Chapter 28 Daisy
DAISY
Ten weeks later, The Margin reopens. By then, Cole has accepted a plea on the abduction and assault charges; I won’t have to testify at another trial.
The main frame and roof survived. Derek's crew repaired the rear section, worked within the existing footprint, and waited for each inspection before closing the walls.
Ten weeks has meant dust, delayed deliveries, and Nell making decisions with paint samples spread over her kitchen table.
Tonight is the first time we get to see it without a work light in the middle of the floor.
The transformation is nothing short of miraculous.
Where there used to be cramped aisles and sagging shelves and a cramped storage room, there's now open space and warm lighting and a children's corner with tiny chairs and a mural of woodland creatures reading books.
The event space in the back, the one Nell has been dreaming about for eight years, has exposed brick walls and a small stage and enough seating for a real crowd.
Nell cried when she first saw it finished.
She doesn't cry often, so I know it mattered.
"Stop looking nervous," she says now, adjusting the ribbon stretched across the newly rebuilt doorway. "It's a soft opening. Friends and family. No pressure."
"I'm not nervous."
"You've checked your reflection in that window four times in the last ten minutes."
"The window is very reflective."
"Daisy." Nell sets down her scissors and turns to face me fully. "What's going on? You've been weird all day. Weirder than pregnancy hormones would explain."
I have been weird. I know I have. Something is happening tonight.
I can feel it in the way Adam kept finding excuses to touch me this morning, the way he smiled when he left for "errands" that he refused to elaborate on, the way my father called this afternoon just to ask what I was wearing to the opening.
My father, asking about my outfit. Dale Williams, who wore the same flannel shirt to my high school graduation that he wore to fix the transmission on his truck.
"I think Adam is planning something," I admit.
"Obviously he's planning something. The man has been vibrating at a frequency only dogs can hear for the past week.
" Nell picks the scissors back up and snips the ribbon to exactly the right length.
"Whatever it is, it's going to be romantic and over the top, because that's apparently how billionaires express emotions. Just try to act surprised."
"What if I don't want to act surprised? What if I want to actually be surprised?"
"Then you shouldn't have married a man who's physically incapable of being subtle." She steps back to admire her ribbon work. "Now go check your reflection again. You've got lipstick on your teeth."
I do not have lipstick on my teeth. I checked. Four times.
The guests start arriving at six, Ruth with a bottle of whiskey she claims is "medicinal," Bev with a lasagna that could feed an army, Priya with a group of grad students who look mildly terrified of Ruth.
My father shows up in a button-down shirt I've never seen before, looking uncomfortable but determined, and I realize with a start that he's wearing actual dress shoes instead of his usual work boots.
"Dad," I say. "You look nice."
"Don't make a thing of it." He tugs at his collar like it's strangling him. "Your mother always said I cleaned up okay when I tried."
The mention of my mother (casual, unprompted) makes my eyes sting. He doesn't talk about her often. Neither of us do.
"She was right," I manage. "You do."
He nods once, gruffly, and then escapes toward the refreshment table where Bev is cutting her lasagna into precise squares. Adam arrives last.
He's wearing his glasses (the ones he only wears for reading, the ones that make him look like a particularly attractive literature professor) and his hands are shaking slightly as he walks through the door.
"Hi," he says when he reaches me.
I smile. "You're shaking."
"I'm not shaking. I'm... vibrating. At a frequency only dogs can hear, apparently."
"You talked to Nell." I narrow my eyes.
"Nell told me I looked like a man about to do something stupid and romantic, and that I should lean into it because you apparently find that charming."
"She's not wrong."
"Terrifying woman." He takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine. "Can we go over to the reading corner? There's something I want to ask you."
"The store just opened. Nell's going to kill me if I disappear."
"Nell's in on it. She asked everyone to gather there."
"In on what?"
But he's already pulling me by the hand toward the back of the store, past the new releases and through the restored archway into the public reading corner, the one that used to be water-damaged and unusable, the one I'd written off as a loss when I first saw the renovation estimates. It's not a loss anymore.
The space glows with warm light from restored sconces, comfortable armchairs arranged in a loose circle, built-in shelves stocked with well-loved paperbacks meant for browsing.
And standing in that circle, watching us approach with barely contained grins, are all of them: Nell with her arms crossed and her eyes suspiciously bright, the contractors who rebuilt the walls, the electrician who rewired the whole back half, the volunteers who shelved books until midnight for three weeks straight.
Everyone who poured themselves into bringing this place back from ash and smoke damage.
My throat tightens. "What is this?"
"Witnesses," Adam says, and his voice cracks on the word.
His hands are still shaking. He reaches up to adjust his glasses, misses, tries again.
"You're nervous," I say, and I don't know why that makes my heart stutter.
"Terrified, actually."
"Of what? You already asked me to renew our vows. I already said yes. Right here, while the store was still a wreck—"
"Daisy." He's laughing now, but it's the breathless kind, the kind that sounds like it might tip into something else entirely. "I know. I know you said yes. But I needed to ask you properly."
He takes a breath. "The original proposal, the one at the beginning, when we were making a deal instead of building a marriage, I didn't give you anything.
No choice of setting, no time to celebrate.
I just asked you to solve a problem for me, and you said yes because you needed to solve a problem of your own. "
My heart is beating very fast now. "Adam—"
"Let me finish. Please." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box: familiar, worn, the same box he used five years ago when we sat in that conference room and negotiated the terms of our arrangement.
"I kept this on my nightstand the whole time you were gone.
Every night I looked at it and thought about all the ways I failed you.
All the things I should have done differently. "
He opens the box. Inside is my wedding ring, the same simple gold band I left on the hall table the day I walked out.
"I'm not proposing," he clarifies. "We're already married. The lawyers withdrew the divorce filing when we asked them to. October came and went; the five-year agreement ended, but our marriage didn't. We signed away the old exit terms together. But I want to ask you anyway. Properly this time."
He drops to one knee. Behind his glasses, his eyes are wet.
"Daisy Williams. Dog-Eared Daisy, who reads with a pencil and argues about endings and makes the world better just by being in it.
" His voice cracks. "I made you a promise once, when I was too stupid and scared to understand what I was promising.
I said I would keep you safe. Rule One taught me what that promise should have meant, and how often I broke it.
I let you become invisible in your own home.
I let my family make you feel worthless.
I chose my company over you so many times that you stopped believing you were even a choice. "
A tear slides down my cheek. I don't wipe it away.
"But I'm asking now. Really asking, not negotiating.
Not making a deal." He holds the ring up, his hand trembling.
"Stay with me. Not because you have to, or because it's convenient, or because you're having my baby.
Stay because you want to. Stay because I love you more than I've ever loved anything, and I will spend the rest of my life proving it if you'll let me. Stay because—"
"Yes."
He stops. Blinks. "I wasn't finished."
"I don't care. Yes." I'm crying now, really crying, the kind that makes my voice wobble and my mascara run. "Yes, I'll stay. Yes, I'll renew our vows. Yes, I'll let you keep showing up, because that's what you've been doing, Adam. Every single day. You've been showing up."
"But I had more to say—"
"You can say it later. Put the ring on."
He laughs (a wet, relieved sound) and slides the ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly, like it never left.
"I kept thinking of things to say," he says, standing up and pulling me into his arms. "There were callbacks to our first meeting. References to your annotating habits. A very moving section about what it felt like to watch you read."
"Tell me later."
"There was a metaphor about bookmarks."
"Adam."
"You're going to love the bookmark metaphor."
I kiss him. Hard and deep, tasting salt from my tears and his, feeling his arms tighten around me like he's afraid I'll disappear. When I finally pull back, we're both breathless.
"I have one condition," I say.
"Anything."
"I write the vows."
He laughs, pressing his forehead to mine. "Obviously you write the vows. You're the one with the English degree."
"And you're not allowed to add footnotes."
"That seems unnecessarily restrictive."
"No footnotes, Adam."
"Fine. No footnotes." He kisses my nose. "Can I at least include a reading list?"
Before I can answer, Chaucer plants himself on the empty ring box at our feet.
"Did you—" I look at Adam incredulously. "Did you train the cat to deliver the ring?"