Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Daisy
There are several ways to survive walking toward your mother with a fake boyfriend, a rescue dog, and a lie large enough to qualify for its own zip code.
One, keep your shoulders back.
Two, smile like you are not currently reconsidering every decision that led to this exact fall-decorated porch.
Three, do not let the dog make better emotional choices than you.
Unfortunately, Puck has already betrayed me.
He sits at my mother’s feet like he has been summoned by vineyard law, tail sweeping the porch boards, eyes full of devotion, enormous head tilted upward as if Eleanor Thorn is the patron saint of ear scratches and inherited property.
My mother bends and rubs behind his torn ear.
Puck closes his eyes.
The traitor.
“Oh,” Mom says, her voice warming. “Aren’t you handsome?”
I glance at her. “Do not encourage his vanity.”
Forrest shakes his head. “Too late.”
Puck leans harder into my mother’s hand, apparently deciding within six seconds that Winterberry Cove is his ancestral estate, and the rest of us are staff.
Mom looks from Puck to Forrest, then to me.
That is the dangerous part.
My mother’s eyes are not dramatic. They don’t widen or narrow like a woman in a cable drama.
Eleanor Thorn’s eyes simply collect things.
Details. Timing. Distance. The way Forrest opened my door.
The way I’m holding my notebook like it contains legal immunity.
The way he stands beside me instead of in front of me.
The way I’m breathing.
I can practically hear her filing everything into categories.
Daughter.
Wolfcraft.
Dog.
Possible betrayal.
“Darling girl,” she says, opening her arms.
I want to glare at her.
Where the fuck did “darling girl” come from? Are we performing some tragic vineyard play where I’m the returning daughter, Forrest is the brooding romantic lead, and Puck is the emotionally stable chorus?
I hope not. I’m already committed to one low-budget production called Fake It Until November, and the role is demanding enough without adding Shakespearean daughter to my résumé.
Still, I step into her arms.
Because what else can you do when your mother looks at you with love instead of disappointment?
Her coat smells like lavender, woodsmoke, and the hand lotion she has used since I was a kid. For one second, I am small enough to want this to be simple. Then she squeezes me a little too tightly, and the second passes.
“You’re too thin,” she says near my ear.
“Good morning to you too.”
I lean back and give her a look because last week on a video call she implied I looked like I was gaining. With my mother, there is always a correct size, a correct reaction, a correct way to be hurting that doesn’t inconvenience the room.
Just enough.
Never too much.
Never not enough.
Which is probably how I became a woman who can fit herself into whatever container people need. Daughter. Planner. Ex-fiancée. Emergency solution. Fake girlfriend with seasonal posture.
Look at me, unpacking generational damage after half a self-help shelf and a bookstore employee discount.
Bea says that isn’t the same as therapy.
Bea is correct.
Unfortunately, rent and therapy are not currently on speaking terms.
“This place is beautiful,” Forrest says, as if he’s defusing a family heirloom before it explodes.
Smart man.
Mom’s gaze moves to him. “Forrest Wolfcraft.”
“Mrs. Thorn.”
She looks between us again, and I hate how pleased that makes her.
“Well,” she says. “Come in. We have coffee.”
As we walk toward the entrance, Forrest leans closer, voice low enough for only me. “You okay?”
“No,” I say brightly, because commitment to performance is important in community theater and fake dating.
His eyes hold mine. “You’re hurting.”
I exhale through a smile. “But functioning.”
“Good.”
“Don’t get attached to my honesty. It visits briefly and leaves no forwarding address.”
“Noted.”
We follow Mom inside.
The Thorn house is old in the way New England houses are old, meaning every floorboard has an opinion and one door upstairs has never closed properly despite three generations of men insisting they fixed it.
The kitchen is big and bright, with windows looking out over the vineyard rows and the lake beyond. Copper pots hang above the island. Tiny pumpkins line the windowsill like they’re waiting to be assigned tasks.
I used to do homework at this island.
I used to steal cinnamon rolls from that counter.
I used to stand barefoot on these tiles while my father taught me how to make coffee too strong because, according to him, weak coffee is how the day knows it can beat you.
The thought comes too fast.
Dad.
The kitchen does this sometimes. Keeps him in corners no one warned me about.
“Cider donuts,” I announce, clapping once because tears before breakfast would be gauche and also deeply inconvenient. “Please tell me there are cider donuts.”
Mom studies me for a second too long. “There are cider donuts.”
“Wonderful. I can survive emotional ambushes if fried dough is involved.”
Forrest looks down at me. “Useful information.”
“Vital, actually. Put it in the contract.”
“Which one?”
“Any of them. I’m versatile.”
Mom turns toward the hallway. “Let me call Calla. She can have breakfast with us before we head out.”
“Calla is here?” I ask, maybe too cheerfully. “Where is she?”
“Tasting room.”
Forrest pauses with a crate in his arms. “Who’s Calla?”
“My cousin,” I say. “She runs the flower farm and has the emotional warmth of a locked barn.”
“I heard that,” a voice says from the doorway.
Helena appears wearing mud-splattered boots, a sweater under a waxed jacket, and the expression of a woman who has already murdered three conversations before coffee.
Her curls are piled in a clip, pieces escaping around her face.
In one hand, she holds a bucket of dahlias. In the other, floral snips.
Her gaze slides to Forrest, assessing and unimpressed.
“Oh, wow,” she says. “You brought a Wolfcraft.”
“Miss Thorn,” Forrest says with a nod.
“Watch it, Helena,” I warn. “He’s protected by the Wolfcraft-Thorn treaty Soren and Winnie claim will keep their little bundle away from both families if we misbehave.”
Helena glares at me. “Fine. But I’m doing this under duress.”
“Noted.” I pretend to scribble in the air.
She looks me over, and I feel it before she says anything. The appraisal. The worry. The cousinly affection wrapped in blunt force trauma.
“So,” she says, “are you helping with harvest setup? It’s not the same without you bossing everyone around.”
“Thank you. I’ve missed being appreciated for my worst traits.”
Helena gives me a quick hug, the bucket pressed awkwardly between us. She smells like soil, eucalyptus, and cold morning air.
“You look tired,” she says.
“Wonderful. That’s becoming my brand.”
“You also look expensive-adjacent,” she adds, glancing at Forrest.
“I’m standing right here,” Forrest says.
“Then try to look less like a family complication.”
Mom makes a small sound into her mug.
I point at Helena. “This is why I missed you.”
“You didn’t call.”
“I was busy being busy and dating this grumpy specimen.”
Helena glances at Forrest again. “Acceptable.”
Forrest’s mouth does not move, but I know him now. That is his almost-smile trying not to become evidence.
Mom sets a plate of cider donuts on the island with the precise calm of a woman trying very hard not to ask forty-seven questions.
“Eat breakfast,” she says. “We have a busy day, and I’d like everyone conscious for it.”
“I love when family affection sounds like a staff memo,” I say, reaching for a donut.
“You faint once during harvest inventory and no one lets you forget it,” Helena says.
“I was seventeen and dehydrated from excellence.”
“You were seventeen and refusing water because you thought carrying four crates at once made you indispensable.”
I take a bite of donut instead of responding, which is mature and also delicious.
Forrest watches me for half a second too long.
“What?” I ask around cinnamon and poor life choices.
“Nothing.”
“That was not a nothing face.”
“You have sugar on your mouth.”
I freeze.
Mom freezes.
Helena freezes with the predatory delight of a woman handed entertainment before breakfast.
Forrest reaches for a napkin, then stops himself.
Small.
Barely anything.
Still, I feel the almost-touch in every place it doesn’t happen.
I grab the napkin from him before my mother can start embroidering our initials onto guest towels.
“Thank you,” I say, wiping my mouth with the dignity of a woman who has not just been emotionally compromised by pastry dust.
Forrest looks away first.
Good.
Terrible.
Breakfast becomes a brief, dangerous exercise in not letting my mother’s hope sit too comfortably in the room. She asks Forrest about Puck. Helena asks him if he knows anything about fixing a broken cooler in the flower shed. Forrest says, “Probably,” which, from him, is basically a sonnet.
Mom notices that too.
Of course she does.
By the time we step outside, the morning has warmed just enough to lift the mist off the vineyard. Rows of vines stretch down the hill toward the lake, leaves rustling in the light wind. The air smells like damp earth, grapes, and woodsmoke from somewhere beyond the barns.
My chest aches before I can stop it.
I missed this.
That’s the awful part.
Not Liam. Not the gossip. Not the town watching me fail at being the woman they thought I’d become.
This.
The porch boards beneath my boots. The curve of the rows. The tasting room doors propped open. Helena walks ahead with her bucket. My mother moves through the property like she knows every inch by pulse.
Forrest falls into step beside me.
He doesn’t say anything.
Somehow, that helps.
We cross the yard toward the vineyard path, Puck trotting ahead as if he has been hired as security and paid in ear scratches.
Mom and Helena walk a few paces in front of us, already discussing centerpieces, harvest timing, and whether Carla’s mother can be kept away from the flower order without requiring legal intervention.
Forrest’s shoulder brushes mine.
Once.
Accidental, probably.
Neither of us moves away.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
“I’m absorbing.”
“That’s my line.”
“I’m borrowing it. Fake relationships require resource sharing.”
His eyes stay forward. “You okay?”
I look out over the vines.
There are too many answers to that question, and none of them belong on a fall morning with my mother ten feet ahead and my fake boyfriend standing close enough that I can feel the warmth of him through my sleeve.
So I give him the truest one I can afford.
“I forgot how much I missed it.”
Forrest nods once.
No pity. No advice. No attempt to fix the thing in me that cracked open the moment I saw the rows.
Just that nod.
Like he heard me.
Like he’d keep the sentence safe if I needed him to.
Helena turns back and calls, “Daisy, are you coming, or are you and your Wolfcraft going to stare romantically at agricultural assets all morning?”
I smile because it’s that or start crying in front of grapes, and I do have standards.
“Coming,” I call.
Forrest leans in just enough for only me to hear. “Agricultural assets?”
“My family has never met a phrase they couldn’t make worse.”
His mouth almost moves.
There it is.
My fake boyfriend, almost smiling at my family vineyard while my real life waits somewhere between the tasting room and the truth.
I should be terrified.
I am.
But I keep walking beside him anyway.