Chapter Five Daisy #2
“Oh, don’t be silly.” Nora patted Soraya’s shoulder. “They won’t excommunicate you. If they did, how would they shame you?” Soraya frowned and opened her mouth, but Nora forged onward. “Anyway. I thought I could use a little bit of income supplement.”
“Yeah,” Soraya said.
“What about you?” Daisy asked Soraya.
“I had a visit from my Bible study leader.” She clutched her coffee cup with both hands and looked around the room like she was afraid someone might overhear. “She thinks I should get back with David because he’s such a good man.”
Nora made a loud scoffing sound, then got up when her drink was announced and returned to the table a moment later.
“I’m not taking him back,” Soraya said. “That is, of course, going to be a financial problem, but I can’t let go of the infidelity, even if it isn’t physical. It feels like a betrayal.”
“Yeah, you kind of made vows about that,” Nora said.
“Thank you.” Soraya reached across the table and grabbed Nora’s arm. “Thank you for saying that, Nora. Because that’s how I feel, and no one seems sufficiently upset about it.”
“I’m sorry.” Daisy realized it was her turn, but she wasn’t particularly in the mood to talk about it. “I quit. The construction company. I’m not working for him anymore.”
Nora’s eyebrows lifted. “What happened that made you quit?”
Daisy looked away for a second, trying to . . . ground herself. Suddenly the room didn’t feel real. “I think he might be marrying her. I saw a big purchase from a jewelry store on his business account.”
“That’s so screwed up in so many ways,” Nora said.
“I know. And I think this is how he was telling me. I couldn’t stand it, not anymore. Ever since he walked out, everything has been his decision. Everything. He decided we were done, that he was moving out and moving on, he decided— Not this. I decided this.”
“Good for you,” Soraya said.
Daisy wasn’t sure it was good for her. She might make way less money at the apothecary, and it was definitely not going to be as flexible, and it might lead to the collapse of her husband’s business and therefore her children’s legacy. That was fine.
“So now I just have to take a day job where I don’t get to be home and balance that with the Youth Musical Theater of Oregon and the big production we have coming up and, oh—he was going to build sets.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Nora said.
“I am worried. We don’t have a big budget, and the kids are doing so well with rehearsal, but we can’t do this if we don’t have sets.”
“Black-box theater?”
“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers isn’t black-box-theater appropriate,” Daisy said. “And I have my mom and my grandma and the kids and . . . What did I just do? How am I going to live?”
“Daisy.” Soraya stared at her with uncharacteristic focus. “How are you going to live if you don’t get a real, decent settlement from him? How are either of us going to live? Everything is really messed up whether you keep working at his construction company or not. At least you have your pride.”
“Do I?” Daisy laughed. “Because my high school sweetheart left me, broke my heart, and looked at me like I meant nothing. I don’t feel like I have pride.
” It had been the most lowering moment of her life.
He’d told her he was leaving, and she’d had to vomit.
He’d acted like nothing had happened, like she hadn’t been sick because of him. Like she wasn’t broken because of him.
She’d seen people give more empathy to total strangers than Jonathan had given her after he’d dropped that bomb.
Nora put her hand on Daisy’s. “You have us now.”
Soraya looked like she might cry. “I haven’t felt like I’ve had anyone. All of my friends, my mother, everyone just thinks I’m stupid for kicking him out. For staying apart.”
“I don’t think that,” Nora said. “I think what you want matters.”
Soraya covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. “I’m not familiar with that concept.”
“This is so . . . It’s so ridiculous,” Daisy said.
“Your husband sent a picture of his penis to another woman at church. My husband left me and is already buying major jewelry for the twenty-five-year-old he’s shacking up with, and we have all these .
. . worries and fears and pain because of them, and they don’t even care. ”
“You’re not sociopaths,” Nora pointed out.
“Neither is Jonathan. He’s doing a great impression of one right now, but he’s not one. I don’t think my whole life was a lie. Whatever he’s telling himself right now, though . . . I don’t know. And it’s killing me. I hate that. I hate it for all of us.”
Nora would deflect and say Ben wasn’t really gone. Maybe he wasn’t. Daisy’s trust in men was at an all-time low.
“The store is open.” Nora looked down at her phone.
“Yes.”
But she found she couldn’t move now that she had made this decision.
“Come on,” Nora said. “We’re all going together.”
So Daisy let herself be collected like she was a child and dragged out of the coffee shop.
She startled slightly when she saw Zach standing out on the sidewalk next to the outdoor tables, talking to someone else. She turned away quickly.
Nora craned her neck past her. “Isn’t that—”
“Yes. My husband’s business partner.”
“Yeah, but he’s also famous,” Nora said.
“Zachary Woods.” Soraya’s words sounded reverent.
Both Daisy and Nora looked at her. Soraya shrugged. “We pray for him a lot.”
Nora snorted. “I’m sorry, what do you pray for him for?”
“For his eternal soul. You know, after we discuss what we assume are the details of his personal life.”
“Is that how you excuse gossiping?” Daisy asked.
“Absolutely,” Soraya confirmed.
It was the first time Daisy felt like she could relate to Soraya. Maybe Soraya was a human like the rest of them, with flaws and feelings she had to keep buried deep or risk being rejected.
“That man is so hot,” Nora said. “I think if I look directly at him for too long, I’ll spontaneously combust.”
“I’ve never looked very long, of course.” Soraya sniffed piously, but the corners of her lips turned upward slightly.
“He’s arrogant.” Daisy walked ahead of everyone else as they moved quickly down the sidewalk toward Lady’s Mantle.
“Even better!” said Nora.
That was funny. She wouldn’t have necessarily thought Nora would like that.
Daisy didn’t think Nora’s husband could be called arrogant.
Smug, maybe. Or at least that’s how she’d always perceived him.
He wasn’t her dentist, but she did see a different dentist in the office, and she’d had glancing contact with Dr. Ben Clarke and his waxed mustache.
Where Nora was simply cool, Ben seemed like he cared very much about being cool, to the point where he had convinced himself he was the coolest person in the room.
Which was an odd look on a man in his mid-thirties.
Of course, Daisy’s husband in his mid-thirties had decided to cliché his way into a twenty-five-year-old’s bed, so maybe she needed to be less judgmental.
Either way, Zach was arrogant but not smug. She would make a two-column list later regarding the differences between those two things.
“It’s not better,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t know him that well. He mainly hangs out with Jonathan.”
“Oh, bummer.” Nora looked performatively glum. “Then we have to hate him.”
“Yes. We do,” Daisy agreed resolutely.
They stood in front of the door, and she could see their reflections in it. Three women framed by the painted floral carving in the wood frame. Three women who looked like they were about to walk into a fire.
But life had felt like that recently. For all of them.
“Well,” said Nora. “Let’s do this.”