Chapter 14
Goldie - 3 weeks later
I thumbs up a text message from Davis when he sends me an angry face emoji after I reject another one of his calls, further pissing him off, I’m sure. I shouldn’t have answered his first call three weeks ago because now he won’t stop. I don’t want to hear any more of his meaningless apologies. And I don’t want to listen to him masturbating again, in case that’s why he’s calling, since it will lead to more apologies and regret, which I hate. I don’t understand why he can’t just leave me alone.
I want to scream when he calls yet again , and I’m about to throw my phone across the room when I stop short. It’s Dad’s name flashing on my screen, not Davis’s.
My hand shakes as I swipe to answer it. “What do you want?”
“Marigold…Hi.” There’s a long pause as my mind whirls. “Thanks for answering the phone.” Another long pause where I give him nothing. “So, uh, how’s it going, kid?”
I contemplate hanging up, but the little girl in me still clings to a tiny bit of hope that her daddy—her real daddy—loves her. “It’s fine,” I lie, scuffing my big toe against the kitchen tiles, which need sweeping. I twist to lean back against the countertop next to the sink, happy for the excuse to continue putting off doing the dishes piling up for a little while longer. When neither of us says anything, I sigh with annoyance, the little girl within me shrinking back. “Why are you calling me?”
He curses under his breath, and I can imagine him sitting back on his nasty couch and scrubbing his hands through his thin gray hair the way Davis does when he gets frustrated. “Listen, I wanted to apologize for how things turned out.”
Oh great, another man apologizing for his shitty behavior, hoping it will fix everything. Just what I always wanted , I think to myself sarcastically.
“Alright.” Another awkward pause. “Well, if that’s all, then I’ll be going now.”
“No, no. Hang on a minute.” He sighs. “I was wondering…would you be willing to come by? So I can apologize in person?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say quietly.
“Please, Marigold. I know I ain’t got no right to ask, but I gotta see you. See my granddaughter.” I turn that over in my mind, warning bells chiming when I feel childish hope surging once more. “I cleaned up the apartment, and I stopped smoking inside for good. Got the place all nice and tidy for you.”
“Dad…”
“Come on. Make an old man happy,” he says with a pleading edge, a complete one-eighty from the last time I saw him.
I ignore the warning and give in. “Fine.”
“That’s my girl.”
I scrunch my nose. It sounds like something Davis would say to me, and I don’t like it.
“How about tonight? I’ll put the new sheets on the bed and—”
I push away from the counter, pacing the kitchen. “I’m not…I’m not going to stay with you.”
“Oh. Where are you living? It’s not with that asshole who brought you here, is it?”
Even though Davis is an asshole, it raises my hackles hearing Dad call him names. “That’s none of your business.”
“Well, shit, I think it is my business,” he grumbles, raising his voice.
I stop in place and clench my hand around my phone. “I’m hanging up now.”
“No, no, no. Please don’t hang up.” Dad lowers his voice. “I’m sorry. I’ll, uh, stay out of it. But I really need to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my only daughter. Like I said, I’ll stay out of your business if that’s what you want.”
Closing my eyes and combing my loose hair back behind my ears, I say, “If you can keep your promise, then fine. We can meet up.”
“Tonight?”
I glance at the clock on the microwave. It’s already three in the afternoon. Since Dad doesn’t have a car, I’ll have to come to him, and with the two-hour drive to Dallas, I won’t get there until five if we leave right now. Even though I shouldn’t, I reluctantly give in again.
“Thank you, Marigold. Hey, how about I order in? We can have dinner here and then—”
“No,” I say, interrupting him. “Not your apartment. I don’t feel safe there.” I don’t give a shit if he’s offended by that or not. It’s the truth.
Thankfully, he doesn’t give me any pushback and suggests a chain restaurant near his apartment. Right before we hang up, he says, “Thanks, kid. Means a lot to your old man.”
I give the dirty dishes a once over, then leave the kitchen to get myself and Lily ready for the stupid long drive. I’ve explored Davis’s house from top to bottom in the weeks I’ve been here, not at all feeling guilty about snooping. One of my more pleasant discoveries was the wall of hooks in Davis’s old bedroom, each hook displaying a different ball cap, most of them sporting a white, silver, or navy blue star. The man is obsessed with them. He even has a tattoo of one on his ribs below his calla lily tattoo that he got in memory of his dad. If we were on good terms, I’d probably tease him about his collection. But we’re not. So I don’t.
I’m in desperate need of a shower, but I settle for digging through Davis’s closet and pulling on one of his smaller black T-shirts, my surprisingly clean New Mexico hoodie, and a pair of his black sweatpants that I have to roll down three times so they won’t fall off. I wind my hair into a low messy bun without attempting to brush it out and pull on one of Davis’s ball caps to cover my greasy roots.
I want to call Dad back and reschedule when I have to wake Lily from her nap since it means she’ll cry throughout the long drive, but if I don’t leave now, I probably never will, and I need to hear him out. See if he really does want to have a relationship with us. If not for my sake, then for Lily’s, since he’s the only family we have left.
I dig through the dwindling pile of clean clothes in the laundry hamper that needs folding and putting away, and I shake out one of the long-sleeve pink onesies and fleece ruffle pants Davis bought for Lily. They’re wrinkly, but since we’re not going anywhere fancy, I’m not going to worry about it.
I snap a picture of her after I add the pink flannel over her outfit and, at the last minute, put on her pink ball cap, though I’ll have to take it off before buckling her into her car seat in the Ford. I’ve finally gotten comfortable with driving it after only hitting two curbs this week on my drive to her recent pediatric appointment. That’s a considerable improvement from last week when I made a left turn and straight up drove over a median I hadn’t seen.
My fingers twitch with the impulse to send the picture to Davis, knowing he’d probably love it. They’ve done that a lot lately, but that’s one thing I won’t give in to.
* * *
I’m late getting to the restaurant after having to pull over into a CVS parking lot to nurse Lily and change her diaper halfway through the drive. I find Dad in a similar but cleaner outfit than the last time I saw him, smoking a cigarette to the right of the restaurant’s glass front doors, and I slow my approach.
“Hey, Marigold.” He beams and opens his arms for a hug.
I back up and wave to his cigarette. “Not good for the baby,” I say.
“Right, right. Sorry about that.” He takes one long inhale, sucking back as much of his cigarette as he can before dropping it on the ground and snubbing it out with his scuffed black cowboy boot that has seen better days.
When he comes in for a hug, I put Lily up to my shoulder, facing away from him so she won’t breathe in his secondhand smoke. I also hold my breath when I accept his hug, then pull away quickly.
Dad holds the door open and gestures me into the overly warm restaurant with an exaggerated sweep of his arm. The hostess at the front leads us to a wooden booth at the back wall that looks out over the parking lot. Lily isn’t old enough to sit up by herself in a high chair, so I cradle her. Dad doesn’t ask to hold her, though he shoots her plenty of curious looks.
A college-age server approaches and takes our drink order, his fuzzy upper lip curling slightly when he clocks my age, disheveled appearance, and the fact that I have a baby. Well, fuck you, too, judgmental asshole. He doesn’t make eye contact after that, which honestly is preferable.
I only order water since I’ve started keeping count again of how much of Davis’s money I’ve spent so I can pay him back every last cent. I’m disappointed but not surprised when Dad orders a draft beer. After the server leaves us to look over our dinner menus, I struggle with what to say.
Dad scratches his temple. “So, that man who was with you…he’s not your girl’s daddy, yeah?”
“Lily. Her name is Lily. And he’s…” It doesn’t feel right to finish my sentence. Davis isn’t technically her father, but it feels wrong to say that out loud. Like it would be a shameful lie.
Thinking about Davis makes me think about the picture I took of Lily earlier, and my fingers twitch again with the urge to pull my phone out and send it to him now. The urge immediately evaporates when I imagine how he’d react if he knew I was out with my dad. He’d probably get pissed and try to tell me what to do—as if he gets a say—then threaten to spank me.
My belly flutters.
Stupid, stupid.
Dad tap, tap, taps his fingers against the tabletop as he fidgets in his seat, which leaves me to fidget in mine. He glances nervously once at Lily, then at me, then around the busy restaurant, lit by yellow bulbs hanging above each booth and the large TVs hanging from the ceiling above the bar in the middle of the dining room.
Just as I open my mouth to ask him why he’s so nervous, a reed-thin older woman with unnaturally bright blonde, shoulder-length hair plops down on the booth seat next to Dad. Bile churns in my stomach, and I clutch Lily closer to my chest.
“What are you doing here?” All those warning bells I heard chiming earlier go off like fireworks in my head, and I momentarily feel dizzy. Fuck! Why didn’t I listen to my gut and call this off? Panic-stricken, I look to Dad, who drops his eyes to the tabletop. I only ask him one question: “Why?”
“It’s amazing what people will do for money.” Colton’s mom pinches her thin lips together, anger coloring her normally cold, sunken cheeks. We’re both pale, but she’s the kind of woman who obsesses about staying out of the sun at all costs, and it’s ghoulish on her. “Like father, like daughter,” she spits with disdain.
“What…what are you talking about?” I ask Mrs. Fitzroy. I flick my eyes between the two adults who have made my life hell. “Did she pay you to bring me here?” I direct my question to Dad, who chugs his beer when the server arrives instead of answering me.
“You people are nothing but trash. Getting your dear old dad to call you only cost me two hundred dollars.” Mrs. Fitzroy leans over the table and points her bony finger at me. “But you…you’re the kind of trash who tried to trap my son into staying with you. Thank god I saw right through you and dug your claws out of my Colton before you could ruin his life.”
“What are you talking about?” I scream the question, cemented to my seat when I should have left the moment she sat down. I startle Lily with my raised voice, and she starts to cry, her tears breaking my heart because it’s my fault. All of this is my fault. If I had just stayed home…
Mrs. Fitzroy drops her nearly translucent blue eyes to my daughter and curls her top lip even higher than the server’s had been. “I won’t let you ruin my granddaughter’s life, either.”
The fear and confusion freezing me in place goes up in flames. “Fuck you!” I scoot toward the edge of the seat, readjusting Lily so I can shoulder her diaper bag before standing.
Mrs. Fitzroy darts out of her seat and looms over me so I can’t get up without knocking her over. I shrink back when she says, “You’re going to sign these papers”—she throws a stack of legal documents on the table that she pulls out of her oversized handbag—“and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll hand her over.”
We’re drawing plenty of attention now, and I look around for help when Dad remains seated instead of doing the fatherly thing and stepping in. Why, why, why do I keep expecting anything good and decent out of him?
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to just give her to you! You wanted me to get an abortion . There’s no way—”
“And you should have! But you didn’t. You’re a selfish little bitch and had her anyway, even though you can’t support yourself or her!” Her voice is shrill, and still, no one tries to intervene, choosing to sit and watch us like we’re putting on a show. “What’s your plan? Slap my son with eighteen years of child support so you can live on his dime? Well, I see right through that, too, and now that she’s here, I’m going to raise her so she doesn’t grow up to be a slut like you, already shacking up with another man!”
She gestures for me to pass Lily to her. When I scoot away and press my back against the wall and window, she braces a knobby knee on the bench seat like she’s going to climb on top of it.
Tears blur my vision, and I try to blink them away rapidly, but it doesn’t work. When she gets her hands around Lily and tries to tug her out of my grasp, I kick her thigh and scream, “Stop! Stop!”
Mrs. Fitzroy shrieks when I kick her again, making her fall backward off the seat onto her ass, but she springs to her feet, looking ready to murder me as a blue vein bulges in the middle of her forehead. “You little bitch!” Then she suddenly widens her eyes in faux terror and screeches, “Help, help! She attacked me! She’s crazy! Help!”
A family walks in, and the giant of a man who looks like he eats nails for breakfast is immediately at Mrs. Fitzroy’s side after passing his son to the woman behind him. “The hell is going on here? You ok, miss?” His booming voice startles Mrs. Fitzroy, and she backs up and sneers before she remembers she’s supposed to be acting scared.
“Help me, please,” I beg him, grabbing his attention. “She’s trying to take my daughter!” His menacing gaze darkens as he searches my face, reading the genuine terror on mine versus the act Mrs. Fitzroy is putting on, and he looks ready to spit those nails at Colton’s mom.
Mrs. Fitzroy backs away from my side of the booth but not away from the table. She straightens her spine, though she has to tip her chin all the way up to look the man in the eye. “She is an unfit mother, and I have every legal right to take my granddaughter!”
“Back the fuck up, now,” the man grits out, using his bulk to intimidate Mrs. Fitzroy into stumbling back on her pointy, brown leather sandals.
The young, heavily pregnant blonde woman who walked in with the man, holding their son on her hip, rushes toward me. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go,” she says softly, and I scramble out of the booth.
I sob with relief when the man blocks Mrs. Fitzroy from following after us, screaming about calling the cops if he touches so much as a hair on her head.
“I won’t touch you, but I sure as hell won’t let you touch her either,” the man says to Mrs. Fitzroy with a growl, tugging on his bushy beard.
I give Dad one last glance over my shoulder. He drops his head in his hands with his elbows on the table next to his empty pint glass. I want to scream that he’s a bastard and demand answers out of him, but when Mrs. Fitzroy attempts to dart around the giant, I follow the young woman out of the restaurant without a word. Everyone else simply continues to stare at us in shocked silence, some with their cell phones out recording the confrontation.
When we reach the parking lot, the blonde motions to the parked vehicles. “Which one is yours?”
I can hardly get the words out to tell her it’s the red truck, and she follows me. I jerk back when the giant man unexpectedly reappears at our sides. Mrs. Fitzroy is screaming into her cell phone right behind him just as I get Lily buckled into her car seat and slam the truck door closed.
The woman takes my diaper bag off my shoulder, throws it in the passenger seat, and then follows me around to the driver’s side. I climb into my seat when the man wrenches the door open.
“You good to drive?” He tips his head with his close-cropped dark hair toward my shaky hand as I try to fit the key into the ignition.
“Y-Yes, I’m ok,” I say after taking a steadying breath, fitting the key in, and getting the engine running. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Anytime.” He winks. “What’s your name, Red?”
“Marigold.”
“Well, Marigold, you tell Davis that Wyatt says ‘Hi’ and to get his ass back home.”
Eyes wide, I ask him, “How did you know…?”
“The truck.”
When the man winks again and closes my door, I drive straight over the curb and through the field butting up to the side of the restaurant instead of attempting to back up into the crowd now surrounding Mrs. Fitzroy. I pray that she hasn’t thought to write down the license plate, which she could use to track me down, as she yells unintelligibly at anyone who will listen. The truck bounces wildly over mounds of dirt in the tall grass, but the frame is high enough off the ground not to bottom out when I drive over the next curb too fast and onto the street.
I make it forty-five minutes down the highway, dying a little inside while Lily wails from her car seat, until I feel confident we’re not being followed, then pull over into the same CVS parking lot I did on the way into the city. Lily is nearly inconsolable, and I bounce her in my arms as I walk circles around the truck until she’s able to calm down enough for me to put her back in her seat, giving me plenty of time to spiral about what all just happened and what the hell I’m going to do now.
There’s no world in which I’ll hand over my daughter. Mrs. Fitzroy has completely lost her mind if she thinks I’ll let her get anywhere near Lily, though she has the money to take me to court for custody. That prospect scares me even more than when I was attacked before meeting Davis.
What do I do, what do I do?
Just before I pull out of the lot to head home, I call Davis for the first time since he left. He answers on the first ring.
Davis
I rub my palm over my chest after popping another antacid. I can’t seem to shake the heartburn that came on out of nowhere a few hours ago, though I can’t think of what I ate that would give me this reaction. That terrifies me because it’s the same thing that happened the night I met Goldie. There’s a looming sense of doom, made all the worse by the fact that Goldie kept sending my calls to voicemail earlier.
My phone rings, and figuring it’s Russell calling for an updated ETA again, I swipe to answer it without taking my eyes off the road. “Hey, boss.”
“All good?”
“Oh, hey, Wyatt,” I grunt with surprise, keeping my eye on a vehicle ahead of me that’s having trouble staying in its lane. “What’s up?”
“Dolly wants to know when she makes it home safe since we’re in Dallas for the weekend and won’t be able to drop by and check on her.”
I pass a cop cruiser on the shoulder, hidden by a large road sign that lights up behind me. “Check on who?”
“The fuck you mean, ‘who’? The redhead. Who do you think?”
My heart slams into my ribs, pulling my attention away from the cruiser that speeds around me to pull over the swerving driver, clearing the road for me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Wyatt unleashes a long line of curses and is interrupted by an incoming call. I swipe to answer it on the first ring when Honey Baby flashes across the screen.
“Davis?” The fear in Goldie’s voice has a bomb going off inside my chest, and I clutch my left pec. I fucking knew it. Knew something bad was coming.
“What happened? Are you—is Lily—are y’all ok?” Jesus, Jesus, tell me they’re ok. Something horrible must have happened if both Wyatt and Goldie are calling me. I pick up speed before she even has to say another word, hoping like hell the cop behind me will stay busy long enough for me to drive out of their jurisdiction.
“My dad…Colton’s mom…they—” Goldie breaks down and starts sobbing on the phone while Lily grows louder, crying her little heart out in the background.
“Oh, baby, baby, hang on. What happened? Are you hurt? Is Lily ok?”
“S-She tried t-to take her!” Goldie wails.
“Who did?” I boom into the phone, damn near flying down the highway at dangerous speeds, counting my lucky stars that I’m past the worst of rush hour traffic and only three hours out from the warehouse. I fire off questions with rising panic. “Goldie, baby, who tried to take her? Who? Have you talked to the police yet? Where are you?”
Goldie’s voice goes in and out as service turns spotty, and all I can make out is, “No cops!…We got away…I don’t know what…I’m—”
I want to roar when there’s nothing but static after that, and the call drops as soon as I take my exit down a tree-lined back road. I slam my hand against the steering wheel over and over again until I lose feeling in it after I try to call Goldie and then Wyatt back, but there’s no service.
All I know is someone tried to take my daughter, and I wasn’t there to stop them. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there! And now my woman and child are crying, and I have no idea where they are. I’m not with them to console them, hold them, protect them, and love them.
But I will be soon.
And I’m not leaving.
Not ever again.
* * *
When I get to the warehouse and back the rig up to the loading dock, I jump out and slam the door closed. I’ve run halfway through the parking lot to get in the Buick when Russell catches up to me.
He grabs my shoulder. “Davis, hold on a minute, son.”
I shrug his hand off. “I don’t have time for this!”
Russell sprints ahead of me, not even out of breath, forcing me to stop when he puts his hands up. “I told you we needed to talk when you got back.”
“I said, I don’t have time for this!” I try to sidestep him. “I need to get home.”
Russell must see something in my eyes, and he banks his irritation. “What the hell is going on?”
“I quit,” I bite out impulsively, feeling like my stomach is going to fall out my asshole at the rash decision. I’ve got too many responsibilities, but I’ll make it work. I swerve around him, unlock the Buick, and throw my travel bag inside.
Russell’s brows crash together, and he catches my car door when I try to close it after turning over the ignition. “Fuck that. I’m not letting you quit. Come to my office when you can.”
I nod with relief, and when he closes my door, I peel out of the parking lot and drive like a bat out of hell down the dark roads toward home. Home . I finally have someone—a family—to come home to since Dad passed. That thought has me rubbing my aching chest.