Chapter Ten
Later that night
“You ain’t gon-gonna lemme see my little girl?” Jason slurred, stumbling out the door behind Charlie as officers blocked him.
Charlie curled her arm around Daisy, hurrying her little girl toward the stairs at the end of the balcony of the cheap apartment building.
“I’ll take you back to court!” he bellowed behind her. “I swear to God, you know I will, you bi—”
“Enough, Mr. Thompson,” the officer who looked more like a club bouncer than a cop said. “That’s no way to talk around your little girl. You need to sober up.”
“C’mon, sweet girl.” Charlie shook as she planted a kiss to Daisy’s blond head.
Trembled as she willed Daisy to take the stairs at a jog despite it being the middle of the night, inky black, past neighbors gathering in their doorways to watch and whisper.
The landing smelled like piss and the lightbulb over the stairwell blinked like a dying firefly as Jason shouted curses at her back.
“Quiet, Mr. Thompson,” the officer barked.
She buried Daisy’s ear against her ribs with the crook of her elbow to block out her ex’s ugly words as if she could shield Daisy from the ugly truth.
“See? Artex is right there, excited to see you.” She pointed to the shaggy dog.
Artex barked, his jowls slobbering the window as his little human approached.
Daisy had been young when Charlie had made her grand escape from Jason. Charlie’s counselor had suggested that she get her a dog.
The best advice.
Charlie couldn’t finagle a unicorn out of the universe for her daughter, but she could get a dog. The last thing Charlie had wanted was another mouth to feed. But the moment Daisy had wrapped her arms around the creature’s neck, it was clear the dog was here to stay—
Glass smashed behind them.
“Jeezus.” Charlie gasped, dragged Daisy the rest of the way across the parking lot to her Rover.
Neighbors chattered. She glanced back. Cops swarmed Jason, taking him to the floor—
The cruiser’s windshield spiderwebbed with a bottleneck wedged though it like a dart. The amber liquor he’d begun a love affair with about the time he put their brand-new house on the market long ago emptied in glugs onto the car’s console.
Bouncer cop, in tactical pants, polo, holstered firearm, and earpiece coiled behind his ear, yanked Jason back to his feet, this time, not so gently pushing him up against the wall.
He wrenched Jason’s hands behind his back, applying zip ties as Charlie turned back to her SUV and yanked open the door.
“Jason Thompson. You’re under arrest—”
Charlie crammed Daisy in the back seat. “Fingers, toes, belt,” she breathed.
She slammed the door and ran around the SUV, hating that Daisy was witness to the flashing police lights, walkie-talkie static, and the image of her father drunk and under arrest. Hating that Daisy was forced to endure this.
Hating that Judge Mitchell saw the value in protecting Jason’s rights as a dad over Daisy’s right to feel secure.
Hating that her job, though salaried and benefited, still didn’t pay enough to comfortably afford a high-end lawyer who could fight a better legal battle.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say and do can be used against you in a court of law…”
But Charlie knew better than to think Jason meant to damage the cop’s property. That bottle he’d been fisting when she’d banged on the door at her daughter’s panicked call, pleading with Jason to open up, had been intended for her.
Court order or not, what was she supposed to do?
Her baby couldn’t go on like this. Jason hadn’t raised a violent hand to Daisy. But he’d been piss drunk around her more and more frequently when he’d promised Judge Mitchell he wouldn’t be.
“Try me, Charlize! You can’t keep me from my daughter! I got rights!” Jason bellowed as he was manhandled into submission, ignoring the Miranda. “You’re gonna regret this! I swear to God, you better watch your ba—”
She slammed her door, scrambled into the driver’s seat as her shaking hands thrust the shift into drive, while Artex assaulted Daisy’s face with his tongue, shaking with excitement to have her back.
Charlie gunned the engine out of the parking lot, hurrying to strap on her belt.
The AC blasted. Silence fell. The chaos receded in the rearview, into the distance, then into blackness.
She glanced back at Daisy, the girl’s arms wrapped around the dog’s neck, like he was a teddy bear. A tear wobbled on her eye.
“Sweet girl,” Charlie breathed, forcing a smile, even though her hands trembled.
You better watch your back…
What else could she say? Ask Daisy if she was okay? Of course she wasn’t okay.
She turned up the music. Glanced in the rearview at Daisy staring lifelessly out the window, passing silhouettes of pastures and crops.
Passing occasional farmhouse lights blinking by.
Passing beneath the flashing dots overhead as an airplane crossed the sky, people on their way to vacations, work trips, unaware that the speck driving below them was a little unicorn-loving girl’s crushed heart.
“Wanna talk about it, Daisy Maisy?”
She glanced back and forth between the road and her daughter in the rearview as her daughter said nothing.
“We never even went to the carnival,” Daisy finally said. “Said he didn’t want to see you there.”
Jason hadn’t taken her? That was his whole point for the weekend. “Why’d your dad think I’d be there?”
Daisy shrugged. “Said he didn’t want to see you on stage.”
On stage? She’d tried calling Thaddeus over and over, only to realize he’d given her a wrong number.
Jason had harassed her with texts ever since, his new ammunition against her, about being caught on camera playing with McClintock and the Disclaimers.
She’d dared to venture to YouTube, watching cell phone clips of the two of them onstage, the way he fell to his knees and thumped his heart, the way he bear-hugged her afterward, stumbling her off stage, crowd going wild.
People … seemed to like her music!
Whoa … where’d she come from?
Did they stage that? She’s too perfect.
Banjoing beauty.
Incredible! They oughtta ditch Hunter and hire her!
No fair! She’s so pretty you know she’s gonna clip his wings.
Like Cinderella from the ball, she’s just gone??? FIND HER!!
After years of wishing she could fall silent, fall invisible, their praise had felt so good! Until she’d clicked on older videos, related videos, of shows from the band’s early days, of a younger, grittier, wilder Thaddeus…
Like a train wreck, she hadn’t been able to look away.
She’d scrolled video after video of him playing to local crowds, flirting with women and letting them kiss him, touch him, on stage, when some random girl had posted a link to a social media fan page, and God, she shouldn’t have clicked it!
An entire page dedicated to him called McClintock’s Alumni, solely for those who’d scored with him, posting photos of him over the years, draped around one girl or another, and she’d felt sick.
Sick because she’d liked him!
Sick because she’d called him, believing his whole genuine act.
Sick because that was his MO, calling a girl up on stage knowing he’d score with them later.
Sick because Jason had been … right.
Sick because she’d been gullible enough to fall yet again for a cute boy in a band.
She’d shared her deepest parts with him, about Uncle Johnny and her daisies and how lonely she’d been as a girl, when she was nothing but a night’s pastime under the lure of a proposition.
All the guilt churning in her soul undammed and flooded her mind and heart.
If only she hadn’t flirted with that cute guy in that band who’d grown so jealous of her ambition he’d humiliated her on stage and forbidden her to ever play with him again.
If only she hadn’t ended up a pregnant eighteen-year old—a statistic.
If only she hadn’t listened to her momma and vied to marry him in a whirlwind courthouse wedding.
Debbie-Sue had cared about appearances, and her daughter who’d spent a childhood dolled up for pageants, couldn’t embarrass her by being knocked up out of wedlock.
But if Charlie were honest, she’d been desperate to keep her scholarship—her only ticket to pay for college and go to Nashville, never to look back on that old farmhouse filled with photos of a five-year-old Charlie dolled up like a twenty-five-year-old model in pageant after pageant.
If only she’d had the courage to get out sooner, instead of hiding the increasing toxicity festering between her and Jason until it finally broke her.
She’d once loved music, but after Jason’s public humiliations … she loved Daisy more. And she was smart. So, she’d gotten creative.
Jason might have come back into her life, demanding rights he’d abandoned, but Charlie couldn’t subject Daisy to another weekend of sitting by the window looking for a man who wasn’t showing up, or worse, being forced to go with him when he did.
Judge Mitchell said she couldn’t withhold Daisy, period. Why? Why was Jason getting a pass when Daisy was the one suffering for it?
She exhaled. It was Saturday night. At least tomorrow was Sunday, and Jason would probably be held until at least Monday when most judges held bail hearings.
Hopefully he’d vanish without a trace for another year like he’d done before, giving them a blessed reprieve from the constant tumult, constant looking over her shoulder, constant walking on eggshells.
She looked back at her little girl, let down once again by a dad who couldn’t pull his shit together, growing up before her eyes.
These years were fleeting. Daisy longed for a daddy she could count on, could take to those Daddy-daughter dances …
Jason had flaked on that, too, the past two years, forgetting all about his little girl waiting by the door in her sparkly dress, calls to his landline unanswered.
Texts to his cell undeliverable—his burner phone du jour out of minutes.
Last year, Daisy hadn’t even wanted to go.