Daisy Dulac's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

For three days Daisy carried her mistake with her. She had guessed at Cole Arnett from a mailbox, and she had guessed wrong. He wasn't lonely. He was grieving. She owed him an apology, but a card felt cheap and a pie felt like courting. Every gift she imagined pushed him toward romance, the exact thing he'd told her he didn't want. So she said nothing, and his cabin stayed dark, and the crooked box by the twisted maple filled with unread flyers. She stopped at the Ridge General Store to think it through. Inside, near the register, stood Ava Okafor, the event coordinator who planned every wedding and funeral on the ridge. Daisy had watched her for months. Ava held her color-coded clipboard against a basket of groceries. One chicken breast. One potato. One small carton of milk. Dinner for one, again. "You cater the whole ridge," Daisy said, "but you never eat with anyone." Ava's pen stopped. "I feed people. That's different." She checked a box on her clipboard. "You're the mail lady. The matchmaker." "I was." Daisy set her satchel on the counter. "I got one wrong this week. Made a widower think I wanted to pair him off. Now he won't open his door." Ava looked up. Her sharp face softened. "You want to fix it." "I don't know how. Everything I bring him looks like I'm still trying." Ava set down her basket. "Then don't bring him anything for him." She flipped a page. "When someone loses a wife, they lose being married. Not just her. The routine. The other name on things. You can't gift that back." She tapped her pen once. "So you honor it instead." Daisy watched her. "How?" "Ask him about her. Say her name if he'll give it. Grieving people go silent because no one wants to hear it." Ava picked her basket back up. "That's not a gift. That's just not looking away." Daisy left the store with an empty satchel and a full plan. She drove out to the crooked box. Cole's rig sat cold in the yard. She knocked and waited. When the door opened, she held up no pie, no card, no biscuits. "I'm not here to match you," she said. "I came to say I'm sorry. I read you wrong." She took a breath. "Will you tell me about her?" Cole's hand went to the ring on his chain. For a long moment he said nothing. Then he stepped back and held the door. "Her name was Ruth," he said. "She hated the ice roads." Daisy sat at his table. He talked, slow and plain, for an hour. She only listened. When she left, he walked her to the truck. "You ever want to know a heart," he said, "that's how. You ask." Daisy drove home lighter. She had her method now. But Ava's basket stayed in her mind, one plate, one fork, one woman who fed everyone but herself.