“Dolly, did you not just hear everything I told you?”
“I heard it all. You had a really bad week and a really bad fight with your boyfriend.”
I blinked rapid-fire and stared at her in disbelief. Surely my sister, who was not known for her jokes, must’ve miraculously located her funny bone and was pulling my leg.
She continued to drive straight faced as ever.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Daisy, I have been listening and it seems to me like this is a good, decent guy who was working with a terrible hand. He was damned if he told you and damned if hadn’t. Even if he thought you were the most trustworthy person in the world he couldn’t have gone blabbing a very sensitive secret because it wasn’t his secret to tell. And that lets me know, dear sister, that you can trust him with your secrets.”
I leaned my head back against the headrest. I’d never thought about it quite that way before. Dolly was right. Trevor was loyal to a fault.
Not loyal to you though.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. He thinks I’m a liar.”
“Because you lied to him,” she said softly.
“I know.”
“Daisy, let me ask you a question. If you could erase the mistakes you both made what would you want?”
Trevor. A yearning so deep and intense rose in my chest, I felt it in my heart and in my bones. I’d want charming, sweet, clever, stubborn, infuriating Trevor.
“I—”
“Gosh.” She glanced over at me and then back to the road. “You don’t even have to say anything. I can see it all over your lovesick little face.”
Lovesick? I was not lovesick! This was not what love felt like. This feeling of anxiousness, of neediness, of desire, and hope, and fear . . . this couldn’t be love.
At least I hoped it wasn’t.
Dolly proceeded to burst my bubble.
“The way you describe your relationship with Trevor, the push and pull? All the angst and joy, the feeling of being the only two people in the world? Losing track of time when you’re with that person? Thinking about them constantly?” She laughed. “If y’all aren’t already falling in love, y’all are thirty seconds from it. And you don’t just give up on folks you love.”
She glanced over at me again. “You can’t. Something in the way we’re made won’t let us.”
She gave a half-shrug. “That’s how I know this is nowhere near finished.”
I wouldn’t allow myself to hope that there could be something for me and Trevor in the future, even though I wanted so badly for Dolly to be right. Dolly understood logic, therefore logically speaking she had to see that Trevor and I weren’t good for each other.
“Dolly, maybe that would be so if we could just erase the past, but that’s not reality—”
“I disagree. It’s reality all the time.”
“But he—”
“He lied. You lied. Now what? You’ve been swinging back and forth between brooding and mooning for the last two and a half hours. You’ve. Got. It. Bad. And he clearly still cares for you because he’s getting into shouting matches with you. If a man doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t spare two words in your direction, let alone all the energy it takes to get angry. He’s shouting at you when he’d very clearly rather be making you scream. And y’all have been carrying on like this all semester? He’s probably so frustrated he’s near out of his mind.”
“Dolly! You’re the one who warned me to stay away from him the first place!”
“Of course I warned you away, Daisy, you were just getting to school and I could see the way he was looking at you—”
My head whipped toward my sister.
“How was he looking at me?”
She smiled like she knew a secret. “Like he could not wait for your big sister to leave. Like he wanted to get you alone to ‘touch and agree’—and I do not mean he wanted to be your prayer partner.”
“Dolly!” I spluttered. Though the idea of Trevor looking at me like he . . . he wanted gave me butterflies. I resigned myself to the idea that perhaps Trevor would always give me butterflies.
Dolly ignored my affronted tone. “We had this talk, Daisy. Mommy covered the birds and the bees, and I covered the teeth and the tongue.” Her smile was barely there but her tone was as cheeky as ever.
My sister—my prim, buttoned-up sister—was unfailingly proper and rigidly circumspect, but she was not, much to my eternal surprise, a prude.
I’d blushed when James mentioned the birds and the bees because my mother had, in fact, had that very painful talk with me when I’d turned fifteen. And as soon as she’d left my sister slipped into my room, closed the door, and began to drop some enlightening facts my mother omitted.
“No sister of mine is going out into the world unprepared. Mommy just gave you the basics. I’m going to give you notes on the advanced study, including the DIY version.”
So yes, I’d blushed, because Dolly was as detailed and thorough with explaining the “advanced study” as she was with everything else. Not that I’d had anyone to practice advanced study with. Not that I’d had anyone to practice basic study with.
That was all beside the point. “Dolly, I’m not talking about any of Trevor’s looks with you.”
She raised her eyebrows as if to say, suit yourself.
“It doesn’t matter that we’re attracted to each other. We have terrible communication.”
“Then fix it, Daisy. You’re acting like your life is happening to someone else. Like you don’t have any control over this situation. From what you’ve told me Trevor’s pride is wounded—”
“His pride?”
“Yes, Daisy, his pride. He trusted you with pieces of himself and he feels like you didn’t do the same thing. Before you say anything—I know that there are things he didn’t trust you with. I got that part, okay? But saying ‘oh well, we both messed up so let’s go our own ways’ isn’t your only option. You could try meeting him with a little grace. You could try forgiving and forgetting.”
“Nobody ever really forgets anything. That’s just a lie we tell ourselves.” I quote my own sister, affecting her voice.
She smiled at my impersonation. “Fine. You could try forgiving and deciding to leave your mistakes in the past and stop throwing them in each other’s faces. Or you can continue to not be with the person who, imperfections aside, sounds like a good person that makes you happy.”
“Even if I wanted to do that, I couldn’t right now. Trevor’s part of the group that will investigate me. I wouldn’t—”
“Back up. Investigating you?”
I brought Dolly up to speed. When I finished, she said, “So let me get this straight. They’ll be a hearing to determine if you get to stay in school. The boy you just fought with, the one that is most likely head over heels with you, is one of the people responsible for deciding your fate, and his best friend is helping you to try and get out of this mess?”
Except for the head over heels part she had it right. “Yes.”
“Daisy, yours might be the first relationship to ever die because Cupid just gave up and decided to shoot himself in the face with an arrow.”
I smiled despite myself and griped, “It’s not a relationship.”
“And what type of kangaroo court is this? There are so many conflicts of interest, Daddy would have all of this dropped in a second”—she snapped her fingers—“if he—”
If he were involved. If he was speaking to me. If he hadn’t disowned me.
She pulled into our driveway and navigated into the garage on the side of the house.
It was dark and late, near midnight, so we were silent as we climbed the veranda stairs and entered the house.
By some unspoken agreement, we both made our way to the second-floor den and closed the door behind us. My father was most likely already upstairs asleep.
Dolly glanced at the clock, rubbing her eyes tiredly.
She made her way to my mother’s f
avorite chair and tossed my mom’s afghan to me. I clutched it tightly and collapsed on the sofa, exhausted.
“Sniff it.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.
It still smelled very, very faintly of my mother’s perfume and even more faintly of my mother.
And that felt comforting, like a little of her was in the room with us.
“I don’t usually touch it. I don’t even usually sit in this chair.” Her soprano was a bit too high. “But when I need . . . When it feels unbearable, I come here and I just . . . try to feel her, you know?”
I nodded and I felt my eyes prick, I but managed not to cry.
Dolly and I lounged in silence for a long time.
What would my mother think of what had happened between me and Dolly? How I’d pushed her away and shut her out?
She’d hate it.
I stared at my sister through the dim moonlight in the room. Her eyes were closed but she still fidgeted every few seconds.
“I’m so sorry, Dolly. I’m so, so, so, so sorry. Everything you said about me in my dorm room was true.”
She opened her eyes and blinked tiredly, then yawned and half lifted her hand to make a flicking motion. “Daisy, it’s all right.”
“It’s not. It’s not all right. I haven’t been a great sister to you. I haven’t . . . You remind me of Mommy so much. And it hurts. It hurt to be reminded all the time. I was terrible to you and I’m sorry.”
“I’m not like Mommy, you’re just like her. Sweet to everybody,” she mumbled ,closing her eyes.
“Dolly, please what can I do to make this up to you? I need you to forgive me,” I whispered.
She said on a soft exhale, “Okay. You’re forgiven.”
She sounded like she was only a few minutes from dropping off to sleep.
I didn’t deserve my sister. And I also didn’t understand my sister.
Her forgiveness didn’t feel real. It felt too easy, like I hadn’t earned it and since I was trying to be honest and own my feelings, I asked, “Dolly, how can you just forgive me, just like that?”
I’d been expecting to have to beg, to plead. Dolly was not known for her magnanimity. She was president, CEO, and lead talent recruiter for Grudge Holders, Inc.
“Grace,” she said around a yawn.
“Grace?”
She struggled to open her eyes and then she sighed and opened them a little more fully. “The way I see it, I can continue being angry with my sister. Not speaking to her and wind up with the type of relationship that I do not want.” She looked me in my eyes and I could see the sincerity of her words. “Or, I can believe my sister is sorry and forgive her. Grace.”
“Grace,” I repeated.
“Paul . . . taught me that . . .” she said, her eyes closing again.
Paul?! Who in the world was Paul?
“Reverend . . . Smith . . . taught . . . me . . . lot . . . grace.” A few seconds later Dolly’s eyes were closed and her breathing even.
Interesting.
Dolly Pearl Payton was holding out on me. I stared at my sister’s now-sleeping form knowing I was going to interrogate the hell out of her in the morning. Two years ago a new minister had been installed as pastor of our church. He was young and, in the words of James, he was fine. He was also single. Church got a lot livelier after that. I remembered him coming by the house a lot to pray with my mom when she’d been sick and to sit with us after she passed. He’d performed her eulogy.
Very, very interesting.
I recalled Dolly’s eagerness to get back for Sunday service when she’d dropped me off at school and wondered if Reverend Smith, or as Dolly called him, Paul, was the driver behind that determination.
Oh yes, I would be launching the Spanish Inquisition the moment she opened her eyes.
I lay down on the sofa, wanting to stay near Dolly for the night. When we were younger, on special occasions like the Fourth of July or Labor Day—never Memorial Day; that was never a fun occasion—my parents would let us make an indoor camp in the den and have a slumber party. I snuggled under the warmth of the blanket, surrounded by faint echoes of my mother, feeling lighter and closer to my sister than I had in a long time.
Dolly’s chair was empty when I awoke the next morning and the room was filled with light, which meant it was already mid-morning. I must’ve slept wrong because there was a crick in my neck. I stood up and stretched, trying to realign my neck when motion from other side of the room caused me to jump lose my balance and fall back into the sofa with an OOMPH!
My father stood in the doorway, looking confused.
“Daisy?”
“Yes?” I gasped, still trying to catch my breath from the fright. My father must’ve been working from his home office downstairs. Dolly had finally moved into his office at Payton Mills this past summer, but he still had an office in the municipal building and worked there most days.
I saw his eyes look up as if he was trying to recall something and then he blinked in confusion.
“What are you doing here? Did the school . . .? Were you asked to leave?”
“No. I just needed to come home. I was . . .”
On the verge of a mental breakdown.
“Homesick. And so I called Dolly and she came to get me.”
“You just decided to take a vacation from school in the middle of the week?”
He sounded even more confused.
“No, I . . .”
I trailed off as realization dawned that technically what my father said was true. I had decided to leave school in the middle of the week for what was a vacation. I looked down at the floor, a deep ingrained reflex at making my parents ashamed. I was tired of being the girl that let her father down.
After a moment of my silence I heard my father say in frustration, “Daisy, I wish you would talk to me.”
My response slipped out before I could catch it.
“I wish I could talk to you.”
My eyes snapped up to meet his in surprise and before I could take the words back, before I could apologize for my sass, he whistled lowly. “All right, well now we seem to be getting somewhere.”
My father sat in the chair Dolly had occupied in the night before. “Now that’s a pretty big statement. Before we get to what you aren’t telling me, maybe we should back up and talk about why you feel like you can’t tell me.”
I closed my eyes and tried to will the panic coursing through me to recede. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
My father shook his head at me implacably. “Oh no. While I’d love nothing more than to believe that my youngest daughter feels like she can come to me to discuss anything, I’m more inclined to believe what you said the first time is what you meant.”
“I don’t know how to explain it so you’ll understand.”
“Don’t worry about my understanding, Daisy. Just tell me what’s on your mind. I’m here to listen even if I don’t understand.”
“You don’t know what this feels like. I’ve failed everyone, including you. And I was having a hard time dealing with that. So I asked Dolly to come and get me.”
He frowned. “Why on earth do you think I wouldn’t understand that feeling?”
“Because you’ve never failed at anything.”
My father began chuckling before I’d even finished my sentence.
“This is all your fault, Kendra,” he spoke to the ceiling. “You should not have left me alone with these crazy, stubborn girls. And you should not have coddled them so much while you were here.”
He looked at me and answered the question in my eyes.
“Yes, I still talk to your mother. It makes the day a little easier to face if it feels like I’m bringing her along through it.”
My heart sank at the idea of my father missing my mother so much that he talked to her throughout his day.
“And I want you to know if she was here she would have blamed me and said I’m the one that coddled
you all. Then she would have laughed harder than I did at your statement, Daisy, because no one could tell you better how imperfect I am. I fail all the time.”
He shook his head in disbelief, but was still grinning.
I found this hard to believe. My father was pretty much perfect in my eyes.
“When your mother and I were still newlyweds, I was balancing my burgeoning law career, working at the Mill, and my young family. I was failing miserably until your mother told me she would leave me if I didn’t get my act together.”
I reared back in surprise and he laughed.
"I was so caught up in my own ambition that I was letting my family down. Even when I was home, I was so overworked that I was neglecting y’all half the time. But it didn’t have to be that way—I didn’t have to do everything. I eventually hired a general manager and then, as we grew, an entire executive team to help me manage.
“But hiring help hadn’t even felt like a choice until your mother pointed out how I was hurting our family. My father did it all when he was starting the Mill so in trying to emulate him, I did it all too. But his point was never for me to do things his way. He was just trying to show me the ropes. And so now I have to wonder what things I’ve unintentionally made you think needed to be done my way when I was just trying to show you the ropes.”
He leveled me with his gaze again.
It was time for me to explain myself.
“I don’t want to work at Payton Mills.” The words burned. I don’t know why I started there, maybe because my father just told me a story about how he’d worked two careers to keep his father happy and I absolutely did not want to do that.
My father’s face morphed into one of confusion. “Okay . . .?”
“I know that’s what’s expected of me. I know that in order to be a perfect Payton I’m supposed to work at the Mill and if I want to do something else then I can do that too, like you did with being a judge. But I don’t want to do that. I just want to be free to follow my dreams.”
“Daisy, first of all, there’s no such thing as a perfect Payton. Second of all, I don’t work at the Mill because I have to, I work there because I want to. I love it! I love the noise and the movement. I worked two careers because I was fortunate enough to have that many opportunities. But of course that doesn’t have to be your reality. Why would you think that?”
Upsy Daisy: A First Love College Romance Page 31