Take On Me: Plantain Series Book Three

by Amelia Oliver

  My mind flashes back, montages of memories I’d forgotten. Men coming to the front door, asking for one of my siblings. My breathing increases, my eyes focusing on the floor as my brain floods me with repressed memories. My dad calling me into the kitchen, an older man sitting there at the table with him. The stranger looking at me, I can’t be more than five or six, and when he asks me how old I am, I don’t reply. My dad coaxes me to answer, but I don’t. Instead, I start crying and run into my room. I don’t know why I reacted that way as I see it play before my eyes, but then my parents come back to my room and punish me. That’s when the beatings started, and I vaguely remember being told as I got older my husband wanted a disciplined wife.

  This man came over every couple of years, and I was forced to sit there while he talked with my parents and I was told beforehand not to speak. Was this the man I was going to be married off to? I close my eyes and think of Joey, only think of Joey, my girls’ faces, anything to push the sickening feelings back.

  “Were they killed?” I ask, blinking my eyes as I look back to him.

  “We didn't want anything getting back to you, so Chilly went in and changed all your documents. They wouldn't leave you alone, something had to be done. We were all worried they'd take you or something and marry you off to this freak. The fear gripped Joey like I've never seen. He wasn't going to let them take you.”

  “Was it you or Joey? Who did it?”

  “Just know that what was done was out of love for you.”

  I look down at my hands, my eyes pooling with tears, my parents were dead.

  “There’s something else you should know; I’d feel a lot better if you knew it all.”

  My eyes meet his and dread comes over me, not knowing what the hell else he could tell me.

  “So when all this was going down, when the cops had suspicions of their deaths being legit or staged or whatever…they started considering Joey and Dornan as suspects-”

  “But how? If my identification was changed by then, how’d they even know about me to lead them to the boys?”

  “They fit the description of someone the neighbor saw, I don’t remember exactly. But being associated with the club, we’re always the first people they come to when something goes down.”

  “Okay, keep going,” I nod.

  “No one wanted you to know, hell, I don’t think the boys even knew they were on the radar…anyway, when we got wind of it from an officer…Maven’s dad turned himself in, said it was him.”

  “What?” I ask, my chin warbling.

  “That’s the thing about family Katie, everyone willing to help a member out for the greater good of the group.”

  Joseph and I sit for a moment longer, and I clear my cheeks of tears and thank him, before grabbing my car keys and driving to Maven's. I know it’s late but her car and bike are here, and I don't think she's asleep. Bagheera, Maven’s puppy, barks as I walk up to the back door, but quiets when he sees me. Maven’s in her kitchen, her hands on the countertop with her head bowed. She's wearing all black, and a leather vest from the club I've never seen her in before. She looks over at me as I enter through the screen door, with a look that's also foreign to her. But when we connect I'm overwhelmed with my recent news, and I hug her, tears filling my eyes. She hugs me just as hard and starts to sniffle.

  “I did something tonight Katie, the old me is dead.”

  I pull back and look at her.

  “I went on my first run with the club...I-”

  I stop her words as I pull her against me and hug her.

  “I know what your dad did, how he helped Joey and Dornan.” I lean back and look at her. “Maven, I’m so…sorry.”

  Tears begin streaming down my face as she begins to cry also, her hand running over my hair.

  “But, I’m so thankful,” I add with a gasp.

  She nods. “That’s what’s so hard for me Katie. I know what my dad did was the right thing. He was going to end up in prison anyhow, that wasn’t the only thing he confessed to. But as angry as I am about him leaving me, he spared my best friends, and I’m thankful for that too.”

  I move in to hug her again, and hang on to her like a lifeline. I’ve never in my life cried like this, or been this emotional. I can sense that neither has Maven, and I wonder if we’ve both just hit a wall of trying to be strong all the time. It’s cleansing, and almost a feeling of rebirth. There’s only so much someone can keep inside before they have to let it out. I’ve never let myself fully be overwhelmed by feeling, but I couldn’t stop it in this moment if I tried. We stand there, embracing for I don’t know how long, until Maven looks up at me.

  “We need a drink I think,” she says.

  “For once, I agree with you on that one.”

  She gives me a small smile, since I never drink, and moves over to a cabinet behind me. I take a deep breath and wipe under my eyes, I feel marginally better but still not really fully grasping the new reality of my old life. I watch as Maven pours golden colored liquor into two short glasses, then handing me one.

  “Here’s to kissing our old lives goodbye,” she announces raising her glass.

  Chapter 17

  I don’t get drunk that night, but buzzed enough to fall asleep. We stay in Plantain until a few days after New Year’s Eve, and I feel like not only is it the start of a new year, but a start of a new me. I didn’t tell Joey the night we talked after Christmas that I knew about my parents, it seemed trivial for some reason. I knew what was done was done, and it was time to move on. Honestly, I felt like a weight I didn’t know I was carrying was off me.

  Maybe knowing my parents were gone, never to taint my life with their anger or hatred ever again. I always had a fear they’d show up at my house, see my girls, know I was happy and try to ruin us somehow. Now that fear was gone, and I was happy for it.

  Natasha and Lily returned to school after holiday break, and that was my starting point of getting into shape. I never had body shame aside from my scars or feelings I didn’t have an adequate body or anything, but I knew I’d feel more confident about myself. My parents permanently scarred my skin, my daughters also did their work on me when I was pregnant. This was something to do for me, to have control of how I looked and felt.

  I purchased some work out DVD’s to do at home while Goldie napped or after the girls had gone to bed at night, they were a mix of cardio and martial art type workouts. Needless to say, I started seeing results only a few weeks later, and was happy to see muscles and tone from it. I told Joey about it and I sent him some photos of my biceps and abs to his cellphone.

  Even though we didn’t get messages immediately, it was still another way we kept in contact. when I received his reply to my photos a few days later, I was happy he was so impressed and clearly turned on by what I sent him. It was an empowering feeling, that once in my life I was controlling how I looked and how that in turn made me feel. It also oddly made me less self-conscious about my scars, and I found myself freely walking around in tank tops for the first time in my life, even if it was just around the house.

  It was summer again, Joey would be home in a few weeks, and the girls and I just arrived home from another trip to Plantain. Things there were the same, Dornan still pining over Maven, Maven still a mess from joining the club. But I could see on this trip that she was coping better. She was changing though. It took more to get her to smile or laugh. She was weary of people now, closed off and secretive. I worried about her, but I felt like I was worrying about everyone these days. We stop at the grocery store before home and I’m unloading the car in the garage as the girls play in the front yard.

  “Here you go.” I hear a man’s voice I don’t recognize and walk a few steps out on the driveway to see. A man probably a little older than me, with dark hair is standing by a lawn mower in the front yard of the house next to us, and smiling at Natasha as he hands her back her small ball.

  “What do you say?” I ask her, and she looks back at the man and thanks him.

/>   The girls run off, and I take the opportunity to meet our new neighbor. He stands straight, and he’s only an inch or two taller than me.

  “Hi there, I’m Michael, your new neighbor,” he says with a smile as I approach, noticing two boys crouched down in his driveway with sidewalk chalk who look around my older girls’ age. Sure enough Natasha and Lily come running past us toward the boys.

  “Hi, I’m Katie,” I smile with a little laugh at the kids’ behavior, reaching out my hand to his.

  “Katie, nice to meet you…sorry, we haven’t been able to come over and meet y’all sooner. Just moving in and all, my boys getting used to a new school, my wife being deployed.”

  “No, no, I understand,” I nod. “So, your wife-”

  “Yes, infantry. Your husband I presume?”

  “Yes, infantry also,” I lie and nod, my fingers running over Joey’s wedding band on my necklace.

  “How long have you lived here?” he asks, lifting the front of his shirt up to wipe his face and showing me a rippling chest.

  “A couple years,” I reply.

  “Nice, you like it?”

  “Yeah, it’s good, a lot of kids here.”

  He nods and gives me a smile, it’s playful but I don’t know why he’s looking at me like this.

  “What?” I ask with an anxious smile.

  “Lots of stay at home wives too, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, but I think there are a few other Army husbands here.”

  He nods and looks at Joey’s ring on my necklace.

  “So do you work?” he asks.

  “I do, out of the house. I do hair,” I tell him.

  “Oh cool, you cut guy’s hair?”

  “Mhm,” I nod. “Do you work?”

  “Yes, at home also. My job in Texas is keeping me on, so I have an office in the basement.”

  Goldie buries her little face against my leg and starts crying from being tired, and I pick her up. “Nap time,” I tell Michael.

  “Well, do you mind if the kids play a little longer? My boys really haven’t made any friends here yet it would mean a lot to ‘em.”

  “Yeah, sure of course, I’ll be back out in a little bit.”

  We part ways and I tell my older girls to take the boys into the backyard and show them their swing set. A little while later I head back outside and the girls ask if they can ride their bikes out front which I tell them yes and take a seat on the porch to watch them and their new friends play. Shortly after, Michael comes over, looking fresh from a shower.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asks at the bottom of the porch steps.

  “No, come on up, do you want something to drink?” I ask.

  “No, I’m fine,” he replies giving me a small wave of his hand.

  “I didn’t catch your boys’ names.”

  “Cole and Devon, they’re twins, six. And yours?”

  “Natasha, Lily, and Goldie.”

  “Having anymore?”

  “Not sure,” I confess, “you guys?”

  “Yeah, I mean I hope to,” he shrugs.

  “How long has your wife been overseas?” I ask as we rock in the chairs beside one another.

  “Seven weeks, she’s supposed to be gone six months…feels like a lifetime already to be honest,” he says, never looking away from his sons.

  “It’s hard to be with kids all the time, a single parent…but you get used to it, I mean, you kind of have to.”

  “I went from working in an office, my wife getting this hair-brained idea that since she used to be a junior coast guard after high school, she should join the Army after the attacks.”

  He doesn’t say this bitterly, but there’s a taste of it. I recognize that, the not understanding.

  “They have something inside them, calls to them on another level I think. But thank God, right? Because of them, they’ll keep us all safe.”

  He looks down at his hands, his fingers spinning his wedding band on his ring finger.

  “It gets easier,” I reassure.

  I took Michael under my wing sort of, I knew he was struggling, so why not. Our families started getting together pretty much every day. The kids played after school, and Michael would work during the day, but I started inviting them over for dinner most nights. The weekends we’d take the kids to the park, or the movies. I’m not going to lie, it felt good to have someone for support. Michael and his boys became part of our little family, and I felt like he was beginning to cope better with his wife leaving.

  As much as I felt like I was helping him, he was also helping me. Not like he was close to replacing Joey, it just felt good to have a companion who was going through the same things I was. No matter how harmless, I didn’t tell Joey about our new relationship with Michael and his family, well, Michael more really. He knew the girls had become friends with the kids next door, but he never asked about the parent there, male or female. I did feel guilty not telling him, but I knew it would affect him, and I wanted his mind on his job right now.

  After his nine-month deployment, Joey arrives home at two a.m. on a Tuesday. He looks good, tired and a little dirty, but good. This visit feels exciting and different then when he left. I didn’t have anyone I trusted to watch the girls, so we all made it an event, staying up to get him from the airport, which they passed out on the drive home. After getting them all into their beds, Joey and I showered together. Feeling his skin on me, touching him, it’s something I can’t describe. Familiar, but you don’t realize how much you missed it until you have it again.

  His hair and beard are long, and after our shower he asks me to cut his hair a bit, before trimming his beard down to much closer to his face. He’s tan and is leaner than when I last saw him. He seems to like my new appearance, and he keeps asking me to make a muscle so he can squeeze my little bicep in his man paws.

  The girls show everything they put in their folders for him, from school, and drawings they made of him in his uniform. He sits with them and listens to them explain everything, and I love how patient he is to listen to them go on and on. He never makes them feel like he’d rather be doing something else. Instead he asks them questions and is clearly excited about everything they tell him.

  The entire time Joey’s home, Michael never comes over, which I’m thankful for. I don’t know if it’s intentional but I feel like it’s best for Joey not to worry. No matter how much explaining I would do in telling Joey he’s just a friend, I know he will let the suspicion take over. Not to say I never see Michael, he’s outside with the kids, and gives a friendly wave when he sees me, but only when I’m alone.

  The time Joey’s home, it feels like it’s gone in a flash. And before we know it, he’s packing up for another deployment. It’s hard, but not as hard as the first time he left. I don’t know if I’m stronger, or I feel a bit more relieved once Joey told me about his day to day over there. He told me that most the action he’s seen or been in, they don’t have to be close with weapons and technology now, it’s not like hand to hand like I envisioned World War One style. He said that anytime they’ve been close to attack, they have the advantage and don’t take unnecessary risks. Joey doesn’t tell me much because I got the sense that he didn’t want to think about those thing’s while he was home.

  A few weeks after Joey left, I found out I was pregnant. This time I knew immediately, no missed period needed for me. I took a test and gathered I was only about four weeks along. I made a doctor’s appointment for when I’d be eight weeks, and decided not to share my news with anyone until I’d reached that point. I knew Joey would be happy as hell, and I was happier than ever for this new life. There was a chance Joey would either be done with his deployment by the delivery date if my calculations were correct, or at least not long after I delivered.

  One night two weeks later though, something odd happened. I had terrible cramps and felt off. Using the bathroom, I figured something was going on with my stomach. But as soon as I sat on the toilet I felt a rush of something come out of
me and I looked between my legs to see blood in the water. I knew I was miscarrying, and felt the tears pool in my eyes. The pain I felt physically, was nothing in comparison to how I felt emotionally. I tried to rationalize, maybe I never was pregnant and this was just my period. But there was a clot and tissue that was not normal for my period. I let myself cry as I apologized to the fetus that would’ve been our baby.

  I gather myself eventually and wander downstairs. First I thought about taking a shot of some liquor but didn’t think that would help me. Instead, I opened the drawer in the kitchen I’d thrown a half empty pack of Joey’s cigarettes he left behind last time he was here. He’d picked up the habit while overseas, and one night I went outside to join him on the porch, trying a hit of one. I coughed and felt like I couldn’t get the taste off my tongue for hours, which caused Joey to laugh at me the rest of the night. But I’m drawn to them right now for some reason.

  I tip toe through the house, since the girls are asleep, and head outside turning on the porch light. I sniffle as I place the cigarette between my lips and light it. I’m not inhaling, but the smell just gives me comfort. The smell reminds me of Joey, the one person I need more than anything right now. I look up at the stars as I sit in one of the rocking chairs lining the porch. Having that sensation that Joey and I share these stars, knowing he can look up and see the very same sight, even though thousands of miles away from me.

  My mind is whirling as to how I lost this baby and why. Part of me has always lived my life with the idea that everything happens for a reason. Maybe something was wrong with the baby and this was a natural thing. Better now than when I was months along or something. Maybe it’s me, maybe something’s wrong with me. A million thoughts filter through, as a sound to my left snaps me into reality.

  “Katie?”