Ian pushed down his sleeve. “I don’t need to see the book,” he said, and stalked out of the sunroom.
Violet put her hand over her mouth and giggled. Maybe, she thought, Ian’s tattoo meant, “The naive man is often made a fool.” Whatever it said, Ian and his awful tattoos had given Violet the first really silly, lighthearted moment she had had in weeks. She looked to Grimace. “It’s funny,” she said to him, “the way that life works.”
Chapter 70
“Evie! Hey. Come in.” Daisy stepped back from the door and gestured for Evie to follow her inside.
“I’m sorry for just showing up,” Evie said. “I remembered you told me where you lived, so . . .”
“You don’t have to apologize.” Daisy laughed. “This place is like a train station, people always coming and going. So, what’s up? You looked stressed.”
“The thing is . . . Nico showed up this morning. He wasn’t due back until the end of the summer, but he cut his trip short. And he said I can’t stay at his house any longer.”
Daisy frowned. “What are you going to do?”
Evie fiddled with the hem of her T-shirt. “Well, that’s a bit of a problem. See, I don’t really have money for rent.... The rents are so high in summer. . . . I told you I haven’t been working long enough to save much. I had figured that in the fall, when the tourists are gone, it might be easier to find an apartment I could afford.... But now . . .”
“Why don’t you stay here?” Daisy suggested promptly. “We’ve got plenty of room.”
“Really? It would only be for a little while. I’m . . . I’m expecting a check from my mother’s estate and once that finds me, I’ll have plenty of money for rent somewhere downtown.”
Daisy immediately wondered how a check would find Evie if she was on the run and using a false name, but she didn’t push the point. She wanted Evie to stay with them. Being friends with Evie, keeping her secret and helping her in small practical ways, had given her a sense of purpose, a sense she had lost when she lost her beloved father. After her mother’s death she had taken on her father’s happiness as a sort of cause, a reason to get up in the morning. When he had died and Poppy had come home to be guardian, well, things had changed.
“Of course you can stay,” Daisy said, putting a hand on Evie’s shoulder. “For as long as you like. I mean, well, I’ll have to ask Poppy, but I’m sure she’ll say yes. Wait here. She’s in the kitchen. I’ll go ask her now.”
Daisy dashed off to find Poppy. If idiot Ian were welcome, why wouldn’t Evie, who was perfectly nice, be welcome, too?
Poppy was chopping onions; a pile of cut green peppers sat in a bowl nearby. “I’m getting pretty good at the sous-chef stuff,” she announced. “I haven’t sliced off the tip of a nail in days.”
“Good. Poppy? I have a big favor to ask. An important one.”
Poppy put down her knife. “That sounds ominous.”
“No, I don’t mean it’s anything bad. It’s about my friend Evie, the one staying at Nico’s house for the summer. The thing is he came home unexpectedly and basically threw her out.”
“That wasn’t very nice of him.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Daisy agreed. “Anyway, I told—I mean, I was thinking that she could stay here with us for a while, until the tourists leave and rents drop. I know you’ve never met her,” Daisy went on hurriedly, “but that’s only because she works so many hours at The Clamshell, but she’s really nice. Joel can tell you, she won’t be any trouble.”
Poppy shrugged. “Sure. I don’t see why not. Why don’t you get my old bedroom ready for her?”
Daisy laughed with relief. “Thanks, Poppy, really. She’ll help out around the house. She won’t be a burden at all.”
“I’m not really worried about that. No one could be a worse houseguest than Ian.”
“That’s the truth!”
Poppy picked up her knife again. “Evie can be an honorary Higgins. The more the merrier. Plus, it’s what Mom and Dad would have done.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you remember the time one of Mom’s old friends from high school stayed with us for an entire summer?” Poppy asked. “Well, you were pretty young then.”
“No, I vaguely remember . . . Yeah, what was her name? Her marriage had just broken up or something.... She had the most amazing red hair.”
“Stacy. Stacy Street. She sent a card when Mom died.”
“She wasn’t at the funeral?” Daisy asked.
“She lives in Hong Kong now,” Poppy explained. “With her second husband. Anyway, she was in a bad way that summer, totally at a loss. Mom and Dad took her in without question. It must have been difficult for them in some ways. I remember Stacy always seemed to be crying or about to cry. But they were so good to her. They really helped her get on her feet again.”
“Hospitality is a Higgins family tradition. Oh, Evie’s waiting! Thanks, again, Poppy.”
Daisy dashed back to Evie, still waiting in the front hall. “She said it’s fine!”
Evie smiled, but Daisy saw tears in her eyes, too. “My stuff is still at Nico’s. It’s not much. . . .”
“Wait a minute. How did you get here from Nico’s?”
“I walked.”
“That’s an insanely long walk!” Daisy reached into her pocket for her cell phone. “Look, let me see if Joel can pick us up and take us to Nico’s right now. If he can’t I’ll see if Allie can. We’re having chili for dinner and you definitely don’t want to miss the famous Higgins chili.”
Chapter 71
Evie was safely installed in Poppy’s old bedroom, though how she was going to stand looking at the poster of that stupid boy band still on the wall, Daisy just did not know. Still, it had to be better than sticking around at Nico’s house unwanted until she found a room somewhere she could afford.
Daisy and Joel had waited in his car outside the house while Evie had gone in to grab her things.
“I’m dying to get another glimpse of this guy Nico,” Joel had said when Evie had been gone for a few minutes. “Can you believe I’ve only seen him once?”
“I don’t think he likes to mingle with we townies,” Daisy said. “Just my observation.”
Twenty minutes later Evie came out of the house and climbed into the back seat of Joel’s car.
“Was he there?” Joel asked.
“Taking a beauty nap,” Evie replied, with the ghost of a smile. “I could hear the snoring.”
The ride back to Willow Way was oddly silent. Daisy was pleased that Evie would be staying with her and her family, but the fact remained that the situation couldn’t last forever and what might happen once Evie moved on was kind of scary to think about. Evie, too, must have been thinking much the same thing. The future, what any of them could see of it, was murky.
After Joel had dropped them off, Daisy had introduced Evie to her sisters and to Allie, and had then shown her to what would be her room. She had just left Evie to put away her things, which certainly wouldn’t take long as she had so little with her, just one large backpack. No iPad. Only two pairs of socks and two pairs of jeans. No books. Watching Evie pull her few belongings from the backpack it had occurred to Daisy for the first time that Evie, who wasn’t a permanent resident of Yorktide, might not be eligible for something as ubiquitous as a library card. She had never thought about the fact that someone might be denied a library card. Why should she have? Well, Daisy thought, assuming Evie did want to read, she had come to the right house! They were tripping over books in the Higgins homestead.
Daisy stopped in the upstairs hall outside of what had once been her parents’ bedroom. The door was closed. She hesitated for a moment and then she opened the door and went inside. It was the first time she had been in the room since she had taken her grandfather’s tiepin from the safe. A quick glance around the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom told her that Poppy hadn’t made any major changes. There was a lamp she had brought with her from her Boston apartment, and she s
eemed to have replaced the bedding—neither Annabelle nor Oliver would have chosen the pattern that Poppy had chosen. Daisy’s parents might walk into the room at any moment and find themselves at home.
It was a disconcerting thought, but Daisy realized that only weeks ago such a notion—her father alive and well and walking into his bedroom—would have sent her spiraling into grief. But now . . . The loss of her father didn’t hurt quite as much as it had. Yes, a melancholic sadness still haunted her, but it wasn’t as sharp and biting as it had been. Her grief had mellowed, probably for several reasons. One of which, Daisy thought, might be her new friendship with Evie, and the sense it brought with it that she was doing good for someone.
Daisy quietly opened her father’s closet. It was a waste, really, all those expensive, beautifully tailored shirts and suits, the cashmere sweaters and silk ties, the leather shoes handmade for him in Italy. All just sitting there, tucked away and unseen. She closed the closet and moved over to his dresser. She opened the top drawer and looked down at the neatly folded linen handkerchiefs, all of which bore his initials in elaborate embroidery. His wallet was there, too. His house keys. And a stack of thin leather bookmarks Daisy had made at summer camp one year. She picked up one of the bookmarks—appropriately enough she had tooled a daisy onto its surface—and thought it might be okay if she took it to her own room to use. Carefully, she closed the drawer again and slipped the bookmark into her back pocket.
Poppy had been given so much responsibility, and with so little warning. Maybe, Daisy thought now, she could offer to be the one to go through their father’s clothes and select what would go to charity. As long as Poppy didn’t take her offer of help as criticism of her own failure to handle the chore . . . Wait, Daisy thought. She would wait a bit before suggesting that she would deal with their father’s clothing. The truth was she wasn’t entirely sure that she was ready, either.
One step at a time. And the next thing on Daisy’s agenda was chili, which with Allie’s coaching, Poppy had really mastered. Daisy left her parents’ old room—Poppy’s room now—careful to close the door behind her.
Chapter 72
“That chili really was amazing. And the salad wasn’t bad, either. Funny, I’ve never been into salads before. All that cold green lettuce.”
Daisy laughed. “With all the good stuff Allie adds to a salad it’s not even like eating a salad!”
Evie and Daisy were in Poppy’s old room. Evie’s room now. For a while. Poppy had given permission for Evie to take down the old poster of the boy band and she had. Otherwise, Evie hadn’t changed anything and she wouldn’t. It wasn’t really her room to—to inhabit.
“Your house is really great,” she said now to Daisy. “It’s like a manor house in some wonderful movie.”
“To the manor born. Why do I know that expression? I must have read it somewhere.”
“I used to like to read,” Evie said. “Well, I guess I still do. Or would. If—”
“If what?”
Evie shrugged. “If things were different. If my mind wasn’t so busy all the time with practical stuff.”
“Well, here’s a good thing. While you’re staying with us you don’t really have to worry about practical stuff—not much, anyway—so you can do all the reading you want.”
Evie smiled. Maybe, she thought, there were some foreign-language books in the sunroom or the study. That would be awesome.
“Um, is this really all you have?” Daisy asked. “What we picked up at Nico’s yesterday? I don’t mean anything insulting by that. . . .”
“I know. And yeah, it’s just the stuff I brought with me when I . . . But I don’t really care. Things don’t mean a lot to me. Possessions.”
“Really? They mean a lot to me. Some things, anyway. Look, come to my room. I want to show you something.”
Evie followed Daisy two doors down the hall, where Daisy took a square black box off a shelf of her bookcase. “It’s a conservation box. It helps keep old papers from rotting away. Here,” she added, handing Evie a pair of plastic gloves. “You don’t want any oil or dirt on your skin to get on the paper.”
Wearing her own pair of gloves, Daisy opened the box and lifted out a piece of yellowed paper. “This belonged to my mom,” she said. “We each chose something special of hers to keep when she died. Violet chose her gardening hat and Poppy took a bracelet. This is what I wanted.”
“What is it?” Evie asked, thinking of the locket she wore around her neck and gently touching the old paper. “I mean, it looks like a letter, but . . .”
“It is. It dates from the Civil War,” Daisy explained. “It was written by this woman, look, here’s her signature, Clementine Wallace, to her son, Abraham. He was a soldier in the Northern army.”
Evie squinted. “It’s kind of hard to read the handwriting.”
“I know. It’s pretty faded and people’s handwriting was different back then. But Mom could read it. Basically this woman, Clementine, is worried sick about her son. Listen to this line. ‘My beloved Abraham, I am sending you the shirt you asked me to mend, as well as a new pair of socks as I am sure such amenities are not to be had—’ The next word is too badly faded for me to make out. Even my mom couldn’t read it. Anyway, the next line reads: ‘Your brother recovers from an ague that kept him to his bed for nigh three weeks.’ ”
“What’s an ague?” Evie asked.
“It’s an illness, like a fever with chills and sweats. And then she goes on: ‘Every evening I stand by the front gate and look down the road in the fond hope that I will find you coming home to us.’ Can you imagine?” Daisy said, carefully replacing the letter in the box. “Knowing that your child is out there in awful conditions, getting shot at or stabbed with a bayonet. Getting dysentery. Having a limb cut off without anesthesia. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it but pray. If you believe in God and I think pretty much everybody did back then.”
“And nothing has really changed, has it?” Evie said after a moment. “I mean, parents love their children and children love their parents.” Or they want to . . .
“Yeah. Look, I’m really sorry about your dad. I wish . . .”
“I know,” Evie said quickly, wondering how Daisy had possibly known what she was thinking. “Me, too. I think I’ll go see if Poppy needs any help with anything.”
Daisy laughed. “She’ll find some chore that needs doing! And if you run into Ian, don’t let him talk you into doing his laundry!”
Evie left Daisy’s room and went downstairs, noting as she went the pictures on the walls, the colors of the curtains, the pattern on the stair runner—all the details of the home that would be hers only for a time. She was reminded yet again of all that she had lost. And she had lied to Daisy yet again. Possessions did mean a lot to her, now more than ever, possessions and a place to come home to at the end of the day. Evie felt a rush of envy, followed by a wave of sorrow, followed finally by a fierce determination to regain a life of certainty. I will have a home of my own again, she vowed, as she went to find Poppy. I will.
Chapter 73
The occupants of the Higgins house, both permanent and temporary, were seated at the table in the rarely used dining room. Allie had suggested to Poppy that they gather there for dinner just for the change.
“Besides,” she had said. “Our brood seems to be ever growing. We’re getting a bit crowded at the kitchen table.”
And that was a point. Poppy looked around at the others at the table. Except for one person she was happy they were all there together.
“If I were you,” Daisy was saying to Ian, “I’d be scared. You’re outnumbered in this house.”
“Because I’m a man?”
“Because you’re a guy,” Daisy corrected.
Ian didn’t seem to take offense. He poured another glass of wine and grinned. “I think I can take care of myself. Unless you’re like, The Witches of Willow Way.”
“Nothing is impossible,” Daisy shot back.
Poppy raised her eyebrows at her sister. Ian was, after all, a guest and that made him in some way vulnerable. It was the host’s job to protect her guest, not to attack him. No matter how obnoxious he was.
“What’s your sun sign?” Violet asked Ian. “I’m usually very good at telling that about someone, but with you, all I’m getting is static.”
Ian shrugged. “Not that I believe in all that stuff, but I’m Gemini.”
Violet frowned. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Hmm. The Saturn return might explain it, but . . . No. It’s no use. I can’t get anything. It’s like you’re not really there or something.”
Ian addressed Poppy. “She’s a regular little sorcerer, isn’t she? Give her a few years to practice and you could put her on the stage.”
“Is everything mockery with you?” Daisy snapped.
Allie cleared her throat and shot a glance at Poppy.
“Why take life too seriously?” Ian countered.
“Because,” Violet said, “it doesn’t last very long. Because it’s precious and once life here on Earth is gone, it’s gone forever.”
“Live fast ’cause it don’t last. Right? Die young and leave a pretty corpse.”
Poppy cringed. She glanced at Daisy and then at Violet, both of whom seemed in a momentary state of shock.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Allie said, her tone icy.
Ian turned to Allie and laughed. “What? It’s from that old Blondie song. Die young and stay pretty. Live fast ’cause it don’t last.”
“Don’t you think,” Allie said, “that it’s a tad inappropriate given the circumstances?”
“Obviously not,” Violet replied, “or he wouldn’t have said it.”
“Really? I’m not so sure. I think he’s a—”
“Daisy,” Poppy began, but realized she couldn’t scold her sister for voicing what was probably also her own opinion. “Let’s change the subject, please, everyone.”
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