Marrying Daisy Bellamy

by Susan Wiggs

  Somehow, she managed to steal a few hours of sleep. In the morning, they all gathered for breakfast. She sat next to Julian, watching him methodically eat his way through the buffet—an omelet, pancakes, cereal, fruit—like a starving man.

  “You always did have a big appetite, boy,” Tante Mimi said fondly.

  “’Member when we had that pie-eating contest?” Remy asked.

  “Sure,” said Julian. “I was the winner.”

  “Yeah, but you had a bellyache all night.” Remy leaned forward to catch Daisy’s eye. “Me and Jules, we went camping at the state park. What we call that park, Mama?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Tante Mimi. “It was by Lake Ponchartrain.”

  “Yeah,” said Remy, “with our scouting group, and we had the eating contest. Learned stuff, too.” He handed Julian a plastic matchbox. “’Member this? I made it for you.”

  “Thanks, Remy.” Julian slid open the box. “Strike-anywhere matches, a water purification tablet… It’s everything I need to survive in the wilderness.” He took out a small wire. “I don’t remember what this is for.”

  Remy beamed, clearly delighted to be the authority. “You rub it on your hair and set it on top of some water, and it’ll always point north.” He frowned at Julian. “You got enough hair for that, Jules?”

  Julian burst out laughing. “I guess I’d better check.” He demonstrated the makeshift compass on his water glass. The tiny filament swung gently toward Remy. “Look at that,” Julian said. “You’re my true north, Rem.”

  “Even in Colombia?” Remy asked.

  Julian’s smile stayed in place, though Daisy sensed the tension ramping up. “A compass works differently south of the equator,” he said. “Still works, though. Thanks, Remy.”

  His New Orleans relatives and his mother had a long day of travel ahead of them. Daisy would be driving back to Avalon with Connor, Olivia and baby Zoe.

  Soon, Daisy would be back with Charlie and the life she’d made for herself. A few times, she caught herself thinking, I wish… And then she would rein herself in. Let him go, she thought. Let him go.

  After breakfast, she returned to her room to get her bag, pausing to check her hair and makeup. For some reason, it seemed important to look nice when she told him goodbye.

  In the lobby, she was surprised to find Julian there by himself.

  He was dressed in civilian clothes, loose cargo shorts and a pink golf shirt. It didn’t escape Daisy’s notice that every woman who passed by checked him out, yet he seemed oblivious to the attention. He had no idea how amazing he looked, at the peak of fitness, his posture perfect even when he was relaxing. The minute he spotted Daisy, his gaze never wavered, focusing on her with laserlike intensity.

  So much had changed for them both, but one thing remained constant—this pull of emotion that drew them together. It felt particularly present this morning, and Daisy discovered she was not the only one who felt that way.

  “Morning,” he said in a low voice that sounded intoxicatingly sexy. “I thought you’d never get here.”

  This was not, she reminded herself, the way she had scripted the conversation in her head. She was supposed to have a talk with him, tell him their lives were taking them in different directions and figure out how they were both going to deal with that.

  “Where is everyone else?” she asked, trying to get her bearings.

  “They all took off for the airport. They said to tell you goodbye.”

  “Connor and Olivia?”

  Julian picked up her overnight bag. “Already headed back to Avalon.”

  “What?” She stopped in the hotel doorway. “But what about me?”

  “I’ll get you home.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re driving me all the way to Avalon?” It was a long drive. The idea of having him all to herself was almost too much to bear.

  “I’m not driving you,” he said.

  “Then how—?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They boarded a campus-to-town bus marked Cayuga, the name of the narrow, forty-mile-long lake that stretched from Ithaca to Seneca Falls.

  She looked around nervously at the other passengers. “Don’t tell me we’re—”

  “Hush.” He gently put a finger to her lips, and his touch made her shiver despite the warmth of the day. “You’ll see.”

  She tried to steel herself against his charms but instead settled into a sense of delicious anticipation. Their heart-to-heart could wait a bit longer. “I do love surprises,” she said.

  “Then I guess you’ll love this.”

  At the lakefront he led the way past a busy marina, bobbing with sailboats and runabouts. There was a boathouse, with kayaks and canoes stacked on racks. At the end of a long, L-shaped dock were a couple of float planes.

  When Julian started down the dock, she balked. “Really, Julian? Seriously? You’re flying?”

  He grinned, his eyes bright with excitement. “You okay with that?”

  Unable to hold herself back, she set down her camera bag and raced toward him, leaping into his embrace and wrapping her arms and legs around him. “What do you think?” she demanded.

  He held her as if she weighed nothing. “Cool. We’ll be back in Avalon before Connor and Olivia.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” she said. “I mean, I miss Charlie. I always do when I’m away overnight, but—”

  “It’s okay.” He brushed his knuckles over her cheek.

  He knew her well. He knew that having a good time without Charlie around was a struggle for her. She and her little boy were a pair, even when they couldn’t be together.

  The float plane was a single engine two-seater that had been painted fuchsia. It belonged to the local flying club, which Julian had joined as soon as he’d matriculated at Cornell. He’d been taking flying lessons all through college, exchanging mechanical and maintenance labor for instruction, flight hours and fuel.

  Before boarding, he went through a safety and readiness checklist with methodical precision. She knew the reckless boy was still inside him, the guy who jumped rows of barrels on a motorcycle and tackled the worst technical rock climbs without batting an eye. Now she watched that restless energy channel itself into intense focus and concentration.

  She stood back on the dock, admiring the assured efficiency of his movements as he worked. Like a child’s toy, the moored plane bobbed in time to the lapping of the water. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said.

  He flashed a smile that managed to be at once boyish and sexy. “I’ve always wanted to take you flying.” He loosened the mooring ropes, holding one in his hand.

  “I feel like I already am,” she said, then flushed because that sounded so lame. Still, she could not help smiling. It was a magnificent day, the sky cloudless, the water flat and calm. The surrounding hills wore mantles of new green growth. Everything in sight seemed swollen with abundance, and anything seemed possible.

  Daisy knew she would soon be telling him farewell for good, or at least for the foreseeable future. But how could she do that now, when he was taking her flying, for heaven’s sake? She didn’t let herself dwell on it. Instead, she focused on the undeniable splendor of this day and felt grateful to be spending it with Julian.

  He jimmied the change in his pocket, seeming oddly nervous. “As a matter of fact, I was planning to—”

  “Julian, the plane!” She jumped to the edge of the dock. “It’s getting away.”

  Without hesitation, he leaped onto a pontoon, causing the small aircraft to bob wildly. He tossed her a rope. She grabbed it and pulled him back to the dock.

  “Thanks,” he said, “I almost lost you before I even had you.”

  “You should be more careful.”

  “I had my head turned. It’s not like I get to spend every day with the girl of my dreams.”

  “What did you call me?” Her heart was racing now.

  “The girl of my dreams. It’s cheesy, I know, but tha
t’s how I feel.”

  There were many ways to think about what he’d said. She knew he meant it in the best possible way, but she parsed the words, a habit of hers.

  Even the word girl. She hadn’t been a girl since the day she’d stared in horror at a home pregnancy test wand and realized her entire life was about to change. And being someone’s dream sounded all well and good, but in actual fact it turned her into a concept, an ideal, and she didn’t want that. She wanted him to know her on the most real level possible.

  “Julian—”

  “Ready?” he asked, unlocking the plane and flipping open the surprisingly flimsy door. “Climb aboard. I’ll load your stuff after.”

  She felt a thrum of excitement in her chest. The interior of the plane was like that of a middling sports car. Vinyl bucket seats, regular seat belts. The view out the front, over the sloping nose of the plane, was certainly different, though. The lake rolled out before them, reflecting the endless sky.

  Julian shoved off the dock and climbed into the cockpit. “Put on your headset. It’s going to get noisy in here.”

  She gamely donned a bulky headset. “Roger that.” Her voice sounded tinny and artificial. “How do I look?”

  “Like Princess Leia, with those big things on the sides of your head.”

  He did some more checking of the panel and gauges, and spoke on another frequency to a tower somewhere.

  The single engine started, sounding like a lawn mower motor. Daisy did not have a single reservation about his flying. She knew she was safe with him.

  He slowly navigated the plane out of the marina, and the whine of the motor crescendoed to a powerful drone. The shoreline flickered past with ever-increasing speed, and then they were swept aloft with a breath-stealing lift of power. The treetops seemed close enough to touch, and the long curved finger of Lake Cayuga beckoned with flashes of silver reflecting the sun.

  Daisy leaned back in her seat and laughed aloud. The day was glorious, and life was good.

  To most of the world, “New York” meant Manhattan—gridlock traffic, skyscrapers, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty. The rest of the state got little attention. Most people would be surprised by the vast wilderness and variety of the landscape. The brilliant scenery rolled out before them. There were towering hills and river-fed forests, rock formations and cliffs and gorges. They soared over Cherry Ridge Wild Forest and the Catskills Wilderness, overshooting Willow Lake for a view of the famed Mohonk Mountain House, a historic resort. Daisy had gone there with her mom and brother one winter, when their mother was still in the midst of picking up the pieces of her life after divorce.

  The thought of her parents’ divorce no longer felt like a fresh, bleeding wound to Daisy. She would always mourn the loss of her family, but if she was being completely honest with herself, even when all four Bellamys lived under one roof, they weren’t quite a family. From her earliest memory, there had been a deep chasm between her parents. She hadn’t understood it then, but she did now. As hard as it had been to accept, her mom and dad simply weren’t meant to be together, no matter how hard they tried.

  The breakup had not been easy for either parent, but the rewards were uncountable. Her father had remarried first, turning Daisy’s best friend, Sonnet Romano, into her stepsister. Later, Daisy’s mother had settled in Avalon and joined a law firm. Against all expectations, she’d fallen in love with the local veterinarian and couldn’t be happier.

  Daisy sighed with contentment and looked over at Julian. He must have felt her gaze because he turned, too. In high-tech aviator shades, he looked incredible, Top Gun in a pink golf shirt.

  The plane swooped down over the Shawangunks, a rocky ridge gouged by deep fissures. This particular wilderness area marked a special time for them both.

  “Remember?” he asked, indicating the dramatic striated rock formations above the river. A few rock climbers, looking like four-legged spiders, clung to the sheer faces. Julian had taken her climbing there the first summer they’d met. She had railed and resisted the climb with almost as much force as she had railed and resisted his friendship—at first.

  At that time in her life, she had not allowed herself to trust anyone, and that included Julian, even though she was completely intrigued by him. Challenged by him to climb, she had balked, but he’d simply been patient, knowing even then that she would come around. He was the only person she’d ever met who recognized her appetite for adventure. When everyone else dismissed her as another overprivileged city girl destined for a life of shopping and lunch, Julian had challenged her to want more, to be more.

  At the summit of the climb, lying exhausted in the powdery red dust, she had done something life-changing. She had taken out what became her last pack of illicit cigarettes and with Julian as witness, made a small fire and burned them all. She never smoked a cigarette again after that day.

  It would have been nice if that special, healing day had somehow inoculated her against future bumps and bruises, but it was not to be. At summer’s end, she’d gone back to her senior year at prep school, where she’d managed to screw up a lot more.

  A whole lot more.

  Julian flew the plane over a waterfall at Deep Notch, where they’d gone ice climbing one winter, another place wrapped in memories of a day like no other. Ice climbing. Who but Julian would think it was a good idea to scale a wall of ice? And who but Julian could talk her into following him? So many of the things she’d done with him involved climbing and striving, embarking on dangerous pursuits, trying extreme sports. The funny thing about following Julian on impossible adventures was that she always seemed to succeed.

  Getting to the top of the wall of ice had its own reward, but that was not what she remembered about that day. What she remembered was that, sitting at the frozen summit, shaking and sweating from the treacherous climb, she and Julian had finally shared their first kiss. Before that moment, she’d already known she loved him. What she had learned that day was that she would probably never stop.

  “And how about this place?” he asked, his voice thready over the headset.

  She wasn’t even going to pretend to be coy. “I remember every minute.”

  “Me, too.” He headed for their destination—Willow Lake. From the sky, the small lakeside town of Avalon looked both familiar and crazily different, like something generated by computer animation, perhaps. The town square and lakefront park were dotted with people out enjoying the day. She spotted the Avalon Meadows Golf Course and Country Club, where she’d shot many a wedding, and the Inn at Willow Lake, owned and operated by her dad and stepmom.

  She looked straight down at the cataract known as Meerskill Falls, draping a plunging gorge like a bride’s veil. At the top, almost indistinguishable, were hills and cliffs punctured by the famous ice caves, another place she and Julian had explored.

  She was tense, thinking about the past, and so she shifted gears, aiming her thoughts to the present moment.

  Finally, they came to the most familiar, most beloved landmark of all—Camp Kioga.

  She reached over and touched Julian’s arm. “It’s so beautiful,” she said.

  The gardens and sports courts were pristine. Window boxes with flowers in bloom decked the cabins, bungalows and bunkhouses clustered at the water’s edge. The grand pavilion dominated the landscape. A few kayaks were paddling around Spruce Island, a small green atoll crowned by a gazebo. A catboat skimmed by, its sail flying, offering a welcome glimpse of summer.

  “Want to take the controls?” asked Julian.

  “Are you kidding? Show me what to do.”

  He had her grip the controls. “The key is to have a light touch. No sudden movements, don’t try to force anything.”

  “Got it.” Very gently, she eased back and the plane climbed. She felt the way she imagined a kite would feel, or a bird with wings spread wide, riding the very air itself. I love this, she thought. I could do this forever.

  “I’ll take over for landing,” Julian said
after a while. He guided the plane into a downward glide toward an isolated area of the lake designated for float planes. The touchdown was smooth and exhilarating, and within minutes, they were tied up at the dock.

  Daisy put her arms around him and jumped up in another full body hug. It felt so good to be held by him. “That was magical,” she said. “Thank you so much.” Every nerve ending tingled as he set her down on the dock.

  “What’s that face?” he asked, breaking in on her thoughts.

  “What face? I don’t have a face.”

  “Right.”

  Her heart sped up. Time to speak up—that difficult conversation she’d imagined this morning hovered on the edge of her consciousness. This was her first opening. It might be her only chance before he was sent off to Timbuktu. She took a deep breath, and the words rushed out: “I love you, that’s what.”

  He froze, staring at her.

  She couldn’t believe what had come out of her mouth. It was supposed to be I can’t let myself love you, our lives are leading us too far apart, there can’t be any future for us. Instead, she’d spoken from a place where the stark truth dwelled, a truth she couldn’t escape, even though it defied common sense.

  She wondered if the words had shocked him. She couldn’t read his expression, and that scared her. “I’ve never told you before,” she said. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out.” She’d really blown it now, deviating from the script that had seemed so sensible in her hotel room this morning.

  Even though it felt as reckless as one of Julian’s stunts, she couldn’t stop herself. “I’m glad,” she rushed on foolishly. “I’m glad I said it, because I mean it. I’ve felt this way for a long time, forever and I keep waiting for it to go away, but the opposite is happening. It’s only getting worse.”