Chapter 1
Chapter One
Daisy
By the beginning of October, I have learned that planning your cheating ex-fiancé’s wedding is easier if you treat it like a hostage negotiation.
Do not make eye contact with the emotional damage.
Do not personalize the floral palette.
Do not scream into the shared vendor folder, no matter how violently the bride’s mother abuses the comment feature.
Most importantly, do not picture the man who once promised to love you forever standing beneath a tasteful vineyard arch while marrying the woman he slept with before your engagement ended.
That way leads to mascara loss, unpaid express shipping, and the purchase of a cardigan called Coastal Mourning as if everything else in my.life wasn't poetic enough as it is.
I am doing great.
Thriving, even.
If thriving means developing a stress twitch every time someone says “tablescape.”
This is what I tell myself while standing in the supply closet at the Boston literacy nonprofit where I work as office manager, holding a half-empty toner box against my hip and staring at an email from my mother titled:
Urgent: Carla’s ceremony aisle concerns.
Urgent, for context, used to mean medical emergencies, fire alarms, or someone trapped in an elevator.
At the Thorn family vineyard, urgent means Carla Alden has decided the aisle runner might photograph too pale against the natural stone path, and my mother needs me to “weigh in with my trained eye.”
I do not have a trained eye.
I have anxiety in sensible shoes.
I have an emotionally overdeveloped sense of self-preservation and seven months of remote wedding coordination experience I never wanted.
Obviously, Mom has been delegating more than just this wedding.
I’ve helped organize other events for the vineyard too, which is fine.
Great, even. Nothing says thriving adult woman like answering emails about linen counts after your second job, so you can afford rent, utilities, and the deluxe ramen with the tiny dehydrated vegetable confetti.
That extra income has been keeping me afloat.
Barely.
More like keeping one nostril above water while the rest of me negotiates with late fees.
Now, though, it’s all hands, all spreadsheets, and all emotional hazmat gear for the wedding of the century in Winterberry Cove.
I also once arranged a seating chart for two divorced uncles, one former priest, and a woman who brought her emotional support ferret to Thanksgiving, so apparently that makes me modern Martha Stewart with a trauma response.
Love this for me.
So, everything is fine.
Except Liam is still getting married in November.
To Carla. At my family’s vineyard. In a ceremony my mother insists is too profitable to decline and too visible to mishandle.
Which is how I, Daisy Thorn, former fiancée, current office manager, occasional latte artist, and full-time cautionary tale in affordable, yet emotionally unsupportive, ankle boots, have become the invisible woman behind the wedding that will confirm to all of Winterberry Cove that Liam did not ruin his life by losing me.
He simply upgraded venues.
And brides.
And probably emotional stability.
Which feels rude, honestly. Emotional stability should not be transferable like airline miles.
Let’s be honest, the Thorns aren’t exactly beacons of stability.
We are complicated at best and dangerous if put in the same room as the Wolfcraft family.
Well, not always, since my brother married Winnifred Wolfcraft, and they are disgustingly happy in a way that makes our family look less like a cautionary case study and more like people capable of growth.
They’re the exception.
The rest of us have been instructed to behave around the Wolfcrafts at all times, or Soren will take visitation away from both families.
Which is a serious concern now that Winnie is pregnant. Obviously, Mom has to be extra nice to them, or they’ll ration baby updates like winter-time sugar. One sonogram photo per trimester. No rollovers. Grandparent privileges subject to emotional maturity.
None of us are expected to qualify.
I shift the toner box higher and reread my mother’s email because apparently I enjoy suffering in high resolution.
Darling,
Carla is concerned the aisle runner may compete with the natural tones of the vineyard stone.
I told her you have such a gift with visual harmony, and we’d love your thoughts before I approve the rental adjustment.
Also, Liam’s mother asked whether we can add two more tables to the rehearsal dinner.
I said I’d check with you because you’re so good with flow.
Love,
Mom
Fucking flow?
I stare at that word until the supply closet seems to shrink around me.
I’m so good with flow.
I am also good with donor databases, emergency copier maintenance, soothing interns who accidentally email the wrong attachment to two hundred volunteers, and convincing wealthy people that literacy programs deserve funding even when the entire office is operating on discount coffee and printer prayers.
I am good with flow because my entire personality is a woman standing in a flood saying, Fantastic, I’ll just add drowning to the agenda.
At the nonprofit, being good at things means people give you more things to do.
In my family, being good at things means people forget to ask whether it hurts.
“Daisy?” Mira calls from somewhere outside the closet. “Did we ever get the updated grant numbers for the after-school program?”
I tuck my phone beneath my chin, wedge the toner box against my ribs, and reach for the stack of folders balanced above the paper towels.
“Yes. They’re in the shared drive under Q3 Program Metrics, not Q3 Metrics Final, because Q3 Metrics Final is from last month, and Q3 Metrics Final—Final is somehow a draft. ”
Mira appears in the doorway and studies me with deep professional concern. “You scare me in the best way.”
“That’s what I put on my dating profile,” I lie.
Listen, I do not have a dating profile.
I downloaded an app in June, stared at the first prompt for twenty-three minutes, then deleted it after realizing I had no answer to What are you looking for? that didn’t sound like a woman seconds away from joining a cult with decent dental.
I haul the toner out of the closet and return to my desk, which is less of a desk and more of a paper-based habitat with a keyboard somewhere beneath the ecosystem. Every morning, I tell myself I’m going to organize it. Every afternoon, I accept that I’m simply a raccoon with a meeting calendar.
The office is bright in the way old buildings try to be bright when they have tall windows and unreliable wiring.
Outside, Boston has decided to do that mid-fall thing where the air feels newly washed, like the city is trying to charm you before winter arrives and steals your will to live one frozen sidewalk at a time.
Inside, the printer blinks at me like it knows about my credit score.
My phone buzzes again.
Mom: Just circling back. Carla is hoping to finalize by EOD.
EOD.
My mother has started using corporate abbreviations.
There truly is no bottom to the madness that’s my life.
Soon she’ll be saying things like “circle back,” “bandwidth,” and “let’s take this offline,” which is how I’ll know I’ve died and gone to a networking brunch where everyone wears beige.
I sit, set the toner down, and type back before I can think better of it.
Keep the runner. Add two tables only if we shift the bar service closer to the east terrace and reduce the lounge seating by the fireplace. Ask Carla if she prefers clean sight-lines or a room where everyone can sit like they’re waiting at an airport gate.
I read it twice, delete the airport gate part, then replace it with something less likely to get me removed from my mother’s will.
Happy to mock up the layout tonight.
There.
Perfectly professional.
Mildly dead inside, but in a tasteful way.
“Please tell me you’re not working on the wedding again,” Mira says, appearing beside my desk with her mug in one hand and a stack of mail in the other.
I lock my phone like it contains state secrets, my search history, and every lie I’ve ever told while using the phrase totally fine.
“I’m not working on the wedding again.”
“You said that too fast.”
“I’m efficient.”
“You’re underpaid, overcommitted, and one parking ticket away from becoming a cautionary folk tale.”
“That’s hurtful and oddly lyrical.” I glare at her. “Plus, I don’t have a car, so it would be impossible to get a parking ticket.”
Mira drops the mail onto my desk and studies me with the expression of a woman who recognizes burnout the way some people recognize bird calls. She’s in her early fifties, terrifyingly competent, and has the rare ability to make you feel cared for while telling you to stop acting like a martyr.
“Daisy,” she says.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You used my name in the tone.”
“What tone?”
“The tone people use right before suggesting rest, boundaries, or lunch.”
“Have you eaten lunch?”
I glance at the corner of my desk, where a granola bar has been sitting since Tuesday, still sealed because opening it would require accepting that it counts as a meal.
Mira follows my gaze.
“That’s depressing.”
“It has almonds.”
“That’s not a defense.”
“It has little dark chocolate pieces.”
“Daisy.”
“I’m eating after work.”
“At the café?”
“Yes.”
“During your second job?”
I open my mouth, then close it because I am not currently accepting thoughtful criticism. My emotional inbox is full. Please submit all concerns in writing and expect a response in six to eight business years.
The thing is, everyone says “second job” like it is inherently tragic, but I like The Turning Page.
I like the smell of cinnamon and coffee.
I like Bea’s muttered insults, the old books, the regulars, the tiny stage where poets overuse the word “ache,” and the table by the window where someone leaves pencil notes in the margins of donated romance novels as if they are in a long-term argument with happily ever after.
The extra paycheck helps, obviously.
Bea also feeds me once a shift, which reduces the number of times I stand in grocery aisles doing math that feels too personal.
Okay, fine.
The extra paycheck is the main reason.
But liking the place makes the exhaustion feel less pathetic.
“I’m fine,” I tell Mira, which is what I say when I am not fine but would prefer the room not to vote on it.
She looks at me for a second too long. “You know, ‘fine’ is not a personality.”
“It can be if you moisturize daily.”
Her mouth twitches. “Eat something that isn’t a fundraising cheese cube before the end of the day.”
“Hey, I respect cheese cubes as a protein-adjacent concept.”
“Daisy.”
“Fine. I’ll eat something with an actual expiration date.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what I can offer.”
She sighs, which is fair. I’m exhausting to love. I know this because I also have to live with me and, frankly, I would not renew the lease.
Then my phone lights up again with another email from the wedding folder, and whatever almost passed for honesty folds itself away.