“Does she still ask about me?”
Daisy shifted her eyes to the floor and with a guilt-ridden voice whispered, “All the time. She asks about you all the time. It’s not easy being a kid without a dad, especially in a society where it is still very much taboo to be a single mother. And while Matt tries to step in, the fact remains that…”
“… he’s not her father,” Jameson finished her sentence, then rocked his head back and forth. “I should’ve been here, Daisy. All this time…”
“I know.”
“You took that from me.”
A whoosh of self-reproach spread across her skin as she reiterated, “I know.”
He took another step out of her apartment, then lingered in the hallway. “Can I come by tomorrow?”
Daisy leaned into the doorframe and folded her arms. “Matt will be home tomorrow, and we were supposed to go to the aquarium.”
“Doeshelive here?”
“No, but when he’s in town, we try to soak up as much time together.”
Jameson subtly balked. “How about Tuesday?”
“She has school.”
“After?”
Daisy cautiously nodded. “Sure. After school.”
“Can I bring dinner or something?”
Daisy popped her lips and groused, “Mm-hmm.”
His voice dropped low, the old tenderness slipping through, “Sounds good. See you then,darlin’.”
Chapter Twenty-One
DAISY STOOD IN A DARKroom, stranded in nothing but a sheer white nightgown and a cream-colored robe. Her feet were bare, her hair long past her breasts, the way it had been in her youth. Far ahead, a pin of light infiltrated the darkness. It caught her attention and she started toward it. At first, she walked. When the light seemed to drift away, she broke into a sprint, desperate not to lose her only way out.
But her legs couldn’t move fast enough and the light vanished.
Utter gloom swallowed her.
Daisy fell to the ground, wrecked by the sense that she had failed. That light had been her beacon. Then, impossibly, it returned. This time moving toward her and before she could stand to welcome it, the room flooded with radiance. She opened her eyes to find an image from her past:
Herself, younger, in her New York City apartment, turning the small second bedroom into a nursery. She watched her younger self assemble a crib and fill a bassinet with a handful of stuffed animals. She watched as she primed herself for a lifeshe hadn’t planned but would fiercely embrace. Her heart caved when she watched herself cry, tears of sorrow falling as she stared at the room she had put together alone.
All alone.
Daisy remembered that day. Worse, she remembered the feeling. She had been terrified, more of the questions to come than of motherhood itself. She feared the day her daughter would ask about her father and the choices Daisy had made to protect her. Beyond the choice to keep her child, keeping the truth of her parentage a secret had been one of the hardest things she had ever done.
She watched her younger self sink to her knees on the nursery carpet, palms circling the roundness of her belly. She whispered a string of “I’m sorrys” to the small person inside and promised to try her damned hardest to be the best mother she could be.
As Daisy watched, a weight lifted. For years, she’d carried guilt for what her decision had cost. For years, she’d watched her daughter wrestle with why her father didn’t want her, how he supposedly loved her and yet wasn’t there. A hundred times, Daisy had almost told the truth. But each time, she remembered his world.
The drugs, the road, the heartbreak. None of it was meant for a child.
So Daisy absorbed the guilt so her daughter could have a normal life.
She looked at the lonely girl on the nursery floor and also felt something else… release. She ached to go back and tell that girl it would be okay. A strong wind blew through her hair. She lifted her face.
