Blue Sky Days (13 page)

As we continued our grocery shopping, with me walking lazily beside Daisy as she pushed the cart, I gave her a sidelong glance, unable to keep the grin off my face.

“What?” she asked, looking around and blushing. Seeing Daisy blush was like hearing Daisy giggle—definitely a bizarre occurrence.

“Nothing,” I said airily, looking away and biting my lip to keep from laughing. “Nothing at all.”

*****

Daisy and I spent at least an hour coming up with the perfect menu for dinner. We decided to start off with bruschetta—Daisy said it was one of Sam’s favourites—then move to a main course of roast beef with baby potatoes and seasonal vegetables. Daisy even made ice cream to go with the fresh strawberries Nicholas and I had picked a couple days before at Farmer Milligan’s.

I watched Daisy as she flitted nervously around the kitchen, her movements quick and almost jerky—a strong contrast from her usual grace and fluidity. The corners of my mouth began to twitch as my eyes followed her. I tried to hold in my mirth for a long time, but when she put a knife in the fridge instead of the drawer, I burst out laughing.

Daisy jumped and spun around, the startled look on her face making me laugh even harder.

“What are you so nervous about?” I said between fits of giggles. “I thought you and Sam have been friends forever. Why are you so worked up about him coming to dinner?”

Daisy sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “It just seems like such a coincidence that he’s home after me talking about him this morning.”

I blinked, confused. “You weren’t talking about him this morning.”

Daisy let out a short nervous laugh before sitting down at the table, leaning her cheek against her hand and letting out a long sigh. “Remember how I told you about my first love?” she asked expectantly.

It took me a minute to realize what she was talking about, but then it hit me and my mouth dropped open. “
Sam
? Nicholas’s father was your first…?” I sputtered, looking at her with wide eyes, and she nodded. “I can’t believe you never told me before! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this morning when we talking about it!”

“I’m sorry, Em, don’t be mad, I just—”

“No, no, I’m not mad,” I interrupted, sitting across from Daisy and taking her hand. “I’m just…
shocked
.”

“I can imagine. I know I should have told you before, but I thought it might make you uncomfortable.” She was playing with her hair again, something I had never seen her do until that day.

We sat in silence for a minute, and Daisy looked at me as if trying to anticipate what I would say next. “So he was your first love. The first person you…the one you lost your virginity to.”

She nodded. “Yes. And not just the first person I loved, the
only
person I’ve ever
really
loved. Nothing ever compared to what I had with Sam, what I felt for him.”

“Well, what happened then? Why’d you two break up? Does Nicholas know about your relationship with his dad?” I knew I was peppering her with questions, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

Daisy sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair. “First of all, yes, Nicholas knows. It was about a year after his mother died. I had just moved to Riverview, and I met Sam at a dinner party hosted by a mutual acquaintance. We became friends almost immediately. He said everyone and everything reminded him of his wife except for me, because I hadn’t been around while she was alive or while she was so sick.”

Daisy leaned back in her chair and pulled her legs up so she was hugging her knees. “We started spending more and more time together, just as friends. Sam’s about ten years older than me, and I had a huge crush on him, but I didn’t think anything would ever happen between us. He loved his wife very much, and from all I’d heard, she was an incredible woman. Look at how amazing Nicholas is, how could his mother be anything but incredible?”

She paused, smiling sadly, and I imagined she was thinking of Nicholas at twelve, a year after he’d lost his mother. It was hard to believe that Daisy had known Nicholas for almost half his life.

“Anyway, Sam said I was good for him,” Daisy continued. “That I wasn’t like anyone he’d ever known. He said I made him feel young again, made him realize that it was okay to feel again and to move on. It didn’t take long for me to fall completely in love with him, and, to my great surprise, he fell in love with me, too. But even though we were in love, something just didn’t feel right. The age difference, the fact that I was so young and inexperienced, and he had Nicholas to raise on his own…”

The sadness had returned to her eyes as she pulled her knees in tighter, tucking them under her chin. “Nicholas knew about us, and understood as much as a twelve-year-old can understand these things. I thought for sure he would hate me. I was so certain he’d think I was trying to take his mother’s place, or take his dad’s attention away from him, but he was so amiable, even then. He liked to include me in things, and would invite me over for dinner or to go out on drives with them. Years later, Nicholas told me that he thought his dad would never be happy again until I came along. But it just…it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”

When Daisy stopped speaking, I felt breathless. I realized I had started to cry at some point during her story, and I wiped the moisture from my cheeks. “You still love him.”

Daisy smiled weakly. “I do. I suppose I always will.” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly and I felt a sharp pang of sadness for her. She must have seen it on my face, because her smile turned genuine as she reached to take my hand, saying, “But we’ve both moved on, and we’re friends now. Good friends. And friends are better than nothing, right?”

“Yeah…of course.” I thought of Nicholas and wondered if I could be just friends with him when I had such strong feelings for him. I didn’t think I could. I loved the way he looked at me, and the way he smiled at me—that secret smile he saved just for me. I loved the way he touched me and kissed me. I couldn’t imagine being around him and not having all of that.

Daisy nodded her head as if trying to convince herself as well as me. “Enough talk, eh? We have a lot of work to do before the guys come.” She stood up and smoothed her hand-painted star-print apron before making her way over to the fridge. Daisy brought out plum tomatoes and the knife she had put in there by mistake. She started to finely chop the tomatoes, and as she did, I scooped them into a bowl where I added olive oil and spices. We continued to work side-by-side preparing the rest of the meal, and after Daisy slid the roast into the oven we both went upstairs to get ready.

As I showered, letting the cool water wash over my hot, sticky skin, I thought about Daisy and Sam. There were a million questions I wanted to ask Daisy, but knew that I wouldn’t. Even though she said she had moved on, it was obvious there was still some hurt there—and definitely something more—so I didn’t want to dredge up the past and make her relive her pain.

But
, I realized, it had been eleven years since Nicholas’s mother passed away, and the way Sam had looked at Daisy in the grocery store made me think her feelings for him weren’t completely one-sided. I had no doubt that Sam had loved his wife very much—after all, she had given him Nicholas—but maybe he never forgot the love he and Daisy shared all those years ago.

I finished getting ready on autopilot, my thoughts consumed by my conversation with Daisy. Maybe Sam still thought of Daisy the way she thought of him, and maybe something could happen between them again. They were both still relatively young with nothing to hold them back—unless, of course, they were too scared to admit their feelings for each other. I hated the idea of them spending the rest of their lives living with secret unspoken emotions when they both might be feeling the same thing.

I had just decided to recruit Nicholas’s help with the situation when the doorbell rang and I heard Daisy welcoming Sam and Nicholas into the house. I stood in front of the mirror and finally took a look at myself. Without thinking, I had chosen the dress Nicholas told me was his favourite—sleeveless purple cotton, with a skirt that flared out at the hips and ended at the knees in cute, flirty ruffles. My damp hair curled over my shoulders, and I decided to leave it down rather than fuss with it.

I made my way downstairs, following their voices to the living room. When I stopped in the doorway, Daisy and Sam were talking animatedly to one another while Nicholas sat on the couch. His eyes lit up when he saw me, and he stood, crossing the room in a few quick strides and touching his lips to mine.
 

“Ahh, young love,” I heard Sam say quietly to Daisy, and I blushed as I pulled away from Nicholas’s kiss.

Nicholas smiled and rolled his eyes in Sam’s direction before winking at me. Then, taking my hand, he led me to where Daisy and Sam were standing, studying one of Daisy’s latest paintings.

“I always knew Daisy would make a living out of her art,” Sam told me. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Daisy, turned so that he could run his fingers gingerly over the raised lines of the flowers in the painting. “Such incredible talent.”

Daisy’s cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink as she thanked Sam, then said we could go sit in the dining room because dinner was ready. After Daisy and I brought out the platters of food and poured the wine, we all sat down at the table. Daisy and Sam took seats at either end of the table, leaving Nicholas and I to sit across from each other.

Sam said grace, something I wasn’t used to, but it was touching and felt appropriate. He gave thanks not only for the hospitality and the wonderful meal Daisy and I had prepared, but also for the company of friends and family.

As we passed around the food, Daisy and Sam began telling tales about Nicholas when he was younger. Throughout our mini dinner party, I saw another side of Daisy I had never seen; she was more confident now, as she normally was, but she was even more animated than usual. Her hands moved as she spoke, and her face was alight and glowing with pleasure. The dining room was alive with chatter and laughter as we all shared stories, talking about anything and everything we could think of.

When we finished eating, we moved to the front porch. Daisy and Sam sat in the rockers, while Nicholas and I sat holding hands on the front steps.

As the night wore on and we grew tired, Nicholas and I sat silently, listening to Daisy and Sam talk quietly behind us. Our fingers entwined, my head resting on his shoulder, I thought how this had been one of the best nights I’d spent since my arrival in Riverview.

It was shortly before midnight when Sam said they better get going because Nicholas had to be up at dawn to start work. Nicholas and I stood facing each other as Sam and Daisy said their goodbyes. As he kissed me good night, a soft and tender meeting of lips, I thought about what a perfect night it had been, and how that moment felt like the right one to finally tell Nicholas I loved him. I didn’t want to have regrets like Daisy did, even though Nicholas and I didn’t have anything to keep us apart the way Daisy and Sam had all those years ago.

The words were on the tip of my tongue when Sam clapped his hand on Nicholas’s shoulder and said, “Ready to roll, son?”

“I’ll think of you at sunrise tomorrow,” Nicholas whispered, brushing his lips over my knuckles before releasing my hands.

Sam nudged Nicholas aside playfully and wrapped his arms around me in a hug. I couldn’t help but smile, even though the moment had been taken away from me. After spending just an evening with him, I felt like I’d known Sam forever, the same way I did with Nicholas. There was just something about the Shaw men.

Sam released me and placed a light kiss on my forehead before turning to Nicholas and giving him a shove toward the truck, a broad smile on his face.

Daisy came up behind me and slid her arms around my waist, resting her chin on my shoulder. As the truck backed out of the driveway and the headlights disappeared down the street, I leaned back in Daisy’s arms and we sighed in unison.

CHAPTER 9

Over the next few weeks, I spent a lot of time with Daisy. Some days, she let me sit and silently watch her while she painted or sculpted or drew; other days, I would keep her company in her creative room, sprawled on the couch, reading a book. We went for picnics in the park, we window-shopped on Main Street, and we spent a lot of time outside in the garden or on the porch, talking or just enjoying each other’s company.

Every few days, we met Nicholas for lunch in the small grassy park across from his construction site. We would give him baked goodies to share with his crew when he returned to work, and after the first two times, some of the guys brought their bagged lunches and we all spread out on the grass and ate together. Sam was often around too, not used to his time off work, and feeling at home on a construction site.

One day I got a call from Mrs. O’Hanlon at the general store; she told me that my photographs were still waiting to be picked up. It took me a minute to remember the pictures I had taken several weeks before with Daisy’s old camera, and that she had dropped the film off for me.

I had been so excited about the camera, I couldn’t believe I’d completely forgotten about it, especially with all the extra time I had now that Nicholas was back at work. Daisy told me it was a sign that I was finally learning to relax and let go.

Eager to see how the photos turned out, I headed straight for the store—an old one-story brick building on the older part of Main Street.

While I waited for Mrs. O’Hanlon to find my package of photos, I looked around the checkout area and noticed a stand of postcards. My first thought was that I wished I had someone to send one to. There was a part of me that wanted to send one to my dad, but I knew my mother would see it, and it just wasn’t worth the negative comments I knew she’d come up with.

I picked out a couple of them anyway and studied the pictures, recognizing shots of the old movie theatre and the diner Vince and Maggie worked at on Main Street, as well as Farmer Milligan’s big red barn with his fields stretching out endlessly behind it.