53. Daisy
Chapter 53
Daisy
T he turkey was resting on the counter — a step Joan said was crucial to make sure all the yummy juices didn’t spill out when we cut it — when Daya arrived. Any worry I’d had about her feelings toward me evaporated the second she stepped into the house, enveloping me in a sage-scented hug.
She had Wolf’s dark hair and smile, and her brown eyes were warm and kind. She was dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, bangles sliding on both arms, a turquoise necklace set in silver around her neck.
She’d brought homemade corn cakes — a Thanksgiving tradition in the LaForte family — and immediately put on an apron to help me transfer food from their baking and mixing dishes to ones suitable for serving.
She told me about her work as a professor of Native studies and the guidebook to foraging she was writing for a small publisher, and I told her about the house, about all the work we’d done and how much Wolf had helped.
She seemed interested and impressed and I found myself forgetting she was Wolf’s mom and just enjoying her company as a person.
Wolf was slicing the turkey — he insisted on using his favorite knife rather than the silver carving set I’d found in the pantry — when Otis returned from his parents’ house. They’d sent a whole huckleberry pie (my favorite) and their greetings, and a few minutes later Cassie and Sarai arrived with two bottles of wine and a luxury candle.
Sarai looked beautiful in a deep red dress that set off her hair, her nails freshly decorated with autumn leaves, and Cassie had worn black jeans with knee-high boots and an emerald-colored sweater that brought out the green in her eyes and made her copper hair shine.
I felt weirdly emotional as we sat down to eat, my favorite people seated around my great-grandparents’ dining table. In a perfect world, Ruth would have been here too, and Joan, and maybe even my dad, but as we dug into the food, it felt like I was building something important. Like we were building something important, the Beasts and I. Something more important than a renovated house.
Something like family.
We spent the meal talking about everything and nothing at all: Cassie’s business (she was looking for a second location) and Sarai’s dreams of owning her own nail salon, Daya’s plans for a solo trip to Peru, the yet-to-be-renovated kitchen in the house.
When we were all so full we could barely move, Jace and Otis cleared the table with Cassie and Sarai’s help, arguing that the rest of us had done most of the prep work and cooking.
Wolf made coffee and we decamped to the living room where Otis made a fire. There were three pies in the kitchen, but we were all too full to think about dessert, so we opted for a game of charades until we decided we were too full for that too.
I lounged on the couch with the Beasts while Cassie and Sarai sat by the fire and Daya took one of the wing chairs, and we filled Daya in on our search for Michael White and the truth about Arlo Kane’s disappearance.
I left out my fear that Mac was my biological father. I still hadn’t told the Beasts about the letter from Mac I’d found in the attic at my dad’s house. I wasn’t ready for my paternity to be casual dinner conversation.
“I remember them,” Daya said.
Wolf’s head snapped up. “You never told me that.”
Daya shrugged and took a drink of her coffee. “You never asked. And I was younger than Mac and his crew. I only knew of them, but I remember them ruling the roost during high school. The girls were wild for them.” She looked at me. “Unfortunately for all the other girls, Mac, Arlo, and Michael only had eyes for your mom.”
I sat up straighter. “All of them?”
“They never said as much,” Daya said. “Your mom was all about Mac, but it was pretty obvious the other two carried a torch for her too.”
I remembered the picture in the yearbook: Mac with his arms around my mom, Arlo looking on, a sharp glint in his eyes.
Had they fought over her?
“That’s… wow,” I said. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“I’m sorry I can’t tell you more,” Daya said. “I’ll let you know if anything else comes to me.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“So what’s next?” Sarai asked.
Wolf looked at me before turning to answer her question. “We’re thinking of going to Boston to see if we can find anything out from the school. Yearbooks and law reviews have been good to us. We were thinking we might be able to find something out from The Daily Free Press .”
“What’s The Daily Free Press ?” Cassie asked.
“It’s the school paper, but it’s only archived at the university library,” Jace said.
“Isn’t it weird how some stuff isn’t on the internet?” Sarai asked. “I mean, think about it, there’s still information in the world you can’t find on Google.”
Daya laughed. “I’m still trying to get used to the fact that you can find anything there at all.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” Cassie said. “ The Daily Free Press . Maybe Michael White will show up in an article about a job fair or one of the clubs.”
“That’s what we’re thinking,” Wolf said. “We’re at a dead end otherwise.”
Aloha still hadn’t gotten back to us about Blake’s second phone. Except for Michael White and his alleged grad school attendance, the trail was cold.
Daya looked into the fire, her expression pensive. “Let the information lead you, but be careful.” She looked at Wolf before her gaze slid to me. “All of you.”