“Maybe it’s both.”
He laughed again. “I’ve always liked that about you.”
“Liked what?”
“Your sarcasm.”
She pulled a face. “Who said I was being sarcastic?”
He held her gaze, and the room fell still. “Should we have a drink before we head to the restaurant?”
She nodded, not looking away, and he moved into the kitchen. He poured two glasses of wine and gestured to the couch.
“Make yourself at home. I’ll put on some music. Any requests?”
She thought for a moment. “Hmmm…maybe some Fleetwood Mac.”
“Great choice,” he said, grinning as he set the vinyl. Moments later,Landslidedrifted softly through the speakers.
“I remember an interview Stevie Nicks did about this song,” he continued, handing her a glass.
“Oh, yeah?” Daisy asked, though her eyes were focused on something in the distance.
“It’s hard to explain. It was like she was talking directly to me. I was working as a trolley boy back then at Tesco. I remember listening toLandslideand thinking—how can someone I’venever met put into words something I didn’t even know I felt? That’s when I knew I wanted to study the brain. I wanted to understand how music could do that. How someone else’s truth could unlock your own.”
Daisy smiled faintly and stared into her glass, swirling the wine.
“So, Stevie Nicks inspired your career path?” she teased.
“In a way, yeah.”
The room fell quiet again. Daisy took a long sip of wine, then another.
“What are you thinking about?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head. “It’s nothing.”
“You look like you want to say something.”
“I do,” she whispered. “But I really shouldn’t.”
“You know you can tell me anything,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper
For a moment, it seemed she might let down her guard, but when her eyes lifted to his, he felt it: something had shifted within her, and the silence between them no longer felt safe.
XXXVIII
DAISY
She’d once told him in one of her emails that, as a child, she’d dreamt of going to New York. Her mother had spent her twenties and the first half of her thirties there, a time she often spoke of with longing. When she died, it became clear that it had been the only place where she’d felt truly happy, the only time she’d been entirely herself.
In New York, there had been a glow in her mother’s eyes, as though her soul were alight and nothing could extinguish it. But after becoming a mother, after she was forced to leave everything behind and return to England, the photographs told a different story. They illustrated the slow, quiet erasure of a woman who had once known herself, only to lose that sense ofself to the demands of motherhood, never able to find her way back.
“Remind me, what did your mother do when she lived here?” he asked as they walked through the crowds.
“She was a musician.”
He considered her answer, exhaling a soft laugh. “That explains it.”
