Page 16 of Stowaway Whirlwind
I drop Goldie’s backpack and grab his bony shoulder to spin him around to face me before he can make contact with Goldie’s soft skin. The color drains from his cheeks before I punch him square in the nose, which crumples under my fist, and then shove him over the arm of the torn-up, faded-brown couch. He lands on his back on the flattened cushions and bounces off onto the dark carpet, stained a variety of suspicious colors.
Goldie screams my name again, and I turn around in time to dodge her dad’s fist flying at my face. He stumbles with the forward momentum when his punch doesn’t land, and I shove against his shoulder, speeding along his descent so that he crashes on top of the guy on the floor. They both grunt as the wind is knocked out of them.
“We’re leaving right the fuck now, honey.” I sling my arm around Goldie’s shoulders to pull her into me away from the wall. She’s shaking so hard that I drop my arm around her waist, supporting her when she leans against me as we cross the few feet to the front door.
I briefly remember to snatch her backpack from the floor with all her important documents before we step outside and quickly make our way back to my truck, which thankfully still has all its tires and windows intact. Though it’s risky as hell, Idon’t bother to stop to put Lily in her car seat. I doubt Goldie would let her go right now anyway. The sound of the two of them crying rips my heart to shreds as I open the front passenger door and boost them in, toss the backpack in the footwell, then reach across Goldie’s lap to buckle her seat belt.
A blink of an eye later, I’m in the driver’s seat, pulling out of the parking lot with my girls in tow. In my rear view mirror, behind the cloud of dust my tires kicked up, I can just make out Goldie’s dad yelling and waving his middle fingers in the air from the sidewalk. I take a deep breath and force myself to slow down as soon as I’m on the main road since Lily isn’t in her car seat.
After driving aimlessly for ten minutes, taking random turns as I go to make sure we’re not being followed, I pull over into a pawn shop’s empty parking lot and throw the gear in park. If I weren’t so worked up, and if Goldie weren’t holding Lily, I’d pull her onto my lap and hug her tight.
With trembling hands, Goldie unbuckles her seat belt and pulls her hoodie up. She fumbles while unhooking the top of her nursing bra, and it takes a few tries to get the baby to latch properly. The silence in the cab is only broken by Goldie’s sniffles and my heavy breathing as I try to calm my racing thoughts.
Fuck it. I pull on the lever and slide the solid bench seat back before slipping one arm under Goldie’s legs and the other around her back to lift her up and maneuver her sideways onto my lap with her knees pointed toward my door. Lily startles when Goldie yelps, but Goldie guides her mouth back to her chest and soothes her with quiet shushing noises. I don’t know if she realizes I’m doing the same thing to her as I rub Goldie’s back and echo her shushing.
I recoil from the smell of smoke when I bury my face in Goldie’s loose hair, needing a little soothing of my own. Wewere in the apartment for thirty minutes max, and she already reeks. That means I do, too. Even worse, so must Lily. Any hope of bringing my heart rate back down from a dangerous level instantly shatters.
The girls are quiet by the time Lily finishes nursing and falls asleep. Goldie won’t look at me as she tries to hook her nursing bra with unsteady hands, unable to clip it in place the first two tries. She sucks in a breath and holds it when I push her hand out of the way and clip it myself, then gently work her hoodie back down to cover her breasts.
It’s awkward climbing out of the truck with her in my arms, but I manage to do so without making Lily flinch. Goldie lays the baby down on the back seat for a quick diaper change, then buckles her into her car seat somehow without waking her. Instead of climbing into the back to sit next to Lily as before, I close the back door, then boost Goldie into the front and buckle her into the middle of the bench next to me.
It’s not until we’re on the highway headed away from the city that Goldie finally speaks. “Where are we going?” Even though she’s not crying anymore, her grief filters through her quiet voice.
I don’t know if she realizes yet that I’m holding her hand on my lap as I rub my thumb over hers, back and forth. I don’t know if she realizes that she keeps scooting closer, either, or that our thighs are pressed together.
“I’m taking y’all home with me.”
Chapter 7
Goldie
It’s been one nightmare after another. Years of dreaming about what it would be like when Dad got out of prison and we could be together again has been snuffed out. Today was the first time I called my dadDadright to his face instead ofDaddy. He stopped beingDaddythe second he chose drugs over me.
Now, I feel broken. Worse than that. Unwanted. A burden. And I miss Aunt Lydia more than ever—the woman who was more like a parent than either of my biological parents. I miss her hugs and how she would hum an old Irish lullaby that neither of us knew the meaning of, which her mom used to sing to her.
I miss our old apartment that always smelled like the glass potpourri pots she used to let simmer on the stove for hours on the weekends, the apartment filled with the scent of citrus and mint—not the foul stench of soggy cigarette butts and sour garbage. I don’t know how anyone can choose to live like that, let alone my dad, who lied about the kind of life we were going to live after I found my way to Texas.
I don’t understand why he did that. We’d been talking on the phone for weeks ever since Aunt Lydia got her late-stage cancer diagnosis, and her health deteriorated faster than her oncologistpredicted. Davis had been upset on my behalf when he found out I had to hitchhike to get to Texas. I had defended Dad and made excuses for him, but the truth is I was upset, too. Dad had promised me he had the money to buy me a bus ticket, but at the last minute, he said he had to lend it to a buddy whose car had broken down. I bet that was another lie.
I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know my aunt had been in similar sticky situations before when it came to money. As soon as she had saved a little in the bank, she’d be hit with some unexpected emergency, so I ignored the hollowness in my gut that warned me not to get my hopes up about him. I should have listened to it.
That wasn’t even the worst part, though, since I knew he didn’t have much to live on, and I hadn’t been expecting anything grand. The worst was the way he spoke to me, calling me ungrateful and selfish within minutes of seeing me for the first time in eleven years. It broke my heart.
If Davis hadn’t been with me, I would have been stuck there for who knows how long, making my newborn daughter suffer in those living conditions. I want to throw up just thinking about her breathing in that filth for even the short amount of time we were there.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper miserably to Davis, my heart sore.
Davis squeezes my hand twice. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
“Yes, I do. What happened back there…with my dad and that other guy. I didn’t know it was going to be like that. Thathewould be like that. And then he attacked you…” I thought I was done crying, but fresh tears slip down my cheeks and drip onto my lap when I hang my head.
“None of that was your fault, honey.” I see him from the corner of my eye, darting his attention to me and back to the road, his brows pinched as he shakes his head.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “I would have fought that guy off harder, you know….if I didn’t have Lily. But I couldn’t and…and…thank you. For what you did for us. Thank you. It means more to me than you will ever know.”
“I told you I’d take care of you.”
“Yeah, until I got to my dad’s apartment. But now…what do I do now?” I pick at a loose thread connecting the stretchy band to the bottom of my hoodie.
