Chapter Three
Daisy burned the biscuits, enough to fill the kitchen with the smell of char.
Nathan noticed immediately. “You never burn biscuits.”
Daisy pressed her lips together and pulled the tray free with a cloth wrapped around her hand. “There's a first time for everything.”
Nathan’s silence made her grip the tray harder.
The kitchen felt too small this morning.
Too warm near the stove. Too crowded by thoughts she couldn't force into order.
Usually, the kitchen settled her. Every movement in the room belonged to memory and repetition.
She knew every inch of the kitchen by memory now, from the lavender near the back door to the jars arranged carefully along the shelves.
But today, nothing was settled.
Flint Callahan was sleeping in her parlor. The same man who'd once kissed her beneath the cottonwoods and looked at her as though she hung the stars.
Daisy set the ruined biscuits aside and reached for another bowl. Flour stuck to her damp palms while she forced her hands steady again.
Nathan sat nearby, exhaustion heavy in every small movement as he sorted bandages and medical instruments.
He hadn't slept more than an hour since Flint had been brought into the house.
Daisy could hear it in the slower rhythm of his breathing and the occasional stiffness when he rose from his chair.
“He should eat something today,” Nathan said.
Daisy nodded automatically. “Broth first.”
“Yes.”
“I know how to tend a feverish patient.”
“That's not what concerns me.”
She paused.
There it was again. That careful tone Nathan used when he believed she was standing too close to heartbreak.
Daisy resumed mixing dough. “You needn’t speak to me as though I'm sixteen.”
“And you needn’t pretend this is ordinary.”
Outside, wagon wheels rattled faintly over the distant road. Somewhere beyond the kitchen windows, wind stirred through the budding cottonwoods. Morning had fully arrived, carrying the cool, damp scent of spring rain that would likely threaten later in the day.
Usually, Daisy loved mornings.
Usually, they belonged to quiet things. Candle wax melting slowly over heat. Soap molds cooling on shelves. Nathan reading medical journals while she brewed tea. The comforting predictability of small work and familiar walls.
Today, every sound in the house led back to the parlor.
To the uneven breathing beyond the hallway.
To Flint.
Daisy reached for the flour tin too quickly and bumped the edge of the bowl. Powder was scattered across the table.
Nathan stood at once.
“I can manage,” she snapped before he could move.
“I know.”
The gentleness in his voice made guilt stab through her irritation.
Daisy exhaled slowly and forced herself to continue kneading the dough. “I'm merely tired.”
“You haven’t been still once this morning.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re making paste instead of dough.”
She smiled through the pain and the memories she tried to ignore. Three years ago, and the fever… and what came after. Three years ago, after waking to darkness so complete it had swallowed the entire world whole.
At first, she'd believed it was temporary. A lingering symptom. Nathan had spoken carefully, gently, never quite admitting the truth while hope still existed. Then one morning, she'd reached for the washbasin and realized she couldn't see the sunlight on the water anymore.
She still remembered the terror of that moment. The unbearable certainty that the life she'd imagined was gone. And beneath even that fear had come another, a crueler one: Flint would stay.
Not out of obligation. Flint would have stayed simply because he loved her. He would marry her out of loyalty. Devotion. Duty. And one day he would wake beside a blind wife who needed help navigating her own kitchen and realize too late what her blindness had cost him.
Daisy had loved him too much to let that happen. At least that was what she'd told herself then. Now she was no longer certain whether she'd protected Flint or merely protected herself from hearing pity in his voice.
Nathan folded another bandage. “He recognized your blindness immediately.”
Daisy’s hands stilled. “Yes.”
“Are you holding up?”
She almost laughed.
Like my carefully ordered life has cracked straight down the middle. Like the man I never stopped loving looked at me yesterday with grief in his eyes. Like I'm terrified he will now see me exactly as I feared he would.
Instead, she said, “I feel nothing in particular.”
Nathan made a quiet sound that conveyed complete disbelief.
Daisy pressed harder against the dough. “You warned me for years that hiding the truth couldn't last forever.”
“I warned you because secrets become heavier with time.” Nathan sounded tired.
“And now he knows.”
“Yes.”
Her throat shrank unexpectedly.
The knowledge changed the shape of every conversation between them. The words alone seemed capable of changing the shape of the house. Flint knew she was blind. He knew she'd hidden it from him. And worse, he knew she'd hidden it during the very same years she vanished from his life.
Daisy swallowed hard. She could still hear the break in his voice when he realized. The pain in his tone nearly crushed her.
“He saw me differently,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
Nathan went quiet.
Daisy instantly wished she'd said nothing.
She turned away from the table and reached for the kettle. “The broth will take another hour.”
“Daisy.”
“I don't want to discuss this.” Daisy’s voice was firm.
“You need to.”
“No.” She gripped the kettle handle. “What I need is to continue functioning as though there isn't a wounded man sleeping in our parlor.”
Nathan’s chair scraped softly against the floor. “He's involved in something dangerous,” he said carefully. “You understand that.”
“Yes.”
“Men don't end up beaten half to death in alleys because they lead peaceful lives.”
Daisy flinched inwardly. She knew what Nathan truly meant. Flint had changed. The boy Samuel and Ruth Callahan raised alongside Wyatt had grown into a man carrying violence behind his eyes and secrets in his silence.
Nathan continued, “You cannot let old feelings blind you to reality.”
A bitter smile touched Daisy’s mouth at the choice of words. “I'm not a lovesick girl.”
“No. But you are compassionate to a fault.”
“He needed help.” Daisy's words were clipped.
“That's not all this is.”
Daisy turned toward the sound of her brother’s voice. “What would you have had me do? Leave him in the street?”
Nathan’s silence answered too slowly.
Her chest clenched. “You wouldn't have.”
“No,” he admitted. “I wouldn't.”
“Then stop speaking as though caring for him is a weakness.”
Nathan sighed heavily, and suddenly he sounded much older than thirty-five. “I'm speaking this way because I remember what it cost you the first time.”
Pain flickered sharp and bright through her. Daisy lowered her head. The broth simmered quietly on the stove. Outside, the wind rattled bare branches against the house. Somewhere down the hallway, floorboards creaked faintly.
Was Flint moving?
No. Only the house settling.
Still, her attention strained instinctively toward the parlor.
Nathan heard it in her silence. “Every noise in this house has your attention now.”
She hated being so easily read. “He's injured.”
“He's Flint.”
The truth of it remained between them.
Daisy turned back to the counter before Nathan could hear how she was breathing.
Three years suddenly felt very short.
Because, despite everything, the hurt, the guilt, the fear, some reckless, aching part of her had recognized Flint’s breathing yesterday before her mind allowed itself to believe it could truly be him.
That frightened her more than his injuries.
It would have been easier if time had dulled the memory of his laugh, the warmth of his hands, or the way he once listened to her as though every word mattered.
Instead, those feelings had merely gone underground, waiting.
And now Flint was here.
Broken. Bitter. Alive.
The back door rattled suddenly beneath a gust of wind. Daisy startled hard enough that the spoon slipped from her fingers and clattered across the floor.
Nathan was beside her instantly.
“I said I can manage.”
“I know.” His hand hovered near her elbow anyway. “You jumped.”
“I was thinking.”
“That much was obvious.”
She crouched carefully, fingertips searching the floorboards until they closed around the spoon. Nathan remained nearby, close enough that she could feel his worry like warmth against her skin.
When she stood again, she said quietly, “You think this is foolish.”
Nathan hesitated. “I think you are vulnerable where Flint's concerned.”
Daisy laughed softly, though there was little humor in it. “You mean foolish.”
“I mean, you still care about him.”
That nearly undid her.
Nathan rarely spoke gently about Flint. Not after Daisy disappeared from the Callahan ranch and Flint drifted farther into rough company and dangerous work.
Nathan had seen enough suffering as a doctor to distrust men who carried violence around them.
And Flint carried it now. Daisy could hear it in the roughness of his voice.
Feel it in the tension in a room with him.
Even unconscious, he seemed coiled against threats only he could see.
Sometimes, when Flint forgot himself, she still heard the man she remembered.
That was the problem.
Daisy turned back to the stove before Nathan could say anything more. “I can care for him without losing myself.”
Nathan’s answer came very quietly. “I hope so.”
The morning stretched onward. Daisy worked because work kept her from thinking too much. She strained the broth. Folded fresh cloths. Ground dried willow bark and comfrey into a salve beneath the mortar and pestle. Melted beeswax slowly while measuring herbs by scent and texture.
Nathan checked on Flint twice.
Both times, Daisy remained in the kitchen.
Staying in the kitchen felt cowardly. But she couldn't bear another conversation with him yet. Not while the weight of his expression still lingered in her mind, not the exact image, because she no longer possessed the ability, but the feeling of it.
Shock. Grief. And something dangerously close to pity.
Around midday, Nathan finally accepted a bowl of broth and sat heavily at the table. “He asked for water.”
Daisy’s pulse stumbled. “And?”
“And nothing. He drank. He glared at me. Then he fell asleep again.”
Despite herself, a faint smile touched her mouth.
Nathan noticed immediately. “You’re smiling.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
Heat crept into her cheeks. “You are imagining things.”
“I'm a doctor. Observation is my profession.”
“You are insufferable.”
Nathan’s laugh surprised her.
For a moment, the kitchen felt almost normal again. Before illness. Before heartbreak. Before everything became careful and fragile.
Then the floor creaked faintly down the hall.
The parlor.
Daisy’s attention snapped there instantly.
Nathan heard it happen. “You see?” he said gently.
Her smile vanished.
By late afternoon, the rain finally came. Soft at first. Then steadier, tapping against the roof and windows in a rhythm Daisy had always loved. Rain made the world feel smaller and safer somehow. Wrapped close around the house. Tonight, it only deepened the strange intimacy of Flint being there.
Nathan’s hand squeezed her shoulder briefly. “Don't sit up all night listening for him.”
She said nothing, which, unfortunately, was answer enough.
After he went upstairs, the house fell quiet. The house grew quiet except for the rain and the clock in the parlor. Beneath all of it, she could hear Flint breathing.
Daisy sat motionless beside the kitchen table, hands folded in her lap. She stayed seated another minute before giving up and rising anyway. Nathan had changed the bandages recently. Flint was sleeping. Everything that needed doing had already been done.
Still, she rose.
Her pulse beat too fast as she crossed the hallway. The floorboards beneath her feet felt cool through her stockings. The familiar scent of lamp oil drifted faintly through the house. She reached the parlor archway and stopped there, listening.
Breathing.
Slow. Rough. Uneven.
Daisy stepped quietly into the room. She knew the layout by memory. Sofa near the east wall. Chair beside it. Small table to the right. The lamp turned low.
Flint lay where Nathan had left him on the sofa.
For a long moment, she simply stood there.
Three years ago, she'd never imagined living in this house at all.
The little place at the edge of town had been born from loss and necessity, chosen because it offered privacy when privacy was the thing she wanted most. Yet over time, she had made it her own.
She had built a business here. A routine.
A life. Sometimes, she almost forgot that she had once imagined something entirely different: Flint's boots by the door, children racing through the hallway, laughter shared over supper after long days at the Callahan ranch.
Instead, she'd built a smaller, safer life here, and now Flint occupied its center like a wound reopening.
She moved carefully toward the sofa.
His breathing changed slightly as she neared, though he didn't wake.
Daisy lowered herself slowly into the chair beside him. Close enough to hear each breath clearly now. Close enough to catch the familiar scent beneath medicine and blood.
Rain tapped softly at the windows. The clock ticked steadily. Flint breathed.
Daisy clasped her hands together in her lap to keep from reaching toward him. She shouldn't touch him. Shouldn't remember. Shouldn't sit here listening to the sound of a man she'd spent three years trying to forget.
And yet she remained. Because the truth she could never confess aloud sat heavy and aching inside her chest: The sound of Flint breathing beneath her roof felt dangerously, painfully like relief.