by Holley Trent
“I think we all need that sometimes.”
He turned his head and found the church now half-empty, and there he was, neglecting one of his duties as best man. Even if Jerry didn’t mind, Ben wanted to play his part. He willed his fingers away from her face, but they refused to budge. So instead, he stepped in even closer and pressed his face against her hair.
“Are you going to the reception, liefje?”
She shook her head, or tried to anyway.
He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes. “Are you always going to hide from him? You’re giving him too much control.”
“I know.” She sniffed. “Just like when we were married. I don’t want to cause a scene. He’ll pick on me and I’ll cry and I’ll have a shitty night.” She winced and looked to the ceiling. “Sorry, God.”
He wanted to say that he’d stop Barry from antagonizing her, but the truth was, if the guy started, the situation would probably get ugly. There’d be words exchanged, and perhaps they’d come to blows. He’d seen his mother so low and defeated for so many years that he really didn’t want to come face-to-face with a man responsible for making another woman that way. It took everything he had to accept that his father wasn’t a jackass, so he had no forgiveness left to spare.
It was Jerry and Trinity’s day, so he wouldn’t cause a scene.
He scanned the room. One quarter left. He leaned down to her ear and whispered, “You want me to grab the bouquet for you?”
She laughed. “No. Who would I marry?”
“Me. You did volunteer, remember?” He winked.
There was a brightness to her eyes that seemed to dull as soon as it sparked, and she slumped a bit in his embrace. “You’re not that desperate.”
He planted a kiss on her forehead. “Who said anything about desperate?” He let go of her and backed into the aisle. “You want me to bring you some cake later?”
She wrapped her arms across her torso, probably very cold beneath the overenthusiastic air vent in her summer-weight dress. “I think my roommates might be around, but I’ll leave the back door open for you. You can just let yourself in. I guess the reception will go late, knowing this bunch.”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
With one glide of his thumb across her jaw and a chaste kiss on her lips, he retreated to the double doors, watching her cheeks flush and a smile form on her face as he walked backward.
Oh, she was there. She was so there. Ensnared just like him, but absolutely mortified.
Ben didn’t have anything to lose. She, on the other hand, had already lost once and probably didn’t want to lose again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After Ben slipped out of her house on early Sunday morning, swinging his tuxedo jacket over his shoulder and whistling a jaunty tune, Daisy pulled on her old ratty bathrobe and hummed her way down the hall to the kitchen.
They hadn’t even gotten to the cake, which she was at the moment making a beeline for. Cake and coffee sounded like a dream after the night they’d had.
They hadn’t even had sex. They’d cuddled and caressed and did a lot of things that probably were considered sex in some societies, but there was no actual intercourse. They watched television—with Ben explaining some of the shows he watched in Belgium—and talked in whispers until their voices went hoarse.
It’d been wonderful. She could do with a lifetime of nights like those. She giggled as she reached for the coffee pot.
“What’s so damn funny?” came a deep, drawling voice from the back door. The screen door snapped shut as Barry leaned in against the nearby counter.
Daisy jumped, but quickly righted herself. She sighed and lifted the lid of the coffeemaker. “What are you doing here? You weren’t here this much even when we were married.”
“When’d you go and get all smart-mouthed? Not attractive, girl.”
“Maybe I’m not trying to be attractive. Maybe I don’t give a shit what you think.” She reached into the cabinet and wrapped her fingers around a canister of Colombian extra-dark roast.
“Oh, you cussin’ now, too? Gone downhill, girl, and I didn’t think the hill was all that steep.” He laughed.
She rolled her eyes and silently counted scoops of coffee. When she was done, she turned to him, took a deep breath, and said in the steadiest voice she could manage, “I’d appreciate it if you’d give me your key.”
He stared dumbly at her as if what she’d said was so outlandish it didn’t even justify a response.
“I’m not kidding, Barry. You don’t live here. You can’t just let yourself in whenever you want.”
He scoffed and moved further into the room, transferring mud onto the clean linoleum from his sneakers. “That’s real funny,” he said with his head inside the refrigerator he’d opened. “Damn, y’all ain’t got no juice. Guess I’ll have to go through the drive-though.”
The longer he remained in her kitchen, the more her reserve depleted. The less brave she felt. It’d been the same way back in high school where she’d say no, and he’d needle her in the subtle ways he always did and eventually she’d say yes just to make him happy. A miserable Barry always made her miserable, too, so at some point—maybe halfway through eleventh grade— she’d stopped having any opinions of her own. Her opinions were his opinions. She did what he wanted because that was easiest. As an adult, she understood how one-sided their relationship was back then. What she didn’t understand now was why he still affected her in much the same way.
She swallowed and took another deep breath. “Yeah, the drive-through. Why don’t you go ahead and do that?”
“What’s the rush?” He closed the fridge door and opened the freezer. “Hell yeah, y’all got those sausage biscuits I like.”
“Ellis bought those.”
He took two out of the box. “He won’t care.”
She ground her teeth.
“What are you so uptight about?” He pulled the microwave door open and popped the sandwiches in. “You need to loosen up.”
“I was perfectly loose until you walked into my kitchen.”
“I was perfectly loose until you walked into my kitchen!” he mocked in a high-pitched, singsong voice.
She ground her teeth some more, and turned to face the coffeemaker. She counted the drips from the filter into the carafe, willing her pulse to come down from the stratosphere and tried to block out his continued needling in the background.
He didn’t stop. “What’d you cut your hair off for? You used to like having your hair pulled. What are you gonna do now? Oh, never mind. Ain’t nobody pulling your hair.”
“I never liked having my hair pulled.”
“Whatever. You didn’t complain.”
“You wouldn’t have stopped even if I did.”
The microwave beeped, and the smell of sausage and eggs permeated the kitchen as he opened the door. “Shit, that’s hot. Gimmie a plate.” He tossed a plastic wrap-covered biscuit from hand to hand like a hot potato.
“Get your own.” She grabbed a mug from the cabinet and let it slam shut with more force than necessary.
“Fuck, you’re a bitch.” He got close to her right ear and sang “Bitch bitch bitch” as he reached overhead and opened the cabinet she’d just closed.
Something inside her very nearly snapped, but not quite. She’d had too much practice.
Any other woman in her situation probably would have sent an elbow flying to his nose or rammed her knee into his crotch, but her first reaction had never been violence. Her brain always told her to run. Hide. Cower. But now, she was too angry for that. Too angry to flee. Too angry to yell, even. She was beyond that. Her mind was reeling into a very scary place, and one she’d never descended into before. It was dark and she didn’t like it, but she couldn’t see any way out, except to say it. The magic words.
She slipped sideways and turned to see his face. She fixed her stare on his bloodshot brown eyes—the ones she thought were so dreamy back in eighth grade—and squ
ared her chin. “Grow up.”
He got his plate and laughed so loud and so close to her head, the hearing in her left ear went a bit muffled. “Grow up,” he mimed. “That’s cute.”
“That’s right, Barry. Grow the fuck up. You’re twenty-seven years old and you act like you haven’t started puberty. Last I checked, your nuts had dropped so that can’t be it.” Her voice was absolutely flat, but she knew her cheeks were redder than Barry’s eyes.
Liz walked into the kitchen rubbing her eyes. “What’s all the ruckus?”
“I dunno. Something crawled up her butt, I guess. Can’t see why I ever married her.” He moved away with his biscuits and took a seat at the table.
Daisy hated that goddamned table. It’d been one of the first things she and Barry had bought together after they’d started renting the house. Now she was loath to even look at it—to remember all the meals that’d gone cold and uneaten because he wasn’t home.
Liz’s expression was wary as she locked eyes with Daisy.
Daisy didn’t expect her to choose sides, even if she did know what a buffoon her brother was. There wasn’t anything Liz could do to change him. He had to want to change, and probably never would.
“What’s going on, Daisy?” she asked.
Truth? Lie? Something in between? Daisy studied the worry in her ex-sister-in-law’s expression and chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to hurt Liz. Liz had always been kind. Hell, Liz had tried to steer Daisy away from Barry back when she was in ninth grade and Liz was in eleventh. She’d pulled Daisy aside and said, “You’re sweet. He’s gonna hurt your feelings, honey. That’s how he is.”
Daisy had said, “Boys will be boys” or something to that affect. Some bullshit line she’d probably learned from Momma. Her mother probably thought love taps were acceptable displays of affection, too.
“I asked him for his key.” Daisy warmed her hands around her coffee mug, and tried to uphold her eye contact, although her nature had her programmed to cower. Cowering was fucking exhausting. She was sick of being exhausted.
Liz sighed. “Fuck, Barry. I told you to only use the key if I locked myself out. You don’t live here anymore. You don’t pay rent. You can’t drop in uninvited.”
“What do you want, twenty bucks?” A smarmy grin spanned his face.
There. That was the breaking point.
Daisy set down her coffee mug, having not even taken a sip, and tightened the sash of her robe around her waist. She walked toward the hall, talking as she moved. “Liz, I’m not renewing the lease. You and Ellis can pick it up, otherwise you’ve got thirty days to find someplace to live.” She slipped into her bedroom and before closing the door said, “Barry, you’re trespassing. Get the fuck out in the next thirty minutes or I’m calling the cops.”
She locked the door and sank onto the corner of her unmade bed. The same one she’d had such a wonderful night on with a man she adored so much, but was too broken to give herself to. She laughed, and at first it was just a low chuckle. Then it progressed to true laughter, with her shoulders shaking as she thought about how fucking foolish she was. Laughter gave way to sobs. And the sobs…
Well, those ended with nausea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Daisy called out of work on Monday, but on Tuesday slipped into the barn with her usual unobtrusive entrance. She’d taken her seat at her worktable, murmuring a quiet hello to Momma and Moeder, whom Francine had put to work preparing trays for soap.
Ben stood upright from where he leaned over Nikki’s desk and studied Daisy’s face. She looked pale. Well, paler than usual, and her eyelids were heavy as if she’d been rubbing them, and a lot.
He’d tried calling her the day before, if only to hear her voice and perhaps solicit an invitation so he could see for himself that she was fine, but she hadn’t answered. Francine hadn’t known where she was, and that revelation left him feeling unsettled. He drove to Edenton, parked in front of her little house, and got out, only to pause at the sidewalk when he encountered a man on the porch with his booted feet up on the railing.
“Who are you, Ellis’s boyfriend?” the man had asked after taking a long draw on his cigarette.
Ben had shaken his head. “No. I’m here to see Miss Mooring.”
The man scoffed. “Well, Miss Mooring is currently indisposed. Ain’t answering the door. I’m waiting on my sister to let me in so I can get some stuff I left inside.”
Ah, Ben had thought. The infamous Barry. “What do you mean indisposed? Is she well?”
“Why do you care?”
Ben had crossed his arms over his chest and stared the man down.
“The fuck you looking at?”
“An idiot, apparently.”
“Come say it to my face.”
Ben had taken two steps toward the man when a late-model sedan pulled into the driveway, and the driver’s door sprang open.
“Can I help you?” the woman had asked as she pressed a plastic grocery bag into her purse and shut the car door.
“Daisy wasn’t at work. I wanted to see if she were well.”
The woman’s mouth had opened into a slack O shape. She’d looked from Ben to Barry and tightened her grip on her purse. “Um, just a little cold. It’s hitting her harder than it should because she was tired, you know? Uh…I had the same cold last week.” She’d sniffled and wiped her nose.
Ben hadn’t bought it, but he didn’t have time to press. He’d needed to go back to Tyner. “Could you tell her to call Ben at home, please?”
She’d nodded and Barry had stood, stubbing his cigarette out on the railing.
“Hey!” Barry had called out.
“Yes?”
“What you want with Daisy?”
Ben hadn’t answered. He understood the reason why she hadn’t wanted to go to Jerry’s reception, and it was a damn shame.
At the barn, he paused the discussion he was having with Nikki and her lawyer about his immigration paperwork and left her office. He walked straight to Daisy and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Hello,” he said when she looked up.
She managed a tiny smile. “Hi. Leaving tonight?”
“Yes.”
“When are you coming back? Do you know?”
“Belated Monday meeting in five minutes!” Nikki yelled.
Ben cringed and turned his attention back to Daisy. “No. Nikki’s trying to get the employment documentation in place just in case.”
She nodded.
He wanted to ask her how she felt—not just physically, but about how she was coping with Nikki’s impeding announcement about the new soaps. As far as he knew, no one had let Francine in the loop yet. And of course, he wanted to pull her aside and ask her how she felt about him—about his departure and tentative return. It hadn’t come on Saturday night. They’d kept the conversation to light things such as how it was that Daisy had never learned to swim and how he’d managed to obtain fluency in four languages. He knew a lot about her. He knew that inside that quiet shell, was a stunning brilliance. He imagined that people probably thought she wasn’t smart because she didn’t talk much, but the truth was she had a mind that was always churning, even if she didn’t provide a running commentary about it.
She’d go minutes saying nothing, and then in a sentence or two reveal some simple poignancy that made him stop and think. One of those little bons mots had made him pull her in close and kiss the top of her head. He’d murmured, “I love you” in Dutch, but she hadn’t understood.
“Can I…” She stopped fiddling with the paperwork on her tabletop and looked down the line at the other women. “Uh.” She swallowed and stood. “We need to talk to Nikki about that trade show.”
He let his face slacken with his confusion, but something in her eyes impelled him to nod. He headed up the aisle to Nikki’s office with Daisy on his heels.
Nikki raised an eyebrow as they entered.
Daisy shook her head and turned to look through the office window out into the prod
uction area. Neither woman at the soap station could see them from their current angle. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and pulled him through the outer door. “Nikki, can I talk to Ben in your house?”
“Can you do it in five minutes?”
Daisy seemed to think about it. Finally, she nodded, and pulled again.
“What’s the big fuss, Daisy?” he asked, nudging her vise-like grip on his wrist free. She didn’t need to manhandle him. He would have followed her wherever she went, even to the ends of the Earth.
She didn’t answer until they’d stepped up onto the Mitchells’ screened-in porch and had a seat on the swing. She looked down at her hands and wrung them. “This is bad timing.”
“What is it? Are you quitting?”
She let out a little scoff and shook her head. “No. I like working here. More so now that I get to be a little creative.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t want you to think it means anything, or that you need to act a certain way.”
He squeezed her hands and she looked up. “Daisy, liefje. Please.”
She let out a shuddering breath. “Only me and Liz and now you will know.”
“Tell me.” He asked, but he thought he already knew.
“I’m…” She closed her mouth and ground her teeth. “I’m usually pretty regular, but I was a couple of days late and I didn’t feel right so I—”
“You’re pregnant?”
She nodded and looked at her lap, jaw tense, worrying at her lip.
Bad timing, indeed. What was he supposed to do with that information? Board a plane, fret, and count the days until he could return? Because he would return. There’d be no question about that. He wanted to be there for it all, assuming she’d let him. And assuming she’d…
“Daisy, you’re going to keep it, aren’t you?”
She looked up, eyes wide, shock evident on her face.
“I mean, it’s your choice, but I don’t want you to feel like I won’t help. I want it—him or her, I mean.” Verdomme. He raked his hands through his hair and grunted. This isn’t coming out right.
“Assuming it’s viable, yes. I’m going to have the baby.”