Neither one of us argued.
Instead, after he’d left with his keys, we both turned to go to the kitchen to survey the damage.
“Shit. She ripped up all the paper plates. What are we going to eat on now?” Frankie asked.
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. I laughed until tears were leaking out of the corner of my eyes.
“Well,” I said. “Your mom didn’t touch the actual plates. You could consider washing the dishes after you’re done with them.”
Frankie grinned. “Oh.”
At that comment, I started laughing even harder.
“It never occurred to you, did it?” I questioned.
She shook her head. “Dad and me? We don’t function really well. He’s used to having everything so structured. And me? Well, my mother decided everything for me. What I would eat, what I would wear. Then dad came home hurt. He spun his wheels. He didn’t have anything to do. He felt like he’d lost a piece of who he was…then my mother had to go and make an already bad situation worse.”
“Your mother.” I laughed humorlessly. “I don’t even know what to say about that woman, to be honest.”
Frankie laughed. “Welcome to my life.”
I had to be honest here.
“I’m not sure I can handle your life,” I admitted. “Your mother…she’s a real piece of work. She was the person who facilitated my kidnapping. We’re not sure if she was actually after you or not. Apparently, picking your daughter up whether she wants to be picked up or not, is legal as long as that child is under the age of eighteen. Unfortunately for her, she got me instead of you, and now she’s facing jail time. So, she’s taking that out on your father—and by default, me.” I paused. “I know that your dad wants me to stay, but I need to go. I need to spend some time away. I need to call into a team meeting, and I just need a little time.”
Frankie seemed to understand that.
“Then go. I’ll cover for you.”
I took her up on her offer. Leaving my bag behind, because it would slow me down as I made a mad dash to my house, I bolted out the back door.
From somewhere in the front yard I could hear Coke talking to someone—likely Tyler—and felt a pang of regret that I was defying his orders. I also felt somewhat bad that I couldn’t hang with the big dogs in the crazy department—but I had enough crazy of my own. I didn’t need anybody else’s crazy to deal with, too…right?
***
Four hours later, I was surprised by the knock at my door.
Not by the actual knock itself, but the fact that it’d taken him four hours to actually come over and find out what had caused me to run.
“Cora!” Coke called.
I was standing on the other side of the door, staring at it like it was about to fall in on itself due to the force of his knocking.
“Cora, please.”
I still didn’t answer the door, despite his pleading.
“Please, Cora. I know that it was bad. I just want…I want to talk to you.”
I looked away from the door.
During the four hours that I’d had to think about everything that had happened, I realized a few things.
One, I was in over my head, and I didn’t know what to do.
Two, I could very well fall head over heels in love with Coke, and he was at the stage in life where things that mattered to me, didn’t matter to him. Such as kids. He had started his family when he was young and didn’t want anymore. I had always wanted three, maybe four kids. He had a seventeen-year-old who was already out of the house, and he’d had a vasectomy. That meant that he didn’t want any more kids.
Finally, if those first two things weren’t enough, then there was the matter of his ex-wife. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be subjected to her, even loosely through Coke and Frankie, for the rest of my life.
I wasn’t sure that I could handle her.
Coke still had a lot to do with her and her family.
He may not be married to her anymore, but he still had plenty of dealings with Beatrice’s father, if not Beatrice herself.
And I didn’t think that Beatrice would be serving much time for kidnapping me. Nobody had been hurt in the process, and she had a shark of a lawyer who my father had warned me would pull no punches.
Did I want her lawyer to pull things out of his hat that could potentially hurt me? I’d be subjected to his verbal assault…and I didn’t want to be skewered alive in front of anybody, let alone an entire courtroom of people. I also knew that, despite Coke and my father’s assurances, they couldn’t protect me from this.
My final thought was that I was going to drop the charges against Beatrice.
I had a lot more to lose here than she did, but I knew that this couldn’t be dropped since she’d committed a felony. I was having some serious doubts about testifying against her.
I had my stepping stone to my dream job. My employer had a morals clause included in my contract since this was a children’s production company. I’m not sure what would be considered immoral on my part, but I didn’t really want to push it.
And what I had going on was, quite possibly, a scandal.
So no, I would not be opening the door.
I would stay in my house and keep my ass right where it was.
I would not, under any circumstances, go to his house.
I. Would. Not.
Chapter 21
Some of you need to go to church because I don’t want you in hell with me.
-Coke’s secret thoughts
Coke
I slammed the door shut and walked into the kitchen to find my daughter staring at me expectantly.
“She wouldn’t come back?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Did she answer the door this time?” she continued, munching on one of the oranges that her mother had knocked on the floor earlier.
The rest of the fruit was resting on the counter, while the bowl my mother had made with her own two hands lay broken into four jagged pieces.
I absently picked up the orange peel, hating the way that it just lay on the counter instead of being immediately discarded into the trash, and froze when I saw the bowl sitting on the very top.
Beatrice hadn’t been stupid.
She knew what she was doing.
Beatrice had hated that I used paper plates. Hated. It.
Beatrice was more of a fine dining kind of woman. Placemats, two forks, linen napkins.
She was literally everything that I wasn’t.
She’d also hated that I had kept some “crap” from my parents.
The bowl that she had broken had been the bane of her existence. That bowl followed me everywhere and had since I’d moved out of my mother’s house and into her father’s at the age of eighteen. It’d gone with me out of state when I’d gone to basic training in Missouri. To three duty stations, one in Germany, and the other in Japan before settling back into Missouri. Then had come back home with me once I’d been injured.
She hated the bowl. She’d accused me of loving that bowl more than her so many times that I’d lost count.
The funny thing was that she was right. I loved the bowl.
My mother had made it for me for Christmas the year that I turned seventeen. She’d gone to a pottery class at the local YMCA. She’d made one for all of her sons. It was lopsided since mine was her first attempt, and it was painted a putrid gray that really wasn’t all that attractive.
But it’d been the most special thing I’d ever gotten from my mother.
She’d spent quite a bit of money on that class, and we never really had money to spare.
The bowl was big, ugly and one of the only things I’d ever gotten from her that hadn’t been well used or something that all of us brothers had to share.
And Beatrice had fucking broken it.
“Dad, are you okay?” Frankie asked, taking a bite of her orange.
I nodded, throwing the peels on top of the trash.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I’m going to go work on the truck. You’ll be okay?”
Frankie looked at me like I’d grown a second head.
“Yeah, Dad. I’ll be okay. Plus…I don’t think Mom will be back any time soon. Not with what you said to her.”
What I said to her wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. However, I think that this was the first time that she actually believed me.
“I haven’t loved you in a very long time, Beatrice. You lied, connived, and then I was forced to marry you. The only reason I showed you even a modicum of kindness was because you first had my kid growing inside of you. Then, because my kid needed a mother. You refused to move with me and tried to force me to choose between our family and the career I needed to support it.”
“I didn’t follow you because you never asked!” she hissed. “Who doesn’t ask their wife to follow them?”
“Beatrice, I set up a house, moved into it, and you never came despite me sending you plane tickets. How fucking much more did I have to say to get you to come? I needed Frankie there. I needed to see my daughter more than every couple of months!” I bellowed.
“That’s what I’m talking about, right there. It was always Frankie, Frankie, Frankie. Never Beatrice,” she snarled right back, this time taking out the spice rack.
“Because Frankie was my daughter. I loved my daughter! A man’s not a man if he doesn’t want to see his baby girl,” I countered. “You stole all those years from me because I never ‘asked’ you?”
I never liked you went unsaid.
But I was sure she could read it in my eyes.
“You left me,” Beatrice said, a little softer this time.
“And could you blame me? Beatrice, you made my life a living hell. You never gave me what a man needs from a woman. Then, you got some on the side while I was away working…and no, don’t bother to deny it. I’m not stupid. That was one of the reasons that I didn’t give you another kid. That is why I took some time off and didn’t even tell you that I was getting a vasectomy. I couldn’t, not in good conscience, bring another child into this mess you created. And I didn’t trust you enough to ever put that birth control decision into your hands. You’d fuck me over just like you did all those years ago.”
Beatrice went silent for a few long moments, allowing me to continue.
“But the moment that Frankie saw your true colors, I was finished pretending. The fifteen and a half years that I was married to you were both the best and worst of my life. The best because I got Frankie, and the worst because I had to put up with you to get her. And now, when I’m finally happy with the woman who just walked out of here, you decide that you want to ruin this, too? Well, let me tell you something, Beatrice. I’m not going to stand for that. You’re not going to ruin this, because this? Her? Well, she’s the second-best thing to ever happen to me. Now get out before I call the cops and tell them that you broke in.”
That was when Beatrice had finally relented.
She backed away toward the door, looking between me and Frankie.
It’d been the parting shot as she was leaving that had made me think that maybe I should’ve held my tongue.
“You’ll regret this one day. One day, the precious life you’ve created for yourself will all be a memory, and you won’t have anyone to blame but yourself. You’ve made a huge mistake,” Beatrice prophesied.
But it was too late. I’d felt compelled to say what I said.
It’d needed to be said.
Beatrice needed to hear how awful my life was with her.
“The only mistake I’ve made in my life was you. Now leave.”
“Yeah,” I paused and looked at her. “Frankie, you know that what we said…you were never a mistake.”
Frankie smiled. “Dad, trust me when I say that I know Mom a lot better than you. At least you got to escape…me? I hated every second of my life. Why do you think I buried myself in school work so much and graduated with so many college credits?”
I hated that I’d left her to Beatrice. I wish I would’ve tried harder.
But I’d thought, at the time, that Beatrice would be the better choice.
A girl needed her mom.
I breathed out a frustrated breath. “I hate that you ever had to choose, but I want you to know, you really are the best thing to happen to me.”
“And Cora is the second?” Frankie asked, sounding hopeful.
I thought about that for a long moment before answering. “Yes.”
“Now, let’s make plans. How do you think we can get her to talk to you?”
Chapter 22
My secret talent is getting tired without doing anything at all.
-Text from Cora to Coke
Cora
Day one of being without Coke went about as well as expected.
I muddied my brain with comics, dedicating each and every one of them to the man who had made me realize that what I wanted was something that I likely wouldn’t ever have.
Each one I put into an envelope, and when he came back later that night, I’d handed them to him and closed the door in his face.
***
Day two dawned with me having to do a team meeting with my producer who told me that she was very impressed with my work, then offered me the second largest character’s edits, too.
“I think you’ll be perfect for the job. We had an animator working on him…but something didn’t sit right with the team. We want you to draw a few samples and send them over via email. But, let me just tell you, after seeing all your edits for Mona? Well, let’s just say that most likely you already got everyone’s approval. This is just preliminary.”
After hanging up, my jaw half open, I turned around and reached for my cell phone, almost on instinct.
I had Coke’s number punched in, and the phone ringing, before I’d consciously told myself to do it.
He hadn’t answered, and that’d been the reminder that I’d needed.
Mustn’t call Coke. Even if I had good news to tell him.
I’d once seen a video of how the drink, Coca-Cola, reacted with the acid inside the stomach. It turned a putrid black and foamed as the two substances reacted with each other.
And that was kind of the way that I was feeling right now. My belly was roiling, and every single one of the synapses in my brain were firing, telling me that something was wrong.
I’d done something, and I couldn’t quite figure out if I’d done the right or wrong thing.
***
Day three came with Coke calling me back after getting my earlier phone call.
His call came at 12:01 AM. Then another came at 12:03, and another at 12:04. The final one, at 12:05 came, and then the truck started sounding.
Only, this time, it was different than the others.
Where before I’d get a start of the truck here, a rev of the truck there, this time it was a constant, VRROOOOM. VROOOOOM. Vrrrrroooooooooom.
Over and over and over again the engine revved.
At one point, I’d gotten off the bed and was going to head in that direction, but then I reminded myself that wouldn’t be smart.
Coke was bad for me. Coke was bad for me.
Maybe if I kept repeating those words, one day I’d believe them.
***
Coke was bad for me. Coke was bad for me.
I stared down at my phone and whined.
Coke had sent me a picture of my incubators that we had taken over to his house.
There was the tiniest of cracks in one of them, signaling the arrival of one of my baby chicks.
I put the phone down and refused to look at the video.
He could have the chicks.
Coke was bad for me. Coke was bad for me.
***
Day five dawned with Frankie knocking at my door.
I opened it, and she was looking at me with
sad eyes. “I know that you and my dad aren’t talking, but I just wanted to tell you that I’m going back to school. I also wanted to give you this…and tell you about it.”
I frowned at the gray bowl—the one Beatrice had broken the day that I’d left—and stared at it.
“Okay…”
“My grandmother made this for him when he was seventeen,” she said softly, touching the pieces gently with careful fingers. Not because she was afraid to cut herself, but because she didn’t want to hurt the pieces. “When they died, this was the only thing he’d ever gotten from his parents present-wise…ever. The first thing that was only his. Only ever his.”
I stared at it in horror.
Beatrice had likely known that.
“Oh, no,” I said softly.
“Yeah,” she said, then went on to explain a little more about it.
By the time that she was finished, I was nearly in tears.
“My dad’s had a really hard life,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes.
“I think the last couple of months were the only time I’ve ever heard him say that he was happy,” she breathed.
Though Frankie had left, I’d stayed right where I was on the stoop of my house, watching her disappear.
It was only when I heard her car start up that I came unstuck.
But it wasn’t to go inside and get back to the mountain of work that I had to do.
No, it was to go get my car keys and head in the direction of Coke’s office.
Chapter 23
I have absolutely no desire to fit in.
-Text from Cora to Coke
Coke
“June, I need to go to the auction today and get a few new Fords. Can you try to hold down the fort?” I asked, seeing Janie, Kayla, and June sitting at the long counter.
June was actually working, whereas Kayla and Janie were eating donuts—donuts that I’d brought in but hadn’t had the stomach to eat.
“Sure thing, boss,” June replied, typing away at her computer.
I frowned. “Why are y’all here?”
“Because I was laid off,” Kayla said. “And we like it here.”
I frowned. “You were laid off?”
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