Page 104 of A Doctor for Daisy

She grabbed a little floral clutch purse with a strap that slid around her wrist. “Is that one of Poppy’s purses?”

“It is,” she said. “It’s a new piece. They give us pieces a few times a year. A lot of soaps and lotions monthly but Poppy’s pieces less. If we don’t want the piece that is being given, we can take the value of it toward something else. I knew this was coming out a few months ago and I had my eye on it. Not that I get to dress up much, but I thought, you know, if I ever get invited to some dressy event, I need a purse.”

“And here you are,” he said.

“Here I am. It goes with everything. Or you could say I made sure that my outfit didn’t clash with the purse.”

He remembered his mother always lecturing—or teaching in her mind—proper attire to his sisters. Not clashing but it was normally not to have the purse clash with the outfit. Daisy did the opposite and he wasn’t surprised she found a way to get her bold style in there.

It fit her personality and she looked perfect enough to be on the arm of royalty. Not his.

“Whatever you did, it’s working,” he said.

She picked up a long black jacket she had and slipped it on. “You are looking at me funny,” she said.

He smiled. “I don’t picture you as owning a black jacket.”

“It’s Heather’s,” she said. “I didn’t have anything to wear with this. I would have liked a different color or a lighter one, but I wasn’t going to buy anything either.”

“No one is going to see it or pay attention to it,” he said. “They will be more focused on what is underneath.”

She winked at him. “You get to see that later tonight.”

“I can’t wait,” he said.

They left after that and were halfway through their drive. “So my mother called me yesterday.”

“How is she doing?” he asked. “Is she upset you won’t see her for Christmas?”

“No,” she said. “She is going to spend it with Charlie. I think they are trying to make it work, but she said any bit of work he did on her to move in with him is gone. She’s really on the fence now. She even said she noticed she’d changed her style for him and didn’t like she’d done that. She went back to the way she was. If he doesn’t like it, too bad.”

“Do you know why she is the way she is? Why she never dated anyone or lived with anyone before?”

“We’ve talked in the past. Not much. It’s funny. That is one of those parent child conversations I wanted and we never had it. I asked when I was a kid. I asked as an adult. I got the same canned response every time.”

“What response is that?” he asked. He looked over at her in the car, but it was dark out and he couldn’t see more than her silhouette as she was watching the road.

“That she likes her life the way it is. She likes making her own decisions. I told her that was fine when she was raising me. Or so I thought. She’s made enough comments over the years that she doesn’t like answering to anyone.”

“Who does?” he asked.

“I know. Thinking back, my grandmother was pretty controlling. We lived with her for a period of time and my grandmother would always ask questions. My mother hated that.”

“And that is why your mother didn’t do it to you?” he asked.

“She did but not the right ones. She asked fun ones. I heard what you said the other day about my mother not having a childhood. Or feeling like she didn’t, so I brought it up to her.”

“Really?” he asked, shocked.

“Yeah. She said, thinking back, she thought that was part of it. She didn’t want me to feel toward her what she felt toward her mother.”

“Makes complete sense,” he said.

“It does. I feel foolish that I never thought of it before. But we had what I think was a long overdue conversation. I told her that there was so much in my life that I needed parental support for and she didn’t give it to me. That she often acted childish around my friends. As if she wanted them to like her as a friend.”

“How did she take that?”

“She was hurt. I know she was. But I think we had to clear the air. I wasn’t even going to bring this all up except she was talking about Charlie again almost as if she expected me to be like a friend with advice. I was giving her suggestions and things I thought of and she told me I was a buzz kill and too serious.”

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