The Daisy Children

by Sofia Grant

  “This isn’t about you,” Caroline shot back. “For once, please, just admit that you aren’t the center of the universe. I’m telling you about grief. About real grief, not this—this romantic fantasy of yours.”

  “You want me to believe you loved her more than anything?” Margaret said. “I’ll tell you what, I believe you loved her more than me. That’s easy. There’s never been room in your heart for me. But Alelia told me, she was the one who raised Ruby. You were too busy with your clubs and your committees, so intent on climbing the ladder, feeling like everyone was beneath you. You forget: I was your daughter too. Not once did you ever make me feel like I could take her place, that I was really yours.”

  And damn it, she was crying now, big messy gasping sobs and tears streaking down her face. She wouldn’t have guessed there was room in her heart for more hurt, but it was almost as if she was a child again. Watching her mother put on her coat to go out while Alelia wiped away her tears and tried to console her. Lying in bed at night and wondering why her mother didn’t ever come for a good-night kiss.

  “At least Daddy tried,” Margaret finished, miserably. “He always tried to keep me from seeing that his heart was broken, that he’d trade me for Ruby in a second. He—he—” But her voice broke, and she couldn’t tell her mother that at least her father had swung her in the air as a toddler, had held her hand while she tossed stale bread for the ducks, that he’d bought her a bouquet of white roses for her twelfth birthday and a birthstone necklace for her sixteenth.

  “Stop that ridiculous whining.” Caroline’s face was pinched. “Your father and I gave you everything. We did the best we could for you. It’s never enough, is it?”

  “I guess not.”

  Caroline went to the door, but at the last minute she turned around and looked back. Her eyes were dry and dull; her expression grim. “Well then, I guess we’re even,” she said. “Because you were never enough for me either.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  You’re sure we don’t need to go home and change clothes?” Scarlett asked, after they’d finished their meal and helped Maude and her brother break down the tables and clean up the trash.

  “I think we’re fine,” Katie said, as she took a last look around the parking lot. At some point, Jam had simply vanished, without saying goodbye to anyone. Katie found herself oddly disappointed.

  She’d caught him watching her several times—but only because she couldn’t seem to keep herself from staring at him. It wasn’t that he was easy on the eyes—though he was, almost ridiculously so, with those Marine Corps abs and that gorgeous face that he did his very best to spoil by scowling. And it wasn’t the leg, either; he moved so easily on his prosthetic that she barely registered its presence.

  It was the riddle of all the kindness that he seemed so determined to hide. What kind of teenager lets the bratty kid next door hang out in his backyard? What kind of man chooses a career in the military after it nearly kills him, only to return to civilian life because his family needs him? What kind of man pretends that his work with helpless and abused animals is insignificant—then spends his free time rehabilitating lost causes?

  What kind of man had made a friend of the woman her own mother had described as a coldhearted monster?

  A man very different from the one she had married, that was for sure. Liam wasn’t a bad person—he had many great qualities, including keen intelligence, a sharp wit, a sense of humor. And he was good-looking, of course, though perhaps not as jaw-droppingly so as Jam.

  But Liam looked out for Liam first. He’d landed the job at Boston’s top ad agency by working his connections for all they were worth. With the exception of Rex, most of his friends seemed to have been chosen for the introductions they could make, the social circles in which they moved. Katie had known that when she married him, and she’d been happy to ride his coattails to the enviable life they’d built.

  Here in New London, she was an outsider again. No one cared about her address, her wardrobe, the number of likes on her Instagram posts.

  “Well, at least come fix up with me. The restroom’s a two-seater,” Scarlett said. “You can keep me company.”

  In the bathroom, Katie rinsed off her face and scrubbed the barbecue sauce from under her fingernails. Then she relinquished the mirror to Scarlett, taking a seat on a bench covered in fabric depicting pinup girls on roller skates, and watched as her cousin reapplied her makeup, from ebony eyeliner that winged out at the edges to a dab of gold shimmer on her already full lower lip.

  “Do you think I look okay?” Scarlett asked, when she was finally finished.

  “Honestly, you look beautiful, but I really don’t think you need to worry about it. The lawyer’s already been paid by Margaret. Uh, Grandma. Gomma.” The name still felt a little strange on her lips. “He works for us, if you want to look at it that way.”

  “I guess,” Scarlett mumbled. “I kind of wish we had time to run by the house, but it can be awful hard to find parking in downtown Tyler.”

  As Scarlett drove, Katie noticed the fuel gauge was hovering dangerously close to empty. She didn’t mention it, because neither of them had any money to do anything about it. When they arrived at the lawyer’s office, Katie had to stifle a laugh: unlike the near-impossible task of finding a free parking space in the Back Bay or Beacon Hill, a man in a cowboy hat actually stood in an empty parking space right in front of the building and waved them in, then tipped his hat and ambled away before they could thank him.

  And parking was free.

  Katie took the lead, hoping to calm her cousin’s nerves. “We’re here to see J. B. McNaughton,” she told the receptionist, a young woman in a gauzy vintage-style dress and bright red glasses.

  “Be right with you,” she said, and hammered at her keyboard for a few seconds. “That’ll show ’em. Okay. You must be Scarlett and Katie. Nice to meet you.”

  She stood up and offered her hand.

  “Oh!” Katie said. “You’re . . . J.B.?”

  “Janice Beth,” the young attorney said with a sly grin. “I use the initials to throw people off. Y’all go ahead, let’s sit over here.”

  Now Katie realized that what she’d mistaken for a reception area was actually the entire office. A small round table with four chairs served as a conference table, and a glass-front cabinet kept books and files out of the way. The only ornamentation was a battered silk fern in a mauve ceramic pot, and half a dozen crayon drawings taped to the wall.

  “My niece is the artist,” J.B. said, following Katie’s gaze. “She’s a real pistol. Reminds me of me. Got to say, I’ve been real curious to meet you two after working for your grandmother-slash-cousin for the last few years.” Noting Scarlett’s look of surprise, she added, “I know I look young, but I promise I passed the bar. Margaret was one of my very first clients. She told me she wouldn’t pay my full rate until I proved I could do the job. Never did give me a raise, either.”

  “Gomma was kind of cheap,” Scarlett admitted.

  J.B. chuckled and picked up a piece of paper from a manila folder she’d brought to the table. “You can say that again. When the appraiser she hired gave me this inventory of the contents of the house, he said he was pretty sure she hadn’t bought anything new in years.”

  “Excuse me,” Katie said. “You said Margaret hired an appraiser?”

  “Oh, yes. She did it shortly after she had me revise her will, over a year before she had her stroke. She wanted every detail addressed, and I have to say, the man she hired was amazingly thorough.” She glanced down at the list. “‘Seven pillowcases, various colors, standard size. Tissue box cover, crocheted.’ And on and on for fourteen pages. I can only imagine what she put that poor man through. Unfortunately, it didn’t really help the bottom line. He valued Margaret’s possessions at six thousand, two hundred and sixty dollars, and most of that was for her jewelry, which she subsequently sold.”

  “Does it say there, did she sell her big jade ring?” Scarlett as
ked. “She always said I could have it when I got old enough not to lose it. The veins on it looked like a horse head.”

  J.B. shook her head politely. “I don’t recall seeing a mention of that. I believe most of the value was in a wedding set that belonged to her mother.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Scarlett said. “I don’t think that ring was worth much. It just kind of reminded me of her.”

  J.B. regarded Scarlett thoughtfully. “Were you . . . close to Margaret?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. I loved her.”

  “Well then,” J.B. said gently. “I apologize. When Margaret said she was mostly estranged from family . . . and she was, er, very . . . matter-of-fact—”

  “It’s okay, you can say it,” Scarlett said. “She was a grumpy old lady most of the time. But she meant well, she really did.”

  J.B. glanced at Katie as though for confirmation. “I, um, regret that I only met her once,” Katie said.

  J.B. cleared her throat. “Well, then. Let’s get down to it. We can go over this in as much detail as you’d like, of course, but I’ll begin by just covering the major points. Let’s start with her checking, savings, and money market accounts, which totaled almost nine thousand dollars, and will be split equally between you.”

  “That’s four and a half thousand dollars!” Scarlett exclaimed.

  Katie said nothing: the share each of them would receive was less than the monthly mortgage on Rex and Lolly’s town house, a fact that she was pretty sure would astound her cousin.

  “Margaret left the house to you, Scarlett,” J.B. continued, “and all of the contents of the house and garage to you, Katie. In addition, Margaret made a rather specific stipulation.” She peered up at both of them, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “You have one week from this reading of the will to go through the house and decide what you want to keep, Katie, and then the rest of it is to be sold or otherwise disposed of, and the house delivered empty to Scarlett.”

  Scarlett blinked. “Well, that’s ridiculous, why would Katie want to sell any of it? It was Gomma’s!”

  J.B. tapped her fingernails on the desk, stifling a smile. “You know, Margaret thought you might say that. I think that’s why she had that appraisal done. She also had the house appraised. I’ve got that figure for you here.”

  She took another page out of the file and held it up for them to see the figure that followed a long paragraph of legalese.

  124 Oliver St.—$154,600

  “I have to say,” Katie said carefully, after a long moment passed. “I would have expected a higher figure, given the, um, economic revival in the area. I looked online and they say the fulfillment center’s going to bring almost a thousand new jobs. I thought . . .”

  “Oh, real estate values are almost certainly going up,” J.B. said. “Not at the rate you’re probably used to in Boston, though. And now that they’ve moved the proposed site of the center, there isn’t exactly a shortage of commercial space in New London. You could always hold on to the house and see if its value goes up, Scarlett, but there aren’t any guarantees.

  “And in your case, Katie, I obviously can’t enforce your grandmother’s wishes. If you tell me you’re dumping everything without going through it, well, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I believe Margaret was hoping that you’d honor her wishes out of a sense of . . . affection, I suppose, and perhaps duty as well.”

  Katie was mystified. Her grandmother was a stranger to her, a thorn in her mother’s side. From the way Georgina described her, she was stingy, selfish, and downright mean. But Margaret apparently had motives that were opaque to all of them, Scarlett included.

  “Well,” she said, attempting a game smile. “It should be an interesting week.”

  SCARLETT WAS QUIET on the drive back. She’d taken a call while Katie visited the ladies’ room, and it hadn’t improved her mood—when Katie asked if everything was all right, Scarlett had simply shrugged in a tight-lipped way that suggested she was trying to hold back tears.

  As they passed the “Welcome to New London” sign, Katie couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Scarlett, that was a new experience for me too. I’ve never inherited anything before. I honestly don’t know if I’ll keep any of Margaret’s stuff. So I guess I just wanted to say, if you want any of it—it’s yours. And about the house, whether you end up selling it or not, I just wanted you to know that I’m ready to talk, or listen or whatever you need.”

  Scarlett glanced her way, hands tight on the steering wheel. “That’s nice of you,” she said. “The thing is, I know exactly what I’d do if it was just me. But Merritt—well, we don’t really see eye to eye.”

  “How so?”

  Scarlett sighed. “He thinks I should sell the house and invest the money. He’s got this friend who’s starting a business and if we get in on it now, before it takes off, we could make a lot of money. And the thing is, I kind of owe him. Merritt, I mean. I haven’t always been able to pay my half of the rent this last year and so I just pay what I can, and . . . well, he says we’re a team, we help each other out when we need it, and I agree with that, you know? I want to be fair.”

  Alarm bells were going off for Katie—she guessed that Scarlett didn’t know the first thing about investing. Merritt might not be involved in the kind of high-stakes insider trading that landed people in jail, but given what she knew about him so far, she wasn’t at all confident that he was looking out for Scarlett’s best interests.

  An idea was taking shape, one that didn’t really fit into her plan to come down to Texas and wring every cent she could from Margaret’s estate. What if she were to stay in New London a little longer, and help her cousin figure out if she could afford to keep the house and maybe even start her day care business? Katie had a business minor and had planned to get her MBA at some point, maybe even strike out on her own someday, and she knew enough, as Liam said, to be dangerous. But in this situation it seemed pretty obvious that Scarlett needed help.

  “Listen, Scarlett, I know you’re worried about owing Merritt money. But I’d hate for that to be a factor in your decision. What if I loan you the money to pay him back? That way you could take a little more time with this decision. I could help you make a business plan, if you want.”

  “Oh gosh, Katie, I don’t know. It would take money to get started, and all I’ve got’s the house.”

  “And the money from Gomma’s accounts.”

  “Oh, right,” Scarlett said, brightening. “It doesn’t hardly seem real, does it?”

  “It is real. And that money is yours, to do with what you want. Listen, how much do you owe Merritt right now?”

  Scarlett thought for a moment. “Well, honestly, it’s probably up to almost a thousand dollars at this point,” she said. “I fell behind around the holidays. You know, buying Christmas presents.”

  Katie reached over impulsively and patted Scarlett’s arm. “Then don’t give it another thought. You’ll easily be able to pay him back as soon as you get the money from the estate. And I can start doing a little research into the real estate market, to make sure J.B.’s estimate of the value of the house is accurate. If you need more cash—like for instance if you decide to open your day care business—we could look into a bank loan for start-up costs.”

  Scarlett’s eyes went wide. “Wow, I never thought a bank would lend me money. It would be so great if you could help me,” she said. “I’m so confused about what to do. It’s been, well, this whole inheritance has caused some trouble between me and Merritt, I don’t mind saying.”

  They had reached the end of Oliver Street, and Scarlett slowed the truck and coasted over to the curb. Up ahead, over the row of roofs of the other houses on the block, Katie could see the widow’s walk perched at the top of her grandmother’s old mansion, and the redbud trees blooming in the front yard.

  “Just think, when Gomma was born this whole entire block was her family’s land,” Scarlett said. “The only other houses on the street were those
big ones on the other side, but they didn’t have near as much land as Gomma’s family did. I know there’s pictures—I think the historical society probably has them now, since Gomma gave them a bunch of her scrapbooks a while back. I wish you could see how it used to be before . . . I mean, in case I have to sell it.”

  “Listen, Scarlett, don’t make up your mind yet,” Katie said. “We won’t know what’s possible until we look into it.”

  “Oh, it’s okay. If I end up having to sell, well, that’s just the way it is and I’ll be fine with it. But I do want to make sure we go through all of Gomma’s stuff so you can at least see it all. I know you need to get back to Boston, and what do you want all this old stuff for, anyway? It’s like me and the house—it doesn’t make any sense for me to have this big old thing when I don’t even have a husband or kids. Or even a job. But still . . . I mean, it’s family, you know?”

  The little splinter of guilt Katie’d been wrestling turned into a giant spike. She’d known her cousin for two short days, and already she could tell that Scarlett was starving for family connections—and until this week, Katie had never even bothered to learn anything about her side of the family.

  What if she did stay long enough to really get to know Scarlett, to help her figure out what to do with the house, to find a home for her grandmother’s belongings instead of just carting them to a dump? Maybe the historical society and museum might want some of them, especially anything connected to the school explosion. They were an important part of local history, after all. And maybe she’d find other stuff—like the box of letters in the hall closet—that would shed some light on who her mother had been, and how she’d become the way she was. Maybe, just maybe, Katie might end up closer to Georgina.

  Just like Scarlett, Katie had few real connections. She’d fought her way out of Texas and into Columbia, but once she got there she’d just drifted . . . through school and friendships and dating and even, if she was honest with herself, her marriage. She’d counted herself lucky to find Liam, everyone said they made a great couple, so just like the rest of her adult decisions—what job to take, where to vacation, when to have a baby—ending up with him simply seemed like a safe choice.