Chapter 6 Daisy #2
"It will pass. These things always do. But only if you play the game correctly. Only if you give them a better story: the reconciliation, the romance, the happily-ever-after they wanted to believe in. If you do that, they'll forgive you. They'll even root for you again."
"And if I don't want to play?"
"Then you're on your own." Lorraine's voice goes flat, final. "The Meridian machine will protect itself with or without your cooperation. I'd prefer with. It makes my job easier and your life considerably more comfortable. But the choice is yours."
Priya appears at my elbow, pressing a cup of tea into my free hand. Her expression is murderous on my behalf, and that small kindness makes my eyes sting.
"You didn't even ask how I'm doing," I say to Lorraine. "You called to give me instructions. Not once did you ask if I was okay."
"Are you okay?"
"No. I'm standing in a bookstore having a breakdown while strangers dissect my marriage online. I'm not remotely okay."
"Then do the interview, do the photo spread, and give yourself permission to be okay again.
That's the path forward." Lorraine's voice softens a fraction: not warmth, exactly, but close to patience.
"I know this is hard. I know it feels personal.
But feelings don't fix problems. Actions do.
Call me when you're ready to take action. "
The line goes silent. I end the call.
I don't hang up on her exactly. I just press the button and watch the screen go dark and then I sit there in the reading chair while Nell brings me water and Priya hovers and somewhere out in the world, thousands of strangers continue to tear apart my marriage, my choices, my entire existence based on a PDF they found on Twitter.
"My chest hurts," I say, and my voice sounds very small.
"Come here." Nell pulls me up from the chair and guides me toward the stockroom, away from the windows and the door and any customers who might wander in. "Priya, watch the register. We'll be in back."
The stockroom is cramped and cluttered, boxes of new arrivals stacked against walls lined with overflow inventory.
It smells like cardboard and old paper, the smell of every bookstore I've ever loved, and normally I find it comforting, but right now my lungs won't expand properly and my hands are tingling and the walls seem to be getting closer.
"I can't breathe." The words come out in gasps. "Nell, I can't… I can't breathe."
"You can breathe. You're breathing right now. Sit down." She eases me onto a stack of boxes that groan but hold. "Look at me. Eyes on me. We're going to count."
"I can't—"
"Yes, you can. In for four. Ready? One, two, three, four."
I try to follow her count, but the air keeps getting stuck somewhere in my throat, and the comments keep scrolling through my head: gold digger, prostitute, pathetic, worthless, and I think about my father seeing this, my book club seeing this, everyone I've ever met knowing that my marriage started as a contract and wondering if it ever became anything more.
"Hold for four," Nell says. "One, two, three, four."
I hold. Or I try to. My hands are shaking so hard I can hear the boxes rattling beneath me.
"Out for four. One, two, three, four."
We repeat it, and eventually the walls stop closing in and my lungs remember how to work and the tingling in my hands fades to a dull numbness.
"There you go." Nell's voice is gentle but steady. "That's it. Keep breathing."
"I'm sorry." I wipe my face and realize I've been crying, though I don't remember starting. "I'm sorry, I don't… I don't usually—"
"You don't have to apologize for having a panic attack in my stockroom. God knows this place has seen worse." She squeezes my shoulders. "Stay here as long as you need. I'm going to check on Priya."
She leaves, and I sit alone among the boxes, breathing in cardboard and paper and trying to figure out how my life fell apart so completely in the space of an afternoon.
I think about calling Adam. He must know by now, Lorraine said she'd been trying to reach me for an hour, which means she's probably been trying to reach him too.
I wonder if he's seen the comments. I wonder if he cares.
The stockroom door opens. Nell's face appears in the gap, and her expression has shifted from concerned to confused.
"There's something else," she says. "Flowers came for you about an hour ago, before all this started. I put them at the register."
"Flowers?"
"White roses. No name on the delivery slip. I figured they were from your husband, some kind of apology, but now I'm not so sure."
I push myself up from the boxes, legs unsteady. My husband doesn't send flowers.
The main room feels too bright after the dim stockroom.
Chaucer is still on the counter, and next to him sits a crystal vase full of white roses, two dozen at least, perfect and pristine and completely anonymous.
Except for the card. I pull it from the arrangement with fingers that have started shaking again, though for a different reason now.
The handwriting hits me like a punch to the chest.
Slanted. Precise. Familiar in a way that makes my stomach turn over and my skin go cold and my heart start racing with fear, not grief or humiliation, actual fear, the kind I haven't felt in six years.
Two words: Missed me?
"Daisy?" Nell is watching me, her brow furrowed. "What is it? What does it say?"
I stare at the card. At the handwriting I would know anywhere, because I spent two years of my life learning to read his moods in the way he curved his letters.
"That's Cole," I say, and my voice sounds hollow and far away. "He's supposed to be in prison."
"Who the fuck is Cole?"
Cole Redding. My ex-boyfriend.
The man who put me in the hospital when I was twenty-four.
And according to this card, he knows exactly where to find me.