"Growly."
Because I want to find creative ways to off anybody who hurts you.
"I'm morally opposed to people hurting other people." Wow. I really pulled that right out of my ass.
"Sure. Right." She crosses her arms, brow raised. "Because you've never hurt someone?"
She has a point. Especially considering the person I hurt is her. "We're not talking about me, we're talking about you."
"Anyway," she says, the word hard and pointed. "Liam hurt me. My college boyfriend. Four years at Arizona State University, and three of them were spent with him. We were very in love, or so I thought. It turned out he had many other girlfriends. It was this sick and twisted online thing he wasdoing, meeting up with women and sleeping with them." The corner of her lip curls up. "This might be TMI, but I never hated him more than when I sat in an exam room, waiting to hear whether his unfaithfulness had left me with not only a broken heart but also a sexually transmitted infection."
I have a lot of thoughts racing through my mind right now, but the main one is how to slyly learn good old Liam's last name. Pay him a visit. Maybe permanently alter his smile.
Daisy continues. "It didn't, thankfully. But I learned the hard way that you can love people, and they can love you, and they will still leave you. You can love someone, they canclaimthey love you, and they will screw you over. Then you can love someone who loves you back, and life can take them away from you."
That first one in her list is about me, but there's something about the way she says the third one that prompts me to place my focus there. "Like your mom?"
She nods in this tiny, heartbreaking way, and dammit if it doesn't tear me apart. Make me want to haul her to my chest, keep anything from causing her pain. I hate that life has disappointed Daisy. I hate that my actions so long ago have made it onto her list.
Reaching across the console, I find her hand and give it a squeeze. "I recently lost my mom."
Daisy's head swivels, waiting for me to say more. It's one of the last things I want to talk about, ranking up there with Daisy's upcoming wedding. But Daisy needs me in this moment, needs me to provide her with some sort of comfort, and a platitude doesn't feel like nearly enough.
"Liver failure, a few months ago." Now it's my turn to stare through the windshield, trying like hell not to see my mother's face, the regret she felt for the mother she became for a portion of my childhood.
"I'm so sorry, Peter. That's awful."
I nod, thinking back to my mother's final few months. "You know," I say slowly, a new thought turning over in my mind. "It might've been a blessing in disguise that I was injured. I mean, I don't love the scars," I say, palming the left side of my face. "But it gave me time with her I wouldn't have otherwise had. If not for the injury, I would've stayed a SEAL. And she wouldn't have told me about her health."
"She wasn't going to tell you she was sick?" Daisy asks, aghast.
"No," I answer, shaking my head. "She, uh," I falter, fearing I'm saying too much. That Daisy will hear Penn in my words, see the skinny boy who never had enough to eat, and start putting it all together. "There were times when she wasn't a great mom when I was young. She didn't want to make her problem my problem again. Those were her words." In my mind I see her in those final months, the yellow skin and the bruises that seemed to come from nowhere.
"You weren't close, then?"
"That's a tough question to answer. I don't know how grown sons are supposed to be with their mothers, but our relationship was heavy. She wore her guilt about my childhood like a shroud. Being around her was difficult sometimes because she couldn't forgive herself for the past. Our present was being affected by our past, but I didn't have it in me to tell her that, so I stayed away more than I should have. And now I don't have a chance to make that right. Or at least attempt to." The backs of my eyes burn.
What is it Plato once said?You deal with the emotion now before it festers and explodes and puts your brothers in danger, or bury that fucker so deep it never sees the light of day.
Maybe, no matter how deep they're buried, all emotions fester and explode given the right circumstances. Like sitting inmy truck with my childhood best friend, grappling with the way my heart feels when I look at the woman she's grown into. With the way I want to pour my heart out about every single thing, my mother's death and the reason I left Olive Township, the places I've been and the missions I went on.
It's me, Penn.
Fuck what Duke said. Fuck the fall out from Daisy learning the truth. I'll weather that storm. Fuck it ALL.
"Daisy, I?—"
"Peter, look out!" Daisy smacks my arm, pointing with her other hand at the road.
The alarm in Daisy's voice sends my foot straight to the brake, but I hesitate. Daisy doesn't know, but we've been here before, me and her. I've been the driver of a vehicle I couldn't control, one that jumped the curb, Daisy's scream reverberating, and then the teeth-chattering collision. Daisy slumped over the dash, blood pouring from her head. Thirteen-year-old me, staring in horror, knowing that was it for me. Knowing everyone would come to their senses, stop ignoring the way my mother wasn't taking care of me. Would it be juvie for me? Or foster care? And my mom? What would become of her?
I blink back against the awful memory. There was no juvie, or foster care. Just a payout, and a one-way ticket to San Diego.
"Look how cute they are," Daisy squeals, as Gambel's quail, at least a dozen of them, mosey across. The male leads with his comma-shaped topknot of feathers, and the female brings up the rear, herding ten fuzzy golf ball sized babies running zig zags over the asphalt.
My heart rate decreases, not all the way to normal, but better than the galloping pace it soared to when Daisy first cried out.
Nobody's driving behind me, so I come to a full stop. We watch the quail attempt to get all their babies safely across the street.
