Take On Me: Plantain Series Book Three

by Amelia Oliver

“So, you want to go to lunch or something?” Maven asks, hanging up the phone.

  “Sure,” I start, “she’s cute,” I remark about Skye.

  “Yeah, really nice and good at her job…I just hope Dornan doesn’t try to fuck her,” she states.

  I raise my brows and look at her.

  “You know he loves blonds,” she adds.

  “Okay, whatever Maven.”

  “I don’t think she would though, I don’t think he’s her type, she never gives him a second glance. She does however like her some Drag I think, want to see someone get all flustered, watch her when he comes to her desk with a customer.”

  “Yeah he was cute,” I nod.

  “But a total creep, he’s always saying something sexual.”

  “But it’s okay because he’s hot.”

  “It’s totally okay because he’s hot,” she confirms.

  Then the phone rings again. “Hold on,” Maven says lifting the receiver.

  “Ah, I heard you were here.”

  I smile as I look over my shoulder, standing when I see Dornan in the doorway. We hug and he looks me over, like he wants to make sure I’m not wasting away.

  “How you been, girl?”

  “Okay, that drive is a pain, but better than flying alone with three children.”

  He gives me a smile, which is as close to a laugh for Dornan as it gets.

  “You talk to Joey lately?” he asks.

  Since communication is terrible, I know they haven’t spoken since Joey’s deployment.

  “A few days ago, before we left for here.”

  “How’s he doing over there?”

  “Says it’s hot as balls and the spiders are as big as dinner plates,” I say this while pulling a face at the thought of the disturbing image.

  “That’s fucked up,” he says with a shake of his head.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Maven says, hanging up the phone and walking over towards us with her purse in hand.

  “Where you going?” Dornan asks.

  “Lunch, wanna come?” I ask.

  He gives Maven a look, but I know she’s not looking at him but at her cellphone.

  “No,” he tells me. “You coming back after?” he asks her.

  “Yeah,” Maven says almost snottily.

  “We have that thing tonight,” he adds.

  “And I said I was coming back,” she says with the same tone of voice.

  She starts ushering me out and towards Skye.

  “Want Maven to bring you back something?” I ask Dornan, giving Maven a stern look.

  “Nah, thanks though Katie…I’ll come by tomorrow to see the girls, okay?”

  “We’ll be there,” I tell him. “Do you wanna come to lunch with us?” I ask looking at Skye.

  “Oh, thank you for asking, you guys go catch up,” she says giving me her dazzling smile.

  At this point, Maven has my hand and is literally pulling me out to the lot and to my car.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask as we get inside and buckle up.

  “I can’t take him, Katie…I know he’s been missing Joey, but you guys have been moved away for years. Ever since Joey was deployed, it’s like he’s forgotten he has any other friends.”

  I pull out of the lot and down Main Street.

  “Maybe you make him feel better about Joey being gone, like a comfort thing,” I suggest.

  “He’s constantly asking what I’m doing, or where I’m going, if I need help with the house, if I’ve talked to my dad…it never ends,” she sighs with irritation.

  “He loves you, Maven,” I tell her, although my meaning and her understanding are two different versions of love.

  “Whatever.”

  “I want to know those things,” I tell her.

  “I don’t talk to my dad, Katie…I can’t, fuck, my brain goes off in a million directions when I think of all the shit I want to fucking tell him…instead I just get pissed off.”

  I nod. I by no means am one to lecture anyone about putting aside pain caused by a parent. I park outside The Plantain Diner and we enter the half full establishment, taking a seat in a booth beside the windows.

  “So, how is it being in the club? I mean, I know you can’t tell me details, and I know we’ve talked about it a little over the phone, but I want to see your face when you tell me this.”

  She sighs deeply, smiling at the waitress as she drops off two glasses of water and telling us she’ll be right back.

  “It’s exactly what I expected,” she tells me somberly. “Sven wants me to do more, which up until now Joseph’s been doing a lot of what I’m supposed to. It’s just not what I want Katie, but if I don’t do this, for some weird reason I feel like I’ll be letting everyone down. I shouldn’t fucking care if it hurts my dad, I should want it to…but I just can’t.”

  Her cellphone begins to chime and she takes it out of her purse to silence it.

  “Who’s that?” I ask, almost expecting her to say Dornan.

  “Brayden,” she tells me before taking a drink of her water.

  My brows rise as I give her a pointed look. “You still talk to him?” I ask in disbelief.

  “Yes, Katie.”

  “Whyyyyy?”

  “I don’t know,” she shakes her head.

  “You do remember he told you he got married, right?” I remind her.

  “Yes, and do you remember I told you he said he’s just going to be with her until the baby is a little older.”

  “Maven,” I tisk. “You of all people, Miss Independent, doesn’t take crap, calls everyone on their bullshit, and you mean to tell me you’re going to pine around waiting for some asshole to leave his wife for you?”

  “I love him, I know I shouldn’t…but everything in my life’s changed, I just need to hold onto something normal for a while.”

  The waitress comes back and we order, and we try to return our conversation to not such heavy shit. Even when Joey’s brought up, I answer robotically, like everything’s fine. But Maven being one who doesn’t miss anything, knows I’m fragile, and doesn’t pry with questions. We chitchat and gossip about Skye and Drag for most of lunch, trying to keep things light. When I drop Maven back off at the garage, she tells me she’ll come see the girls tomorrow, before disappearing inside.

  I call Gwen to check on the girls, and tell her I'm going to run errands for some last minute Christmas gifts. I make my way to Bannister because I have something else I want to do and don't want Gwen to know. I'm ready to bury this still existing pain I have from my parents, end the feelings that linger deep inside. Most days I think of what happened, what they did. There's something inside me driving me to make it stop. I feel stronger now than I did when I was a kid, strong enough to tell them now that they might've thought they broke me, but they didn't. I'm a good mom because of how they were, a better person because of it too.

  Driving through my old neighborhood is strange, surreal actually. A lot’s changed, and I see that most the homes on my old block have been torn down and upscale looking townhouses have replaced them. I park a few houses down from where my parents lived. Noticing two new cars in the driveway of their address, and get the feeling they don’t belong to my parents.

  I then decide to go to the library and see if there's any information I can find there about where they might be. The public records are also there, and although I don't want to spend money on my investigation, I just might have to. The library hasn't changed and that's a bizarre feeling too. Instantly remembering hanging out here every day with Joey for years. My fingers toy with his ring on my necklace, something I always absent-mindedly do when I think of him.

  I head over to the computers where the microfiche used to be, and look up any newspaper archives on the recent looking builds. I see most residences were bought out by a construction company, along with the names of home-owners who sold to them. The address to their house is there, but the former home-owner information is N/A.

  My next search i
s for their names, and I'm shocked to only see a few things come up. One is an obituary for my brother which mentions my parents’ names, I move to click back but something catches my eye, one word. Suicide. I scroll back over to read that’s the stated cause of my brother’s death, which was always told to me was from a drunken car accident with his friends.

  But this says he was found on the train tracks and was ruled a suicide. There was no trauma from a train, but his wrists were slit. I don't understand why my parents would lie, it’s not like they ever tried to protect me from anything.

  A cold chill runs through me, and I make a note to look up his name when I'm finished with this search. The next article is another obituary, this time for my sister. What the fuck? Another lie they told me. She too committed suicide. Her body found in the desert, self-inflicted gunshot wound. I don't know how to describe this, confusion I guess. Why did they lie to me? Why did my siblings commit suicide? I can only imagine it was due to the treatment by my parents, but even suicide seems a bit extreme.

  My hand curls around the mouse and I move to the next article. Another obituary. My parents, carbon monoxide poisoning in their house...two weeks after I moved my shit out of there. There are few details, and nothing beyond that. I see mention of my siblings in the article, but not me. It doesn't make sense that I wouldn't have been contacted or made aware of their deaths. I was only a town away, and not that hard to find.

  I go back and search my name and there’s nothing. I check that I have a few dollars for the public records and request all documents with my name on then to be printed. I sit in a chair by the records window and am shocked when my names called only a few minutes after I spoke with the clerk. At first I assume there’s an issue, but see he’s holding out a manila envelope that looks empty.

  I give him the money and take the folder, sitting back down as I open it. Inside there’s only two copies, my birth certificate is the first. My eyes zero in on my birth parents’ names, Jane and John Doe. My heart starts racing and I look at the next paper, an adoption form. I swallow thickly and blink rapidly. How is this possible?

  I don't know how I manage to make it back to Gwen and Joseph’s, my mind working at a frantic pace. When I arrive the girls run to me and I hug and kiss them as if nothing’s wrong. Dinner is being set out and Gwen smiles at me.

  “Just in time.”

  We sit down for dinner, and I’m able to push away my questions and enjoy the time with my family. My thoughts turn to Joey, how I wish for nothing more than him to be with us. But honestly, I hope more than anything that he’s safe, and knows how much I miss him.

  ***

  I still can’t get used to this heat, it’s like turning on a blow dryer full blast and holding it in front of your face. Just when you think you’re getting used to it, you quickly realize you aren’t. I’ve been here for six months, and my tour, this tour is almost over. But I know I’ll be back out in another few months. The shit hasn’t gotten any better here, and just when we think we’ve achieved something, that this war isn’t for nothing, something else happens.

  My unit’s job is to infiltrate villages, find any members of the military, or anyone part of the movement and flush them out. When we do that, then we take over the village and try to reconstruct it and make it productive again. When the military takes over, they shut the village down, closing the markets and any trading, causing the people who live there to live like hostages. You think they’d be happy as fuck when we roll in, but they’re not, and that makes the shit even harder. To know you’re trying to help, and it’s for nothing.

  I stand in the middle of the street; we’ve moved into the village but a local told us there are bombs all over the place. So my unit waits as the bomb unit comes in to try and locate them. I stand by my squad leader, a translator, and some of the locals. I don’t pay attention to them, my eyes constantly scanning the surroundings and the faces of the onlookers. I wish I could say by now that I know the ones who are trying to kill us as we stand here, but it can be anyone.

  We’ve had old men, women, children…there’s no limit to the hold the terrorists have over them. But I try not to let the terrible shit I’ve done and witnessed seep into my brain. When I feel its claws attempting to sink in, I think about Katie and my girls, and what they might be doing at that very moment. It doesn’t matter the time, but I usually picture them all in the Cadillac on the way home as Katie picks Natasha and Lily up from school. They talk a mile a minute about their day, while Goldie baby garbles and Katie listens to them all, commenting and asking questions. She’s good like that, a good mom. She always makes the girls feel like they’re just as important as the other.

  I know Katie’s probably stressed, but she can do it. She told me on our last phone call, that she was going to try and get a job at a local salon. The only thing she worried about was missing out on alone time with Goldie during the day. I hope she knows how awesome she is with them, and with me, for me. When I see her again, I need to tell her that. I think it’s Christmas soon, but I lose track of days when I come out here. There’s no way to describe how much I miss them, my family, Plantain, my friends, the club. Military life is what I dreamed of, and I feel like I was made for this. But I don’t love anything more than my family.

  At night I look through the pictures of my girls, my thumb running over their smiling faces and I imagine them giggling as I tickle them. No matter how much time passes that I don’t see them, it doesn’t affect the time we do spend together. I keep all my pictures of Katie on my phone, not only because I don’t want anyone else to see them, but I have more on here than I can carry with me.

  Most of these photos are intimate, and every time I look into her eyes, my heart gets fluttery, amongst other things. When shit gets insane out in the desert, I always picture her face, or hear her voice, telling me to come back to them. My beautiful wife, who’s become a woman before my eyes, but she still has that innocence in her eyes that remind me of the girl I first met.

  Chapter 16

  After dinner, Joseph leaves for something at the clubhouse, and I bathe the girls and get them ready for bed. Gwen put two twin beds in the spare room for the girls, and we push them together and all pile into bed as I read them a story, one by one they fall asleep. I heard Gwen head to bed a bit ago, and I want to talk to Joseph about my findings at the library, so I sneak out of the girls’ room and downstairs. I sit on the plush couch in the front room, collecting my thoughts.

  Now that I’ve had a few hours to make sense of what I read, I can actually have a rational conversation about this. The single headlight from Joseph’s bike illuminates the dark room as he pulls into the driveway. It’s nearly two a.m. and I hope he’s not drunk or exhausted because if I have to wait any longer for answers, I might burst. The back door opens and I stand, his heavy boots attempting to be quiet on the kitchen floor. He rounds the corner and sees me standing there, his expression confused since I’m in the dark alone.

  “I need to talk to you,” I whisper.

  His eyes take on worry.

  “Joey’s okay, it’s not about that,” I rush out.

  He lets out a sigh of relief, nodding as he sets his helmet down. He walks towards his office and I follow. Turning on a light as he walks in, and closing the door behind me.

  “I went to the library today, trying to find out where my parents are now.”

  He closes his eyes for a moment, before sighing again. Turning his back to me, he walks over to a decanter filled with amber liquid, pouring a little in a small glass. My eyes follow him as he takes the seat across from me, and I sit also. My fingers toy with one another, my heart racing, waiting for him to speak.

  “Why does my birth certificate say that you and Gwen adopted me after I was born?”

  He takes a long look at me before sighing and drinking from his glass.

  “We have a surveillance guy, Chilly,” he begins and clears his throat. “He found out some shit about your parents after you were outt
a there, shit none of us felt comfortable with. So myself, Ivan, and Sven went to pay them a visit. Offered them money to stay away from you. Chilly got a hold of court papers they were trying to file, trying to grant a judge to get you back with them and give Joey and me restraining orders. We thought we’d made it clear the night we got you out of there that we wouldn’t let you press charges of abuse if they left you alone. Threats were made, warnings…but they kept hanging around. We’d catch them in a car at the end of the street, days where you’d been home alone.”

  He takes a gulp of his drink, and I remember back to that time. It was right after I left them for good, and I was rarely ever left alone in the house. When I was, Joey would call me constantly to check on me. But I thought nothing of it, just that he was worried about me after the final beating from my parents. To think that my parents were trying to abduct me or something, sends a cold chill through me.

  “So that doesn’t explain where my parents are.”

  Joseph finishes his drink, standing to refill it. My nerves getting the better of me with every moment that passes. He sits back down, not looking at me as he begins again.

  “They’d been prostituting your sister and brother since they were young.”

  Instantly a rock lands at the pit of my stomach.

  “When your brother committed suicide, and your sister’s pregnant body was found just outside Coral Groves, also a suicide…they were on the cop’s radar, we think that’s why they didn’t do the same with you. Chilly then found out that part of the reason they were trying to get you back was because they’d arranged a marriage for you. Looking deeper, the man was about forty-five and this was something he’d been promised for years. Instead of pimping you out, they found someone to pay them to groom you to be…” he stops and shakes his head.

  “Go on,” I say with a shaky voice.

  “Chilly found money transactions over many years, some paperwork insuring that you were a virgin and had been trained and other shit the guy requested. There was correspondence with the guy from your parents in notes and letters. He liked that you didn’t drive, that you did well obeying them. They must’ve sent him photos of your back because there was one comment that he agreed with the way you were being disciplined, and had no problem keeping up with that as punishment.”