Unpunished

By D.D.K.

Unpunished is a story about, love, abuse, sex, betrayal, deceit ,mental illness,murder and the unknown. It's NOT a pretty story, however it is one woman's true story. Donna was on her way home from work one afternoon when she stopped to pick up her mail. She tore excitedly into a package that she assumed was from her mother; instead photographs from her past tumbled onto her lap. She is thrown into the memories of her past, memories that are unwanted and of deeds that went unpunished!!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477280973

D.D.K.

D.D.K. was born in 1958 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is an avid business woman who has raised two daughters and is the proud grandmother of two. She currently lives on an acreage in Saskatchewan with her loving other half and enjoys travelling to the tropics as time permits. Unpunished is her first novel in which she explores the trials and tribulations of finding true love. The reader will be taken on a heartfelt journey that they will not soon forget.

Book preview

Unpunished

D.D.K.

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2012 by D.D.K.. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/08/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8096-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8095-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8097-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919443

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Edited by Karin Kirkland

Sources for the articles:

Cayman Free Press

Cayman Net News

Contents

Prologue/Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Conclusion

Special Thanks to My Gals:

My Sista Karin

Armelle

Angie

Cheralyn

Debbie

Pauline

Rosalie

Shannon

Tammy

Taryn

and my kidlets!

Prologue/Introduction

D onna was driving along the winding country road taking in the view of the river together with the beautiful gold, amber and scarlet leaves that were lightly falling from the trees. She never tired of the drive home, since it was always so breathtaking in any of the four seasons. She stopped at the end of the lane to get her mail as she had done so many times before. There were a lot of the usual fliers but one letter with no return address instantly caught her attention. The handwriting was shaky, as though written with a vibrating pen. It must be from her elderly mother she thought as she excitedly opened the letter, not waiting to drive home first. Donna felt a twisting knot in her stomach as the pictures fell out into a pile on her lap. She recognized where she had once been in the photos, only now she was viciously and intricately cut out. He was back again

It all began to come back, the humiliating history, all of the emotional, physical and traumatic episodes, which had made her life a living hell. So many instances in the past that went . . . unpunished.

Chapter 1

D onna’s mother Mary was a tough, hard woman. At the same time she had gentleness about her, always wanting to rescue people, particularly children. She was beautiful with platinum blonde hair and turquoise blue eyes. Mary was a small framed woman. Donna’s father Alan was Mary’s third marriage. He was a handsome, well-built man with dark thick hair and stunning green eyes. He worked as a mason and did various construction work. Donna had a half-sister from her mom’s first marriage and two half-brothers from her second. Her mother had raised Donna alone with her oldest son as support. She gave Donna most of what she needed. She worked long hours as a hairstylist and her feet were always swollen. Donna was always terrified as a child of losing her mother. She didn’t think she could live without her. She wanted her mother to love her, as much as she loved her mother.

Her father had run away from the Ukraine during the war. He never spoke about it until later in life, while in a drunken stupor. He would serve in three different armies, somehow managing to survive the grip of death. He had left a family of four daughters and one son behind. Donna’s mother and her father’s son Peter wrote to each other for many years. Peter knew it was a matter of survival that caused their father to run and his letters were heartwarming. Donna believed it was the underlying cause of her father’s alcoholism, medicine was what he called it, every morning and every night, it numbed the pain.

During the war, her father and his brother were lined up with many other soldiers in front of a huge pit, which was to become their graves. The men fell backwards into the death pits from the bullets that tore through them. Her father and his brother were spared from death by falling into the pits without being shot. They lay buried beneath the bloody corpses of the men they had fought alongside. After five hours and the sound of silence, they cautiously peeked out from below the bodies in the pit. He was relieved to see that his brother was alive as well. They made a pact to meet in England. Her father ran one way and his brother in the other direction. Eventually they both made their way to England; however they never saw each other again. Her father had apparently fathered a child there. He then found his way to Canada and eventually married her mother.

Donna’s brother Dave was her mentor. He acted in the way she hoped her father would have. He was eleven years older than her. He bought her first bike, a red two wheeled boy’s bike. She practiced riding that bike until she had it mastered. Not without many bruises and bleeding as she kissed the pavement numerous times. Later on in life he would buy her first mini-bike. Wow! What an item that was. Dave was crude and harsh in his words, but she always knew he loved her. He ruled with an iron fist and no matter how much a challenge something was, he forced her to continue until she got it right. Even though the boys had a different father than her, it was never as though they felt any less than full-blooded siblings. Dave took her skating and surprised her with a pair of white booted roller skates. They were a big item in that era which allowed her to take lessons and earn herself some pins of accomplishment.

The younger of her two older brothers Dean, left home at fifteen. He was feisty as heck and was always on her father’s blacklist. She was ten years younger than Dean and she felt his absence daily. He and her sister left some records at home, which she played daily for years like Elvis Presley and some other big names which inspired her in her teen years. Years later, she and her boyfriend Kenny took a tour bus to see Elvis’ second last concert. It was her first big concert and she found it comical when they boarded the tour bus to find every man looking like an Elvis double. There were small, big, thin, heavy and every type of Elvis possible. All the way there the crowd sang nothing but Elvis tunes. Kenny and Donna had no idea that people drank alcohol on bus tours and the whole group was happy to share their loot. The driver stopped when they entered the U.S. so they could purchase their own liquor. She was surprised at Elvis’ huge size and how he cried during each song. She had no idea at that time; she was watching a legend as she was snapping one picture after another. He seemed to be a man who had everything except true happiness. That trip would become a fond lifetime memory for her, and she learned that all the riches in the world could not buy happiness.

Donna knew there was a serious problem in her family. She cried herself to sleep almost every night. She was sad and she missed her brother. She was a bed wetter and she tried so hard not to be. It didn’t seem to matter what she tried, nothing worked. She felt as though she was weak or had something wrong with her. Her mother was always very patient and she was never scolded. This made her feel terrible since she knew that it was work to do the wash every day. At one point the Doctor gave them some type of medication, which would turn her urine red. It never helped anyway. When she awoke and saw the bright red soaked bed, she was terrified. She wet the bed until she was twelve years old and was mortified that any of her friends would find out the truth. She avoided sleep overs and when she did have them, she rarely slept. One time when she finally had a friend over the terror hit her. She woke up and the bed was soaked. This girl was quite a school bully and the thought of the torment this would cause her was overwhelming. She quickly took the plug out of the hot water bottle which she slept with for warmth. What a relief when her friend woke up and realized the water all over the sheets.

Donna was always in fear of her father hurting her mom. The house was always full of screaming and cursing when her dad came home. There had been so many beatings that the boys took from her father. He had beaten Dean so bad that he couldn’t walk for two weeks. Her father emitted daily anger against one of the boys. If it were not against them, it was against her mother. She frequently heard him call her mother a courva, whore, in his own mother tongue, in his fits of rage which he thought she could not understand. Little did he know his baby girl was absorbing all of those choice words. It was Dave who was always there to rescue them when they ran to safety—all thirteen or more times over the years. Times such as Christmases her father would explode, her birthday parties or any random day of the week. Her dad locked her and himself in her parent’s bedroom. Screaming once again in his mother tongue that he was going to kill her and himself. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her. He loved her. It was simply a ploy to torment her mother. It was then that her mother translated the words to Dave. Dave kicked in the door and took her to safety once again.

When Donna walked into a room and saw her mom and dad in a steamy embrace, she would scream with all of her might. Someone would always come running. She couldn’t understand if he was hurting her or not. She couldn’t recognize the difference between affection and abuse.

Chapter 2

O n occasion her father would take her mother out; on this particular evening he had taken her out dancing. Donna’s brother Dean was left to babysit. Dave was out with his friends. Donna was five years old and Dean was fifteen. In his attempt to entertain her, he decided that they would take a ride on her father’s motorcycle. This was a huge risk, as Dean was never allowed to ride it. Things were going well and they were on their way back down the driveway to their home when her foot got lodged in the spokes of the back wheel and stuck against the hot muffler. In excruciating pain and with a foot that looked like it had just come out of a meat grinder, her brother hurried her over to his friend’s place, whose mom was a nurse. The woman cleaned her wounds to the best of her ability; wrapping them in gauze and suggested Dean take her to the hospital. At this point fear was ruling him and surely all he was thinking about was the beating that he was going to get when his stepfather got home. Donna was feeling awful for her brother. He always looked out for her and now this had to happen, what rotten luck!!

When her parents arrived, she was laying on the couch in deep pain under a blanket to hide the leg. The pale white color on her face signaled something wrong to her mother. She was beside herself, but the big surprise was her dad. All he did was listen, shake his head, turn around and head off to bed. Mom took her to the hospital. The gauze that the woman had put on her wounds had soaked up a lot of blood and had dried onto the mangled flesh. She would never forget the hard time they had at the hospital getting it off, slowly peeling back the gauze that was being loosened with syringes of water. It turned out she had second degree friction burns from her ankle to her knee. Donna was a year in a full leg cast and with all her luck she caught chicken pox. She had to put up with the itch, using one of her mom’s knitting needles to scratch with down inside the cast.

One night while she was bathing upstairs, her father arrived home in a drunken stupor and in a mad fury. She could hear the screams of ‘courva’ with his deep loud voice all the way up stairs. Her mom ran into the bathroom and quickly wrapped her in a towel. It was evident they were in trouble. Her mom carried her as she ran next door through knee-deep snow to the neighbors for shelter. The snow burned Donna’s damp skin when her mother dropped her during the trek. She could not stop the trembling that overtook her body. It stopped when they arrived at her sister’s home sometime later for security. She didn’t understand why this was happening. Why were they being punished?

They moved to an apartment where she would start a new school. It wouldn’t last longer than three months. She had befriended a young girl named Sherri, who was confined to a wheelchair. Donna thought Sherri was so pretty with her black rimmed glasses. She was sorry to move back home, since she enjoyed their walks to school together and she felt proud to push Sherri’s wheelchair along the sidewalk to school. She learned to be thankful for what she had, and for being able to run and jump. She was grateful to have met this happy little girl.

On her sixth Christmas she was so excited over her new Timex watch, she ran about the house to find her parents. Her mom was in her bedroom, lying on the bed, totally paralyzed and silent. Donna never really knew what happened, but she remembered vividly that an ambulance took her mom away as Dave told her she would be ok. He would look after her. Donna was later sent to stay with her mom’s friend Helen. Her father came the next day and told her that her mom was going to die. She had no idea why he would say that. Shortly after this, two days later she was taken home to her mother.

Donna walked into the kitchen of their two-story home. She let out a