The day Jessica Eye decided she'd never go home again was her 26th birthday.
She remembers that it was a warm Saturday afternoon in July, three weeks before her next MMA fight. Her father, Randy, always hosted family and friends on weekends at home, a one-story ranch house on five acres of northeast Ohio woodland. The flock would idle outside at the picnic bench or in folding chairs in the yard while her dad tended to his fish fry or tenderloins.
For this particular gathering, Randy's partner, Michelle, had made Jessica a "fruit cake" to celebrate. Not a true confection but a tiered tower of actual fruit made to look like a cake -- watermelon and pineapple and grapes, with a sprinkling of baby marshmallows -- because she was a professional fighter in the heart of training camp and thus couldn't afford any guilty dietary pleasures, birthday or no birthday.