V stared now, out the window into the woods. Thinking, maybe, about her sister.
“I did,” Kurt said.
V set her elbows on the table and leaned closer to Nic. She looked her in the eye, hard and without blinking, for a long moment.
“Daisy wasn’t like the rest of us. Plain folk. Making do. I know where all the others are. Some married. Some got kids. Others like me, just working to pay bills. We like living alone after how we grew up. But Daisy, she was a shining star. Smarter than the rest of us. Resourceful. Always fighting to get out. Get more. She used to use a stick to poke through the crack in the cupboard where the chains couldn’t quite pull them together right. She put sticky tape on the end and figured out how to drag boxes of crackers close to that crack. She’d pull out a few. Eat them all herself. Then she’d slide the box back. And she didn’t care when it was time for punishment.”
V shook her head.
“You think our mother didn’t know exactly how many crackers were in each box?”
Nic watched V tell this story of her sister, her mind spinning. There were girls like Daisy Hollander everywhere. Nic knew the type. Scrappy. Resourceful.
“And she finally found a way to leave for good?” Nic asked.
“Sure did. She told most people she was going to Boston to live with our sister. There were four siblings and my parents still here at the time. I knew she was going to disappear, at least for a while. She didn’t want to get dragged down.”
“So she just never came back? Didn’t you worry about what had happened to her?”
“I know what happened,” V said. “She texted me. She moved to New York. Begged me not to tell her poor boyfriend. That kid nearly lost his mind when she left.”
“But that was ten years ago.”
“Look—some of us are close. Talk every week. Others, a few years go by. Daisy texted once in a while. Stopped altogether a few years ago. But there’s nothing strange about that.”
“And you’re sure they were from her—the messages?”
“I know how she says things. How she talks. Why are you asking this?” V was now concerned. “Do you know something?”
“No—it’s not that. I guess I’m just in that frame of mind, looking for my mother.”
V placed her hand on top of Nic’s. “Oh, you poor thing. But Daisy—well, that’s not the same situation. She moved to the city. She wrote to her boyfriend, too. And thank God! That poor kid. Went to Boston. Harassed my sister there, demanding to search her house looking for Daisy. Put up flyers all over the city. Did the same in Hartford. Any place he thought she might have gone. You know, he even went up to this summer camp she used to go to.”
“Summer camp?” Nic asked.
“I told you she was resourceful. She got herself a scholarship. Up in Woodstock. Some camp for gifted kids. They read plays and poetry all summer—can you imagine? She came back full of herself. Quoting things from people we’d never heard of, making us feel stupid. But it was hard to blame her. Daisy wanted a better life and she was willing to work for it. She said some of the kids at that camp had more money than everyone in this town put together. She got a real taste of it.”
Nic looked at the woods now, through the window. It was dirty,like everything in this room. This house. Piles of clothing. Piles of books. Piles of old magazines. Piles of canned food with bright orange value stickers. V was a hoarder, and Nic couldn’t blame her after the way she’d grown up. Still, there was nothing here that was going to help Nic find her mother.
She took a moment to be respectful, but then got up to leave. Kurt followed.
“Thanks for talking to me,” she said.
“Yeah—thanks,” Kurt echoed.
V got up as well. “My sister left ten years ago. Can’t see how it had anything to do with your mother.”
They walked to the door. Said their goodbyes.
Nic was about to leave, but then she stopped.
“Is her boyfriend still around?” she asked.
“Of course,” V said. She looked at Kurt curiously. “Everybody knows him.”
Nic also looked at Kurt now.
“Who is he?” she asked.
