Chapter 4
Daisy
When I woke this morning, foggy memories of sexy dreams met me, along with a low-level soreness in my muscles like I got after I helped Elijah put up hay for the livestock.
Even my neck ached, and down the backs of my legs, and my belly. It wasn’t sharp pain, just as though I’d used muscles during the night I hadn’t used in a long time.
When I mentioned it to Daddy at breakfast, he said I should take the day to relax. He seemed softer this morning. Something in his demeanor made him seem calm, but also as though he was seething about something.
I didn’t ask. He runs the farm. I do my chores and do my best to take care of him the way he’s done for me practically my whole life.
He put me in front of the TV in my robe, cut up some grapes and watermelon, gave me strict orders to eat at least half of the heaping bowl of fruit, and left me watching She-Ra Season Five.
I’ve also been told to drink the water he left, and he gave me two Tylenol for the muscle aches and told me to stay put until he came back from mending the north side of the barn where the horrible storm blew the sliding door right off the rolling bar at the top.
He even did the one chore that never misses a day: gathering the eggs from the hens, which he hates. For such an ornery ogre of a man, handsome as he is in that rural farmer sort of way, he’s scared of the chickens.
But he got the eggs, giving me a morning off and making me fall in love with him just a little bit more, if that’s even possible.
Elijah is a potent mixture of so many things to me. My belly roils, and I have to squeeze things down inside me when I think of his thick arms, the rumble of his voice, the way he throws the hay bales with one hand up into the second-story loft without a grunt.
He’s the big brother I gained when I came here, my mom marrying a man I’d never even met. Then, over the years, when our parents fell into their bottles and fights and drama, he became my rock.
The father I never had.
I don’t even know who my real dad is. Mom would never tell me, and I had a suspicion as I got older that she probably didn’t know.
That made me sad for a long time, but Elijah always had a way of explaining things to me that made me not just feel better, but feel special. The way he told it, some random man who didn’t know I existed had nothing to do with how valuable I am.
He is my father. But also my brother. And, I’m sorry, God, I want things from him I shouldn’t.
Confusion tangles in my center, my heart throwing itself around in my chest as greedy throbs taunt me from between my legs.
I don’t know what it was. Maybe how he looked at me yesterday morning, standing in the sunlight, drinking his coffee while I hung out the laundry in the summer breeze.
The way that thick part of him down low stood out against his overalls, and when he saw me look, his face twisted into something painful and guilty as he spun on his worn leather boots and practically ran for the barn.
I hated how sad he looked. I hated it.
He deserves everything. He’s given up his life for me, and it’s not fair, but I can’t imagine him leaving me for someone else. Or worse, bringing them home to live with us both. I’d have to watch him touch her, kiss her. Listen to the grown-up noises I know happen in bedrooms in the dark.
It doesn’t matter that it’s natural and right for him to find a woman, to make a family…
I hate it.
Tears spring to my eyes thinking of it now.
So after he turned away and left me standing there with the laundry, and my thoughts turned to how I would have to find a way to run off any other woman he brought home because his God-given masculine needs were not being met, I made my plan.
I left the note under his coffee. I know he watches me while I sleep, and I knew he’d find it.
I mean, I’ll never find a man like him. One I trust. Tall and strong, with a thick beard that makes things happen inside me whenever he kisses my cheek or my forehead.
His kisses were never more than a nurturing, supportive, warm gesture. But, oh, how lately I’ve wished they were more.
His eyes are the same color as the cornflowers that fill one whole part of my garden.
I plant so many because they remind me of him.
His irises are like the petals frozen in ice, and when he looks at me in that certain way, God takes all the oxygen from the earth, and I wonder if I’ll ever breathe again.
I’m nothing special to look at. A little bit overweight, a little bit plain, with orange hair and eyes the color of vomit, my mother used to say.
But sometimes, when Daddy Elijah looks at me… I don’t know, just sometimes, a part of me wonders if he sees me as more than a little sister.
I first started having a crush on him when he started teaching me algebra.
Elijah might talk slowly sometimes, but he knows so much, and he homeschooled me.
He was able to relate everything to the farm.
I knew my feelings were changing before that, but they started to crystallize during those algebra lessons.
And when he told me how clever I was, and that he was going to help me graduate early, I started to have these little fantasies.
And somewhere along the line, I started to think about leaving notes for him.
When my mom and I first moved from a trailer into the farmhouse with Elijah and his dad, I could never sleep.
I lay awake, jumping at every noise the wind or the old farmhouse made.
But when Elijah came in from the farm in the evening, he always checked on me, so that after a while, I grew confident that I would be safe.
And at last, I could sleep.
I started leaving coffee for him after he became my guardian, with a little bit of whiskey like he likes it, and it would be gone when I woke up in the morning.
I started baking him cookies, too, because he loves his sweets. I took to decorating them with icing smiley faces and little messages, teasing myself by writing “Love you, Daddy” or “World’s best big brother”.
Stupid, girly things that might have meant nothing or might have meant everything.
Then I started to dream about the note.
The idea wasn’t even fully formed in my head, just that I liked to think of being loved, of being wanted. Giving him what he needs, too.
It would be worth it, even if I never knew about it. He could have any woman in the world, but he gave that all up to take care of me. He’s never had a girlfriend I know of.
And all that pent-up frustration has to go somewhere.
Maybe, just maybe, if I offered him my body in my sleep, he wouldn’t leave. I sleep through everything, so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty because I wouldn't know.
When I woke this morning, I wondered if he’d understood what I was offering, because he wasn't there next to me like my little girl dreams had hoped. As deep as I sleep, I’m sure if Elijah was next to me, touching me, I’d surely wake up.
But I didn’t, so I think my offering must have been a fail, and now I’m embarrassed.
See, the thing is, I don’t know what’s wrong with my body. Ever since I started to touch that aching spot between my legs, I’ve been cleaning up my own messes.
I don’t just get damp down there, I don’t just ruin my panties, I… well… I squirt when the tingly feelings twist and twist like a tornado, then explode down low in my belly.
The first time it happened, I almost told Elijah and asked him to call Doc Reynolds to make me an appointment.
Anyway, here I am, watching my favorite show, while he’s out in the fields toiling and sweating and being strong and solid, and my body is aching all over, but particularly my thighs and that spot between my legs.
But for some reason, despite the ache, all I can think about is putting my hand down there and stroking my pussy until I squirt all over the couch.
I’m about to do just that when the sound of the doorbell startles me, and I freeze with a pinch of watermelon between my fingers, halfway between the bowl and my open mouth.
I only know it’s the sound of the doorbell because I occasionally check that it works, because we do not get visitors here at the house.
Partly because this farm is down ten miles of dirt roads with hardly any signs telling you where you are or where you’re going, and partly because of the big yellow “PRIVATE PROPERTY! KEEP THE HELL OUT!” sign Daddy nailed to the entry fence five years ago, the day I told him I got my period and asked him to help me get pads from the General Store in town.
He painted it yellow because I said if he was going to have a mean sign like that, it should at least be pretty, and yellow is my favorite color. And Daddy Elijah, for all his grumpiness, always does everything I ask.
That’s why the whole house is also painted yellow. And the walls of my room. And the kitchen. It’s permanently splattered on all his jeans and work shirts and overalls. Yellow goes well with his blue eyes.
For a second, I sit motionless, listening, like maybe it was all in my imagination.
Then it rings again, with a knock following.
I pause my show, setting the bowl of watermelon on the antique coffee table scattered with my Mandala coloring books and sliced peach cans full of my colored pencils, and push up on my aching legs.
I gather the loose opening of my fluffy white robe over my breasts and tug the belt tight as I start over the rugs and wood floors to the front door, my palms getting clammy and my heart thumping into my throat.
Who is here? Where is Elijah?
Fear bands around my chest as I scoot my feet forward, teeth lodged in my bottom lip.
“Who’s there?” I call when I reach the expanse of the front foyer. Stalling at the base of the curved wooden staircase to the second floor while I listen.
There’s a shadow visible through the frosted glass window at the side, and a low whistling comes through. Whoever it is, they’re big, blocking out most of the light coming through the glass side panels I covered with yellow curtains dotted with blue eyelet flowers last year.