Susan Wiggs - Marrying Daisy Bellamy

Logan’s mother, Marian, loved showing Daisy pictures of Logan at Charlie’s age. “It’s uncanny,” she would say. “They could be twins. Logan was always such a happy child,” Mrs. O’Donnell often added.

A happy child who had nearly ruined his life by the age of eighteen. Daisy suspected Logan had grown up under enormous pressure from his parents. He was the only boy of four kids, and his family was very traditional. Much had been expected of him. He was supposed to excel at academics and sports in school, and he had done so. He and Daisy had attended the same rigorous Manhattan prep school, where she’d watched him swagger through the halls with a twinkle in his eye. He came from a privileged background, and he’d been groomed to carry on the tradition—an Ivy League college, or at the very least, Boston College, his dad’s alma mater, followed by a position in the family’s international shipping firm.

Daisy looped her arms around her knees and watched Charlie, who was lost in a world of play. Why did parents saddle their kids with expectations, instead of letting the kid become whoever he wanted to be? Didn’t they know it made kids want to do the opposite?

It was a sports injury that precipitated Logan’s descent into drug addiction. A soccer championship was on the line, and Logan had suffered a knee injury. He discovered if he swallowed enough painkillers, he could keep playing.

Hide your pain and keep on playing. It was the O’Donnell family way.

Daisy pushed her son’s toy truck over a plastic bridge and silently vowed never to pressure him about anything. Ever. She wondered if her own parents had made that same vow about her. Didn’t every generation promise to be better parents than their own parents had been? How come it never worked out that way?

“Good, it’s all settled, then,” she said to Charlie. “A sleepover with your dad.”

“Because you’re working?” Charlie asked, scooping out a hole with a yellow plastic shovel.

That was the only reason she ever left him. To work. This time was different.

She paused her truck at the end of the bridge and took a breath. “This is not for work. I’m going to see Julian.”

Charlie didn’t stop digging and he didn’t look up. “Daddy-boy,” he said quietly.

“Okay?” she asked.

No response.

“Julian’s got something important to do called a commissioning ceremony.” It was the moment Julian would actually be given his officer’s commission, and she couldn’t imagine missing it. “It’s a really big deal to be an officer in the air force,” she added, wondering how much of this Charlie was absorbing. She stuck a plastic gas station by the side of the sandbox road and pushed her truck into the bay to fuel up. “They’re going to tell everybody where he has to go for his job. He could be sent anywhere in the world, from Tierra del Fuego to the North Pole.”

“Where Santa lives,” Charlie said, his face lighting up.

“You never know.”

She shook off a wave of melancholy, thinking about how hard it was going to be, seeing him go off somewhere to start his life as an officer. She was determined not to show her sadness. This weekend was about celebrating Julian’s incredible achievement, not about lamenting the chance they’d never had.

“Tell you what,” she said to Charlie. “Let’s go grab some lunch and you can pick out three toys to take to your dad’s.”

“Four toys,” he said, always pushing for more.

She was pretty sure he didn’t know what four was, but that wasn’t the point. You didn’t bargain with a little kid. “Three,” she said. “And they have to fit in your Clifford bag.”

Charlie was sound asleep in his car seat when Daisy drove up to Logan’s place. She spotted him up on the roof of the house he’d bought last fall, pounding at something. The house was old and graceful, from the 1920s, on a tree-lined street prized for its vintage architecture and quiet ambiance. The neighborhood was a haven for the upwardly mobile, close to schools and the country club. It didn’t appeal to Daisy in particular—her taste ran to funky lakeside cottages—but Logan had embraced home ownership with his usual tenacity.

Like all older homes, the house had issues. He insisted on doing many of the renovations himself, even though he could probably afford any contractor he wanted. It was as if he had something to prove. Born to a wealthy family, he’d never had to do home repairs. With his new place, he embraced the challenge. It was a steep-roofed two-story house surrounded by overgrown rhododendrons and hydrangea bushes, with a big hickory tree in the front. He must have heard her drive up because he paused in his work and lifted his arm to wave.

He lost his balance and wheeled his arms, and his feet came out from under him. Gathering speed, he skidded down the steep slope of the roof. It was like something out of a nightmare. Daisy opened her mouth in a voiceless scream and clamped both hands over her mouth. A part of her understood that this would be a really bad time for Charlie to awaken—in time to see his daddy fall to his death.

Logan grabbed for a purchase, hooking onto the eaves. The old metal tore away. He tumbled to the edge and dropped like a sack of mail, crashing down on an old rhododendron bush.

Daisy leapt out of the car and rushed over to him. He lay by the broken bush, motionless. His eyes were closed, his face chalk-white.

A sense of unreality fell over her. No. These things didn’t happen. They weren’t supposed to happen. He looked dead. He was dead. Just like that.

She couldn’t catch her breath. She sank to her knees beside him. “Logan, no,” she said. “Please.”

A terrible sound came from him as he sucked in a breath. “Please … what?” His eyes fluttered open, and he groaned.

She cried harder, from joy now. “Are you all right? I thought you were dead.”

“Hey, I thought I was dead. Completely knocked the wind out of me.”

“Should I call 911?”

He pushed himself up, plucked a rhody branch from his hair. “Sorry to disappoint you, but the emergency is over.” He moved his head from side to side. “No broken neck. Extremities all intact.”

A thin, livid scrape slashed across his cheek, and his hand was bleeding.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Okay enough, I swear.” He wiped his hand on his shirt.

“You shouldn’t have been up on the roof all by yourself. Couldn’t you have called someone?”

“Now you’re sounding like my mother.”

“Sorry.”

He offered a lopsided grin. “Maybe the fall knocked the silver spoon from my mouth. Here, give me a hand.”

She pulled him to his feet and looked into his eyes, making sure the pupils matched. “Did you hit your head?”

“Nope. Fell on my ass.” He laid his arm around her shoulders. He smelled of sweat and broken greenery. “I should lean on you, though. You know, just in case. Where’s my boy?”

“Asleep in the car.”

“I got plans for us this weekend,” said Logan. “My soccer team’s got a big match.”

She cast another worried look at him. “You might be really hurt.”

He stepped away from her, spread his arms wide. “Look, I’m fine, okay? I took a spill—”

“From a two-story roof.”

“And lived to tell the tale,” he said. “Quit worrying. Charlie and I’ll be fine. Perfectly fine.”

“What were you doing up there, anyway?”

“Fixing some loose shingles. A regular home handyman.”

“Do me a favor. No ladders, no roof repairs while you’re in charge of Charlie.”

He raised his right hand. “Scout’s honor.” He unbuckled Charlie’s seat and pulled it out. Charlie stirred but didn’t wake up, so Logan carried the whole rig into the house. Daisy followed with the Clifford bag and Charlie’s weekender.