by Willow Rose
“So, why did you have to change your plans?” I ask when the waiter is gone. On the stage, the house band is setting up.
“I have a basketball tournament that I completely forgot about.”
“You play basketball?” I say in surprise, thinking about his short, out of shape body.
“What? I don’t look like I could play basketball?” he asks with a grin.
“I’m just surprised,” I say.
“I coach basketball. Never was able to make it big myself, so now I am a coach, all right?”
“That makes more sense,” I say, and sip my white wine, trying to look delicate and elegant. “Where?”
“At the rec center.”
My face lights up thinking about him coaching little kids. “Aw.”
“I knew that would hit a home run,” he says, grinning even more. “Always works.”
I chuckle as the waiter arrives with our food. The band opens by playing “Fly Me to the Moon.” I secretly watch Tom as he sings along, not hitting a single note, and I notice that so far there is nothing I don’t like about this guy.
Chapter Thirteen
April 2016
Nicky comes home from visiting a new client just before six o’clock. She pays the neighbor’s son ten dollars and thanks him for picking up Paige and looking after her this afternoon while Nicky was in Melbourne looking at fabrics for a woman’s couch.
How one woman can take so long making one little decision is beyond Nicky’s comprehension. She had her go through all of her books. Nicky now worries about the rest of the house. If one decision takes this long, how will she ever finish that eighteen thousand square foot mansion? There will be other couches and furniture, and don’t even get her started on the curtains.
“Hi, sweet pea,” she yells up the stairs. “I’m home.”
“Hi, mom,” Paige answers from her room.
“I’ll start dinner.”
Paige doesn’t answer. Probably busy on that computer again. Nicky shakes her head as she unpacks the groceries and starts dinner. She almost regrets buying it for her, since she spends so much time on that thing, but it just felt so good to finally be able to give her something that big and expensive, so as soon as she got the inheritance from her parents, she went to the Apple store and bought the biggest computer she could find and placed it in Paige’s room. The girl hadn’t been able to play Minecraft or Roblox like all the other kids, and was constantly left out when they discussed those games at school. It used to torment Nicky to know that her daughter was falling behind in school where computers became more and more important every year.
Nicky turns on the TV and watches the local news as she peels the potatoes. It’s all about those dead fish in the lagoon again. Today, thousands of dead fish have been seen in the Banana River and in people’s canals.
Nicky stops peeling and turns up the volume. The condition of the lagoon concerns her greatly. She wants to leave a world for her daughter to grow up in. The reporter talks about the rally, arranged by a local celebrity, that is planned for this Saturday, while showing more dead fish and then interviewing concerned tourists who have come here for spring break to fish.
“It’s really disgusting what is going on here,” a tourist from Canada says. “I used to come here and there would be fish jumping into my boat and the water would be crystal clear. This is bad. This is really bad.”
Nicky feels a pinch of anger in her stomach as she returns to her potatoes. Meanwhile, the experts on TV argue whether the fish deaths are due to fertilizer from people’s yards, leaking septic tanks, or overpopulation of manatees.
Nicky hurries up and puts all the potatoes in a pan with carrots and other vegetables before she throws a Mahi Mahi fillet on top and puts it all in the oven, thinking it is going to be terrible to not be able to eat local fish anymore.
She runs upstairs, knocks on the door, and enters her daughter’s room. Just as expected—Paige is on the computer.
“Have you been on that thing all day?” Nicky asks.
“No. I had basketball as well.”
“That’s right,” Nicky says. “Did you do well?”
“Yes. Coach says I can play in the tournament. We have a game on Saturday at two.”
Nicky smiles. She is so glad that Paige enjoys doing sports. There really is no need to worry about her use of computers, is there?
“I’ll have to make sure to be there for that, then,” Nicky says. “Maybe we can go together to the rally for the lagoon in the morning, then head over to the game. How does that sound?”
Paige doesn’t even look at her. She is all into her game and tapping away on her keyboard.
“Sure, Mom. Whatever.”
Chapter Fourteen
April 2016
I take Salter out surfing the next day after school. I feel bad for disappointing him the night before. He seems like he is still angry with me as we paddle out. I have texted Marcia to let her know that we’re going out, but I secretly hope that she won’t come, since I feel like my son needs to be alone with his mother.
“So, how was your day today?” I ask, when we’re on the outside and wait on the next set of waves.
Salter has hardly spoken to me at all since he got back from school, and I can’t stop thinking that something else is bothering him. I can’t believe he can still be this mad about last night.
He shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”
“Did you do anything fun?”
“Mom. This is fourth grade. We don’t have time for fun.”
“Ah. I forgot. Everything is so serious these days. Are there at least any girls you like in your class?”
He rolls his eyes. “Mom. Please.”
“What? You used to always tell me these things.”
“Well, I won’t now.”
“I’m not going to stop asking. I want to know everything about you, just so you know.”
He rolls his eyes at me and I splash water at him. He smiles slightly. A set of waves is rolling towards us. We both start paddling for the same wave. Salter catches it. I don’t. He laughs at me as he rides past me. He does a nice turn on the lip and my heart is filled with pride.
“You know, there was actually room enough for the both of us on that wave,” he says, teasing me as he comes back out.
“Very funny,” I say.
“I can’t believe you couldn’t catch that one,” he continues.
“Well, I am a little out of shape, all right. Let’s leave it at that before someone gets hurt.”
“A little?” he says with a grin.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” he says, laughing.
Another set of waves comes towards us. “Watch me catch this one,” I say, and start to paddle.
Salter follows me. We give it all we have and share a party wave. I ride it longer than him and come back out, laughing.
“Now who’s the cool one around here?”
“Certainly not you when you talk like that,” he says.
“What? No street cred for that one?”
“Okay. I’ll grant you a little cred. That was pretty cool.”
“Thank you.”
Salter goes quiet all of a sudden. He looks down in the water and his smile disappears.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
He looks up. “What do you mean?”
“Come on. I’m your mother. I can tell when my son is troubled. Spit it out or I won’t stop asking about it.”
“It’s nothing, Mom, really.”
“Don’t do that to me. That look on your face tells me it is a lot more than nothing. Spit. It. Out.”
He looks me in the eyes. My heart starts pounding. This is serious. I know my boy. This is not a little thing.
“Promise you won’t get mad,” he says.
“All right. Kind of depends on what you’ve done.”
“It’s not like that. I just don’t want to see you mad or sad.”
“Okay. You’re starting to scare me
a little here, Salter.”
He bites his lips while looking into my eyes. A set of waves rolls towards us, but we let it pass.
“I was thinking…that maybe I could go and live with dad for a little while?”
No!
I stare at him. My sweet baby boy. My accomplishment when everything else went wrong, the only one I knew I could trust and would always have by my side. He wants to leave me? He wants to go…live with his dad?
Please tell me you’re kidding. Please say it is a joke. A cruel one, but just that. Just you pulling a prank on me.
“I’m serious, Mom. I really want to. I miss him. You had me for all that time in New York, and now I feel like it’s his turn. He’s my dad.”
Joey put him up to this. It must be him. Damn you, Joey.
I swallow hard and don’t even notice the next set of waves passing us. I can tell Salter is concerned; he is worried how I will react to this. He is afraid I might be sad or angry. I am angry and sad. Very much indeed. But I can’t show him that.
“Well, if that’s what you want, then I guess…”
I stop. I know it is what I am supposed to say, but that is not how I feel. I want to tell him what he wants to hear, but at the same time I feel like I need to be honest as well.
“You know what? No, I am not okay with it. It is painful, Salter. You know how much I love you and love being with you.”
“Well, it hasn’t felt like it recently,” he says. “Besides, he’s my dad. I want to be with him more. You’re not my only parent. And it’s not like we won’t see each other. I’ll be right down the street. Besides, I’ll see you every other Wednesday and stay the weekend like I do with Dad now.”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I say honestly. I am pressing back tears. I sincerely wish I could just say it is okay, that I could be mature and adult enough to accept this, but I really can’t. I don’t want to. “I don’t want you to live with your dad. I want you to live here with me.”
Salter’s facial expression changes. His eyes are angry now.
“I just knew it! I knew you would be like this. Why can’t you ever just let me do what I want and not what you want? It’s my life.”
Salter turns his board before I can answer and starts to paddle for a wave. I try to stop him.
“Don’t you leave me out here like this, Salter,” I yell at him, but he has already caught the wave and rides it to the beach.
On his way, he passes Marcia, who is just paddling out to me. She is panting as she stops next to me. I bite my lips and hold back the tears while she smiles.
“What have I missed?”
Chapter Fifteen
April 2016
The men are standing shoulder to shoulder. Danny counts as many as eight men, all with the same hungry look in their eyes.
They call it a beauty pageant, as they present the girls one after the other. All the girls are wearing the same red dress. The only thing that separates them is the numbers pinned to their dresses.
Danny looks around in the arrival hall of Orlando Airport. No one who passes the windows seems to care or even wonder what is going on inside the coffee shop. They’re busy with their own lives and where they’re going.
These girls on the podium have just arrived as well. Taken here from countries like the Philippines, Cambodia or Thailand. Brought in on fake passports. The owner of the coffee house is the one presenting the girls, praising their best features to the men, speaking about them like they were models. But they’re not. They’re slaves. And they’re about to be bought.
The man to Danny’s right lifts his hand and points at girl number 3. He is wearing an expensive suit and jewelry. The coffee shop owner applauds him for it and takes the girl to him. She doesn’t look at him; she doesn’t put up a fight. She knows it is useless. She is broken and probably heavily drugged.
These people know how to break a girl. She was probably brought here thinking she was going to be an actress or a model or marry some rich American guy and be able to send back money to her family.
The man leaves with his purchase. Danny watches her as they walk past him. He guesses she can’t be more than fourteen. Her family back home probably thinks she made it big, that she is the one who lucked out.
Danny turns to face the other girls. Another man makes his purchase and disappears with his girl. One buys two. Danny looks for eye contact. He tries to get it from one of the girls, to meet their eyes. But they’re not there; they can’t focus or look straight at him. Instead, they stare blankly into the air.
Except for one girl.
The girl with the number 2 on her dress. Her eyes are different. This girl’s eyes are staring directly at Danny with a piercing gaze. There is something about her that makes Danny unable to stop looking at her. A fight. A feistiness.
This girl hasn’t been broken, he thinks to himself. There is still fight left in her. A great deal of fight.
Danny is ready to make his bid. He wants this girl. He lifts his hand high in the air.
“I vote for number 2.”
The girl is still staring at him with her feisty eyes as the owner grabs her arm and pulls her towards him. She walks reluctantly towards Danny and is handed over to him, just as the coffee shop explodes in an inferno of loud voices.
“POLICE! Everyone get down!”
With his heart in his throat, Danny turns and watches, as what looks like thirty heavily armed police officers storm the coffee shop, pointing their weapons at them. Terrified, the men try to escape, but are soon thrown to the ground and arrested. The owner of the coffee shop pulls his gun and Danny turns fast, then jumps near the girl he has just purchased, and at the second the owner fires his gun, Danny forces the girl to the ground to avoid the bullet.
Next thing Danny knows, three police officers are on top of him, dragging him away from the girl. He manages to look into her brown eyes one last time before he is knocked out.
Chapter Sixteen
April 2016
I call up Joey when I get back inside. Salter is in his room and he doesn’t want to speak to me. I am so frustrated I am about to cry.
“Did you put him up to this?” I ask, almost spitting the words out.
“What?” Joey asks.
“You must have. I…I can’t believe you would do this to me, Joey. After all we have been through.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Joey says. “Is something wrong with Salter?”
“He wants to come live with you,” I say. “He just told me so.”
“He does?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I know you put him up to it. What is it? You want to hurt me so badly?”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t put him up to anything. If he wants to come live with his dad, well then he is more than welcome.”
“How can you say that? You have no idea how to take care of a kid. You don’t even pack the boy a lunch!”
“I hardly think what kind of lunch you provide determines whether you’re dad of the year or not. I miss him, Mary. I think it would be good for us.”
I moan. I don’t know how to argue against it. I just know that I can’t let this happen. I simply can’t. It breaks my heart.
“Yeah…well, I don’t think it’s such a great idea.” I can hear how childish I sound, but can’t stop it.
He scoffs. “Well, there’s a big surprise there.”
“You can’t take him from me, Joey. You simply can’t. I don’t know what to do without him.”
Joey chuckles. “You always exaggerate, Mary. It’s not like I’m taking him away from you. He’ll come live here for a little while, and then he’ll want to come back to Mommy after a few weeks. Don’t you worry. He is a momma’s boy after all. I’ll just have to enjoy whatever little I get of him. Get some time one-on-one. Some man-time. It’ll be good for him. I promise. You’ll see him every other week for five days, like we always do. It won’t be that big of a difference, Mary.”
> “I worry that he’ll never want to come home to me again,” I say, grabbing a cookie with the other hand and eating it. I am not seeing Tom for a few days, while the basketball tournament lasts anyway, so there is no need to watch my weight. Especially not when I feel sorry for myself.
“Of course he’ll come home. Are you kidding me? You’re his mother,” Joey says, comforting me.
It works a little. Or maybe it’s the cookie.
“All right…I guess there really is no other way,” I say. “But you’ve got to make sure you pack him his lunch. Every day. And don’t let that little thing of yours leave out any more lingerie, or I’ll take him back, you hear me? One more bra and I’m bringing him home.”
“I hear you loud and clear,” Joey says. I know he is grinning. I can tell by the tone of his voice.
“I’ll bring him over tomorrow after school, then,” I say. “At least I get to spend tonight with him.”
“And next weekend,” Joey says. “Plus, feel free to stop by anytime. Bring Snowflake. Bonnie and Clyde are miserable without him.”
I get a warm feeling in my body that Joey is the one missing me, but I don’t say anything. It is hard being away from each other after spending most of our lives together like we have. I miss him too. Not all the bad stuff, but the good parts we shared. I barely get to indulge in the memories before I am violently pulled out of them, when I hear her voice in the background.
“Who are you talking to, baby?”
She might as well have punched me in the stomach. I can’t stand the fact that she is in that house and that soon she’ll be there with my son as well. She’ll be there with my family. My family.
Now I feel like crying again.
“I’ll be right there,” Joey answers her. “Listen,” he says to me.
“You gotta go. Yeah. I kind of figured.”
“Sorry. We have this thing, this yoga paddle board experience that we’re going to on the river.”
“On the river? With all those dead fish? Good luck.”
