Page 70 of The Life She Had

Daisy

“Wh-what?”I stammer. Then I try to recover with, “CeCe?” and a short laugh. “Getting me mixed up with Celeste?”

He locks gazes with me. “Never.”

Oh, shit.

“You honestly thought I fell for that?” He shakes his head. “You seemed to think I did, but how the hell could I?”

I say nothing, just stand there, my voice gone.

“You really thought I didn’t recognize you, CeCe? That a new hair color and contacts would keep me from recognizing you the moment I saw you?”

“Twenty years,” I croak. “It’s been—”

“Twenty years. And I’d know you after fifty. I know your voice. I know your expressions. I know the way you walk, the way you speak, the way you think.”

When I don’t speak, he says, “How long did it take you to recognize me?”

I say nothing.

“Would you have known me if I were bald? If I were wearing sunglasses?”

Yes. That’s the truth of it. His hair color didn’t tell me who he was. His eye color didn’t, either. I saw his face, his smile, and I knew him, and my cheeks heat as I murmur, “I didn’t want to presume you’d remember me.”

He throws back his head and laughs, the sound ringing in the silence. “Okay, I gotta give you that, because it’s exactly what I thought when you seemed to figure you’d tricked me. Huh, maybe she doesn’t know who I am. I mean, sure, we’re in the town where I grew up, where your gran lived, but Tom’s not an uncommon name. She’s probably forgotten me altogether.”

“Never.”

“And I didn’t forget you.” He looks toward the house. “You know, there are easier ways of getting your inheritance.”

“I didn’t want that woman getting away with it. She took something from me.”

“Your gran’s house. Your birthright.”

I shake my head. “Not that. I think she took...” My gaze sweeps down and sees Liam, and I give a start, as if his body appeared from nowhere.

“I’ll explain later,” I say. “Right now, we need to call the police.”

“Do you think she did it?”

“Celeste?”

He winces at the name.

“You know who I mean,” I say.

“Do you have a real name for her?”

“Not yet. I’ve been looking for it in the house. She must have kept some ID. Real ID.” I look up at him. “Keep calling her Celeste, please, even when it’s just the two of us, so we don’t mess up. She’s welcome to the name. I never used it.”

The first time we met, I told him my name was CeCe, and it took nearly the entire summer for him to realize I was the granddaughter Maeve Turner called Celeste. I’d used CeCe at school, and eventually, that’s who I became with everyone except my mom. Dad used to call me Skye. Celeste, Celestial, Sky, get it? Yeah, it was half pet name and half because he didn’t like Celeste, either, thinking it sounded prissy. I always thought it sounded too pretty, too fancy. It fits the woman in the house more than it ever did me.

Daisy comes from my first construction job, when I showed up in short cut-offs and a shirt with a daisy on it and the crew dubbed me Daisy. After that, I’d go to a new work site and introduce myself as CeCe, and they’d say, “Oh, you’re Daisy, right?”

I am a woman of many names. It’s certainly made this last week easier.

“Do you think she killed Liam?” he asks again.

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