Chapter 20
That night, Kelly starts to dream that she is going to meet Dylan in the late evening because he asked her to come. Her dream continues to relive Joe Patch holding a knife to her throat raping her in a dark alley. While she is dreaming, she is tossing and turning in her bed, starting to sweat, and screaming softly, "no" over and over again. Her dream jumps forward to her in the bouquet store, hanging clothes, when her rapist walks into the store and locks the door when he recognizes who she is. He pulls out the same knife he used the week before and starts to move towards her. But before he could advance any further, Kelly pulls out the gun that Dylan gave her and fires shots at him, killing him. Kelly wakes up from the sound of the gun ringing in her ears in a complete sweat, screaming, and terribly frighten.
Kelly's screams wake up Sammy in his room, but he wasn't sure what the noise was, so instead he pulled the covers over his head to completely hide because he was scared. He also hugged his stuffed animals really close to him again till he fell back asleep again.
Kelly tries to calm herself down and determines that she is not able to go back to sleep, unfortunately it is three o'clock in the morning. After she straightens up her room, she decided that her bathroom needed an extreme deep clean. By the time that Brandon knocks on the door at seven in the morning, Kelly had cleaned the entire upstairs of the house, excluding Sammy's room. Kelly was pouring herself some more coffee when she heard Brandon's knock.
She gives him a small smile as she opens the door for him. "Hey Kel, morning," Brandon says.
"Morning Brandon," Kelly after she take a sip of the hot liquid, "there's coffee in the pot if you want any and I think Sammy is still sleeping, if you want to go wake him up for breakfast."
"Ok, but first, did you sleep well last night?" Brandon asks.
Kelly hesitates for a moment, not expecting that question, "Yeah, it was fine," Kelly says as she turns around and almost bumps into the table, barely missing it at the last second, "I'm wide awake now as you can see."
Brandon still feels a bit concerned about her, but he decides to ignore it and go see if Sammy is awake. When Brandon gets upstairs he does notice how much cleaner the place looks wondering when Kelly had time to clean. He knocks on the door first before opening, "Sammy, you ready for the day yet?"
"Daddy," Sammy says excitedly as he jumps out of bed, running towards Brandon, "I missed you last night, I'm glad that Mommy let you come over again."
Brandon lets out a small laugh, "of course, I'm here. It's pretty much impossible to get rid of me out of your life."
"Good, because I don't what you to go anywhere ever," Sammy exclaims.
"Oh, I see. What if I have to go on a trip?" Brandon asks.
Sammy responds with, "You take me with you, duh."
"Oh ok, well then I guess we are going to see what the future holds for us, won't we?"
"Yep," Sammy says.
"Good, lets go down to the kitchen to find some breakfast," Brandon says. As Brandon and Sammy eat breakfast, Kelly is getting herself ready for work.
Kelly enters the kitchen as Brandon and Sammy are putting their dishes into the dishwasher. "Morning sweetie," she says towards Sammy who doesn't respond.
Before she grabs her keys and purse off of the countertop, she squats down to give Sammy a morning hug, but Sammy moves behind Brandon's leg. Disappointed Kelly asks, "Sammy, may I get a morning hug and a kiss goodbye, please?"
Sammy stays behind Brandon, holding on to his leg, staring at Kelly.
Kelly looks up at Brandon quick and then back at Sammy, "Sammy, I really love you. I would really like a hug from my favorite little man."
He continues to stare at Kelly, not moving, but then he finally quietly says, "No," and then runs into the living room.
Kelly stands up, "Well I guess he is still mad at me," saying sadly. Brandon puts his hands on her arms and moves them up and down slowly, "I'm sure it's just a phase, he'll bounce out of it as we all get more used to this big change of me being here."
"I hope so, Brandon. I have to go bye," Kelly says as she gives him a kiss on the check, grabs her things and goes out of the door.
At about 10 o'clock at the high school, Kelly gets a phone call from the Police Department, asking her and the principal to come to the station.
Kelly goes into the Harry Wilson's office knocking on the door, "Harry, may I speak with you in private?"
"Yeah sure, come in and close the door," Harry responds as he is moving a stack of papers. As Kelly sits down she begins, "Last week, you notice Naomi Clark's wilder than usual behavior, right?"
"Yeah, I take it that you have spoken with her, she hasn't been sent to the office all week," Harry comments.
"Well, on Tuesday morning, she finally came to me and told me everything. Harry, Mr. Cannon, raped her on prom night."
"What? That's impossible, he wouldn't do that. Remember, she lied about those sexual assault charges earlier in the semester," Harry said not believing Kelly.
"Yes, that was my very first thought as well, but Harry, she came to me because she overhead that Silver was going to over to his house Tuesday evening, that's when I knew that she was telling the truth. Naomi and Silver have had their ups and downs over the last few years, but deep down they are still best friends. I tried to ask Silver not to go, but she didn't listen. Thankfully, Naomi followed her there and if she didn't then Mr. Cannon would have forced himself on my sister as well. They came immediately back to the house and Naomi finally agreed to go to the police. They just called, saying they have found something that they would like to share with both of us, right now," Kelly finished seeing Harry's face go from not believing to betrayed by Mr. Cannon.
"Wow…well, I guess the only thing for us to do is go to the station to see what they have to tell us," Harry says.
As they are getting into the car, Kelly calls Brandon. At the same time, Brandon was telling Sammy that they were going to meet up with Kelly for lunch. Sammy's responds was, "I don't want to see Mommy."
And before Brandon could respond, the phone started to ring and Sammy ran into his room.
"Hello," he answers.
"Hey Brandon, it's me." Kelly continues, "I'm really sorry, but unfortunately I'm going after to cancel on lunch."
"Why, is everything all right?" Brandon asks concerned and a little disappointed.
"Hmm… yeah, so far everything is alright. It's just something that Harry Wilson and I need to deal with from Tuesday night," Kelly explains, probably telling him more than she should.
"Are the girls still alright?" Brandon asks. "Yeah, the girls are alright, but I still can't go into any more details, I'm sorry," Kelly apologies.
"Hey, please don't be sorry, it'll be okay," Brandon tries to reassure her.
"Yeah, it will be in time, could you please give Sammy a hug for me and tell him that I love him again," Kelly asks.
"Sure thing, talk to you later?" he asks again.
"Yeah, thanks again for being so understanding, bye," Kelly hangs up.
Once they get to the station, an officer directs them to sit down in a room to wait. After about five minutes the two officers that Kelly spoke with on Tuesday night comes into the room.
The first officer speaks up, "Hi, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Taylor, I'm glad that you guys could come down here to meet with us. This is concerning the case of your student Ms. Clark vs. the teacher Mr. Cannon. We have found some very interesting information on Mr. Cannon. His name isn't actually Cannon at all, it's Douglas Atherton. He has been committed of the same charges in two other countries, Europe and Australia. So, we have right to believe that Ms. Clark is telling the truth."
As the officers show them all of the evidence, all they both can say is, "wow."
"So what is the next step," Kelly asks.
The second officer speaks up, "Well, we don't have the permit for his arrest currently, but we will have it soon. So in meantime, please be extremely careful and keep your eye on him very closely. We are also going to continue to have unmarked cars follow him."
"Alright, thank you very much for updating us," Harry tells the officers while shaking their hands.
Kelly also thanks the officers, "Yes, thank you for asking us to come down here."
