If You Really Loved Me Read Online Free Page B

led David Brown through the twenty-four hours that had just passed. It was apparent that Brown was a man who had spent most of his time working and the rest of it with his extended family, a family in which he seemed to function as the head. He explained that he lived with Linda, their eight-month-old baby, Krystal, and with Linda's sister, Patricia Bailey, seventeen. He added that Patti's mother was ' a "chronic alcoholic," so he and Linda had taken her sister in.
    "And Cinnamon?"
    "Cinnamon's mother and I were divorced ten years ago. Cinny's been back and forth between us. She's been with us this time since last fall."
    David Brown described himself as a beleaguered parent, torn between his wife and young baby and his teenage daughter. The picture he painted of Cinnamon revealed an angry girl who did not fit in with the family and resisted his attempts to get help for her. "I've talked to her about counseling, but she threatened to commit suicide if I forced her into counseling."
    "Did anything special happen today—yesterday—that might have escalated the situation?"
    Brown shook his head slowly, as he reached for another cigarette, and tried to form his thoughts. He recalled that his parents, Manuela and Arthur Brown—who lived in Carson —had come over and spent most of the day with them. It was a Monday, but David Brown ran his own business: Data Recovery. He had invented a "process" that enabled him to retrieve lost data from computers. He had worked, he said, for a number of major corporations as well as the Pentagon.
    "Linda and I ran my business. The phones rang all day long."
    But he could work the hours he wanted, take a day off in the middle of the week to make up for working all weekend. On Monday—only yesterday—they had all planned to go out to the desert for a picnic excursion, but rain made them change their plans.
    McLean noted that Brown remembered some events of the day before precisely, and then there were times his clear recall suddenly became vague and fuzzy. Shock. McLean had seen it before.
    Brown continued his recollections. They had spent most of Monday playing a card game: Uno. They often did. It was a favorite of his whole—extended—family. And his parents were over to visit a lot. Linda had refused to play Uno the day before.
    "She was irritable yesterday. Cinny played for about half a game. Then she left—she might have gone out to her trailer."
    "Trailer?" McLean prompted.
    David Brown explained that Cinnamon had been living in a little Terry travel trailer in the backyard for about three weeks. There had been problems between Cinnamon and Linda. His wife had "kicked Cinnamon out" of the house and said she had to stay in the trailer.
    "They just didn't get along," Brown said, sighing. "There were continual problems between them. About two weeks ago, I spoke to her mother—to my first wife, Brenda— about having Cinny move back to her. But we compromised by having Cinny live in the trailer. Cinny was having problems at school too, so I transferred her out of Bolsa Grande in Garden Grove and she just started at Loara High School in Anaheim."
    Brown explained that Cinnamon refused to help with the household chores and didn't get along with either Linda or her younger sister, Patti. Although Cinnamon slept in the trailer, she usually came into the house for meals and to watch television, so it wasn't as if she had been completely banished.
    Asked to home in on the evening before, Brown strained to remember. He had an appointment with his chiropractor sometime between five and six, and he had taken Cinnamon and Patti with him. The trio had been in an automobile accident months earlier and were all being treated. On the way back home, Cinnamon had begun to cause trouble again and had verbally abused Patti, treating her "very badly," as Brown recalled.
    David Brown had certainly been a man pulled in many directions. His parents were still at the home on Ocean Breeze, his wife was