Leading up to 'that night'

On Father’s day weekend 1994 Randy (my husband of barely two years) left Nick and I.  It came as a complete shock to me.  He had been my high school sweetheart, my best friend.  The only thing that had been wrong in our relationship was that he had been out all night the weekend before…come to find out later, he was with Deborah Soule.  He moved in with Debbie and her two children immediately.  I was devastated.  But I moved on and into my sister Celeste’s house with Nicholas until we got settled into our own place.  I signed up for college and signed Nick up for day care at FLCC.  I was going to do what I had to do to give my son the best life I could.  Nick had a hard time adjusting to being away from me, but after a while he started to like being in day care, and I have to say, I was very hesitant to leave him there.  I heard a lot of horror stories about abuse in day care settings and it really scared me, but they took wonderful care of him.   We were quite happy, and I look back at this time as one of the happiest in my life. 

I had talked to Randy repeatedly about not leaving Nick alone with Debbie. I did not know her well, and when Nick was there, he was there to visit his father, not Debbie.  I told Randy if he had to work on his weekend with Nick, just let me know, I would keep him and he could have him the next weekend.  If Nick cried and wanted me during the night...call me, I would come get him any time, day or night.  Randy agreed to all this, but never called.  He did skip his visitation often, looking back I am thankful for that.  At the time though it broke my heart because Nick loved his dad.  Every white car he would see he would point to and say "daddy's kuck, daddy's kuck."

In November, around Thanksgiving time, Randy dropped Nick off at my house.  I noticed immediately a little scratch on his cheek, but didn’t think much about it.  It was later when I changed his diaper that I noticed little scratches and digs in his diaper area, other little bruises in various places and his entire right ear was bruised.  So I took him to the ER, where I was treated like the jealous ex-wife and sent home.  They did report it to CPS because I had requested it.  Over the next couple of days I noticed the temple area above his  ear starting to swell (you can see this in some of the pictures I have posted on here).  This time I took him to the Doctors and was told it was ‘cat scratch disease’ so Nick was put on an antibiotic.  That was all fine and good, except at that time I did not own a cat,  but once again the Doctor would not listen to me.  (I was later told after Nick died that injury was most likely a fractured skull.)  Social Services claims to have investigated, but didn’t listen to me or the day care center.  While one of the girls at the day care center changed Nick’s diaper he pointed to the scratches and said “Debbie boo-boo”.   It was very frustrating when I was told I had to send Nick back over there or I would be arrested.  Social Services took total control over my son, and in the end were not held accountable in any way for his murder.