“Heard what?” She looked genuinely curious, so maybe I was wrong. “I just figured you might need to eat something that wasn’t from a package.”
I nodded, overcome with gratitude.
“Where’s baby Maisy?” Greer asked.
“She’s asleep,” I whispered.
Greer put her finger up to her lips.
“Maybe Aunt Daisy would let you watch Disney while we have a glass of wine?” Amelia said.
Greer’s eyes went wide. “Extra screen time?” she whispered as if she was incanting a spell. “What about George?”
“I’ll give George extra screen time sometime to make it fair.”
Greer was very big on fairness. I predicted that she would be a lawyer one day. I poured a glass of wine for Amelia as she fiddled with my TV and then joined me at the dining table.
“So, now you’ve got me curious,” she said, taking a sip and grinning.
“Oh, Amelia.” I put my head in my hands. I filled her in on all the details of the police visit and what I had said to Mason afterward. I wanted—no,needed—her to say,Daisy, it’s not that bad.
But she didn’t. How could she? Because I had put my needs over those of a teenage girl in a world of pain. It was pretty awful.Iwas pretty awful. I wanted to blame my mother. Would that work? I knew it wouldn’t.
When I finally looked up at her, Amelia was studying me. “Are you rethinking letting me watch your children?”
She shook her head. “I’m using my journalistic skills to psychoanalyze you.”
I sat up straighter. “Oh, thank goodness. Have you diagnosed me yet?”
She raised her eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure I have.”
The way she looked at me… I knew she knew. A sorrow that I never, ever let myself feel, that I hadn’t fully let myself lean into since I was a teenager, grabbed at my throat.
“So I’m right,” she said.
Tears burst out of me at the same time as “They didn’t evenwanther. They willneverwant her. And I’m not going to let what happened to me happen to her.”
Amelia moved closer and put her arm around me. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “I was hoping that you were scarred, not just a total monster.” I couldn’t help but laugh. I wiped my eyes.
“Thank you for that,” I said. “Because I can assure you, I was thinking that I was.”
Amelia leaned back and took another sip of her wine. “Man,” she said, “you know, it’s funny, because when I went off to college and then moved to Palm Beach, I used to think,People would never even believe what I dealt with living down here.And then I realized that, sure, yeah, I had a crazy aunt that lived in the east wing and a mother and her best friend who ran our little town through genius tactics of meddling and manipulation. And a long-suffering daddy who had to put up with it all. But the older I get, the more I realize that that’s not bad stuff. That’s just more love.”
My eyes filled as she talked. I nodded.
And my heart ached thinking of Mason, of how I had blown my chance at being a part of this family that I had fallen so hopelessly in love with. I had created something beautiful for myself and thenshot it to hell. Was it on purpose? Was I afraid that if I let him really love me, if I let myself get truly attached to a family, they would leave?
I knew I was letting myself off easy. Like, well, my mom left me, so now I’m ruined forever. But hadn’t I been hiding behind that one for a while? It was time to move on. If I didn’t, how was I going to be the mother that Maisy truly needed if I did end up getting that chance?
“Mommy!” Greer said, fiddling with the remote. “The news people are talking about Uncle Mason!”
I jumped up, assuming this was about Maisy and the rescue. Amelia said, “I’m sure it’s just her imagination. She has a big one, you know!”
I got to Greer’s side at the tail end of a shot panning a baseball field that was way too fancy to be in Cape Carolina. I smiled. That was so sweet. She must associate every baseball field she saw with her favorite uncle. I patted Greer’s knee as she sighed and leaned against me. “Aunt Daisy, I’m going to miss Uncle Mason so much.”
I looked down at her, confused, until Carmen and Larry, our local nightly news co-anchors, popped back on, and Larry said, “It’s about time Mason Thaysden got his due.”
Carmen—yes,thatCarmen, the same one who was married to our esteemed principal and carried a torch for Mason—nodded. “Oh, I know you’re mucholderthan I am, Larry,” she said, shining her fingernails on her lapel. “But I never missed a game he pitched in high school.”
