I knew my life was fucked-up, but I didn’t know it had reached dead-mom-all-alone-in-the-world level fucked-up. So when Marcel had dragged me across the dirty floor, my mind immediately thought he was going to assault me. I kicked and hit and screamed, but he didn’t relent.
When he’d pulled me as far from the dressing room as he could, he spun me around and held me by the top of my arms. He shook me hard enough to make my teeth clatter. Marcel shook me until my insides shifted.
“Listen to me, Lydia.” Spit flew from his mouth to my face. His eyes were crazed, moving from my eyes, to my nose, to my mouth, to the ground. “Cricket’s gone.”
The fight drained from me like the little whirl of water that forms when you pull the plug from a bathtub, but I didn’t understand right away. I thought he’d meant she’d left so I couldn’t get the field trip money from her. I was going to chase that bitch down.
I asked, “Where is she?”
He averted his eyes before he said, “She’s dead, Lydia. Cricket is dead. Overdose. About an hour ago.”
I scoffed and asked, “Are you out of your mind? Where’d she go?”
My body felt it right away, even if it took my mind years to catch up. As soon as Marcel said Cricket is dead my arms and legs grew hefty, my posture wasn’t as straight, and a sinkhole opened in my chest and took everything on the surface down with it—including the sensation of my beating heart.
“They took her by ambulance.” Marcel shook me again. “But it was too late. She’s gone, and they’re looking for you.”
“Who’s looking for me?” I asked as color lost tone before my eyes. My life suddenly lacked richness, and everything was gray scale and vague. There was no dimension, value, shape, or space left, leaving behind a two-dimensional realm I’d roam and live until the afternoon I would meet the second Ridge son nearly ten years later.
“Child protective services. They asked about Cricket’s family and someone told the cops she has a daughter.”
“What should I do?”
“Lydia, run. You don’t want to get caught in the system,” he said. He pushed me toward the exit doors. “Run, and don’t ever come back.”
I stumbled a few steps from Marcel, wondering why if someone had just died, there weren’t more people investigating or why customers still drank shitty cocktails and servers kept wiping down tables. I held my palm to my forehead, and I wanted to ask Marcel if he was sure it was Cricket who died—if anyone died at all—but my eye caught that of the club owner.
“Hey, you,” the club owner called out to me from his office door behind the stage. “Come here, sweetheart.”
“Goddammit, Lydia. Get the fuck out of here.” Marcel’s large body collided with mine, and he practically lifted me off my feet to shove me toward the exit. “I’m sorry, okay. I’m sorry, but I’m doing you a favor.”
I tripped on the curb outside and fell to my hands and knees, but I hadn’t felt it when the skin tore and scraped away when I hit the pavement. I didn’t feel anything at all. I stared at my fingers sprawled against the dirty parking lot, curtained by my long hair. I breathed in and out, hoping to pause time for just a minute, just to let me catch up.
“Lydia, stop,” the club owner burst out of the club doors.
I looked over my shoulder, stumbled to my feet, and ran before he could grab me. I ran as fast and as far from the strip club as I could for what would be the last time, pushing through people on the street while my backpack bounced on my back.
Marty was in the kitchen when I sprang through the rickety screen door, drenched in sweat and numb.
He watched me run past him to my room. He asked, “Where the fuck is the fire?”
Secure in my bedroom, I slid the dresser in front of the door and dropped my school bag to the floor, unsure of what to do, what to bring, where to go. I started by filling a duffel bag with some clothes and a toothbrush. The bag wasn’t big enough to fit more than a couple changes of clothes, but maybe I could come by later and grab the rest.
Marty pounded on the door. “You broke the fuckin’ screen door, girl.”
Mom didn’t do a lot of things right by me, but when I turned fifteen last year, she gave me a folder with my birth certificate and social security card.
“I thought I lost them a few times. You better hang on to these now that you’re old enough,” she’d said.
“Who’s going to fix the door, Lydia?” He hammered harder and the door broke open, slamming against the dresser. It shook me harder than Marcel did when he told me Cricket’s dead. “This is my house. You are your fucking mother—”
“Mom’s dead, Marty.” I opened the top drawer of my nightstand to grab the envelope with the only proof that I am who I am.
Lydia Montgomery. Daughter of Cricket Montgomery. Father unknown.
My hands flew up to cover my mouth and my vision blurred behind a wall of tears I couldn’t hold back.
On top of the envelope inside the drawer were two twenty-dollar bills and a note in Cricket’s handwriting:
Have a good time, baby.
Love,
Mom.
The pounding on the door stopped, and the air left Marty’s lungs in a gasp like he was hit in the gut. “Why would you say something like that?”
I grabbed the envelope and the money and shoved them into my bag. I zipped it closed and threw it over my shoulder. There was no way Marty would let me go if I tried to leave through the door, so I opened the window and took one more look around the only room that had ever been only mine.
A breath.
A pause.
And I jumped.
The fall didn’t stop until tonight.
I chase the salty breeze flowing through the apartment to find Talent leaning against the stone balcony outside. He’s shirtless, dressed in a pair of sweats and barefoot with one ankle crossed over the other. The half-moon bathes him in as much light as it can, mostly-shadowed, calling on the stars to help shine a spotlight on his loveliness.
Nature’s glow is draped over his shoulders like a blanket, sharpening the silhouette of his body against the bleak ocean background. Positioned with his back toward me, his head is down and the muscles in his back subtly move as he switches crossed ankles. Tightening the shirt I stole from his closet around my body, I linger in the living room when I realize he’s speaking on the phone.
“I’m not coming to the office.” His voice in both parts indifferent and firm. A woodsy skunk-like smell I recognize immediately blends with the ocean breeze, hugging my senses.
Grand Haven’s royal boy smokes pot.
The rebelliousness makes me smile.
A cloud of dense white smoke billows around him when he says, “What implications? I’m not coming for the crown, Wilder. I don’t need to be there. It’s fucking midnight, and I’m not doing this tonight.”
My eyes search the room for a clock, finding it on the microwave above the stove. Sure enough, it’s a few minutes after midnight. Who could possibly want to meet with him at this time of night is beyond me, but so are the inner workings of a lawyer with a clientele as great as Ridge & Sons. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I don’t waver either.
“She’s here,” Talent admits. His voice takes a softer tone. “Thanks for the heads-up, but I don’t see an issue. If Giovanni has a fucking—”