Daisy's Back in Town

by Rachel Gibson

  “If you were in love with her, why did you break up with her?”

  “How do you know that I broke up with her?”

  “It was in Steven’s letter.”

  “It was?” He recalled little about the letter other than the mention of Nathan. “Mom and dad had just died and I was dealing, or trying to deal, with all of that.” He lifted a finger off the bottle and pointed at his brother. “You remember what pure hell that was.”

  “Sure.”

  “About that same time Daisy got even more possessive and emotional than usual. It seemed like she was always hanging on my neck, and the more I tried to get her to loosen her grasp, the more she choked me. I just couldn’t handle it, so I told her we needed time apart. The next thing I knew, she’d married my best friend.”

  “Pregnant women get really weird. Believe me, I’ve been through it three times now.”

  “I didn’t know she was pregnant.”

  “True. She told Steven and not you because you’d dumped her.”

  “I didn’t dump her.” Christ, Billy was starting to piss him off. “I just needed some time to think. If I’d known, I would have done the right thing.”

  “I know you would have.”

  Finally, a little support from his family.

  “But she felt dumped all the same, and she went to Steven and he helped her out instead of you.”

  “What the hell? You’re my brother. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “I am. Always. But you’re so angry, I just don’t think you can see things clearly, is all. I understand how you feel, but someone needs to point out to you that you had a hand in Daisy marrying Steven.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded for the sake of argument, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. “But that doesn’t excuse either of them from not telling me about my son. I’ll never forgive Daisy for that.”

  “Well, you know what Tim McGraw says about never?”

  He didn’t give a shit what Tim McGraw had to say about anything. Tim was married to Faith Hill, and Faith hadn’t run off with his babies and kept them a secret for fifteen years.

  Billy took a long pull off his beer and told him anyway. “Old Tim says something about the trouble with never is never never works. I think there’s some wisdom in that.”

  And Jack thought Billy needed to slow down on the Lone Star. “I was thinking that maybe I’d grab the boat and take Nathan to Lake Meredith fishing,” he said purposely directing the conversation away from Daisy. “Maybe camp out for a night.”

  “Rhonda and I took the girls and camped out at the lake last summer. We stayed at that Stanford-Yake campsite right there by the marina. It had a real nice comfort station for the girls.”

  “I don’t care how nice the toilets are.” Billy cared because he had to live with four females who’d bitch about it.

  “I thought you might want to ask Nathan’s momma to come along.”

  Jack stood and walked across the patio. “What’s gotten into you?” He wanted to get to know his son without anyone else around. Now that he knew about his reaction whenever Nathan brought up Daisy or Steven, he could control it. “Are you being contrary just to piss me off?”

  Billy laughed and stood also. “No, I just thought Nathan might be more comfortable with her there. He might open up more.”

  Maybe, but sleeping with Daisy in the same tent was not going to happen. It wasn’t even an option. And it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with him maybe putting a pillow over her head while she slept. He moved to the Rubbermaid garbage can by the side of the house, opened the lid, and tossed the bottle inside. “We’ll be okay alone.” He secured the lid down tight. “We’ll catch some walleye and maybe a few largemouth bass.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Hey, you two,” Jack called across the yard. “Get over here and give me some sugar so I can leave.”

  Lacy slid down the yellow plastic slide, and a few seconds later Amy Lynn jumped off the swing. They both ran across the lawn. Lacy with her head down as usual—Jack knelt on one knee, safely removing his nuts from head-butting level.

  Billy moved across the patio and threw away his bottle. “Maybe next week sometime, we should have Nathan over so he can meet his cousins.”

  “To meet your two yard babies?” Jack asked as he grabbed Lacy and set her on his knee.

  “I’m not a yard baby,” Amy Lynn protested, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

  “What are you, then? A yard bird?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A chicken”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Swear to God. That’s what your grandma Parrish called chickens. ’Course, she was raised on a farm in Tennessee and they really did have chickens in their yard.” He gave Lacy a kiss, then set her back on her feet. He stood with Amy Lynn’s arms still around his neck.

  “Don’t go,” she protested.

  “Got to.” He tickled her armpits and she giggled and dropped to her feet. “I have to make some big fishing’ plans.”

  “You’ll have fun,” Billy predicted as he scooped up Lacy and followed Jack to the gate at the side of the house. “Nathan’s a good kid. You can tell he’s being raised right.”

  Jack glanced over his shoulder at Billy. “You saw the way he looks. That ring though his lip and that hair. Those dog chains and his pants down around the crack of his ass.”

  “That’s the way some kids look today. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t raised right.”

  True, but Jack wasn’t in the mood to give Daisy credit for anything, especially since Billy seemed determined to play devil’s advocate. “When he was three, he wanted a Porsche 911.”

  Billy stopped dead in his tracks. “He’s a Parrish.”

  Finally, he’d made his point.

  Jack raised his hand and knocked twice on Louella Brooks’s front door. The sun was beginning to set, washing the porch in dull gray light.

  The door swung open and he came face-to-face with Daisy. Her hair was down around her shoulders, kind of messy as if she’d just got out of bed. She wore a pink dress that tied behind her neck and laced up between her breasts. Her feet were bare and she was sexy as hell. A contrary mix of anger and desire pulled low in his abdomen.

  “Hi, Jack.”

  “Hey. Is Nathan around?”

  “Nathan left with my mother, but . . .” Her brows lowered and she licked her lips. “What time is it?”

  He looked at his watch. “A little after eight.”

  “Oh. Well, Mom and Nathan went over to Lily’s to help her with dinner.”

  “How’s your sister?”

  She brushed her fingertips beneath her eyes. “Better. She went home from the hospital two days ago.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “I guess I nodded off during ‘Frasier’ reruns.” She gave him a warm, sleepy smile. “Nathan should be back anytime.”

  “Do you mind if I wait for him?”

  “Are you going to be nice?” She drew out the word niiiiiice. Daisy Lee had found her accent.

  “Reasonably.”

  She thought about if for a moment, then stepped back. “Come on in.”

  He followed her through the darkened living room. The technicolor light from the televison flashed white and blue patches across her bare shoulders and back. She led him into the kitchen and flipped the switch.

  It had been a long time since he’d been in Louella Brooks’s kitchen.

  “Would you like something to drink? Tea, Coke, water?” She smiled back over her shoulder at him. “Bourbon?”

  “No thanks.”

  She raked her finger through the top of her hair as she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a blue bottle of water with her free hand. Her fingers combed through her hair to the ends, then she twisted the top off the bottle and knocked the door shut with her hip.

  “How was your trip?” he asked.

  “It was real sad.” The silk strands of her hair
slid back in place, and she leaned a shoulder into the refrigerator and looked up at him. “I finally packed up most of Steven’s things. Junie came over and got what she wanted. Good Will came and got the rest.”

  Jack saw the sadness in her brown eyes and told himself he didn’t care. She lifted the bottle to her lips and took a long drink. When she lowered it again, a clear drop of water rested on her top lip. “I have some photos for you.” The droplet rested there for several long moments before it slid down and disappeared into the seam.

  “What photos?” If they were pictures of her and Steven and Nathan living it up in Seattle, then she could keep them.

  “The photo taken in the nursery when Nathan was born, of him riding his trike, blowing out birthday candles, playing football. Stuff like that.” She held up a finger. “I’ll be right back.”

  He didn’t want her to be reasonable. Giving him photos went beyond pretending to be nice in public. He didn’t want her to be nice at all. He didn’t want to watch crystal drops of water slide between her pink lips. He didn’t want to watch her leave, his gaze slipping down her back to her behind and the bottom of the dress where it touched the backs of her thighs.

  When she returned, she had a shoe box under one arm. “I have tons of pictures of Nathan; these are just a few that I thought you might like.” She carried them to the breakfast nook and took a seat. Jack slid into the seat across from her as she took off the lid to the shoe box. She pulled out a few photos and handed them to him. “This is his hospital picture. He was kind of bruised up because they had to use forceps on him.”

  Jack gazed down at the photo in his hand of a tiny baby with a bruise on his cheek. His eyes were kind of puffy and his mouth was pursed as if he where about to kiss someone. The next picture was of Daisy as he remembered her looking in high school. Like the day she’d left him. Her hair was big, and she sat in a hospital bed holding a baby wrapped up tight in a striped blanket. His baby boy. His girl. Only by then she hadn’t been his anymore.

  “I didn’t know if you’d want that one because I’m in it,” she said, “but I’m in all the pictures taken in the hospital.” She dug out a few more. “Any of these you don’t want, just leave them with me.” This time when she handed the photos over, she leaned across the table. “This was taken on Nathan’s first birthday.” She pointed to a baby standing on a kitchen chair. He had chocolate cake smeared on his face, clear up into his hair, and he wore a huge grin. The remains of a smashed cake sat on the table in front of him.

  “I’d just made his cake and turned my back to wash the dishes,” Daisy explained. “When I turned back, he was standing on that chair and had grabbed big hunks of cake. By the time I got my camera, he’d stuffed a bunch in his mouth and rubbed it on the top of his head.” Jack laughed and she looked up from the photo and smiled. “He was such a pistol,” she said and returned her attention to the picture. His gaze slid to the side of her neck. Her breasts were pressed against the table, pushing her cleavage over the top of her dress. If he leaned forward, he could smell her hair. “That was about the time we had to start locking him in our bedroom,” she said.

  Jack leaned way back. “Why?”

  She straightened. “Because that boy started crawling out of his crib when he was seven months old. We had to get him a little bed that was really low to the ground because we were afraid he’d hurt himself. Then one day, a little after his first birthday, I was making his bed, and under his satin baby pillow, I found three screw drivers.” She shook her head. “The only thing I could figure out was that he was roaming around the house after Steven and I fell asleep. So that’s when we had to lock him in our bedroom with us.”

  The three of them all in bed together. One big happy family. It should have been him. It should have been him with her and with Nathan. But she’d chosen Steven.

  She should have chosen him. It should have been him in that bed, but the harsh truth was that he couldn’t blame her for her choice.

  Not anymore. Not when she’d chosen Steven because she’d been eighteen and scared. But being eighteen and scared didn’t excuse her from keeping his son from him. He didn’t think he’d ever forgive her for that.

  She spread some more photos out on the table. “I have a lot of photographs of Nathan through the years. He’s my favorite subject. I have some really nice black-and-whites of him that I took a few years ago when we went climbing around the rocks at the bottom of Snoqualmie Falls. Black and white just balanced everything around him beautifully.” Her lips turned up at the corners. “Color would have been too overwhelming, and he would have been lost in the shot.”

  “You sound like you know a lot about taking pictures.” He had one of those auto-everything cameras, and still forgot to bring it to the girls’ parties.

  “I’m a photographer. It’s what I used to do for a living.”

  He hadn’t known that about her. Didn’t know very much about her life in Seattle, as a matter of fact.

  “It’s what I plan to do again. I’m going to open my own studio. I’ve been checking into small business loans, and I talked to a realtor about leasing a space in Belltown, which is in the downtown area.” She dug through the box and handed him more photos. “It’s going to be a little scary at first, but with the money I get from selling our house, and the money I received from Steven’s life insurance policies, we’ll be okay.”

  She was moving on with her life. Moving forward while he felt as if he were firmly stuck in the past. Unable to move.

  Louella walked into the kitchen with Nathan trailing behind, wearing even more chains than usual and a black T-shirt with a skateboarder on the front.

  Daisy slid from behind the table and moved to meet them. “Nathan, Jack came over to talk to you.”

  Nathan’s gaze met his over the top of Daisy’s head. Jack set the photo on the table and stood. He turned his attention to Daisy’s mother. She had blue smudges beneath her eyes and her hair listed left. “Good evening, Miz Brooks.”

  “Evening, Jackson.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’ve felt better,” she said. “Lily insists that she stay at her own home when it would be better if she stayed here.” She set her big black purse on the counter and moved to stand a few feet in front of him. “Last year Tiny Barnett’s youngest girl, Tammy, had woman trouble and had to have surgery. Did you hear what happened to her?”

  Jack wasn’t sure Louella was speaking to him. She was looking at him, but he didn’t know anyone named Tiny Barnett or her daughter Tammy.

  Evidently a reply wasn’t necessary, though. “She died because she went home from the hospital early.”

  “Mom,” Daisy said on a sigh, “Lily isn’t going to die.”

  “That’s what Tammy thought too. Left behind a little boy about Pippen’s age. Left a husband too. He was a Yankee fella from one of those eastern states, and when Tammy made her heavenly journey, he packed up that baby and left. Tiny hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him since. And Tiny is a good woman. She’s stuck with Horace Barnett all these years. And everyone knows that man was born tired and raised lazy. I don’t think he ever did work a job for more than a month straight.”

  She paused and it all came back to Jack in a flash. The reason he and Steven usually waited on the porch for Daisy. Fifteen years, and she hadn’t changed. Louella Brooks could still talk water up hill.

  “And he had that mentally retarded sister, bless her heart. She used to come by the diner and order gizzards, every now and again. I used to think that . . .”

  Jack felt a pressure in the back of his skull and looked behind Louella to Daisy and Nathan. They stood in profile, Nathan a few inches taller than his mother. He stared down at Daisy, his narrowed gaze communicating something. Daisy shrugged as if to say, “What do you want me to do?” While Louella rambled on about gizzards and chicken fried steak, Daisy and Nathan carried on a whole conversation without saying a word. Mother and son.

  Nathan rocked back on his heels and sla
shed his finger across his throat. Daisy covered her mouth with her hand and started shaking her head. They were a family. Just the two of them. Comfortable with each other. Relaxed. He wasn’t a part of it.

  As if she felt his gaze on her, Daisy looked at Jack, then she burst into laughter.

  “Goodness, Daisy. What’s gotten into you?” Louella asked as she turned to look at her daughter.

  “Just thought of something that happened today.” She brushed her hair behind her ears and said, “Jack came over to talk to Nathan, so maybe we should leave them to it.”

  “Actually, I was hoping that you and Nathan could walk me out to my car.”

  “Cool.”

  “Sure.”

  He turned his attention to Louella. “Good evening, ma’am. Give Lily my best the next time you see her.”

  “I will.”

  The three of them walked through the living room and out the front door, with Jack bringing up the rear.

  “Why didn’t you stop her?” Nathan asked as soon as the door was shut behind them.

  They moved from the porch and down the sidewalk. The setting sun filled the night sky with blazing reds and oranges, fading in the distance to pink and purple. It seemed to catch in strands of Daisy’s hair, turning it gold.

  “No one can stop your grandmother once she gets started,” Daisy answered.

  “All the way home from Lily’s she would not stop talking about someone named Cyrus.”

  “Cyrus is your great uncle who died when he was fourteen, bless his heart.”

  “And I give a crap because why?”

  “Nathan!”

  Jack chuckled.

  “Don’t encourage his bad behavior, Jack,” she said as they came to the end of the sidewalk.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He turned to his son. “How do you feel about fishing?”

  He shrugged. “My dad and I used to fish all the time.”

  Jack forced a smile. “I’m going bass fishing this weekend, and I wanted you to come along. I thought we’d leave Saturday morning and come back sometime Sunday.”