Jack Amarjeet “Fourth” Blackwood, IV, 36. Bond trader turned CEO after a corporate coup who’s learning how to CEO. Finance instructor with a kink for derivatives. “Half Indian, half British, all American,” and hangs out with his parents a lot. Spotless ethics when it comes to money, but women … ? Not so much. Vulgar, uncultured, and rude, his taste is almost exclusively tall, leggy blonde stewardesses who work the route to Hotlanta and back. He’s a Tigger in an Eeyore world, always bouncing on his tail and getting 120 hours of work done in 60, but turns into a pumpkin at 9 o’clock on the dot.
Lydia Daisy Charbonneau, 36. Tenured professor of music theory and composition at the University of Kansas, she’s in New York to audition for a position at Juilliard after one of her students takes her own life. She needs a reset and Jack’s brash and colorful personality, his frenetic energy, is exactly what she needs to make her come alive again.
Jack Amarjeet “Fourth” Blackwood, IV, 36. Mind spins like a centrifuge and he has zero room in his head for the grind of relationships—until he runs into a little piano from Kansas who’s neither impressed by his money nor repelled by his brash personality. She’s chill she has to be hiding something. He’s completely stymied by her until she takes him on an adventure that leaves him with something he never wanted—a family of his own.
Lydia “Daisy” Charbonneau, 36. She was a foundling who doesn’t remember anything before she was about 7 years old. The man who took her in, along with a doddering old showgirl still waiting for her lover to return, was a doting father with some questionable child-rearing exigencies and downright criminal activities. She doesn’t know where she came from and she doesn’t want to know because she sees her childhood as practically perfect in every way.
Jack Jesus “Fifth” Blackwood V, né Jesus Díaz approximately 9. A small, malnourished street kid who nevertheless is the toughest thing in single digits. Takes care of a little girl, and is in and out of an off-grid back-alley ER—until Lydia and Jack catch him mugging someone and escorts him back to his default shelter only to drop into a world she’s familiar with, but Jack is definitely not. Jesus hates his new name, but when it comes down to it, being called “Fifth” means he finally has a forever family.
Marigold Daisy Blackwood, née Mary [last name unknown], approximately 6. A feisty little street kid who depends on the protection of a boy not much older than she, who, when running a high fever, unsuccessfully mugs somebody for cab fare to get her back uptown. She takes one look at Jack and “Daisy” and decides they are going to be her and Jesus’s parents, and they will have a forever home together. Whatever she has to do to make that happen, she will do it.
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