with us,” Daisy said. “But I have to tell you, that old Geary came by and threatened to shut us down if we interfered with you, Lacey. I don’t mean to scare you. But we can’t take you in right now. He seemed real serious.
“Something will work out,” she kept on, but I could hear the shake in her voice. She doubted each word as she said it.
“Once you’re eighteen you can do what you want,” Florin said. “It won’t be that long.”
It was funny to me, and so of the world, that eighteen meant anything at all. It signified for them a time when my life would become my own and I could shift into a new person entirely.
We approached the car and I wondered if Sharon had ever felt the grit of sand under her feet. If she’d ever seen a crab scuttle into frothy waters. Maybe if she could have come today she would have seen the vastness of the sea and known there was more in the world for her than just what it had shown her. Maybe if I had shared the red house with her, something would have shifted. I regretted that day in the canal when I didn’t take her with me. I was selfish with my survival.
AS WE DROVE, I watched the landscape change back to what I knew and Peaches pulled us into it. Someone had spray-painted two words on the welcome sign: Fuck it.
I SAT ON the porch at Cherry’s, the sea still in my nose. I wanted to soak in this moment, before I became someone else. I knew as soon as I went back inside everything would change. I’d pack a bag quietly. I’d take a single mouse to remember her by. I’d bring my favorite romance. I’d take the hearse. Where I would go I didn’t yet know. Maybe back to the beach. Maybe back to Hazel’s house for a few nights. She could help me have the baby. I’d just show up and she’d have to take me in, at least until then. After the baby was out I could travel on and on, never stopping in one place too long.
Inside, Cherry sat on her stool covered in God glitter. She didn’t look at me. A dead chinchilla rested in her lap and she stroked the top of its head with one finger.
“He told me to keep a close watch on you,” she said, “and I wasn’t going to let him down. Not at this hour.”
Vern emerged from the hallway, Derndra at his side. They sat at Cherry’s kitchen table like it was something they’d done many times before. He liked to own whatever space he was in. He wore tattered jeans and an old shirt, the color fraying. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail, no curls bouncing at his shoulders. They looked tired like they’d just cleaned out a basement, dusty and on edge. He gestured for me to sit. I stood where I was, leaned up against the counter. A single fly buzzed and hit the window over and over trying to get out.
“Derndra knew you couldn’t be trusted. Even when I told her of the grapes we ate together, how we’d understood, together. I said, ‘No, my dear, Lacey May is special. She is chosen.’ But my Derndra is wise. She said, ‘That girl needs to be kept close.’”
Derndra looked at my belly with hunger, her bangs flat to her forehead.
I ran past them to the bathroom and pressed against the door. My belly heaved and I clutched my crotch with both hands. The pressure was immense. I looked at the tiny window. I’d never fit. Artichoke beat my walls. My breath caught. “Please God!” I screamed. Pee trickled down my leg.
Vern pushed the door open. He put his arms around my upper body, squeezing me tight.
“Please,” I begged. “Just let me leave.”
“Derndra said my mistake was banishing your mother. Never separate a mother and daughter, she said. She said that’s why you’ve submitted to your female hysteria.”
“Cherry, help!” I screamed, but she sat still. Cherry had replaced the chinchilla with a framed photograph of my mother wearing a gold dress and red lipstick, sash across her chest. Miss Central Valley. “Can’t let her go the way of Sharon, no I can’t,” she said to the photo.
“Cherry!” I thrashed. A sharp pain stabbed deep within me. I willed the baby to be okay.
Cherry seemed to twitch in her seat now. I