"Frank, what's with the truck in the back yard?" Matt asked. "Oh, that's my escape plan. I'm not going back to jail. It's not registered, so I'll just take off if she tried to put me back in jail." Frank stated plainly. This old beat up Chevy truck had a tree growing up through the middle of it, and the tires appeared buried, but somehow it looked like freedom to Frank, so Matt left it alone. They continued working on the house, basically just gathering trash and sorting old mail. Once the house was in better shape, there was the dog to worry about. "Frank, are you taking care of the dog?" Frank got a big smile on his face like the old days, Oh yeah! I take him out all the time. He's a great dog, he's my buddy! You know, I put his thing on and he wags his tail and we go out and he jumps and stuff and he knows man, he knows. Yeah." From what Matt observed, Frank took him out of his crate to feed him and then put him right back in. It seemed so cruel, but Frank insisted that he was taking good care of him and he did seem to like the dog alot.
Matt felt a little better about Frank's situation. The house was getting sorted out, he was current on his mortgage and Frank said he would pay the bill now that he knew where to send it to. He was working at the cell phone store at this point, but he was barely able to manage financially.
If only Kat would sign the divorce papers, let Frank have his half of the equity of the home and his portion of the family's money, it probably wouldn't have come to this and Frank wouldn't have a felony fraud charge on his record. Frank made an error in judgement, which is common with Frontotemporal Dementia, and signed Kat's name to refinance documents. It can be argued that he had no choice since she walked out of the meeting where he signed the family home over to her and she was supposed to sign over his old house back to him, except she and her attorney pulled a dramatic move and got up and walked out leaving Frank and Nicholas wondering what happened. After being under-employed and having an unmanageable amount of child support based on a salary he could never achieve again, he was in a desperate situation. Go to jail for non-payment of support, or go to jail for fraud, or get in that old Chevy planted in the backyard and disappear. Kat could have let it go. There was no harm to her in the end but she insisted that the District Attorney file the charges against Frank. It wasn't enough for her that he didn't live with her, it wasn't enough that there was a protection from abuse order preventing Frank from getting anywhere near Kat and the kids, she wanted to destroy him. A felony would prevent him from getting any meaningful employment in the future which would only hurt her and the chldren, but she didn't care. Mulva Fargo sent a letter to Frank's attorney stating that "any agreement on record is null and void in light of the fraud charges against your client. There will be no more talks of any agreement until a full investigation is launched into Mr. Layton's behavior to be sure that he has not perpetrated any other fraudulent behavior on my client, Ms Green." Kat took her maiden name back. This was all designed to help Kat keep everything she had. If she wanted it over, she could sign the papers and write a check, however more than two years had already gone by and now they had a new excuse to keep delaying.
By summer 2008, it all fell apart again. This time it was too late. "Matt, I don't know what it means, I got this letter." "What is it Frank?" "I don't know, I think it says they sold my house." Matt went over to Frank's house and found more piles of trash and junk and piles of unopened mail and newspapers everywhere. "Well Frank, here's the letter that says that you have three weeks to call to stop the sheriff's sale, and here's the letter that says they sold your house to someone. What were you waiting for? Why didn't you do something?" Matt was so angry at Frank and his brothers and the world for making him the responsible one for all this mess. "You know Frank, I've got a business to run, and my own family, I can't keep doing this. I thought you were going to pay this bill." Frank was sheepish, "I paid the Comcast bill and I thought I paid this one too." "Let me get this straight, you paid the bill for the television, but not the bill for the place where you live. Frank, I told you how important this one is. It's the most important bill you have. You can live without electricity, you could even live without water, you don't need a tv, but you need this house." "Sorry man, uh, I f'ed up." 'Yeah, you did, now I have to see what we can do."
Matt tried. He made phone calls to everywhere and everyone he could think of, but once it's sold, it's done. Frank had five days to move out. "What are you going to do Frank?" Matt asked. "Oh I'll be okay, I'll just get one of those houses in Philly. You just find an empty house and move in." "Umm, no, you're not doing that." Matt felt more like Frank's father now than his brother. Now the hard part. The only thing he could think to do in five days was ask his mom if Frank could crash for a few weeks until they figure something out. He already knew how that was going to go.
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