Chapter 6
Daisy
Iwas right. Todd wasn’t coming back.
I lowered my arm and let the curtain flutter closed.
For the last four days, I stood at the window morning and night.
In the morning, until Max pulled up in his truck to pick me up, and at night as he left the inn and drove off.
I didn’t stop believing that Todd would magically appear on his knees, begging my forgiveness, on the front lawn. I never started.
The moment I read that note, I knew it was over.
I knew he was gone. The following four days without any message from Todd or his parents only buried the betrayal deeper.
Four days of absorbing the looks—the well-intentioned pity from Lou and Wade, from Harper, from Lou’s other siblings, Frankie, Kit, and Jamie, who’d all stopped by the Lamplight Inn at one point or another to offer their help.
Four days of coming to terms with my deepest, darkest secret—the only pain I felt from Todd’s disappearance, the only heartbreak I feared, was for our daughter.
Absentmindedly, I rested my hand on my stomach like I could shield her from ever knowing her father had turned his back on her.
I wondered if this was how my mom felt about me.
I was two when my father left us, too young to remember anything, but not too young for the trauma to root itself deep inside me and shape how I’d grown.
Things hadn’t been good between Todd and me for some time. Before the baby happened, I didn’t think we would…it didn’t matter what I thought. I got pregnant, and suddenly she was the only thing that mattered.
I looked down at my tote bag sitting on the desk chair in the room, my white dress carelessly stuffed into it and billowing out like tissue paper from the top.
I didn’t even know why I was taking it with me.
No, I did know why. Because I didn’t want to forget my mistake.
The one I’d sworn I was too smart, too careful to make.
I’d let myself become reliant on a man who’d left me.
Just like my mom had warned me would happen.
There was a time when I’d imagined getting married and having kids with Todd.
A time when I enjoyed his easy, carefree lifestyle.
When we’d met, I’d never experienced that kind of life before.
The whirlwind of it all. Being raised by a single mom, all I knew was how to pull my own weight and make sure I never relied on anyone to do it for me.
But eventually the shine of Todd’s appeal wore off, leaving only his kind but spoiled core. I liked him. I cared about him. But if we hadn’t gotten pregnant, I wouldn’t have stayed with him, let alone wanted to marry him.
Part of me thought even my mom knew it was a mistake. She only knew him briefly before she passed, but her reaction to our relationship was guarded. More guarded than usual. Maybe it was a blessing that she hadn’t lived to see what happened. The pregnancy. The engagement. The betrayal.
I could hear her now. “You do what you have to do to survive without the help of anyone. You hear me, Daisy?”
I bit my lip hard, strangling back the urge to break down and cry. It wouldn’t do any good. I couldn’t afford to be broken right now.
Picking up the mason jar from the small desk, I uncapped the lid and let a whiff of the scent stretch its fingers to my nose.
Peony.
Lou looked at me like I’d lost my mind, in addition to my groom, when I came downstairs that first morning and asked her for a bottle of the strongest vodka they had and a mason jar. Not to drink, I spelled out, but for the flowers.
It was a good idea, a thoughtful idea for her to put the peonies from my bouquet in a vase in my room, but I couldn’t stand their reminder.
Todd had left, and I was a fool. A fool who’d given up so much for a man I wasn’t even truly sad to lose.
I didn’t need any more reminders, but neither did I want to throw the beautiful flowers away.
So I started a small chemistry project to transform them… and to pass the time.
Fresh flower petals in high-alcohol-content vodka extracted their scent and produced perfume. So I filled the mason jar with vodka and plucked the stems clean, drowning every petaled reminder—he loved me not—into the liquid.
I’d started with one jar until Lou and then Harper learned what I was doing, and brought me half a dozen more.
I blew out a slow breath and capped the jar again. It would be at least another week before the perfume was ready to be strained. That part was easy. I could tell Lou how to do it. I wasn’t thinking when I started this that I wouldn’t be able to take them with me.
Every night after I closed the curtain, while I showered and got ready for bed, I planned my next steps. I had to. I knew Todd wasn’t coming back.
I couldn’t stay here, no matter how kindly Lou offered.
It was already too much that she’d let me stay this whole week and had loaned me some of her twin sister’s maternity clothes.
All of my things, except the handful of outfits I’d brought to the inn for our honeymoon week we were supposed to spend here, were in barely unpacked boxes at the house outside of Portland that Todd’s parents had given us to move into.
I couldn’t go back there. Even if they’d wanted their grandchild there, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be around them.
Pulling out my phone, I opened up Uber and typed in my old address in Portland.
I needed my own space to get my life onto some kind of track.
I had enough money saved for one month’s rent if my old landlord would give me my apartment back.
That was my Plan A. It had only been two weeks since I’d moved out, and he hadn’t found a new renter, last I knew.
Hopefully, that was still the case when I showed up there today.
My phone vibrated, the app matching me with a car. Arriving in ten minutes.
I gave another glance out the window, looking for Max’s truck. I didn’t know why. Max wasn’t coming here today.
I’d told him last night I wanted to skip going out on deliveries today.
That I didn’t feel up to it. It wasn’t a complete lie.
I didn’t feel up to arguing with him—with his chivalry, to be exact.
Just like I knew Todd wasn’t coming back, I also knew Max wouldn’t hear of me trying to get my old apartment in Portland back.
I picked up my soft duffel bag and tote and headed downstairs.
By now, he would be pulling away from The Pastry Queen in Stonebar and driving us to the warehouse. I’d be devouring one of Ella’s blueberry scones while examining the list of deliveries we would make and planning out our driving route.
My chest squeezed like a pricked balloon trying to hold on to all its air. I couldn’t hide in the comfort of Max’s world forever. I had to face the reality of my own, and the sooner I did that, the better.
“Morning, Daisy,” Harper greeted me with a smile, her blonde hair braided back as she sat with the largest cup of coffee known to man at the reception desk.
I quickly covered my grimace with a smile. “Hey, Harp.”
Max’s younger sister was my only hurdle. She’d been working overnight at the reception desk all week, so I expected to see her this morning. As long as I navigated the conversation carefully, maybe she wouldn’t alert Max to my plans.
“How are you feeling? Max said you were staying back today?” She spun her stool and tucked her hands into the pockets of her oversized denim dress.
Not just today. My throat tightened, but I nodded.
“Harper? Oh! There she is.” An old woman with bright purple hair poked her head out from the kitchen, and seeing me, moseyed her hunched form over to us.
She moved slowly, giving me a chance to take in the whole picture of her. Over her clothes, she wore a polka-dot apron that looked to have more stains on it than patterned dots. Dark purple. Bright red. They covered the front like a piece of abstract art.
“Gigi, this is Daisy. Daisy, this is my grandmother, Gigi.” It was only a matter of time before I met the Hamilton-Kinkade family matriarch. She was as much of a staple in Friendship as the historic inn, the towering lighthouse, and Stonebar Farms.
“Daisy.” Gigi stuck out her hand, her knuckles knobby and her skin soft. Even with thick glasses, she still squinted at me. “Wonderful to finally meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you.” She smiled, adding another set of well-worn wrinkles to her face.
“Oh.” I flushed. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about my runaway husband with someone I hardly knew.
“You’ve been helping out my grandson this week.” Her head tipped as relief swept through me. Relief that quickly deflated when I detected pity in her next words. “You should come by the house for family dinner and bring Max with you. That boy works too much.”
If there was one envy Todd and I both shared, it was the way Max’s family was knitted together in a kind of unbroken seam.
No matter how it stretched or strained, they were always there for one another, always held fast to family.
Something neither Todd nor I had ever experienced.
Something I foolishly thought we could build together.
“I’ll tell him,” was all I could offer. I wouldn’t be around to do anything more. Even if I were, I wouldn’t go. The best way to not want something you couldn’t have was to not put it right in front of you.
Gigi grinned, her eyes almost comically large behind her glasses. “I’ll see you soon,” she declared and hugged me without hesitation before returning to the kitchen.
“She’s making up some jars of Stonebar Farms jam as small welcome gifts for guests,” Harper started to explain her presence—and fruit-stained apron—when her eyes snagged on my bag. “Wait. Where are you going?”
I looked up and realized Harper had just noticed my bag. “Back to Portland. I can’t live at the inn forever,” I said, aiming for a breezy tone to my voice, but not sure it quite made it.