Goldie and the Three Wisconsin Bears

“You don’t have to answer now,” he tells me. “Let’s go eat some lunch. We’ve got some finishing work to do upstairs. Then we’ll talk about this more at dinner.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

NICO

Goldie’s messed us all up. We used to each have our roles. I was the nurturer. Jeb was the muscle. And Mitch was the closer.

But now our roles are all mixed up. Mitch and I watch from the window as Jeb comes back with Goldie from the field after insisting he be the one to talk to her.

She’s holding his hand, but I can tell she’s still unsure from the tilt of her head. And I’m surprised by the unreasonable rage that stirs up inside of me.

“She’s going to run,” I tell Mitch. “We need to hide the money. Make sure she doesn’t leave.”

“What happened to giving her choices?” Mitch asks.

My answer to that question comes out heated and harsh. “We’re her only choice. If she doesn’t know that, we have to keep her here until she does.”

Somehow we get through lunch. And Jeb, of all people, is the one who tells us not to go after her when she retreats into my room. “We need to give her some space. She’s having a hell of a time.”

Again that rage spikes inside of me. And I stare at the diaper bag we left beside the back door, along with the keys to Goldie’s new car.

I have a bad feeling, a dread that makes me forget my morals as I insist again, “We need to hide the money. Make sure she doesn’t leave.”

“The only thing that will do is prove to her we’re just as controlling as her ex,” Jeb tells me with a censuring look.

“Yeah, I’m with Jeb,” Mitch says. “Real relationships don’t work if they’re transactional. We’ve got to play this one with our hearts.”

I can’t believe Mitch, of all people, is advocating that we not use money to manipulate people.

But I’m a good soldier. I go along with them, and I only crack a couple of outlet covers after installing carpet in the rest of the bedrooms. And lo and behold, it works. Eventually, I calm down. And after all the finishing work is done, I feel ready to reason with Goldie as I follow Mitch and Jeb down the steps to the first floor.

But then Jeb yells, “Fuck!” And he sounds like a wounded bear.

Mitch and I find out why when we reach the bottom of the stairs and see the back door.

The diaper bag is gone.

And so is the car we parked behind the house.

And so is Goldie.

Chapter Twenty-Four

GINA

“Gina…”

Jeb grabs me by my hair, and my heart spikes. But then he does what he always does. Asks permission in his own special way.

“You want me to punish you, little girl?” he whispers in my ear. “Make you feel good?”

As always, my body responds. Thrilling at the idea of what comes next. I know that he’ll fuck me hard and rough. Tease me about coming too soon before viciously making me come again. Then after giving me a mind blowing orgasm, he’ll hold me like I’m his most treasured possession and whisper about how fucking happy I make him in that coarse way of his. Like a teddy bear.

He makes me happy too. I love both sides of him. And I wish I could hold on to that happiness. I wish I could hold to it forever.

But then he slaps me awake.

No, not Jeb…

The dream dissolves, and Tommy replaces it. He’s standing in front of me. A pair of crazed eyes on top of a scraggly beard. He raises his hand again, knuckles down.

I try to raise my arms to defend myself, but I can’t because I’m tied to a chair.

And right before his hand swing’s down, this morning’s events flash through my mind.

The unexpected proposal.

The conversation with Jeb in the field.

Sitting on the edge of Nico’s bed, trying to convince myself he was right and that I was deserving of all their love. Jeb had given me the three rings they’d proposed with, and I held them like a grenade inside my cupped hands.

I didn’t realize I was rocking back and forth until one of my braids slipped out of the loose ponytail I put them in this morning and fell into my eye line.

Suddenly a memory of my mother hit me.

Sitting between her knees when I was nineteen. The very last time we installed a set of summer braids.

She had taught me to braid, but it suddenly occurred to me to ask who had taught her. “My ndey taught me.”

Ndey. That was one of the few words she taught me in Wolof, the Senegalese language she only spoke with the other braiders at the shop she worked at on the weekends as a second job.

That surprised me. For most of my life, my mother had been a mystery to me. A beautiful orchid that had somehow sprung up in the Georgia sweet grass. I had no clue how she’d gotten there. “You never talk about your mom.”