After the fire, Daisy was frightened of the dark. It was easy enough to handle on its own, but add another wild card, and all of Daisy’s senses fired. Any attempt to flee, to escape the memories, felt like running through a thicket. Cheery music rolled over the film previews, but the dimly lit movie theater turned suddenly into the forest: the girl’s dying body at her feet, the chestnut-bronze eyes looking up at her all too alive. Stella’s friends laughed at her confusion in the cruel, chattery way that only high schoolers can, one of them still half reclining on the floor, playing dead.
Daisy’s mind clawed for a foothold in the dark and found it. You’re indoors, not out. This isn’t real. If you were outside, if it were happening again, you’d see the fireflies.
Daisy blinked and the memories disappeared. Surrounded by the sharp laughter of the teenaged girls, she could have been in the midst of a flock of crows. She held her hands to her face, making to block the noise, and fumbled along the row of seats and through the dark theater for the exit. She hurried to the bathrooms and found a long line. At least having to cry in public guaranteed her admission to the front.
She ducked into a stall and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until the tears stopped, as if applying pressure to a wound. When Daisy exited the stall, she stepped over to the mirror and looked up, finding, instead of her own reflection, the girl she considered her best friend.
“What do you want, Stella?” Though her voice was cool, it released a rush of relief: Stella was sorry. She had followed her out. “You could have stuck up for me back there. God, that was horrible.”
Stella inched away, reached up and tucked her shiny brown hair behind one ear. “Nothing.” She spoke in a low voice, looked back over her shoulder. “I—I just had to go to the bathroom.”
Daisy felt the heat in her clenched palms cool, a blue, removed anger streaming down to her toes, her mud-tinged sneakers almost touching Stella’s patent leather flats.
“Got it. You know what, Stella? I saw her. I don’t need you to believe me.” Daisy’s voice wavered. She had always been a bad liar.
“I’ll see you at school tomorrow. Daisy—”
Daisy exited the bathroom and let the door swing closed with a clap behind her, a single note of applause to top off the evening. The corridor to the back exit was dark, but this time, Daisy felt her eyes adjust. It was one thing to write off her mother, but Daisy had the sense that she was losing her best friend, and it had been a truth too awful to see by daylight.
The thing about New Mexico was the sunlight. It was bright blue days and cloudless nights, tied together with sunsets and sunrises that seemed to clean the sky of all the previous hours. Daisy had always been an early riser, disliking the idea that somebody might learn something before she did. Today, she spent the sleepless hour before dawn waiting for her newest article to go live. By 6 a.m., the rising sun backlit the blinds with its yellow warmth. She turned to the sleeping figure in the bed with a smile, then approached.
It was the way Anderson slept that had stolen her heart, all those years ago. Daisy had liked him from the first minute—though, back then, an honest offer of help would have been enough to make her like anyone. The first night they were together, when he had stretched across a lumpy hotel bed and slept in absolute comfort, one arm tossed back above his head, his chin tilted up just so—exactly as he was doing now—she had begun to fall in love. How young she’d been, and how lost.
Daisy traced his hair, deep brown, then let her fingertip whisper across his brow. She still felt the loss a little bit, every day when she woke. That was okay: it got her up early. Kept her working. The doctor had said there was no reason for it, though it was uncommon for it to happen so far along.
“How old are you, Daisy?” the doctor had asked. She had looked up from her phone, still waiting for Anderson’s response to her frantic messages.
“Thirty-five,” she’d replied. The doctor had said nothing, but a certain look had crossed his face. “I feel young,” she’d said. “I feel really healthy.”
The doctor had assured her that she was healthy, that many women had healthy pregnancies and babies at thirty-five, or older. A shelf on the wall held a row of medical brochures. Daisy had reached over and selected one on egg freezing. She’d taken it home, tucked it into the top drawer of her bedside table, the information at the ready but not out in the open, an unwelcome reminder. It wasn’t that Daisy was old, that wasn’t it. But she wasn’t as young as she had thought she was.
Daisy felt a sigh lingering in her throat, so she leaned near, laid her cheek against his warm shoulder. “Anderson,” she whispered. “Are you ready?”
He stretched, broad arms almost spanning the bedframe, smiled up at her as she adjusted his pillow. “This is your big day, right? Let’s see it.”
Daisy opened her tablet and typed the web address. “Hold on.” She rose from the bed, crossed the room to the wide picture windows that filled the east-facing wall. Pulling the cord with both hands, she filled the room with marigold-hued light one window at a time, then returned to his side. Anderson protested with a teasing groan, one forearm raised to shield his eyes.
“I’m definitely awake now.”
She dropped onto the bed beside him. “I’ve been up,” she murmured.
“Still waking early?”
Daisy’s eyes met his, holding a quick, quiet moment of silence. Not this morning, it said. Today, we are not sad. She picked up the tablet again, held it out in front of her, and reloaded the website. “There it is,” she said, pointing with glee as the article appeared. “My own feature with my own byline. My own name, as soon as you visit the page.”
Anderson clapped his hands together, then pulled her close and pressed his lips to hers. “You deserve it.”
She let the sun warm her face, soaking in the morning. “It’s not that it changes anything materially, but it feels good to see it.”
“You’ve worked for it, Daisy,” Anderson answered, scratching at his stubble as he looked at his phone.
“For this, today, or for this—” She swept her eyes across the spacious bedroom, the windows that looked out over the desert, the work that was starting to come in steadily. This life, here. Both were true.
“Hm?” He placed the phone back on his bedside table, returning his attention to her.
With a sharp clap of a noise and a puff of gray feathers, a pigeon struck the window and dropped out of sight and into the garden.
“Oh, shit.” She hurried to the window, peering down to the ground below. “Not again.”
“You keep those windows too clean,” he answered with a smile. “I’ll remember to pick that one up before the neighbor’s cat comes over.”
Daisy’s eyebrows drew together. She gathered a floral bathrobe from the back of the chair and wrapped it over her pajamas.
“Daisy.” Anderson’s eyes had a way of softening and also focusing in on her. Like a shift in light, she felt his expression change. “Don’t. You were so upset last time.”
“Nonsense. I’m completely fine,” she said. His smile was indulgent, half doubtful, as if to say but are you really? “I just need to see if it’s alive.”
Daisy descended the staircase, nudged her toes into her sandals, and opened the front door. She took in another moment of gratitude for the incredible brightness of this place, the clean, dry air. Even the city seemed to wake up gently, the sounds of nearby vehicles and far-off voices, the neighborhood coming to life. Back home, the humid, close air seemed to get inside your clothes, inside your very skin. She drew in a deep breath and hurried around to the side of the house, scanning the ground beneath the windows. She took a careful step, placing her foot down between the red poppies and ornamental grasses, then another step, avoiding the flowering cactus, and nearly walked right over it.
Leaning close, her chin almost brushed the ground. Daisy could imagine Anderson teasing her: What will the neighbors think? She eyed the pigeon, which was not visibly damaged.
“Get up,” she whispered, extending a curious hand. Maybe she could pick it up, call the animal control department, or a vet. “Come on.”
As Daisy brushed the top of the bird’s head with her fingertip, she noticed with a sigh that she had managed to chip her nail polish, and made a note to touch it up later. She brought her focus back to the bird, staring intently as it lay there, unmoving. Then, with an annoyed squeak and a flutter, the bird hopped to one foot, tottered a few steps, and flapped into the air, taking refuge on the eaves of the house next door.
Daisy laughed, following the bird with her eyes as she walked back inside. It was dark, but she opened the blinds to an angle instead of raising them. She circled through the living room, passed Anderson’s office, and went into the kitchen to wash her hands. As she heated the kettle for tea, she spied a stack of mail resting on the granite bar by the stove. She thumbed through it, sorting junk—a credit card offer, a pamphlet of coupons—from more junk. At the bottom of the stack, a cream-colored envelope peered out, heavyweight paper that was pleasant and smooth to the touch. When she read the name on the return address, she almost jumped back from it, letting it fall to the floor. The kettle whistled. She poured two cups of tea, loaded them on a tray, and cautiously retrieved her mail, placing it face down beside the drinks.
“Babe, did you get the mail yesterday?” She pushed the bedroom door open with one hip and set the tray on the coffee table.
“Yes, I did.” Anderson, still in bed, looked up from his computer to smile at her. “Why? Are you waiting for something?”
“No,” she answered, adding honey to her tea. In the full light of morning, with Anderson right there, no imagining, she turned the envelope over and reread the name. Stella Whitten. “I’m just wondering how long this has been here.”
“Worked late last night,” he said, rising from the bed. “I didn’t want to wake you. I knew you’d find it in the morning.” With a hint of concern, he approached her, took his tea. “Why—is everything alright?”
“Fine, I think.” Daisy tore open the envelope and traced the edges of the card. You are cordially invited to the wedding of Stella Whitten and Bryson Crane, of Zion, North Carolina. Biting her lip, she traced the letters with her fingertip: lacy calligraphy letters in navy-blue ink. Below the address block, a handwritten line, Daisy, hope to see you. Best wishes, S. Daisy squeezed her eyes shut. This was no mistake.
It’s a mean prank, she wanted to say. Another excuse to laugh at the crazy girl. No, she thought, no, that was years ago. Another life entirely.
Memories flickered and swarmed before her closed eyes like a flock of hummingbirds. She pictured the sparkling, warlike, little ruby-throated birds from back home with wings abuzz around her. In spite of the thorny panic that still sprang up, the idea of home remained pervasive, sweet, a lullaby, the recollection of the lush, chirping landscape of her childhood still holding onto her somewhere in her body. That place was a lull, the myriad sounds of crickets, the rustling forest, birds, engines, blurring against the snapping beams and shouts of a long-ago afternoon. The word panic, Daisy had read, came from Pan, the deity of the forest, and other things, those little noises attributed to him.
There was another face that flickered through Daisy’s memory, a girl whose name she had never learned; the singed stubs of eyelashes framing moss-brown eyes, the same color as her own. The wooden beam across her midsection, which surely would have killed her slowly if the fire and chemical smoke had not done the heavy lifting already. Her hands reaching upward, toward Daisy’s own, the cheaply made ring on her finger. Daisy’s memory clouded. Wasn’t there an inscription printed on the ring? It was a word she knew, she was certain of it. Of how her hands held tight to the dying girl’s, until she was pulled away, how the ring slipped off the thin fingers into her own fist. Her own voice whispering, What is your name?
“Babe, you listening?”
“No,” she said. “Sorry—what? I was distracted.”
“Who’s Stella?”
“Someone from home. You know,” she answered with a firm smile that was something less than happy.
“Rather not talk about it now?”
“It’s not that.” Daisy sipped her tea and looked out the windows, the sky turning from sunset yellow into clear blue. “We were best friends, once. Years ago. There’s nothing to say or feel or think about it. And I wouldn’t say we left things on happy terms. So…” She picked up the invitation and handed it to Anderson. “The question remains: why?”
“Who knows, Daisy?” He placed it face down on the table and took her hand. “If you don’t want to think about it, let’s not think about it.”
“You’re exactly right.” She stood up and paced across the room with an excess of energy. Opened her tablet again, traced her finger over her name on the screen. That’s Daisy Ritter, she thought. Not that other girl, from way back. Not the girl Stella betrayed. This Daisy is the only one that matters, and Stella might have found my address, but she doesn’t know I’m on a different planet altogether. But something squeezed inside her chest, and it was gentle and soft, propelling her back to Anderson’s side. She wrapped her arms around him tight, only exhaling when she felt him return the embrace.
“I love you, Daisy.”
“I love you, too.”
“Hey,” he said, remembering. “How’s your dead bird?”
She turned her chin up and beamed at him. “It wasn’t dead,” she said. “It was alive.”
When Anderson left for his morning run, Daisy put the invitation on the other side of the room, under a magazine. She glared in its direction, then returned to bed. Avoid strenuous exercise, the doctor had said. Don’t lose any weight. To watch Anderson leave to breathe past city blocks, feel the concrete pushing him back up, made her jealous.
Daisy had to admit she had never excelled at sitting still. But she was remembering that she’d been awake since half past four. She closed her eyes and pulled the blanket over her face to block the light. Ten minutes later, she walked back across the room, lifted the magazine and looked at the invitation again. Bryson Crane—why did that name sound familiar? When you’re from a small town, every name sounds familiar. But she was certain she’d heard it somewhere before. Who cared who Stella ended up married to, anyway?
Daisy put the magazine back and sat at her desk, scanning the multitude of tabs open on her browser. She had an interview scheduled with a candidate for city council, and a column on local tourism to write. A write-up on wedding trends was due the following Friday. Damn. If it meant working to put Stella’s wedding out of her mind, that was just as well; she was no stranger to hard work. She always had at least six projects on the go. She clicked on another tab, only to scroll past an advertisement for nursery furniture. Damn targeted ads, she thought. Someone should tell them that if you do a web search for ‘miscarriage’ they should probably stop running the pregnancy ads. She pushed the desk chair away from the computer and rolled to a stop in the middle of the floor.
Anderson didn’t need to propose to her. Daisy felt their love was somehow bigger than a need for marriage, the way they’d always looked out for each other. She had kept house and cooked for years while he finished law school, though, to be fair, that was about all she’d considered herself qualified for at the time, writing late at night while he caught up on studying or sleep. In his early years at work, while he was still an intern at the law firm, he’d invited her to every party, introduced her to some of her first contacts for interviews and newspapers. Even when he was studying to pass the bar, he had always made time to help her, looking over her articles. Nearly seventeen years of having each other’s backs. They didn’t need a ceremony or a piece of paper to make that real.
When Daisy heard the back door open downstairs as Anderson returned from his run, she smiled. “How’d it go?” she called, hearing his footsteps on the stairs. “You’re back sooner than I expected.”
“Three miles,” he replied. “Short run today. I’m going into the office early.” Anderson gave Daisy’s rolling chair a playful push, then spun her around to face him, kneeling down so that their eyes were level. “You’re looking pensive. Work going okay?”
“Yes.” Daisy glanced back toward the computer. “Still lots of advertisements for baby stuff. I’m just taking a breather.”
“Ah.” Anderson brushed Daisy’s cheek, swept his fingers across her hair. “You’re so stunning in the morning.”
“Not as much as you.” She leaned closer and wrapped her arms around him, then traced the faint, pale scar that dashed across his chin, a souvenir of a childhood fall.
“Nonsense.” Anderson squirmed, pulling back just slightly. Daisy adored that scar, though she knew he disliked it. He rose to his feet, passed through the bedroom, and took a clean towel from the closet. “I’m going to take a shower. Be right back.”
Daisy smiled and pushed the rolling chair back to her desk. She clicked through her usual roster of news and social media websites, landing finally on the Zion Daily. Daisy told herself that she only checked the Zion news periodically, only to remind herself that she was glad to live far away. Zion. Home. Strange word. All these years later, the distance between her and that town written in stone, and still, the word, home, called to mind that hillside North Carolina town. That town, and everything that had happened there.
The too-large font and shabby margins of a cheaply designed website loaded, a banner image of the skyline of her hometown sharpening across the screen. The Zion Daily had been around for decades, and their website still reflected the small-town paper’s discomfort with newer forms of media. Still, she checked it as though picking a scab—marriage announcements, real estate sales—devouring every word. Even in the comment sections beneath articles, she saw names she recognized, people she had gone to high school or church with, now married, replicating the lives their parents had lived. But she didn’t expect to see the headline that cycled across the screen next. Beside it, an image of a chain-link fence enclosing an overgrown yard, a fire-blackened structure that sagged with the weight of years but still, somehow, stood. Daisy inhaled sharply, then clicked on the words Local Developer Finalizes Sale of Zion Chemical Site. Daisy instinctively looked over her shoulder, huddled closer to the screen.
Seventeen years after a fire permanently shut down the Zion Chemical Company, local real estate developer Bryson Crane will finalize purchase of the site. Rumored plans for development include retail, recreation, or industrial. Decades may pass before the groundwater supply is cleared for residential or foodservice. The fire, in which four workers were killed…
Not now, she thought, rising from her chair. Surely she could allow herself a quick run. She’d keep an easy pace. Daisy pulled off her t-shirt and stepped out of the cotton pajama shorts. She pulled on a pair of leggings, then wrestled a black sports bra over her shoulders and into place. Daisy drew deep breaths, stretching each leg as she pulled on her socks and laced her sneakers, already craving the fresh morning air.
She tapped on the bathroom door before opening it. “Anderson, I’m going for a quick run.”
“Run?” He raised an eyebrow without turning to face her, frowning at his reflection. “Do you see gray hair?”
“I don’t think so. Well, maybe just one or two.” She stood next to him, glanced at their reflections: her mess of blonde waves, his darker brown hair. “Looking dapper as ever, Mr. Moreland.”
He stood up to his full height and picked up his aftershave. “Miss Ritter, I think you already know you’re not supposed to be running anywhere.”
“Jog,” Daisy countered. She took a clean tank top from the drying rack and pulled it on over her bra.
“Walk.” He patted the aftershave onto his neck, twisted the cap back onto the bottle, and replaced it on the shelf above the sink.
“Jog,” Daisy answered firmly. “I won’t be gone long. I know my limits.” She drew close and leaned her chin on his shoulder, turning away from the mirror as she spoke. “You know, the doctor said we could start trying again anytime.”
He tilted his chin and smiled back at her, and it seemed to Daisy that the warmth of his expression reached her from a distance, or perhaps too close to focus. She blew him a kiss and turned to leave, heading down the stairs at a trot and breaking into a jog as soon as she was out the door. Maybe it was harder for him than he let on. What mattered was that, whatever that inscrutable distance was, they still reached each other. Always had. She turned the corner, jogging in place as she waited for the light to change. This was the relationship that had saved her, that had helped her build her life into something she cherished. Her life with him. The reason Zion, and whoever lived there and whatever poisoned, backhanded things they were up to, didn’t have to matter to her one bit. The light turned green and she ran.
Zion Chemical sat on a large, fenced-in lot, just a mile, as the crow flies, up the steep hillside behind the graying-white ranch home where Daisy and her parents. . .
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