Chapter: Karma- Mandy has been found dead

As the snows went away with the arrival of spring, the business of eviction began keeping Danny and I busy with clean-outs and repairs again.
When I went to the loft to meet up with him, the building maintenance guy, from the ground floor business, mentioned a power failure issue that they needed to have fixed. My question was, why Dan Doyle wasn’t there to tend to it, being that he was the person who handled their electrical issues in the past.
That’s when I got the news about Mandy, Dan Doyle’s oldest child.

Dan was not available due to his incapacitation over the fact that she’s been found dead in her apartment, of an overdose. If that wasn’t bad enough, a guy was found in the room with her child, with his pants missing. It was obvious that he had been inappropriately handling Mandy also.
It may be that he didn’t know she had an overdose, assuming her to be merely unconscious when he took advantage of her.
My legs buckled and I fell to the ground, suddenly sick in my stomach, and groaning in sheer disbelief. I spent the rest of the day trying to understand what had happened to the young woman I had worked with, whom was so eager to learn the Carpentry trade, and was so thankful for her sobriety and getting her kids back in her life.

Mandy was just thirteen when I’d met her. Her mother, Lynn, had died in the arms of Mandy’s father, after crashing the motorcycle they had been riding.
Mandy was a teenage mother. She got knocked up before her sixteenth birthday. And now, less than a year out of jail, she’s dead.
The last time I saw her, she and a girlfriend that shared her apartment, had ran into Billy and I, after working on a porch rebuilding project for Salih. We spoke with them outside of a liquor store called The Bottle House. They asking Bill to purchase booze for them.

It was odd that they would be on South Division, where it was known for drug activity, after sundown but I dismissed it without much suspicion. Her person was one that was full of life and everyone loved her. She was spunky and she was beautiful in every way. I can still see her dimples and teeth on her bright smiling face.

That morning, I wondered if her father wasn’t being dealt his grief- karma at play for spending our money from the log home belonging to Mark and Connie when he bought the Harley Davidson Fat boy. Even still, I went to Dan’s home to express my sympathy that evening.

Dan was on his back, lying on the couch in a catatonic state. Saying nothing, I went to his side, knelt down and held his hands in mine. A few moments later I left him in the silence and never saw him again. I drove away, still crippled with the reality and sickness in my heart, while I agonized over how could this have happened. All I could think of was that Dan’s wrong doing brought this on. That’s just how I felt at the time. I kept thinking that he could have prevented this but that his selfishness and his greed made it happen. I couldn’t help but to blame him.

In the meantime, I was oblivious to my own selfishness and greed, and continued digging what was shaping up to be my own grave. The clock was ticking and no one would be prepared. Julie searched for a home that met Casey’s demands while the spring was progressing in winter’s demise.

A house was found that met all the criteria, which led to scrambling for boxes at liquor stores to move with. Kenny became too busy to assist the family, and Casey refused to help- still in a state of which no one on earth can understand except for a fourteen-year-old girl.
What she needed was a paddling, the kind that breaks blood vessels in a father’s hand. The last desperate attempt of gaining control that should have been established early on in the bonding between parent and child.
This is a crucial moment that can’t be overlooked but the idea is to properly invest in a kid from birth, not from their teens. By then there is little hope,... which is what we have here today.