Chapter 27 Daisy
DAISY
The smell of smoke still clings to everything.
Three days after the fire, the investigators finally release the site, and I stand on the sidewalk in borrowed work boots that are half a size too big, staring at what used to be The Margin.
The front wall is mostly intact: singed, water-stained, but standing.
Through the broken windows, I can see where the damage gets worse toward the back, where Kendra started the fire in the storage room.
Beneath the apartment where I used to sleep.
The investigator tells Nell the back door was forced with a pry bar.
Kendra's old volunteer key and code had been canceled after book club; she hadn't walked back in by permission.
She had chosen the storage door she knew was screened from the street.
It makes an ugly kind of sense now, all the watching after we told her to leave.
"Coffee's ready!" Ruth's voice cuts through the early morning quiet.
She's set up a folding table on the sidewalk with three industrial thermoses, a tower of paper cups, and a box of donuts that Bev brought from the bakery two blocks over.
"If you're going to stand around looking tragic, you're going to do it caffeinated. "
I take the cup she shoves at me. "I'm not looking tragic."
"Honey, you've got the face of a woman who's about to apologize for something that isn't her fault.
" Ruth squints at me over her own coffee.
"I was an ER nurse for forty years. I know that face.
It's the face of someone who thinks they caused the car accident because they asked their husband to pick up milk. "
"Ruth—"
"The crazy woman who set the fire is the one who set the fire," she continues, steamrolling right over me. "You are the woman who happened to work here. Those are different women. One of them is in jail. One of them is drinking my coffee. Do you see the distinction?"
I almost smile. Almost. "I see the distinction."
"Good. Now put on your gloves and go be useful. We've got a store to clean up."
People arrive in old clothes and work boots (toolboxes, brooms, coolers of water bottles) and I can't quite process what I'm seeing.
The foreman Adam hired walks the perimeter first thing, orange tape in hand. "Alright, listen up!" He's got a voice built for construction sites. "Everything past this tape is structural. Licensed contractors only. You touch it, I send you home. Clear?"
A murmur of agreement.
"Front section's water and smoke damage. That's where volunteers work. Ms. Okafor?"
Nell steps forward, clipboard in hand. "Thank you, Derek. Okay, people. Priya, your grad students are on debris removal, front left quadrant. Bev, your husband brought the shop vac?"
"Right here." Bev's husband waves from beside a truly impressive piece of equipment.
"Excellent. You're on water extraction, far wall. Ma'am—" She points to a woman I don't recognize, who's setting up industrial fans. "Ruth sent you?"
"She did. Said you'd need airflow."
"I do. Set up along the window line, angled toward the back."
"Daisy." She catches my arm as I'm heading toward the pile of salvaged books someone stacked outside near the door. "Stop."
"I'm helping."
"You're spiraling." She pulls me aside, away from the bustle of volunteers. "I can see it in your shoulders. You hunch like you're trying to make yourself smaller so you'll be a smaller target for blame."
I don't have a response to that, because she's not wrong.
"This is not your fault," Nell says, her voice firm.
"Kendra didn't burn down my store because of you.
She burned it down because she's an unstable person who couldn't handle rejection and made a series of terrible choices.
The fact that you happened to be the person she blamed for Adam refusing her doesn't make you responsible for her actions. "
"Your store is gone, Nell."
"My store is damaged," she corrects. "And it's going to be rebuilt. And you know what? It was underinsured anyway. The payout wouldn't have covered a full restoration to what it was before. But your husband—"
"Nell."
"… who I have decided to tolerate now that he's proven himself useful, came to me yesterday with a contractor and a checkbook, and the first thing he said was 'This is your store.
I'm not trying to buy it or own it or put my name on it.
I just want to help you build it back the way you want it.
' And then he shut up and let me talk for an hour about load-bearing walls and reading nooks. "
Warmth blooms in my chest, but I try to keep my voice neutral. "And then?"
"He asked permission before he spent a single dollar.
He asked what I wanted the space to look like.
He asked if there were features I'd always dreamed about but couldn't afford.
" Nell's eyes are bright with barely contained excitement.
"Daisy, I've been running this store for eight years, and I've always wanted to knock out that back wall and expand into the storage area properly, turn it into a real event space for readings and book clubs and author visits.
But the cost was prohibitive, and I didn't have the capital, and now—"
"Now you do."
"Now I have a benefactor who specifically told me he didn't care about the budget as long as I was happy with the result." She shakes her head. "I wanted to hate him. It was so much easier when I could hate him."
"I know the feeling."
"But he sat there with his little notebook, writing down everything I said, asking clarifying questions about sight lines and acoustic considerations, and at one point he said, 'What about the children's section?
Do you want it closer to the front so parents can see the door, or in the back where it's quieter?
' and I just—" Nell throws her hands up.
"How am I supposed to stay mad at someone who thinks about sight lines for parents? "
The warmth in my chest spreads. "He does that. Thinks about details that matter to other people."
"It's annoying."
"It really is."
We stand there for a moment, watching the volunteers move through what's left of the store, and then Nell nudges me with her elbow. "He also saved your cat and your dead mother's books while a building was on fire around him, so I guess he gets points for that too."
"Nell."
"I'm just saying. If you're going to be in love with somebody, at least you picked one with good instincts in a crisis." She heads back toward the cleanup before I can respond, calling out instructions to Priya about where to stack the salvageable inventory.
In love.
I am, though. I have been for longer than I wanted to admit, even when I was angry, even when I was hurt, even when I was signing divorce papers with hands that shook because loving him had not made staying bearable.
The morning wears on. I work alongside Ruth and Bev, sorting through books that survived the water damage, setting aside the ones that can be dried and restored.
Adam arrives around ten and joins the contractor and two assistants.
They disappear into the back section with hard hats and clipboards, assessing structural damage.
By noon, the sidewalk has become an impromptu community center: folding chairs and card tables, someone's portable speaker playing soft music, neighbors stopping by with food and offers of help.
I'm sitting on an overturned milk crate, taking a break and watching the organized chaos, when I hear a familiar engine.
The truck is old and loud and badly in need of a new muffler, and my heart clenches when I see my father climb out of the cab.
"Dad?"
Dale Williams crosses the sidewalk with the same deliberate stride I remember from childhood, the one that says he's got a plan and he's going to execute it regardless of what anyone else thinks. He's carrying a toolbox in one hand and a power drill in the other.
"Heard there was a building needed fixing," he says gruffly. "Figured I'd see if I could help."
"You drove four hours."
"It's a nice day for a drive." He sets down his toolbox and looks at the damaged storefront, then back at me. "You okay?"
The question is simple, but it cracks my chest open.
He answered when I called him from the wedding car.
He let Adam pay off his debts when the lawsuit threatened to take everything.
He calls on my birthday, every year, without fail.
And now he's here, with his tools, ready to help rebuild a bookstore that isn't his because his daughter worked there.
"I'm okay," I say, and my voice only breaks a little.
"Good." He nods once, like that settles it. "Now point me toward someone who knows what they're doing. I'm better at taking orders than giving them."
Adam emerges from the back of the store just as my father asks, and a look passes between them that I can't read.
They've met, obviously. They've had dinners together, sat across from each other at holidays, made small talk about trucks and weather and sports.
But this feels different. More significant.
"Mr. Williams," Adam says, extending his hand. "Good to see you, sir."
"Dale." My father shakes the offered hand firmly. "Call me Dale. Anyone who runs into a burning building for my daughter's cat has earned first-name privileges."
"The cat has expressed his disapproval in considerable detail."
"Smart cat." Dale looks between us, and I see his weathered face soften, almost imperceptibly. "Put me to work, son. I drove four hours to be useful."
Son. Adam glances at me (checking, making sure I'm okay with this development) and I nod slightly.
"We're replacing the damaged display panels along the front wall," Adam says. "I could use someone who actually knows their way around a drill. The contractor has marked the work we can safely do. His crew is handling the framing."
"Lead the way."