If there ever was a more fabulous Fantastic Four than us, I'd kiss your ass, because there wasn't. Between the four of us, Lucky Pipes grew both financially and spiritually. We were a family, and I'd never had one of those before, so these three men meant the world to me. So, the second I left the doctor’s office after having an ultrasound where the nurse 'accidentally' told me it was a girl, I drove straight to Lucky Pipes and told my family, Ryker, Reese, and Paul...and I could have sworn I saw Ryker shed a tear, but that's for another part of the story.
It was no surprise to anyone that five months later exactly on my due date, standing in flip flops, maternity cutoff shorts, and my favorite black maternity cami on, my water broke in the midst of standing up to answer the phone at Lucky Pipes.
As I place the phone back in its cradle, it clatters to the side and I push the intercom for the bay. I calmly speak into it, "Ryker. Front office." When the intercom beeps, I hear his voice right after.
"Ay, love. What's up? In the middle of preppin' the soft tail."
I press the intercom button again and calmly speak into it again, "Ryker. Front. Fucking. Office. Please."
When he comes through the door, I give him a few minutes to process what he sees and almost immediately following the look of understanding, I think I see a sadness I doubt I'll ever really know the depths of. But just like always, it's gone as soon as it appears.
Having a baby would hurt, if not for all the good freaking meds! Holy shit. I didn't know if I was going to make it. The handful of minutes it took me to get even less centimeters than I was by the time I finally got to the hospital would have killed a lesser woman.
But fear not, a little after midnight the most beautiful baby girl ever born was delivered into the world. She had inky black curls like me and her daddy's perfect little feet.
And oh my God, it hurt like fucking hell to tell Ryker I was finished meeting her eleven hours after she was born.
I can't be entirely certain, but I'd have to say, as I watched the nurse carrying my daughter away from me, Ryker clamped a hand down over his mouth before turning his back to the room and looking out the window…this hurts more than anything...anything I can ever remember.
Having to say goodbye to a daughter you just pushed from your body is unnatural. And I know this because my body tells me so. It tells me every time my breasts are so engorged they ache, and it tells me every time my uterus cramps down in pain, but it tells me louder every time I go to rest my hand on top of my un-swollen, un-pregnant belly. Every. Time.
And apparently, if you give your daughter up for adoption, once her new family arrives, and your bleeding is under control, you can also be discharged sixteen hours after delivery.
The internal struggle and daily wars I wage against myself in the weeks that follow don't help the decent from grace I quickly slide down. Neither does that damn dark cedar chest of Delilah's.
I wanted my daughter. I still do, but so what?
This is life.
I can't control where I am or where I'm going, all I can do is make decisions. Be them right or wrong, either way, you have to learn to live with the consequences.
You have to adapt.
The good news is, I know how to adapt.
I know how to adapt...very fucking well.
Chapter 8
I come across Delilah's box while I'm in the middle of packing maternity clothes away for Goodwill.
Ryker's running behind at work, again, for the fourth consecutive night this week and I'm in the floor of the extra room’s closet, sipping on probably my fourth or fifth glass of wine, surrounded by clothes I never want to see again when I slam my elbow against something behind me.
Cursing God, Ryker, the whore he's probably fucking and everyone else I can list in my rant, I go silent as soon as my eyes land on the ice cooler sized chest, and my fingers immediately go to the chain around my neck holding the key to the ornately made sturdy lock attached to it.
I've avoided this...if I'm being completely honest, I've been avoiding this, subconsciously, like the fucking plague.
Mostly because, I knew what I'd find. Who else would Delilah leave her golden ticket to? Her Holy Grail, the mythical last stash. Whatever was lying around her condo in San Destin and her apartment in downtown Miami was long gone.
No, this was sent to me from her and at a designated time with designated instructions.
Designated instructions that I've put off until right now.
And I still don't feel really ready for it.
Then again, I don't think Dawson, the ex-junkie turned therapist who has twenty years of sobriety under his belt would be ready for this. I for damn sure know I'm not.
After turning the key, the chest opens up with barely a creak. And just as I knew there would be, there are eight, one kilo sealed bricks, lying side by side and stacked on top of each other, three deep, revealing a grand total of twenty-four kilos of A1 fucking cocaine.
Holy fucking shit. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
After I have all twenty-four bags shoved meticulously and in no particular order into shoe boxes and various coat pockets, I finger the twenty to thirty small baggies filled with probably the best of the best of every other drug and pill available.
Between you, me, and that fence post, even then, after I'd successfully stashed the coke and gotten away with it, I still wouldn't have later searched out the coke. Not after witnessing what it did to Delilah. No. No way in hell. If anything, I would have avoided the boxes and coat pockets they were stashed in like the plague this moment just minutes before.
I breathe.
I pause.
I breathe again. Then I walk from the closet, through the house, and straight into the kitchen where I pour myself another glass of red wine, swallowing down two Percocet with the bitter liquid.
I go to mine and Ryker’s room and peer inside the closet, scared to death that I’ll slip tonight. I stand that for what feels like an eternity.
Tonight, though, I mess everything up with my own devices. My own wine and my own Percocet. It's not the drugs in Delilah's trunk that obliterate me tonight.
It's the contents of the files underneath the drugs.
Papers, charts, birth certificates, fucking family photos...
And the last file at the bottom of the chest, yep, that manila one labeled WINTER IVY.
That file sends EVERYTHING into an unparalleled chaos, one that will leave me so fractured I'll never be the same.
The very first piece of paper is a letter from Delilah. I know it immediately when I see her perfect, carefully written words scrawled across the page and begin reading...
Ivy,
I'm sure you've had time to examine the contents of this box, and I know the burden I'm putting on you is one you can bear. Honestly, dear friend, you're the only person I know who won't get yourself killed with it. You're smart. You're strong. And you're so much more than you give yourself credit for.
Just flush it, Ivy bean. All of it. For me, for you, but mostly for Ryker. He loves you so.
As for the rest of the items that have hopefully remained to be seen in this chest...Ivy, I'm sorry.
And for what it's worth, if having you as a best friend entails lying about everything, every day, then I wouldn't do a single thing in my life differently. And that includes you.
Let's do some quick Trivia. I'm going to tell you a story, as well as a few things about myself that many don't know.
Once upon a time, a weird uncle who liked to touch little girls, his niece
in particular, hit a rough spot, and in the name of my virtue, I was shipped off to corners unknown. My parents paid attention when their eleven-year-old daughter told them Uncle Quinn kept asking to touch my privates. But instead of kicking him out, they sent me away to live with my widowed aunt and her three sons in Seattle, Washington.
And on the first day of eighth grade, I fell in love. Hard. And yes, he was a sixth grader...to this day, I am ashamed. But at the time...
I couldn't have cared. I actually thanked Uncle Quinn the following Christmas for being a pervert. I got my ass in a heap of trouble and no one else spoke a word to me that Christmas, but I didn't care. I was smitten. And to top it off, the last day of school before the holidays, Roman William Payne II asked for my phone number, and for the first time in my small life, I thought I was in love.
However, as my luck would it, he was only interested in Stephanie, the VP bitch of my clique. I guess he wasn't ready to take a chance with the HBIC, head bitch in charge. Alas, few were. And so the story goes, and these are the days of our lives, he and I instead became the bestest best of friends.
In fact, if anyone else truly knew me as much as Rome, it would be you.
Which looking back, it all makes sense. Of course, it's always much clearer looking back, isn't it?
When I went back to Seattle after St. Croix the summer we graduated, I was showing my three cousins how hot you were and telling them how you were thinking about live posing for mom and dad's studio in San Destin. Now, their friend, Roman had been asking about you since we were in the eighth grade. So after graduation, when I was showing them your picture, he was there and he caught enough of a glance of the picture to hesitate before asking how you’d been. Surrounded by four perverted eighteen-year-old boys, I thought nothing about it. Nothing about you and your fucked up relationship with your 'aunt' Blythe, or why you seemed more likely to be adopted by Ryker and his mum than your own last standing, flesh and bone. So I just told him. I told him how you’d been —But it seemed like the more I told him, the more he wanted to know, and he started plucking me for any and all information about you and I got weirded out and left and never really thought of it again.
A few months later, I received a large envelope marked certified mail. Inside was a letter from him and all the shit in this file. His letter apologized for freaking me out, then made fun of me for just leaving. He closed the letter asking that I do him one favor.
Let him know that you were okay once a month.
So I did. I have. For the last four years, on every first Monday of the month, I sent over forty-eight emails that all read, "She's doing okay."
Winter Ivy Payne, <- That's your last name. I love you. You are beautiful from the inside out. You're smart, strong, and caring. And guarded as fuck. I love you, but you gotta get over this 'I'm all alone in the world' bullshit. Find what you love, Winter Ivy, and let it fucking kill you. Don't live this life with an ounce of mediocrity, there isn't enough time. Pony up, set the clock for eight seconds, and ride, mamicita. Ride hard. Live hard. And dammit, for the love of Christ, love like you've run out of tomorrows.
Remember that night in Venice, two summers ago, we said we'd rather shoot like stars and burn out bright than live with regrets and scars? Do me two favors… one, always keep the pact we made that night, and the last, lie...even if I didn't go out in a blaze of fucking glory, lie, Ivy, and tell them all I did.
Until when,
~Delilah.
Her every word is like a tattoo. I don't need to read them again, how could I? They are all, one by one seared into the very fibers of my being.
I have a brother.
"Roman." I whisper wide eyed as I flip through the pictures.
He's tall.
I smile.
I pause.
I breathe.
"Rome." I whisper as my eyes trace the lines of Seattle's state sealed stamp on the color copy of what I can only assume to be my birth certificate.
"Winter Ivy Payne." I say to no one.
Born on January 2, 1993 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Seattle, Washington to Mrs. Roman William Payne.
So...I won't be twenty-three next April. I'll be twenty-three in January. Four months early.
"Damn it, Blythe," I mutter with no idea what to do next.
And I have a brother.
I smile and look over at his picture.
I pause.
I breathe.
My fingers gently set the birth certificate back in the box and then I go back to the pile in my lap, only to freeze at the sight of the perfect family.
The man in the picture is tall. He's broad shouldered and standing proud as his smiling eyes peek down at the wife he has tucked up against his side, holding their little girl.
A sob racks its way through me, falling from my lips like a pathetic cry for help and echoes off the walls of our home.
It's him.
It's my daddy.
My eyes shoot to the beautiful, tiny blonde woman huddled against my daddy's side, with their arms linked behind each other’s back. And then they slide down to the next picture of a black haired little girl in shiny black patent leather Mary Jane's, hiked up on her mother’s hip, smiling with bright blue eyes at her daddy.
This is me.
This is mine.
This is my family.
But as soon as the first brush of happiness is felt, it melts away to abandoned sorrow.
Odd, random thoughts bombard me. And every one stings more than the last.
Why didn't they want me? They look well off enough to care for me. I don't like kids, but even for a kid, I don't think I looked half bad. I look happy. Surely that accounts for something. I don't frequent kid circles, but if I had to guess, a happy kid has to be easier to raise than a sad kid. Right?
Maybe mommy dearest only wanted little boys. Maybe that's what was wrong with her, maybe she was allergic to little girls, and that's why daddy the doctor couldn't get her better.
Wait.
The doctor?
My eyes scan the pictures and documents as my internal wheels spin.
I must have seen somewhere he was a doctor. I must have. And when did Beth morph into Blythe in my scrambled memory?
But I don't see anything. I don't see anything anywhere, and just as this thought hits me, an old memory crashes with it.
I'd never been on a plane and if I was never again, I'd be happy. Me and the Beth lady have been in airport after airport all night because she lost Disney World. I told her my daddy said there was a Disneyland, not a Disney World, but she didn't listen.
I've just tucked away my gray blankie when she grabs my arm up, digging into my skin with all her gaudy cheap rings.
"Come on. Put your backpack on and let's go. It's time to meet your new grandpa. Now remember what we talked about, right, child?"
I do, but I'm not telling her that.
So I shrug as I pull my arm out of her claw like vice of a grip and slowly step forward, waiting to be herded off the ship. I'd started calling it ship in Los Angeles to make it sound cooler. It took the Beth lady a while to find a grandpa, but eventually he found us and then carried our suitcases out to his big black pickup truck. At some point he got angry and yelled when the Beth lady told him my daddy used to be Dr. Roman Payne.
And all I could think about on the way to grandpa's house was, I couldn't wait until my daddy could find the right medicine in his doctor bag and give it to mommy and make her all better so I could finally go back home.
Beth is Blythe, but before that can gain any merit, the next thought settles, my father was a doctor.
The bombarding memories are so overwhelming I can barely breathe.
Where was I getting that my mother was sick? Was she?
Well, shit, with my psych record, it's not surprising that it's probably genetic. The fucked up ones usually are.
My mother probably was sick, but in my mind as a child, I contorted it into an actual illness.
When I look back to the stack representing the debris of my childhood, I see a picture taken a few years later of the same, older, and almost hardened version of their younger happier selves, and it verifies at least one of my random thoughts tonight since stepping foot back into this closet.
Their physical health wasn't the reason 'aunt' Beth took me in, whatever the reason was, it took a hard toll on both of them.
My eyes scan over the little boy’s face who seems stuck out of
place...in my space.
And because I'm human, the thought filters through the chaos of my mind.
Good. I'm glad whatever it was they were going through that caused them to not want me hurt them. Fucking. Good. Because it was really damn hard on me, too.
And when I went on, when I trudged forward with people I didn't know from Adam, one day at a time, I had to do it on my own. Every step of the way.
So fuck them.
Fuck Roman 1 and Roman 2, and my psychotic mother! I've got to where I am on my own, this is mine, and I'll finish living my life the way I deem. They all can be damned.
I shove every picture half-heartedly back into the box as the tears fall. I give little to no attention to what it is in this baggie, I just pour it out onto the bathroom counters, grab one of Ryker’s pocket knives out of his dresser drawer, kneel at the bathroom sink, crush it up, and blow, baby...
I just smile and blow.
Chapter 9
I can't say how long I had a feeling that Ryker was cheating on me. I knew something was off. I knew I was spending a lot more time alone, and that time seemed to grow with every passing day.
I wasn't mad or angry at him.
Mostly just hurt.
I think all the preparation I'd given myself where Ryker David Killian was concerned, helped dull the blow.
Don't worry, the only person to bleed when I found out was me. As soon as I saw Ryker and the snooty preppy bitch coming out of Walmart with a new car seat in their buggy, I hit my knees in the middle of the parking lot, tiny, sharp pieces of concrete stabbing into my flesh as I literally kneeled there, high as a fucking kite, and cried into my hands.
Later that night I lied saying I tripped at the gas station when he asked what the bloody hell happened to my legs. It was the first of many lies that would be told between the two of us in the next following days.
Where the Ivy Hides Page 6
