He puffs out his chest. “I’ve come to save Char-char from your poor choices!”
“Poor choices? For the love of Christ, falling for your bullshit was the poorest choice I made. Now get your pasty ass back in that RV and go back to your subpar greenhouse operation where you belong!” She nods at the women. “Carrie, Cassie, Clara, Clair, Cara, Caddie, so sorry, no offense.”
“Production really took a dive when you left,” one of the women says with a shrug. The rest of them nod in silent agreement.
“Enough!” Frank puts a hand out as if he’s some kind of magician and can stop Charlene’s mom from advancing on him. “Cendy, you’re no longer welcome in the fold.”
“My name was never Cendy, you crazy dickbag! It was Wendy, and I had to change it to keep your psycho ass from finding us! And newsflash, Frank, I don’t want to be in your fold, and neither does Charlene. Now get the hell out of here, or I’m going to file a goddamn restraining order.”
“I won’t leave without Char-char! It’s time to bring her home!”
Frank pushes Whensday, or Wendy, or whatever the hell her name is, out of the way and lunges at Charlene.
His rash, ill-thought-out move spurs a series of actions. Charlene flails and screams as he grabs for her elbow. The women from the RV let out a collective gasp of surprise, and one of them yells for Charlene to run.
Poppy, Violet, Sunny, and Lily all converge on Charlene as she stumbles back. She trips on an uneven stone and lands on her butt. The ping of something hitting the interlocking stone and rolling across the driveway barely registers.
“Poppy! Get away from that guy!” Lance yells.
It’s followed by shouts from Randy, Alex, and Miller, but the only thing that resonates is Charlene’s desperate shriek.
I stop thinking. Instead I react, launching myself at him. I take him to the ground before he can put his hands on anyone else. He’s soft and doughy, and clearly not built for a fight. He lands on the ground with a loud oomph.
“Run, beige ladies! You’re free! Run while you can!” Miller yells.
The first punch hits Khaki Man’s soft middle, and he groans and tries to curl into a ball.
“She’s not yours to touch—not fucking ever. Do you understand me?” I yell in his pale, now somewhat greenish face.
“She belongs with me! She belongs with the co-op!” He tries to shove me off. “We need you back to make us whole again, Char-char!”
“She’s mine, motherfucker. You can’t have her.” This time I punch him in the mouth to shut him the hell up.
Before I can give him a black eye, several sets of hands latch onto me, pulling me up. I fight against the restraints, because all I want to do is destroy this fucking lunatic who’s a threat to my girlfriend.
Alex’s voice is in my ear. “You gotta calm down, Darren. You’re scaring the shit out of Charlene, and everyone.”
I glance at the terrified faces of the beige-clad women and then at the cluster of women huddled protectively around Charlene. Behind them is a semi-circle comprised of Alex and Violet’s parents, while my teammates act as a barrier between me and them. I note the nervous, unsettled expressions that color every single one of their faces.
I look back at Frank the fucker whose nose is bleeding. He struggles to sit up while holding his hand to his mouth. Blood streams down his chin and drips onto his pristine white shirt.
A few of the beige women gather around him and help him to his feet. They throw dirty looks over their shoulders at me as they usher him back in the RV. He starts it up and rolls down the window as he throws it into gear. “I’ll be back for you, Char-char! I’ll save you yet!”
“Come back and I’ll run you over with your own goddamn RV!” I yell and try to rush the vehicle, but Lance and Randy grab me.
“I don’t think you’re helping the situation.” Randy inclines his head to where Charlene sits on the driveway, trembling violently. Her knees are pulled up to her chest, clenched fists pressed to her lips. Violet wraps a towel around her, and Lily brushes her hair away from her face while Sunny tries to pry her hands from her mouth. Poppy picks something up off the ground. Multiple somethings.
I turn to Charlene’s mom. “Can you tell me what just happened? Was that Charlene’s father?”
“I suppose he functioned as one during her childhood, but no. That’s my . . . ex for lack of better terminology, but it’s a long story.” She glances around and wrings her hands nervously. “One I’m assuming Charlene hasn’t shared with any of you.”
I shake my head, and there’s a murmur of agreement from everyone else. I look to Violet, almost relieved that she seems to be similarly shocked, and swallow down the huge lump in my throat as I try to process what happened. I need to understand a lot of things right now, starting with what Charlene’s childhood actually looked like, because the picture she painted for me wasn’t this.
I make a move toward her, wanting to . . . I don’t know, understand? Comfort her? I need something, anything to replace the strange state of disbelief I’m currently suspended in.
Alex puts a palm on my chest. “Look at your hands.”
I cringe at the blood coating my knuckles. “Fuck.”
“We’ll get her inside and keep her safe until you’ve cleaned up and calmed down,” Alex says.
Charlene’s mom helps her up and wraps a protective arm around her, and all I can do is watch as the woman I’m in love with, but don’t even know, walks away without looking back.
DARREN
Lance looks at me, lips pressed into a thin line. He puts a hand on my shoulder, his expression almost piteous. “This makes our parents look like they should be up for family of the year award, aye?”
I don’t know much about Lance’s family situation, other than the fact that he doesn’t have a relationship with his mother and he only sees his father once a year at most. But based on his history with women, I can certainly make an experienced guess. Porn star parents and being raised by grandparents who were determined to eradicate the inherited perversion out of me seems pretty decent in comparison to what I now suspect Charlene went through.
And now my mind is reeling out of control. I want to hunt that fucker down and torture him in ways that would make horror movies look like they were produced by Disney.
I feel almost like I’m walking through a fog as Lance takes me to the pool house bathroom to wash up and throw on a shirt. I don’t pay attention to much as I head for the house, feeling exposed and uneasy.
Violet meets me at the door, her face pale and eyes wide with the kind of disbelief that makes a stomach turn. “I had no idea. Not about any of this. I mean, I knew she grew up in a trailer park and it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was this kind of bad.”
“I don’t know if that’s supposed to make me feel better or not,” I tell her.
“I’m sorry, Darren. If it’s any consolation, we’re all as shocked as you are.”
“It isn’t, but thanks.”
“There’s obviously a reason she didn’t tell anyone, including you and me.” Violet gives me a sad smile. “Alex and I are going to send everyone home. She’s in the living room with her mom.”
“Okay.”
I don’t know what to do with any of this. It explains everything and nothing at the same time. And even though I should probably be angry, all I am is sad that I wasn’t safe enough to confide in.
Before I cross the threshold, her mom appears in the doorway.
“I need to ask you something before I talk to Charlene,” I say in a hoarse whisper.
“Of course. I’ll answer if I’m able, but this is Charlene’s story to tell.”
I nod and take a deep breath, my stomach rolling. “Did anyone ever—” I swallow down the bile. I don’t know that I’ll be able to refrain from killing Frank if the answer is yes. “Did Frank—was she ever in physical danger?”
“Oh, Darren.” She settles a palm on my forearm and shakes her head. “Her childhood was a
lot of messed-up things, but it wasn’t that. I got us out before she was ever at risk.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, fighting against the sting behind my eyes and the tightness in my throat. “Okay. That’s good.”
She hugs me, and I stiffen for a moment, not expecting the embrace. But I accept it anyway, because for some reason knowing Charlene’s innocence was kept intact makes me feel marginally better.
Her mom steps back and looks up at me. For being as small as she is, she certainly has a dominating presence, so I can see how she ended up where she did. Sort of.
She tips her head to the side. “Does she know?”
I frown. “Know what?”
Her smile is soft. “That you love her.”
“I’m afraid I’ll push her away if I’m honest with her.”
She pats my cheek. “You’re quite perfect for each other, despite the odds.”
I find Charlene curled up in the corner of the couch, having changed into one of the new outfits she unwrapped this afternoon. It’s a Chicago T-shirt with her first name on the back, because I avoid using her last name whenever possible, and the number twenty-six, since it’s her birthday. I like that it’s also my number. Despite how warm it still is, she’s also wearing leggings.
She looks up when I enter the room, her eyes wary and her bottom lip caught between her teeth. I guarantee it’ll be chewed raw by the end of the day if it isn’t already.
“Are you okay?” I ask, advancing slowly, as if I expect her to bolt. She certainly looks like she wants to.
She lifts her shoulder and lets it fall. “Are you?”
“Not particularly, no.” I’m a lot of things at the moment, but okay is definitely not one of them.
She bows her head and raises her hand to her bare throat, but drops it right away when there’s nothing to fidget with. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I want to rewind time and make us both different, not two irreparably damaged people trying to figure out how to be together without imploding.
“I should’ve told you,” she whispers.
“Were you ever planning to?” I let her into all my darkness, but it hasn’t been willingly. She’s had to drag it out, and now I’ll have to do the same with her.
She sighs and focuses on her hands. She’s holding something, rolling it between her palms. “I wanted to. I was going to, especially after I found out about your parents. But it seemed like too much all at once, and trying to explain . . . I thought I could wait until after playoffs were over, but then with the expansion draft still looming, there was always a reason to wait. I didn’t want to risk it.”
“Risk what?”
“Losing you before I had to.”
“Why would you think you’d lose me?”
She looks up, her expression guarded. “Nothing about me is normal, Darren. My childhood was messy and fucked up.”
“I’m just as messy and fucked up. I thought we’d already established that.”
Charlene scrubs a hand over her face. “I know, but my mom’s already so much crazy—I didn’t know if you could handle any more. I mean, who raises their child in a commune and thinks it’s okay? And not just any commune, but a batshit crazy one where women are treated like property. The whole thing is like a bad talk show episode.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t be able to handle it?”
She sighs. “It wasn’t you specifically. I’ve never told anyone, ever. We never talked about it after we left. It was like . . .” She pauses, maybe searching for the words. “It was all a terrible nightmare. My mom told me not to say anything because we didn’t want Frank to find us and bring us back there.”
She runs her hands up and down her legs. “I remember the night we ran. My mom woke me up in the middle of the night, and we escaped through a hole in the barbed-wire fence.”
“Barbed-wire fence?” It sounds more like prison than a home.
“Yeah, it was meant to keep the bad guys out. Anyway, there was a car waiting for us down the road. I had to hotwire it because she was too panicked to find the key. I didn’t even know what we were running from at the time.”
Her eyes are the kind of haunted I associate with old memories made new again.
“We drove for hours before we finally stopped at a little diner somewhere in Nebraska. I’d never been to a restaurant, never seen a TV before, never shopped in a grocery store, never even worn a pair of pants, Darren. It was such a shock to realize the world was so much bigger than what I knew. It was too much to process. I don’t remember it clearly at all—more like it was some messed-up recurring dream. And reliving it, trying to explain it . . . My extremes were the opposite of yours, Darren. I went from isolation to inclusion so quickly it was impossible to reconcile.”
Charlene explains how her mom got pregnant before she graduated from high school. The guy was a year older, and they ran off together. She always wanted to travel, and he was a trucker. Turns out babies cramp the trucking lifestyle. So one day he dropped her off at a place called The Harvest Co-op, or what Charlene has always referred to as “The Ranch,” located in the middle of Utah, and left her there with her infant baby. Penniless. With no identification.
And Frank took them in with open arms. He welcomed her into “the fold.” It was fantastic. They were a self-contained unit. They earned their own way and functioned like a family, and for a woman who came from a small, isolated town where her parents threatened to help her get rid of the baby without seeing a doctor, it’s not hard to understand why she ran, and why she stayed where she was for as long as she did.
While her mother might’ve known her situation wasn’t normal or conventional, it was certainly preferable. Until apparently it wasn’t anymore.
“So how did you get out, and what prompted leaving?” I ask, still trying to figure that part out.
“I started my period,” Charlene mumbles, and her cheeks flush.
“I don’t think I understand.”
“My mom worried it wasn’t going to be safe for me anymore. We were in extreme isolation, and there were a lot of restrictions. I never left the compound. I’d been told it was dangerous and forbidden. We didn’t have identification. We were dependent on Frank for everything, and I was getting older.”
It finally clicks as to what she means. “I should’ve killed that fucker when I had the chance.”
Charlene ducks her head. “Don’t say that.”
“Charlene, that shit is fucked up. Far worse than anything I went through as a kid. That guy needs to be put behind bars or six feet under.”
She rolls whatever she had between her fingers faster and faster until it pings on the table. She scrambles to grab it, but I catch it mid-bounce. It’s a pearl. I glance up to where her fingers dance nervously around her throat.
“It broke when Da—Frank tried to grab me.” She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, and her shoulders curl forward.
I run a gentle palm over the back of her head. “It’s okay. We’ll get it restrung again.”
“I think I lost half the pearls in the garden this time, or between the stones. We’ll never find them all.”
“So I’ll add new ones until it fits.” I never told her that the first time I had the ancient, broken necklace restrung for her, I replaced all but a few of the original pearls since none of them were real. These were. And I definitely won’t be sharing that with her, either.
“You’ve already done that once. You shouldn’t have to do it again.”
“It’s not about having to do anything, Charlene. It’s about wanting to. Whatever you need, whatever you want, I’ll do it for you. Don’t you get it? I l—”
“Don’t!” She scrambles away from me.
Her terror over the RV has nothing on her panic now. She shakes her head, as if she’s erasing thoughts, words, and memories. “Please, Darren. Whatever you think you should say right now, please don’t. I can’t. I can’t do this. There’s too much. I don’t even know.”
She stands up, smoothing her hands down her thighs. “I need to go home. I have to go home.”
I stand too, wanting to reach out and hold on, to keep her where she’s supposed to be, which is with me. “I can take you home. Why don’t you stay with me? It’s safe, and I’ll take care of you.”
“My mom is here,” she says quietly.
“She can stay with us. I have spare bedrooms. If you need your space, you can stay in one of the other rooms, too.” I sound desperate. Maybe because I am. I have no idea how to manage this situation, but I feel like I’m losing her, as if I’ve opened the glass jar and this time when she goes free, she won’t come back.
That’s not acceptable.
But I can’t lock her away or I’m just as bad as the man she ran from.
Everything suddenly fits—the puzzle orders into a picture I couldn’t ever piece together properly.
I finally understand how much she hates being tied down to anything, literally and figuratively, apart from her job. She seeks stability in things, not people.
Except for Violet. She’s the only constant person I can see. Not even her mother holds that kind of sway with her. I want to know how to be that. I want to know what I need to do in order to be that for her. Because as she shuts down on me and pulls into herself, and the fire I love so much flickers and dies, I’m certain of one thing: if I’m traded, there’s a good chance I’ll lose her forever. Violet will be the anchor that keeps her from coming with me.
And after everything I’ve learned tonight, I’m not sure I can blame her for wanting to stay, even if it means I have to leave half my soul in Chicago with her.
CHARLENE
The night I came home from the party, there was a box on the front stoop. I assumed it was from Darren, so I didn’t open it right away. But the next morning a pamphlet from The Ranch had been shoved through the mail slot, possibly as some kind of messed-up, highly ineffective enticement. All it did was make me never want to leave my house again.
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