was an assassin.  And three months before I became one too.

Three children and thirty years later, Monique had died in an accident trying to escape a fast closing net of police, and I retired the next day.

Monique’s mother had raised our children, and by the time I’d retired, they’d all moved on.  Was I selfish?  Yes.  Do I regret what I did?  Sometimes, like now.

Could I do something about the current situation?

Pierre was Monique’s brother and the only one of her family who knew what she did.  As a consultant to any police force who needed him, in his downtime, he was one of these people who looked for missing persons.

He didn’t do it for the money.  Rather, the clients would pay the so-called reward to a relevant charity.

I had called him a few weeks back when I realised that Angelina’s romantic attachment to Danny was getting serious, but disturbingly, his influence over her was the controlling kind and not in a good way.

It was good to see him again when I picked him and his team up from the airport.  That and the cloak-and-dagger stuff that went with it.

So, for the last four weeks, they had embarked on round-the-clock surveillance, everywhere he went, everyone he saw, everyone.

I had a portfolio of photos of Danny and Angelique together, and Pierre wanted to kill him.  He could, if he wanted to, but later.  Danny was not the driving force in this kidnapping. Someone else was, and he was still working on that when Danny pulled a surprise manoeuvre.

Pierre’s cover was blown, and she was taken.  All he said was that Danny was too stupid to organise something as sophisticated as this, and, what was more unsettling, it was someone who knew who I was or had been.

The ransom was going to be big.  And there was no way Angelique would be returned alive.

The phone rang, and everyone jumped.

My cell phone vibrated in my hand five seconds later and flashed a message: “Got him.”

When I told Pierre we were about to get a call from the kidnappers, he said the usual tactic was to have a person from their team outside reporting on who was there and sometimes pick up conversations inside.

He was right.

Agent Laraby, the male, as he looked at Josephine, said, “Ready.  As we discussed.”

She nodded.

He pushed the answer button.  In the background, we could hear Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ playing.  It was one of my favourites.

It was also a clue.  The kidnapper was enjoying playing games.

“10 million dollars, you know the drill.  Within 24 hours, I will call with the delivery address.  24 hours, or she dies.”

The phone went dead.

Of course, the kidnapper knew they would be tracing the call.  The kidnapper also knew the FBI were there, and more importantly, I was there.  The only surprise was how little they’d asked for.

Josephine looked like she had been hit by a bus.  “That’s ridiculous.  I haven’t ten dollars to my name, let alone ten million.”

Agent Laraby looked at me.

“I suppose I’d better go and make some phone calls.”

“We don’t pay ransoms, Mr Jones.”

“With what you have, are you going to be able to rescue her before 24 hours are up?”

“We are following several positive leads.”

“Then, just in case, I’d like to have options available to us.”

Josephine looked over at me.  “Where are you going to get ten million from?”

It surprised me that she had taken so long to ask the question.  None of the children had known what their parents did, and all had been told we were not the richest people in the neighbourhood.  Telling them we had money would only have made them self-indulgent and lazy.

It didn’t quite work as we expected.

“I have friends.”

She shook her head.  “You’ve got nothing.  Why are you here anyway?”

“You called me.”

“Well, it’s too late.  We ain’t got any money, and she’s going to die.  Somehow, this is all your fault.  Go.  And don’t come back.  Ever.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025