Page 52

CHAPTER 51

LEAVE A PENNY

WILDER

“ S he’s gone.”

I rush past Cass in a frantic daze, my heart slamming against my sternum. She’s trailing me on my path to the side door, talking through where Cricket might have gone, but I can’t hear her past the static in my mind. I throw open the door to a gust of cool air, the rain gone but the sky churning and angry and dark.

The side door to the garage is open, the inside dark and musty and missing her bike.

With a swear, I turn on my heel, nearly crashing into Cass. “She’s on her bike,” I say as I pass her, sticking my head back inside the house to grab my keys.

It’s only seconds before we’re in the truck and I’m speeding out of the driveway while Cass texts everyone we know. The timeline clicks around in my head—a half hour had passed since we’d heard her, but how long ago did she leave? She couldn’t have gone far. She has to be close. Where would she go? Somebody would see her. They’d find her and keep her and call us. Right?

Unbidden, the thought of Trent finding her tears something open in me that I will not be able to put back together until I know she’s safe. I just can’t imagine what he’d do if he found her before us.

Cass is rambling. “The park maybe? We’re too far from the school. Maybe Main Street? Whose house does she know the way to? I…I can’t think…” She pauses. “Let’s drive through town and then go to the park. I’ll call the police station.” Her phone is already out, her fingers flying. “We’re going to find her. Everything’s fine. We’re going to find her,” she says to me and herself, and the universe too, I’m sure.

I haven’t spoken. Words do not exist in the space I’m in, only panic.

Main Street is apocalyptically empty. Cass is talking to the police about what Cricket is wearing, what her bike looks like. It’s the soundtrack of my nightmares. When I skid to a stop, double parked in front of the playground, we all but fly out of the truck, yelling her name. But she’s not there. No one is. It’s quiet and calm, the world vibrant from the remnants of rain and the heavy clouds. And then we’re back in the truck and driving again.

We go places we don’t think she even knows how to get to. The library. The school. Through the neighborhoods around Main Street where we live. Back to Main to stick our heads in every business in the hopes someone has seen her, or better yet, that they found her.

But she’s nowhere.

I don’t know what else to do, where to go. When the squad car pulls up, it’s a relief—maybe they’ll know. Maybe they can tell me what I’m supposed to do.

My phone rings before the cops even exit their vehicle.

Tate’s voice is tight on the other end. “I’ve got Cricket with me.”

A wave of relief slams into me, nearly taking me down. “Tate’s got her,” I choke, and Cass gasps, then sighs, moving to meet the police. “Where are you?”

“She was riding her bike down 193.” I hear the bed of his truck slam shut. “Where are you? I’m bringing her to you.”

“Main Street. What was she doing?”

“Dunno. Haven’t gotten that far, called as soon as I got her.”

“All right. Okay. Okay.”

“I’ve got her. She’s okay,” he promises.

With a shaky breath, I thank him, and we hang up.

Time is warped as we wait for Tate and Cass talks to the police officer, though I’m not paying attention to him. My eyes are locked on the road in the direction I know they’ll be coming from.

When I see his truck, I have to physically stop myself from running toward him, but the second he pulls in, I rush to his passenger door where Cricket sits.

She’s unbuckled and in my arms in a heartbeat, her little arms around my neck and body quaking with sobs. My face is buried so she doesn’t see the tear I can’t contain. It falls somewhere in her hair, lost. And I whisper that it’s all right, that I’m sorry, squeezing her so tight, I can feel every tiny bone in her ribcage.

“What happened, baby?” I ask, rocking her side to side mindlessly, my back turned to everyone. “Where did you go?”

“I w-wanted to go to Nana and Pops’,” she says into my neck where her head is still buried.

“You coulda told me, bug.”

“I didn’t w-want to make anything else bad. It’s m-my fault. It’s m-my fault Cassie is sad and now she can’t be a teacher. And you got mad at Avery’s d-dad and got in a fight ‘cause of me. I’m always in trouble and I-I broke everything and I-I wish I never came h-here.” The words trail off into a string of sobs.

“Cricket,” I whisper after a moment, my chest full of shrapnel. “Cricket, baby, look at me.”

I shift so she’s propped on my arm as her grip on my neck loosens, and she sits up. Foggy streaks across her glasses stop me from being able to see her eyes, so I take them off. Her little fists press into her eye sockets and twist, her face red and mottled. When she lowers her hands, the biggest, saddest, amber eyes shine at me.

“First of all, nothing is your fault. Not Avery, not Cassie’s job, not anything … You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Her gaze drops, and she sniffles but doesn’t speak.

“The second I first saw you, I loved you. Did you know that?”

She looks up through her lashes at me and shakes her head.

Emotion floods me, tingling up my neck and tightening my throat.

“It’s true. All I ever wanted from that very second, Cricket, was to love you and take care of you. You have never made anything bad. You’ve only made everything better. It’s the best thing in my entire life that I have you. If you’d never come here, I’d never have gotten to love you. How could I have lived my whole life and never heard you laugh? Seen you smile? I never would have known what it was like to be your Daddy.” I stop when the word breaks. The sight of her quivering chin and sparkling tears are too much.

“I love you too, Daddy,” she says on a sob, curling into my chest, her head buried beneath my chin. “I’m s-sorry I ran away.”

I rub her back. “I’m sorry too. Do you still want to go to Nana’s?”

She shakes her head. “I wanna go home.”

It’s too much to hear her call it home like she’s always lived there. To call me Daddy like I’ve always been there. To love me like she’s always known me. But when I think about it, I can’t say it’s crazy.

I feel the same way about her.

When I’ve gotten myself together enough to face everybody, they’re busy doing other things. Cass and Tate are finishing putting her bike in the back, and Cass has Cricket’s little backpack on one shoulder. The cop is back in his squad car with the windows down and waves me over for a brief exchange before he heads off. I thank Tate and tell him I’ll text him. I only let Cricket go to transfer her to Cass when they reach for each other. And I’m smashed and shattered and broken in all new ways when I listen to them cry and comfort each other.

Soon enough, she deposits Cricket into the back seat and I drive us home.

All three of us look beat to hell. Cass takes my hand, our fingers twining, her other hand caging the back of mine. For a long moment, it’s quiet in the truck.

Until Cricket speaks.

“Cassie, did you mean what you said about lying?”

Cass pales—we share a look before she answers. “What did I say about lying?”

“You said you pretended to be married to Daddy.”

The silence in the cab is deafening.

I don’t even know how to begin to tell her. But I can’t lie to her either.

“Well,” I start, “it’s pretty complicated, but Cassie and I have been married for a long time. Ten years.”

Her reflection in my rearview is frowning. “Then why did she say she lied?”

Cass’s eyes are huge, her lips flat and hands clammy inside mine.

“For a long time, we weren’t together. Not until we learned about you,” I answer.

Her brows are still drawn. “But she said pretended to be married. So you could keep me.”

Cass opens her mouth to speak, but I squeeze her hand and shake my head. This is on me.

I draw a breath and do my best. “Remember when I said I loved you the first time I ever saw you?” She nods as I turn onto our street. “Well, I couldn’t keep you if I wasn’t…” Settled down? What’s the right word? The only one that makes sense is, “married. Cass and I got married when we were eighteen, but then we left for college and lived a long way away from each other. She moved back not too long ago, but we weren’t…” I grapple for the right terms again. “We were just friends. But she decided to move in here with us so I could keep you, even though we weren’t…well, we hadn’t…”

“We’d barely even seen each other in years, bug,” Cass answers for me.

I pull into the driveway and park, but instead of getting out, I turn in my seat. She’s unbuckled and gathering her backpack, but I stop her.

“Come here, Cricket,” I say gently.

Somberly, she does. When I open my hand on the middle console, she lays her tiny one on top, and I close it up in mine.

“You know who else I loved the first time I ever saw her?” I ask.

Her brows rise, and she glances at Cass, whose cheeks are smudged with color.

“Cassie?”

I nod. “Even all those years when I didn’t see her, I loved her every minute. So yes. We pretended we were together for a little while, but it didn’t take long until we didn’t have to pretend anymore.”

“Because I’ve always loved him too,” Cass adds. “If things had been a little different, I wouldn’t have had to pretend at all—I never would have left.”

“We did something wrong when we lied,” I admit. “Even if it was for a good reason. I didn’t want to lose the chance to be your Daddy. And I thought that was the only way I could have you.”

Cricket nods.

“Do you have more questions for us?”

She hesitates, glancing at Cass. “You said you got fired because of me.”

Cass nearly breaks, pursing her lips and shaking her head as she masters herself, reaching for Cricket’s other hand. “No, baby. No. It’s not your fault—it’s not anybody’s fault. Sometimes the world is like this, and things happen that are hard, that hurt, and there’s no reason, nobody to blame. I wish you’d heard what I said after the part that hurt you—you missed when I said I will always choose you and your daddy. It doesn’t matter what I can’t have, as long as I have you.” The words wobble, her control slipping away with every tear. “I love you, Cricket. I love you so, so much.”

Cricket bursts into tears again, launching herself at Cass, who turns around in her seat so she can hug Cricket better. I can’t see them clearly for tears of my own. And for a moment, there’s nothing else to do but share this love and pain and longing, grateful to have each other.

When they part, they swipe at their faces. Cass asks for Cricket’s glasses to wipe them off, foggy and wet from her tears.

She looks at me with those big, tawny eyes, flecked with gold.

“I love you, bug.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

A hard swallow stops a threatening tear. “Do you have any more questions, baby?”

She shakes her head.

“I’m sorry we lied to you.”

But she surprises me, as she so often does, when she says, “I’m glad you lied, Daddy. Because I got you and Cassie. And you got to remember you loved each other.”

My chest is too small, the feelings too big, the world shrunken down to the contents of the cab of my truck. Cass sniffles, and I realize she’s crying again—I reach for her hand, kissing her knuckles once I have it. Cricket leans over the console to hug me around the neck.

With my throat knotted up like it is, I can’t say anything. So I kiss her little cheek and let her go, and we float into the house, head over heels.

Until Cass’s phone rings.

And it all comes crashing down.