The Daisy Children

by Sofia Grant

  But Georgina seemed on the verge of bolting, so Margaret grabbed the cup off the end and pressed it into Katie’s hands.

  “Someday,” she began, but at the same second Katie said, “Thank you very much,” and Georgina gave her hand an impatient tug, and then—

  And then they were gone.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Katie and Scarlett had been taking turns with the letters, passing them back and forth across the table. Scarlett had read each first, and so when she exclaimed “Holy fuck!” Katie had to wait her turn to read for herself.

  In those moments, a parade of possibilities galloped through her mind. Murder, betrayal, intrigue . . . but when Scarlett wordlessly handed over the brittle folded paper, watching her as she read, Katie realized that somewhere deep inside her she’d already considered this possibility—if not in this precise outline, at least in some rough and unexamined form.

  She read the letter twice and then set it down. It took her a moment to comprehend it. “So Gomma was really Euda’s daughter,” she said slowly. “And Caroline took her and raised her as her own.”

  “And no one ever knew!”

  “But we don’t know that,” Katie said. “I mean, these were in Margaret’s desk. Someone put them there.”

  “It must have been Caroline,” Scarlett said. “Caroline hid them there and they’ve been there ever since. She might even have wondered what happened to them—maybe she forgot and thought she threw them out.”

  “I don’t know,” Katie said. “How could you forget something like that? I mean, this is the biggest secret I can imagine. Caroline faked a pregnancy! She basically bought Euda’s baby!”

  “No, it said in the letter, Euda didn’t want any money.”

  “But she wanted something,” Katie said. “I mean, it was in every letter, between the lines. She wanted her sister back.”

  “And Caroline wouldn’t have anything to do with her,” Scarlett said. “Gomma always said her mother thought our side of the family was trash. Gomma only met her cousins one time, at a wedding. And she never met the rest of us until she just decided to drive over to Archer when I was five. She didn’t call or anything. She told me she was afraid my mom would shut the door in her face.”

  “But . . . there has to be more to it than that,” Katie said. “Don’t you think it’s strange she just showed up at your door one day for no reason? I bet you anything she found those letters and realized that—that she was actually Pammy and Amy and Lassiter’s sister, and her parents were actually her aunt and uncle. God, this is confusing!”

  “But she would have told me!” Scarlett said. “I mean, Katie, we talked about everything. Things I never even told my mom.”

  “Maybe she figured it was too late,” Katie said. “That too much time had passed—that it was better not to stir things up.”

  For a while neither of them spoke, rereading the letters. Then a thought occurred to Katie.

  “What if . . .” she said slowly. “I mean, think about her will. About her wanting us to take a week to clear out that house. You have to admit that’s kind of strange, right? What if this was her way of forcing us to get to know each other—”

  “—and leaving us a treasure hunt so we’d find the letters?”

  “Not just the letters, but the stock certificates.” Katie snapped her fingers. “And my mom’s letters! Remember the very first night—”

  “In that box, in the hall closet,” Scarlett said excitedly. “Like she wanted you to find them.”

  “Because there wasn’t any other way to tell her side of the story,” Katie said. “My mom refused to even talk to her on the phone.”

  “And my mom never even had a chance to know,” Scarlett said wistfully.

  “Do you think you should tell your grandmother?”

  “Grandma Sharon?” Scarlett did the calculations. “So her mom was Pammy, who was really . . . Margaret’s sister.”

  “Wow,” Katie said. “That’s . . . that would be hard to process. All this time they lived thirty miles from each other and never even spoke. Just like Caroline and Euda.”

  “So what does this make us?” Scarlett said. “Gomma told me you were my second cousin, once removed. But if we were actually . . . let’s see. Your grandmother was my great-grandmother’s sister. Her child was . . . this is so confusing.”

  Katie shrugged. “Then don’t think about it. Let’s just be cousins. I mean, does it really even matter?”

  Scarlett grinned. “I don’t guess it does.” She lifted her glass of lemonade. “Here’s to family.”

  As they clinked glasses, the breeze coming through the window lifted one of the sheets of paper and swept it to the floor and under the old stove, so that only a corner peeked out. Katie dove to the floor and retrieved it. “That was close. Just imagine, the truth could have been buried for another eighty years!”

  “This is the story we’ll tell our own children. Oh!” Scarlett exclaimed, her eyes shining. “You’ll be my kids’ auntie! Aunt Katie. You know, if you end up marrying Jam, then I’ll be related to him for real.”

  “Hold on there, Scarlett, you’re out of control,” Katie protested. “In the past two weeks, I’ve lost the grandmother I never knew, made out with a man who isn’t my husband, and discovered a shocking family secret. Don’t you think that’s enough for a while?”

  Scarlett gazed at her happily. “Maybe not. I mean, isn’t that the point of all this? Caroline did this unthinkable thing and lived with the secret her whole life. Margaret never even got to know her own family. Shouldn’t we learn from that? Seize the day, or something like that?”

  “Close enough,” Katie laughed. “Seize the day, indeed.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  March 1998

  A week later Margaret drove the thirty miles to Archer, to the house she’d visited once before. It had been painted a cheery yellow, and there was now a neat square of lawn edged in a flower bed bursting with marigolds and zinnias. She walked up to the door, trembling with nerves. Before she even had time to knock, a little girl opened the door and looked up at her with wide brown eyes set in the most beautiful heart-shaped caramel-colored face that Margaret had ever seen.

  “You must be Scarlett,” Margaret said, her heart knocking around her chest like a bug in a jar. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  Epilogue

  The weeks following the garage sale were marked with record rains. Indian Creek rose up in its banks and flooded the construction site, and work on the fulfillment center was stalled as engineers reviewed their calculations. Civic groups from both Rusk and Harrison Counties took advantage of the opportunity to stage protests and, since it was a slow news week, got their faces on TV, at least in the local markets.

  On the day that the sun burst through the clouds and lit the entire town with streaks of gold, drying up the puddles and bringing everyone out of doors with faces upturned to the sun, Katie was on her knees in the upstairs bathroom of her grandmother’s house using a Q-Tip to scour the grime from the seam where the baseboards met the beautiful old tiny hexagon floor tiles, when suddenly the light was blocked by someone standing in the doorway.

  “Please, please tell me the pizza’s here,” she said, backing awkwardly around the toilet on all fours. “Because I’m about to faint from hunger.”

  But it wasn’t Jam standing in the doorway. At eye level were a long and lacy yellow skirt and crimson gladiator sandals and three silver toe rings, one with a jet stone. On one ankle, a familiar tattoo of a moth.

  “Lolly!” Katie stood up so fast that she knocked her head against the sink, but it didn’t matter, because Lolly wrapped her arms around her and hugged her so hard she lifted Katie clean off the floor. “I can’t believe you came!”

  “Of course I did, you ninny.” They were both laughing and crying at the same time, Katie breathing in Lolly’s familiar peony perfume. “Do you think we could get out of the bathroom? I mean, I love you madly, but there’s barely ro
om for both of us. What are you doing in here, anyway?”

  Katie led her across the hall and into Margaret’s old room, which Scarlett had painted a soft powder pink and filled with furniture she’d rescued from elsewhere in the house. On the bed were a stuffed hippo and a headless doll that she’d found up in the cupboards of the garage apartment.

  “I’m helping, Lolls,” she said, taking armloads of laundry off the settee and tossing them on the bed so they could sit down. “It turns out I’m a helpful person! Who knew?”

  “Not Nickell, March, obviously,” Lolly said, wrinkling her nose. “They never recognized your potential. I heard they’re into a second round of layoffs, by the way.”

  “Yeah, I saw that.” Katie allowed herself a smirk. “How’d you get in the house, anyway?”

  “Uh, the door was wide open? Plus the Lyft driver apparently knew your grandmother.”

  “Trust me, everyone knew Gomma,” Katie said, rolling her eyes. “I have to admit this small-town stuff takes a little getting used to.”

  “But you really are liking it, right?”

  There was the faintest trace of uncertainty in Lolly’s voice. Katie grabbed her hands and squeezed. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You didn’t believe me?”

  Lolly squeezed back. “I mean, yeah, I believed you, I guess, except every time I talk to you there’s a dog barking or power tools in the background or a man’s voice yelling for you to come back to bed . . .”

  Katie felt her face redden. “That only happened one time. And I told you I’d be back in Boston for your birthday!”

  “Which isn’t for three more months.” Lolly tossed her impossible hair. “You know I’ve got no talent for deferred gratification. Besides, I have some gossip that’s too good to share over the phone.”

  “What!”

  “Let’s just say . . .” Lolly cocked her head and regarded her with an expression of great gravity. “A certain unnamed ex of yours got trapped in the elevator after work and the janitor had to get the security guy, who ended up calling the fire department, because he apparently did something to the controls that caused it to get jammed between floors and then couldn’t get it going again. They were in there for hours.”

  A tiny beat passed. “They . . . ?”

  Lolly nodded triumphantly. “A different intern this time, I think from HR? Which, I mean, not great for her career prospects, right? But here’s the good part: Liam didn’t have any pants. Like, nowhere in the elevator. Nowhere to be found!”

  Katie felt a wave of dizziness not unlike the time she rode the Poltergeist at Six Flags, the sense of the car chugging up the roller coaster’s tracks to the top, the horror and thrill of the steep pitch that would follow. “Okay, I’ll bite,” she said faintly. “Where were his pants?”

  “Well, Rex had to pour like half a bottle of scotch down him—and by the way, Rex says to tell you he and Liam are getting a divorce and can he please come home, and don’t worry, I told him he needs to grovel a little longer—but anyway, Liam finally admitted he’d left the pants on the floor of his boss’s corner office because he and the intern were playing truth or dare.” Her good humor gave way to a look of disgust. “Like a couple of fucking thirteen-year-olds. Honestly, I think that was the last straw for Rex. Although, now that I think of it, there’s probably at least a thirteen-year age difference between them, so—hey, honey, you okay? God, should I not have told you?”

  Katie brushed impatiently at her eyes. “No, no, I’m fine. I’m good. That just confirms everything I said to him the other night.”

  “So you did call him!”

  “Yeah . . . I mean, I got to thinking, and this is going to sound stupid because of everything I’ve ever told you about my mom, but—well, I thought, What would Georgina do?”

  “No!” Lolly gasped.

  Katie nodded. “And so I called him up and I gave him a chewing-out he’ll never forget. I didn’t let him get a word in until I’d let him know every single way he didn’t measure up. Including in the sack.” Katie smiled at the memory. “That part was pure Mom.”

  Lolly shook her head, grinning. “Look at you . . . all grown up.”

  The door was flung open and there was Jam, his powerful arms glistening with sweat, tool belt slung low on his hips, two large pizza boxes balanced on one hand.

  “My, my, my,” Lolly said under her breath. “You sure do know how to bury the lede, honey.”

  SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, the morning of the grand opening of Daisy Day Care dawned bright and clear and filled with the delicious aroma of cinnamon as Jam and Kyle came walking into the house carrying trays of rolls and fruit.

  “I’m so nervous!” Scarlett fretted, as the guys went out back to make a final check on the play structure, which they’d only finished installing the day before. “What if no one comes?”

  “Um, didn’t you tell me yesterday that the waiting list just topped ten?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing.”

  Georgina walked into the kitchen, dressed in tight white pants and a daring V-neck navy pullover, silver bangles jingling at her wrist, her makeup perfect. “Where’s the coffee?”

  “Nice of you to join us, Mom,” Katie said. “Sorry you didn’t get to help with any of the setup.”

  “I needed my beauty sleep,” Georgina said mildly, kissing Katie on the cheek. She gave Scarlett’s hand a squeeze and helped herself to a strawberry. “Your office is just a darling little hideaway. So romantic!”

  “So help me, Mother, you’d better not sneak Darryl up there and have your way with him on my desk,” Katie warned.

  Her mother wrinkled her nose. “About that,” she said. “Darryl won’t be joining us.”

  “Oh dear,” Scarlett said.

  Katie rolled her eyes. “What happened, did you poison him in his sleep and make off with his Jaguar?”

  “It turns out it was leased,” her mother said with a shudder of distaste.

  “That’s terrible,” Katie said drily. “Well, maybe you can lure one of Scarlett’s new clients into your lair. All those young dads—one of them’s bound to have a Mrs. Robinson thing.”

  “Hmmph,” Georgina said, taking another strawberry. “I’ll be out back. Maybe Jam and Kyle will be a little more grateful for my company.”

  “You never know,” Katie said cheerfully. “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it, darling!”

  Once she was safely out of earshot, Scarlett refilled their coffee cups. “So you were going to tell me,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to tell! We had a very nice dinner at the Grub House. I can see why it’s a local legend.”

  “All-you-can-eat crawdads, and free bibs too!” Scarlett crowed. “Not bad for your six-month anniversary.”

  “It’s not an anniversary if we’re not dating,” Katie said. “Which we aren’t. I’m still technically married, remember?”

  “Only because J.B.’s been too busy with your business stuff to get around to filing,” Scarlett shot back. “Seems to me I’ve heard you come in the door when the sun’s coming up a few times.”

  “It seems to me someone recently reminded me that we’re grown-ass women,” Katie said. “If I want to do the walk of shame every day of the week, well, I don’t guess anyone can stop me.”

  The “someone” was none other than J.B. herself. In the months since Margaret’s death, while Katie and Scarlett had overseen repairs to the old house, J.B. had handled the inheritance, the incorporation of Katie’s new branding business that she ran out of the old groundskeeper’s apartment, and the dissolution of the contract Scarlett had unwisely signed with Merritt. The latter had taken a healthy chunk of change, but since Scarlett waited until the papers were filed to inform Merritt that she was worth well over a million dollars, he had no recourse but to get fantastically drunk, drive across their front lawn, and stand on the porch yelling a colorful v
ariety of threats and curses—which gave Jam the opportunity he’d been waiting for for years. His ass well and truly whipped, Merritt had slunk away and not been heard from again.

  “You know,” Scarlett said, “you’re sounding more like a Texan every day.”

  “I guess there’s worse things,” Katie said.

  She went out into the foyer, which was now lined with colorful cubbies for the children’s belongings. In a matter of days, the downstairs rooms would ring with the sound of their voices. Occasionally, Katie still had a pang of sadness when she saw the colorful mobiles over the cribs or the stack of diapers in the dining room built-ins, but she was ready to accept that her chance to be a mother would come again when it was the right time.

  Eighty years ago, a child had run through this house, the apple of her parents’ eyes, as beloved as any who had died that warm afternoon in March 1937.

  The following winter a new child arrived, a replacement for the one who was lost.

  Nothing in life seemed to turn out the way it was planned. People loved as best they could, made fortunes and lost them, chased dreams that were ever out of reach, and hid their pain out of sight. Katie thought she’d left the messiness of her family behind, never realizing that she was every bit the creature of all who’d come before.

  This was home—for now. Technically she rented a room and leased an office, but Scarlett was family, and so it went much deeper than a place to live and work. The new business had scored a couple of clients from back in Boston, and next week she’d sign her first local client—a mobile massage business.

  “Hey, good-lookin’.” Jam appeared in the doorway. “Your mother just ordered me to fix her a screwdriver.”

  “Let her fix it herself,” Katie said, throwing her arms around his neck. “She’s resourceful. What do you say we go back to your place and check on the dog?”