by Ashley Lyn
Savannah looks like she wants to find out what's under the kilt.
Luke comes up behind me and starts dancing me away from the party.
“Luke and Ali, if I see you two heading anywhere close to the storage closet, I will beat both of you,” Margo yells from across the bar, causing the entire bar to laugh.
Luke smiles in my hair and huffs, pulling me back out to the floor.
“Nice try, Casanova.”
“You like my parents?”
“They’re the bee’s knees.”
“Bee’s knees?”
“I read an article the other day of phrases that people don’t use anymore, and that was my favorite. I’ve been trying to find a way to insert that into a conversation all week!”
Footloose starts to play, and Luke and I are up, dancing our asses off. We’ve both been practicing this dance routine, because my man understands my need to ‘cut footloose,’ and knows that it’s my favorite movie of all time.
His parents and Savannah look shocked. Laughing hard at their expressions, I nearly piss my pants. I’m fucking up the whole dance, but Luke is on point, dancing like he’s possessed by Kevin Bacon himself.
I give up and continue to watch him until the song ends. He takes a running slide on his knees and ends up right in front of me. On one knee, my heart tries to escape as Bruce comes up and puts a ring box in Luke’s hand. I can’t breathe.
“I wanted to do this with my parents here, and I talked to your moms. Alice Marie Grandville, you are the chocolate chips to my peanut butter, and the saucy wench to my pirate. You’re the reason I’m excited to get up every morning, to see and put those amazing smiles on your lips. I’ve found my forever in you. Alice, will you marry me? “
I tackle him to the floor and straddle him. Leaning down, I give him Eskimo kisses as I cry tears of joy.
“Yes. Hell yes!”
He sits up and slides the beautiful ring onto my finger. “I’ve been looking for weeks, almost as soon as I met you. I found this one at a vintage jewlery store at Emerald Center. It’s different, but I’d hoped—” I don’t even let him finish. He knows me so well; the weird, the quirky, and my love for all things green.
“I love the ring. It’s different, which is perfect, and it’s beautiful.”
‘”I love you too.”
The party goes well into the night, everyone celebrating our engagement. My life just keeps getting better and better.
***
Shamus
It’s not normally like me to come to parties like this. I’m a loner, and I like it that way. It isn’t that I begrudge others their happiness, it’s just that someone stole my happiness, so to go on with my life without her smiles and be happy when she can’t anymore hurts.
Savannah makes me feel things that belong to my wife, and I hate it. She’s sitting here with me, watching the party, laughing with everyone, and the crazy antics of Luke and Ali.
I want to laugh, and I am on the inside as I watch a big man like Luke dancing like Kevin Bacon. It is pretty funny.
Savannah laughs at something her mother says to her, and it’s like a sweet, tinkling bell flowing over my soul. My mind instantly recoils in horror, because the feeling that rushes over me is lust. I jump up so fast, my chair hits the floor, and Savannah looks up at me in shock. I turn and rush out the door, where the cool night air hits me in the face, and I take in a few deep breaths. I wish things were different, that I was taken instead of my wife. Being left to pick up the pieces is hell on earth.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Shocked that she followed me out here has my steps falter just a bit. I right myself and quicken my pace. I have about a mile to walk, and hopefully, she will leave me alone.
“I’m not leaving, so you might as well spit it out.”
“That’s easier said than done. Like it’s easy to recall and tell someone how big of a fucking failure you are. That you let down the one person in your life that you were supposed to protect. Shit, not one, but three people.”
“Sometimes it helps—”
“Shut up, okay! Nothing helps. Nothing will ever bring them back, so fuck off.”
I can hear her steps. The clicking of her heels on the sidewalk grates on my already overstretched nerves.
I come to a halt. Turning, she stops also, and looks at me with the face of a determined angel. I back her up against the wall and brace my arms over her head.
“You want me to spit it out? Well, here it is, angel. I met my wife when I was thirteen years old. I saw her sitting there all alone at the cafeteria table, and my heart stopped beating. She was so exquisitely beautiful, that it actually hurt to look at her. There I was, a transplant from Ireland who was new in town, the kid who talked weird and wore a skirt. No way did I think she would give me anything more than a passing glance, and that was if I was lucky.
“I was brave back then—cocky, and downright arrogant. So I sat down next to her and told her exactly how I felt. Her eyes watered up, and she told me that no one had ever told her that she was beautiful before. You see, she was from the wrong side of the tracks, all the stuck up rich kids in that school treated her like shit. From that day forward I was her protector, her “knight in a kilt” as she used to say. After high school I got a job, and she started nursing school. We got married, even though our parents told us we were too young.”
The rage starts bubbling up in my gut, so I take a shaky breath to try and calm myself.
“A couple months after we got married, she gave me the best news of my life. She was pregnant. I was so elated and ecstatic, I thought my heart was going to sprout wings and fly right out of my chest. For months I was like a proud peacock. She was almost finished with her first year of nursing school, and only a couple weeks away from delivering not one, but two babies…twins, a boy and a girl. What she didn’t tell me was that one of her instructors paid a bit too much attention to her, always touching her belly, and saying sexually explicit things to her.
“We had a big date night planned before she went in for her scheduled C-section. The babies wouldn’t move into the right position, and the doctors said it would be the safest for all of them. I came home to a scene out of a nightmare.”
I can’t even get the words out with the memories so close to the surface.
“There was my beautiful wife—my soulmate, my best friend—slaughtered, shot and cut open, and my babies were gone. The neighbor called the cops because he said that I was running around the yard screaming, but I don’t remember that. They found him after a fellow student told the police that my wife had complained to her about the instructor being handsy. They never found my babies, he…he still to this day refuses to tell anyone what he did with them.
“So there you have it, Savannah. I hope you’re happy that I “spit it out,” reliving the worst moment of my life. I don’t want your pity or your kind words, because I’ve heard them all. They don’t help. They don’t bring my Becca back.”
Turning around, I stalk away, furious with myself. Then I hear it again, the clicking of her fucking irritating heels, following me.
“I don’t pity you, and I know there are no words I can give you. I just want to help.”
“Help me with what? You can’t bring people back from the dead.”
“I work for the country’s top private investigation service. Maybe we can find something.”
“Find what? Fuck you, and your hero complex.”
“It has jack shit to do with a hero complex, you giant fucking ape. I want to help you find out what happened to your children.”
“You don’t think I looked! I looked, the police looked. Hell, the whole fucking town looked, and not a trace, not even a hint of DNA evidence.”
“Just let me try, Shamus. All I need it a date, county, or a case file. Give me something, and I’ll start working on it as soon as I get back to Colorado.”
I just keep walking. She’s talking crazy. I’ve been looking for two years, fol
lowing any possible lead and whisper. I finally gave up about six months ago, and packed all the files I’d gathered into a storage shed in my backyard.
I glance back and see her determined steps and think, Fuck it. I Walk up to the side gate that leads to my backyard and kick it open. Pulling my keys out, I open the lock on the shed and fling the doors open. This shed is home to every scrap of paper, evidence, and lead I could find. I stomp back to the house and lock myself in, not giving a fuck what she does with all that worthless shit. I’m going to drown myself in a bottle, and hopefully quiet the voice in my head. Ironically, it’s the voice of my wife, urging me to do something I told myself I never would. I would never fall for another, never love someone else, and Savannah could very well be the person who could make me break my vow.
rev·e·la·tion
Luke
I'm mentally sinking deep into this pain in the ass project. This client has earned the unofficial title of master of the D-Bags. He’s made more changes to his main points than outfits a teenage girl goes through getting ready for a date.
He’s so condescending, but I think I finally have it nailed down. I’m a couple hours away from having this project off my desk when I hear the doorbell ring. I pray it isn’t a chatty neighbor. Peeking out the peephole, I see the mail express van cruising back down my driveway, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Opening the door, I grab the envelope and head back to my office.
What feels like hours later, the master of D-Bag’s project is done, and he loved the finished product.
Walking into my kitchen, I grab a beer and notice the envelope. Opening it up, a stack of photos fall out onto the counter.
The only photo that falls out picture side up is most definitely pornographic in nature. I flip over another one and my stomach drops. It’s a picture of a much younger Margo.
Flipping the photos back over, I look inside the envelope to make sure nothing else is there, and see a piece of paper. All it says is, “Take a good look at who raised that brat. Do you want your future children around trash like that?”
White hot anger surges through me. I stuff everything back inside the envelope and put on my tennis shoes. I hop on my motorcycle and head straight to Bailey’s.
***
Walking into Bailey’s, I start to sweat. I know this will hurt both Margo and Cleo, and Ali as well. She feels so responsible for everyone else's feelings, and since this is her biological mother doing this, I know she’s going to freak.
I’m fairly certain that Margo’s working today, and that Ali and Cleo are off somewhere raising hell. Walking into the bar, I see that it’s empty, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief.
The envelope is clutched in my hands as Margo comes out of the back, a big grin on her face, but her grin turns to a frown when she sees my posture.
“What happened?”
“I got a delivery today. I only really looked at one photo, but it was enough for me. The nasty note was just as bad.”
I hand the envelope to Margo. Pulling a photo out, the color immediately drains from her face. This strong, brave woman looks at me, completely devastated.
“I…I didn’t know that he…that John took pictures. Viola was a favorite of John’s, our pimp. The only way she could have gotten these was from him. John died years ago, so I’m assuming he gave them to her when we adopted Ali. He was heavily involved in the adoption.”
She sits down at the closest table and takes a deep breath. “When I was sixteen, I had enough of the shit my parents threw at me. Horrible people, my folks. More concerned with drugs than their child. Verbally abusive, I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I just left. I walked right out the door and kept walking. I walked until it felt like my feet were bleeding. This car stopped…I don’t recall the make or model, but I remember being in awe because it was brand new. The man seemed so nice, all dressed up in a nice suit and tie. I thought, why not? He seemed nice, and he was offering me a ride into the city. He promised to take me to a place I could stay, saying a friend of his took in girls like me.”
She smiles sadly. Reaching across the table, I hold her hands in mine.
“The friend he took me to wasn’t a friend, more like a business partner. I walked in the door, happy as hell to finally be out of the hell hole that was my parent's house, but I quickly realized I had walked into a nightmare.
“These photos are from what John called the “breaking party.” It was an exclusive event for his favorite customers to help “break” the new girls. We had to suffer physical and emotional torture for weeks, and once he had us mentally where he wanted us to be, we were scheduled for a breaking party.
“Cleo’s story is a bit different than mine, and it’s her story to tell. In some ways, it’s worse than mine. That was the night I met her. We both broke that night, but the bond we formed has carried us through so much. He died about three years or so after we got out. We threw a party, just Cleo and I, when we heard it all over the news.”
Sliding my chair around, I hug the woman who has me in awe of her strength. Her silent sobs are painful. We sit like that for a bit, then she lets out a screech.
“Next time I get my hands on that woman, I’m punching her right in the twat.”
I burst out laughing. Leave it to Margo. The door opens and in walks Cleo, all neon spandex and smiles, until she gets a look at Margo.
“What did that bag of diseased vaginas do now?”
“She sent pictures that she must have gotten a long time ago of…the break party. She sent them to Luke, along with a nasty letter.”
“What’s a break party?” Ali walks in, and both Margo and Cleo turn a paler shade of white.
“Have you been crying? Margo, what’s going on?” Ali looks at me, frantic. I don’t want to see her hurt, and I know that this is going to be a painful conversation.
“Someone better speak up, right now.”
“That bitch sent some old photos to Luke.”
“Photos of what? You said break party…what is that?”
I give Margo one last hug, then Cleo, knowing that this is a conversation that needs to happen with just the three of them. “Margo, I’ll hang out and watch things here if you and Cleo need some time to talk to Ali.”
I give Ali a light kiss and head back behind the bar while the three of them head to the office.
What a fucking bullshit day.
***
Ali
The story that Margo and Cleo just told me, and the explanation of what a break party is makes me sick to my stomach. I’m so fed up with this rotten woman that I just want to scream.
I slammed my way out of the bar and have been sitting here in my hammock for the last hour. I texted Luke and asked him for some space.
Parker’s idea of calling my father and trying to defuse this seems like the only option, since her bullshit is only escalating. She’s hurt the two most important women in my life, and I refuse to allow it one second longer.
Picking up my cell phone, I place a call to Savannah. “Genesis Investigations, Savannah speaking.”
“Savannah, it’s Ali. Remember when I had you dig up the contact information on my father? Could you email it to me?”
“Sure. Is everything okay?”
“That freaking bitch has upped her game, and I’m done. I’m hoping if I take her leverage away, she’ll back off.”
“All right, I’ll email you all the information I have on him right now. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks, Sav.”
“Sure thing, sister.”
Hanging up, I pull up the email and just stare at it for a while in total shock.
I dial the cell number listed before I lose my nerve. I’m shaking so hard; it feels like I could rattle my teeth loose.
“Hello?” His voice floats over me, and I’m instantly mute.
“Hello…is anyone there? Look, I can hear you breathing.”
Clearing my throat, I open my mouth and try to get words past the l
ump in my throat. I’m talking to my father, something I never thought I would get to do.
“Do you like chocolate cake waffles?” It’s the best I can come up. Jesus, take me now.
“Well, I like waffles, and I like chocolate cake, so I would assume if the two should meet, it would be epic.”
I giggle, because that’s not the response I expected.
“Can I ask with whom I’m speaking?”
“My name is Alice Marie Grandville.”
“Hello, Alice, my name is Dane Marcus Harper. May ask how you got this number?”
“My soon-to-be sister-in-law got it for me.”
“May I ask why?”
“According to my biological mother, who is a nasty piece of work, told me that you are my father.”
The gut-wrenching silence is more nerve-wracking than the walk to the gyno chair.
“I see.”
“Her name, my birth mother, is Viola.”
“Son of a bitch!”
“I take it that you’re acquainted with her brand of bitch.”
“She’s been after me for months for child support, but she’s refused to produce a child or birth certificate. She didn’t even give me your name, only asked for money.”
“So…”
“Yeah, so…”
“DNA test?”
“I…I never thought that I…I mean, I never thought that I would have children. This is…God, I hope she isn’t full of bullshit, because I would like to meet you, to have a daughter.”
“I looked it up online, and you can order the Maury Povich special at home DNA test kit. Would you like me to send a picture? I looked you up on Google, and my moms say the resemblance is uncanny.”
“Are your moms married?”
“No, they’re just friends. They’re both straight. Straight crazy most days, but in the best way.”
“I would like that very much—a picture, I mean. Let me look into the DNA test. I have a friend who’s a lawyer, and he has someone that he uses.”